SOUTH BEND (AP) — A judge who stopped sending female offenders to a state-run juvenile center because he felt it lacked sufficient staffing and adequate services said he's cautiously optimistic about promised changes.

The Indiana Department of Correction announced last week that it will stop housing both boys and girls at the Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility by the end of March after boys are relocated to the Logansport Juvenile Correctional Facility and other sites.

St. Joseph Probate Court Judge Peter Nemeth wrote an open letter to Gov. Mitch Daniels in December complaining that girls at the Indianapolis facility were being "warehoused" and not adequately supervised. Sexual contact among girls was widespread, the judge said his staff had learned. He stopped sending girls to be incarcerated there.

"I think it may correct a lot of the problems I wrote the governor about," Nemeth said of the Indianapolis changes.

Nemeth said he was encouraged by DOC's announcement that a "staffing plan for the facility is being developed to ensure the appropriate deployment of staff."

"If they are actually doing a staffing plan ... if it means more than just words, I think that is real progress," Nemeth said. "I applaud them for that."

Nemeth said he still will not send girls to Indianapolis facility until he knows more details about the changes, especially staff-to-offender ratios. Instead, he said he is sending girls who are the most difficult to rehabilitate to a private juvenile detention facility in Vincennes, at a daily cost to the county of $138, compared to $60 a day at Indianapolis.

The DOC said girls will move into the Indianapolis unit being vacated by boys. The unit will house girls in single rooms locked from a central location. Girls struggling with mental health problems will go to a separate unit.

Nemeth had complained both about unlocked room doors and the lack of time the facility's contracted psychiatrist was spending with girls.

DOC Commissioner J. David Donahue said Nemeth's letter to Daniels had nothing to do with the decision to move boys out of Indianapolis Juvenile.

"It wasn't a trial-and-error objective. It was managing capacity to meet the needs of the community," Donahue said. "We are now relocating the boys back to a boys' facility because we have available capacity there."

The DOC said Logansport Juvenile Correctional Facility recently completed renovations that will allow its population to increase to 160 from 100.

The transfers of the 59 boys held at Indianapolis began last week, the DOC said.