Natrona County needs a new place to house young offenders who pose a danger to themselves or others, and build it to last 20 years.

The county commissioners also need to determine whether to build a detention center for local juveniles only or one to house youth from other counties as well, a consultant told them at a work session Tuesday.

But Gary Bowker told th.

em a regional facility carries a major advantage: it could make money.

"The primary advantage to doing a regional project is to generate revenue to offset operational or capital construction costs," he said, citing his report.

The concept isn't new, because the current 40-bed juvenile detention center on the third floor of the Hall of Justice at 200 N. David St. has housed young offenders from other counties for years, said Bowker of the Loveland, Colo.-based Allied Correctional Systems.

On any given day, half the detainees are from Natrona County and the rest are from other counties, and the outsiders stay about twice as long as the locals, he said.

Yet arrests of juveniles have been falling, as well as detention center populations, Bowker said.

The decline in detainees accelerated over the summer after the Wyoming Department of Family Services began using a new method to assess whether it should recommend incarceration.

Bowker did not factor the DFS change in his report, he said.

Based on his findings, Bowker said Natrona County would need a 24-bed facility - just for housing, not counting beds for book-ins, medical needs and so forth - if it wanted to house just its juveniles, he said.

That would be far less complicated than a regional facility, which he suggested would need 46 beds, he said.

But if the county builds a regional facility, it could develop a management plan either to own and operate it, or contract with a private operator, Bowker said.

Either way, it could pay for itself and maybe more, he said.

In June, the county had about $3 million in reserves for the facility, and the commissioners estimated the total cost would range between $7 million and $9 million.

Bowker cautioned that his recommendation for a regional facility was based on detention population forecasts and not a comprehensive regional study.

He also urged the commissioners to decide wisely about how big it wants the juvenile detention center or face a political backlash.

"If the capacity is oversized, the public perception will be a wasteful and overly expensive county facility. If the capacity is undersized, the public perception will be a lack of foresight by county officials and will tend to be mistrustful of providing more funding for expansion," Bowker wrote.

Reach Tom Morton at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@trib.com.