ShareThisBALTIMORE - A plan to build a new jail here just for youngsters has come under withering criticism from community groups who want criminal justice reform -- not a new facility.
Maryland officials, long under federal pressure to improve conditions for the 90-bed Baltimore City Detention Center, are mulling whether to build a separate jail for suspects under age 18. Estimates for the proposed facility, which would house up to 230 inmates, are as high as $100 million.
But opponents say the state instead should focus on reducing the need for more jail space.
While almost every state allows the court some discretion in whether to move a juvenile to the adult criminal justice system, legal experts say Maryland's law is extreme in requiring that 16- and 17-year-olds charged with any of 23 crimes -- from murder to transportation offenses -- be moved to the adult system.
"The law should be changed so all youth are treated as youth," said Monique Dixon, deputy director of Open Society Institute-Baltimore, an advocacy group. "There is already a system designed for young people charged with crimes. It's called the juvenile justice system."
Compared with adult jails, juvenile detention facilities generally provide more extensive education and social services, shorten the time needed to resolve a case and reduce the likelihood of reoffending after release, some experts say.
Baltimore's jail could reduce the number of juvenile beds to as few as 44 if the state allowed more discretion in charging and processing young suspects, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency observed in a report last May. The Oakland, Calif., nonprofit noted a minor suspect's average stay is four months.
The report found that about 66 percent of all juveniles committed to the jail leave without conviction in adult court. Thirty-eight percent have their cases downgraded to youth court and 14 percent are acquitted or have charges dropped. The remaining 14 percent are released on bail, though some of these youths may be convicted later, the report's author told Scripps Howard News Service.
The report's funding came from the state, Dixon's group and the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates on behalf of disadvantaged children and families.
The impetus for a new jail came from a U.S. Justice Department investigation launched in 2000. It found the Baltimore jail was "deliberately indifferent" to inmates' needs, and it raised concerns about whether juveniles were kept apart from adult inmates, according to a 2009 analysis for state lawmakers.
Rick Binetti, spokesman for Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, denied that underage inmates were ever in proximity to adult inmates. In an email to Scripps Howard, he wrote that the "facilities themselves do not provide proper separation. However, procedures are in place for staff to manage mass movement in such a way the two populations do not come into contact."
Since April, young inmates have bunked in an annex segregated from the general population, though they exercise daily in the main building's gym, said Mark Vernarelli, another corrections department spokesman.
On a recent tour of the annex, two Scripps reporters found dim, fenced-in communal quarters that smelled faintly of urine and had obscenity-laced graffiti scrawled on the cinderblock walls. But double-decker bunk beds were neatly made, with threadbare, sometimes torn blankets tucked into plastic mattresses.
Binetti didn't give a timetable for any decision. But, in an email Monday, he said he expected his department would support something "likely ... in the ballpark" with the council's recommendations.
(Contact reporter Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
