State eyes selling Bowling Brook to Nevada-based Rite of Passage

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - At today’s Board of Public Works meeting, the state is proposing to sell the former Bowling Brook juvenile facility where a youth died in custody this past year to a Nevada-based group that runs juvenile facilities.

State Sen. Bobby Zirkin, a longtime advocate for improved juvenile justice service, is upset at the sale to a for-profit group and the possible reopening of a large-scale treatment facility.

“This is not what the legislature has been asking for,” Zirkin told The Examiner. If it reopens, “all of our efforts to move to regional small facilities have been for naught.”

In a related development, this afternoon Gov. Martin O’Malley is expected to announce the resolution of U.S. Justice Department restrictions on two other juvenile prisons in Maryland — Cheltenham and Hickey school, according to The Associated Press.

Josh White, a local lobbyist for Rite of Passage, the Nevada group, said the Board of Public Works is simply being asked to grant permission for sale of the Carroll County site and buildings on which the state has filed a lien. Once Rite of Passage acquired the site from Walden Real Estate and the former operators for around $7 million, it would then have to apply for a license to run the facility, he said.

The number of beds that ROP would seek to operate has not been determined yet, White said. “Those questions still need to be answered.”

The capacity is more than 100 beds, White said.

Zirkin said the state should not continue to support such large facilities and he is especially leery of handing over state-held juveniles to a for-profit firm.

Zirkin said he planned on contacting all three members of the board — the governor, state comptroller and state treasurer — before they approve the sale.

llazarick@baltimoreexaminer.com

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