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The 16-year-old suspect charged with killing a Farmington man was not the only escapee from the Albuquerque Boys Reintegration Center during its first year of operation.

In all, eight teens have absconded from state custody since the center opened in February 2007.

Three escapees are still at large, according to information provided by the Children, Youth and Families Department, which operates the center at 4000 Edith Blvd. N.E.

Until now, the department has not alerted the public about the escapes from the center. CYFD officials this week were developing a new plan for notifying the public and reducing the escapes, said Romaine Serna, CYFD public information officer.

Meanwhile, critics say CYFD officials aren't paying enough attention to public safety and don't have serious consequences for escapees. Once captured, escapees rarely, if ever, face new charges.

"There should be consequences" for the escapees, said Bill O'Neil, executive director of the New Mexico Juvenile Parole Board. "We feel strongly that kids who escape should be charged. It's not acceptable to ignore them."

Serna acknowledged that the escapes reflected poorly on the center, which is supposed to prepare boys for freedom and their return to their home communities. At the center, the residents have the freedom to go to work and school, but they are required to participate in counseling and other programs while they are living there.

The center has 24 beds but is not staffed for that many residents, Serna said.

She said the department doesn't place boys who are considered dangerous or a threat to the community in the reintegration center. A treatment team carefully evaluates each candidate for reintegration into society, Serna said. But those evaluations aren't always an accurate predictor.

"Sometimes they leave and do some horrible things," Serna said. "That's the hardest part of the work we do. We can't predict what they will do, but we have to believe our kids will change."

The department is reeling from two deaths linked to their escapees who were on the run during 2007.

An escapee from the department's Eagle Nest Reintegration Center, Adam DeLuna, 19, killed an Albuquerque man Aug. 29 in a road rage incident, then two weeks later killed himself during a police chase after a robbery. Albuquerque police said DeLuna's gun was the same weapon used in a home invasion and that DeLuna used it to kill James Howell, 28, of Albuquerque.

The second death was the Nov. 26 shooting of 83-year-old Thomas Powell in Farmington. Oden Gutierrez, 16, who fled the Albuquerque center in October, is accused of murder. His case is pending in Farmington.

"It's a horrible tragedy," Serna said of the killings. But the department "is not ready to say they (the escapees) shouldn't have been at the reintegration centers."

Serna said CYFD is taking measures to improve its system for determining who is ready for reintegration. "The process for accepting residents into the center is being tightened up and beefed up," she said.

Prosecutors in Albuquerque question the process that apparently failed to identify the two escapees as high-risk youth.

The escapes "are the tip of the iceberg" and indicative of a flawed evaluation system, said Assistant District Attorney Garry Breeswine who prosecuted DeLuna.

The pattern of violence in the lives of the reintegration candidates is most important in the evaluation process, not the most recent charge against them, he said.

CYFD "needs to go deeper" in its evaluations to protect the public, he said.

Serna responded to the criticism by saying she doesn't know the details of the evaluations. "I want to believe they go way back" in the case files, she said. "The DAs might have a valid point."

The Albuquerque Boys Reintegration Center sits outside the secure fences of the Youth Diagnostic and Development Center, which houses the most violent youth incarcerated in the state's juvenile justice system.

No one has escaped from YDDC since it erected its secure fences after the 2004 closure of Camino Nuevo, the maximum security juvenile prison, Serna said.

Because YDDC was crowded and considered dangerous by child advocates after a 2006 rape, the reintegration center was opened to reduce the male inmate population. Previously, model female inmates were housed in the reintegration building that now houses the boys.

Parole board executive O'Neil and prosecutor Nancy Neary, who heads the juvenile division of the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office also criticized CYFD for the lack of follow-up to the escapes.

Neary said it's up to CYFD's probation department to refer escape cases to her office for prosecution, but it doesn't happen. She has not seen any referrals, so escapees don't get charged.

"It's kind of pointless," Neary said. "CYFD doesn't want to provide consequences."

O'Neil said the parole board does a thorough review of each candidate for parole before sending them to the reintegration centers.

"We put a lot of thought into escape risk," he said. "We take our role of guarding the public safety very seriously."

CYFD also places teens who have proven good behavior and progress, but who are not yet eligible for parole, at the reintegration centers. Both escapees linked to the deaths were CYFD placements.

"Those were CYFD's call," O'Neil said. The parole board "did not weigh in on their ability to be returned to the community."

He said the escapees who were placed at the center by the parole board were walkaways.

"That's not to minimize the severity of walking away," he said. "But there's a hell of a lot of difference between a walkaway and a kid who invades a home and kills."

Historically, odds are that the juvenile parolee has less than 50 percent chance of completing parole successfully, O'Neil said.

"They are struggling and not able to stay clean," he said. "They have a variety of problems."

In New Mexico, since mandatory parole laws were enacted in 2005, more and more juvenile offenders are being released early. The intent of the laws was to prevent juveniles from lingering in the system.

A teen with a one-year sentence must have a parole hearing after serving nine months. A teen with a two-year sentence must have a parole hearing after serving 21 months. Parole is not mandatory at that time, but each juvenile must at least be considered for parole.

"There's a tremendous pressure to release kids back into the community," O'Neil said. "It's not like the old days. Basically, they are being pushed out of the facilities."

As an independent agency from CYFD, the parole board has to provide the checks and balances for the juvenile justice system to assure public safety, he said.

"Public safety needs to be more than an afterthought," O'Neill said. "The emphasis is elsewhere at CYFD."