AbstractWith the incidence of violent juvenile crime and the increasingly limited funds for residential treatment of the adolescent offender, one court jurisdiction (16th Judicial Circuit, Kane County, Illinois) attempted to develop and administer its own residential treatment facility within the walls of its detention facility. This article documents the problems encountered in this endeavor and provides recommendations for other jurisdictions which might be tempted to try to balance the fiscal and rehabilitative demands of this growing population by administering their own residential treatment facilities. The problems addressed in this article pertain to the following areas of difficulty: developing a therapeutic milieu; attracting, training, and evaluating a competent child care staff; and implementing a consistent philosophy of change designed to drive all decision‐making within the cente