WASHINGTON — A new report examined all juvenile detention facilities in Maryland and found the biggest three juvenile detention centers "continue to expose kids to unsafe and dangerous conditions."
Those detention centers are Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center (BCJJC), Charles H Hickey Jr. School (CHS), and Cheltenham Youth Detention Facility (CYDC).
They also 'inappropriately' send youth with severe mental disorders to these detention facilities, the report found, even as there is an uptick in overall numbers across much of the state's facilities.
The report, by the Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit, an independent watchdog within the Maryland Attorney General's office, conducted unannounced visits and interviews to produce the reports quarterly.
"It should ring alarm bells," Nick Moroney, director of the Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit (JJMU) told WUSA9. "It’s very difficult to get the attention of state officials."
They found at the BCJJC "a dangerous and often chaotic environment" leaving some youth to be held in what the monitoring unit report described as "a prison-like environment" without even appropriate hygiene rations.
One male youth quoted in the report told a monitor, “we are tired of smelling.”
Some of the most egregious findings at BCJJC include a juvenile being assaulted and continued to be assaulted as he was lying defenseless, while staff was "delayed in responding to the assault because they were initially provided with the wrong unit location."
In the Cheltenham facility in Prince George's County, the report states the entire place was left unsupervised for hours after an incident that left the top administrator hospitalized with a head injury following a fight.
Staffing shortages are so bad there, according to the report, staff are 'working four to five double shifts to reach the minimal staff coverage."
At Silver Oaks Academy a staffer, who has since been terminated, "placed his entire body weight on top of a...(and) remained on top of the youth for four minutes and 30 seconds while the youth stated to the staffer that he couldn't breathe."
"It's a conglomeration of things that contribute to the issues that we identified in the report and staffing is one," Moroney explained. "Prosecuting kids as adults is another… maybe most prominently among them, the mental health challenges kids are facing and the fact that they are not properly cohesively addressed. And really not possible to do that in a juvenile services facility."
The report outlined several instances of kids "requiring hospitalization due to high levels of mental health needs continue to be inappropriately locked-up."
"They tend to overwhelming be kids of color and kids that come from impoverished backgrounds and this is where they end up when we don’t have proper resources in regard to mental health resources for the general population that are in these places," Moroney said.
Part of the report included a response from the Department of Juvenile Services (DJS), which much of the issue coming back to staffing shortages as a result of the pandemic.
"DJS is not immune to larger economic trends. As has been reported, the U.S. is experiencing a shortage of entry level workers for variety of reasons related to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and a changing employment market," they explained in the report. "DJS has also experienced this impact especially at the three facilities that are experiencing higher than usual vacancies: the Victor Cullen Center (VCC), Cheltenham Youth Detention Facility, and the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center."
Even as these facilities see an uptick in youth, Maryland prosecutes more children in the adult system than any other state with the exception of Alabama. The majority, minorities.