Cape Girardeau County needs to upgrade its 27-year-old juvenile detention center and teach defensive driving to juvenile officers to reduce liability risks, an official with a state insurance pool says.

County commissioners said they and chief juvenile officer Randy Rhodes will review the recommendations from MOPERM, the Missouri Public Entity Risk Management Fund, which provides liability insurance for 56 counties and 238 cities.

Risk-management consultant Sean McGonigle recommended the county build a "sally port" addition to the juvenile center at 325 Merriwether so juveniles can be brought directly by police car into the building. The county also was advised to build a "secure intake area" to process juvenile offenders.

McGonigle said all law enforcement officers should take a defensive driving course and that the county needs a plan to make the juvenile center accessible to the handicapped as spelled out in federal law.

Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones said the juvenile center was built before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed by Congress and doesn't have to meet the same requirements as a new building.

In all, McGonigle made 17 recommendations to lower liability risks in an April 17 letter to Rhodes, chief juvenile officer for the 32nd Judicial Circuit of Cape Girardeau, Bollinger and Perry counties. The letter followed McGonigle's inspection of the building April 11.

"We are taking it quite seriously," said Jones. But he said the commission first must decide if it is going to build a new juvenile center, a project that has sparked controversy for the past two years.

"If we do an addition down there, then all those things would be taken into consideration," he said.

Before a state board

The county commissions in Cape Girardeau, Bollinger and Perry counties so far have refused to build a new juvenile detention center, a project that circuit judges and Rhodes have strongly pushed. The Bollinger and Perry county commissions want out of the project entirely.

Cape Girardeau County officials say the counties don't have enough money to build a $4.3 million, 38-bed center. The budget battle is now before the Missouri Judicial Finance Commission, a seven-member state board of judges and commissioners.

Jones initially questioned the timing of the MOPERM recommendations. But McGonigle said Monday that the inspection of the juvenile detention center last month had nothing to do with the local controversy.

MOPERM typically hasn't inspected juvenile detention centers, he said, because "we haven't had claims or problems in those areas."

But the insurance fund staff has begun looking at liability risks at such facilities, he said.

"A lot of it is policy and procedural-type things," he said, including written policies and procedures on segregating detainees by gender.

McGonigle has asked the county and juvenile authorities to respond within 30 days to the recommendations.

Rhodes said he will respond to the recommended policies, but that it's up to the Cape Girardeau County Commission to decide if any construction work will be done at the existing center.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123