The Tomasso Group financed this affair, paying for tens of thousands of dollars for limousine trips, hotel stays, expensive meals, and other gifts for the couple.

[6] Rowland was assisted in this goal by Ragaglia who, apparently acting on Alibozek's instructions, told an employee to add Tomasso to a shortlist of potential contractors and voted in favor of the group when sitting on the board that ruled on the contract.

[9] The day after Tomasso received the contract, they paid $2,700 for a one-night stay for Alibozek and Ragaglia at the Waldorf Astoria, a luxury hotel in New York City.

In November 2001, inmates at a public forum complained that the facility lacked hot showers and computer classes, that vocational and educational programming was largely unavailable, and that there had been issues with staff quitting.

[6] Days after this forum, staff protested outside the prison declaring that the facility was understaffed, lacked a clear disciplinary code, and that they felt unsafe.

[6] In the months following the Latessa report, Ragaglia attempted some reforms, placing the prison under the supervision of the DCF's behavioral health unit, establishing a committee to review use of restraints, and seeking to address staff shortages.

[5] Despite these reforms, the report of the Attorney General and Child Advocate, released in September 2002 after a 10-month investigation,[6] denounced the prison as a "dismal failure" at which children at risk of suicide were left unattended, therapy services were unavailable, and staff employed seclusion and restraints illegally and improperly and underreported their use.

In February 2003 they criticized DCF leadership who continued neglecting problems at the prison and in March they called for the creation of a state task force to provide independent oversight.

[6] In July, prison teachers reported to the U.S. Department of Education that they faced unsafe workplace conditions and routine sexual harassment and in September lawyers filed a class action lawsuit against DCF calling for the federal government to take control of the agency as it failed to meet court orders to improve services.

[6] Jodi Rell, who became governor following Rowland's resignation in the face of corruption investigations, inherited a failing prison and embattled child welfare agency.

In 2005, DCF released a new report that called for closing the CJTS by 2008 and replacing it with three smaller regional facilities which would allow children to remain in closer contact with their communities and hopefully reduce recidivism, which had been as high as 50%.

[4][17] Rell accordingly developed a plan to close the prison and proposed repurposing the site as either a training and office facility for the Connecticut State Police or an operations center for the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security.

A new law that moved these minors into the juvenile system increased CJTS's population and the government spent an additional $8 million on the facility.

Lawmakers removed this section from the bill, with House majority leader Joe Aresimowicz stating that he wanted a guarantee that the 335 people employed at the prison would not be laid off.

Workers were not told they would be laid off until they arrived at the prison on the day their employment was terminated, prompting union officials to hold a press conference condemning the manner in which staff were dismissed.

[26] In 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Connecticut and privately asked Governor Ned Lamont to investigate the possibility of providing facilities in the state for the detention of immigrant children.

[33] The Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice led the effort to ensure that the closed youth prison was not used to detain young people migrating into the United States.

[37] One of the plaintiffs, youth service officer Cornell Lewis, went on a week-long hunger strike in 2011 protesting racism from the prison staff's predominantly white supervisors.

[43][44][45] In July 2014, an arbitrator ordered DCF to rehire Lewis and pay back wages for the period of his termination, finding that the firing was far more severe an action than taken against other workers for similar violations and was retaliation for his activism.