By Mary Otto
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
When the $60 million Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center opened in 2003, it was hailed as the kind of solution Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) had promised when he campaigned for office.
Within a year, independent monitors were describing conditions there as bad as those in the state’s most notorious juvenile jails. A U.S. Justice Department report this summer found that the center has failed to “adequately protect children from youth violence.”
When Cheltenham Youth Facility shut down several of its dilapidated cottages in January 2004, advocates heralded a move toward smaller, more specialized centers. But today, some of the state’s jails remain so crowded that teenagers sleep on the floor.
As Ehrlich faces a tough fight for reelection this fall, his bold promises to fix one of Maryland’s most troubled systems have vexed his campaign.
“The system has gotten worse in the last four years,” Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, Ehrlich’s Democratic challenger, said in a recent interview. “We’re writing off too many young lives.”
The governor defends his efforts, saying in a recent debate, “We have made great strides on our juvenile justice system. We’ve changed the whole paradigm there.”
Ehrlich did not mince words about the troubled system when he ran for governor four years ago and laid the blame squarely on his Democratic opponent, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. As lieutenant governor, Townsend had taken on juvenile justice as a priority.
But problems with violence and mismanagement ran deep in many of the nearly two dozen state-run facilities entrusted with more than 2,000 young offenders. The state’s juvenile boot camps had been shut down because of brutality.
“The history of juvenile services in Maryland—up to and including the present,” Ehrlich asserted then, “is one of devastating dysfunction that has ruined children’s lives.”
The Republican who would become the next governor promised a new era and a “child first” approach. He would rename, and redeem, the Department of Juvenile Justice.
But violence and trouble persist. Inspections continue to reveal dangerous conditions, staff shortages, chaotic classrooms, mismanagement and crowding. Despite a boot camp debacle in the past, Ehrlich’s administration, too, tried the military approach, with bad consequences.
Officials at what is now called the Department of Juvenile Services say there were no quick fixes for the broken system and the damaged children they oversee, but they can point to some hopeful signs.
“It’s by no means a perfect system. But it doesn’t mean we haven’t moved in that direction,” said Juvenile Services Secretary Kenneth C. Montague Jr. “There has been a large, large change.”
But advocates say the political stakes make it hard for officials to admit there are problems in the system.
“How can you fix anything you can’t admit to?” asked Ralph B. Thomas, former head of the Office of the Independent Juvenile Justice Monitor under Ehrlich and his Democratic predecessor. Ehrlich “inherited a mess, and the mess continues.”
Montague said the State Department of Education is slowly taking over schools in the facilities and is scheduled to be running them all by 2012. Drug courts in a growing number of counties are offering some youths a chance at treatment.
Two facilities with long histories of trouble, Cheltenham and the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore, have been downsized, although there was a stabbing at Hickey this month. Two small youth detention centers, one on the Eastern Shore and one in Western Maryland, have opened.
Some of the improvements have come with federal monitoring.
Cheltenham and Hickey are being monitored by teams of juvenile justice experts following a 2005 settlement between the state and the Justice Department following claims of civil rights violations.
Educational programs have improved considerably at both facilities in the past year, said Peter Leone, a University of Maryland professor on a team for the two institutions. “It’s safe to say there have been dramatic improvements,” he said.
Yet elsewhere, observers have documented chaos. Patrick J. Elder, a Bethesda teacher, tried working at the Alfred D. Noyes Children’s Center in Rockville for one day last spring—then handed in his resignation.
“What I saw was disgusting,” he said. “The kids had no pencils, no paper, no books.” While two guards sat and chatted in the back of the room, he said, he tried unsuccessfully to get the attention of the 19 boys. Five were playing poker; three were wrestling on the floor.
“I realized this is not for me.”
Independent monitors at the center found similar chaotic conditions. Montague said Noyes presents special challenges because the high cost of living in Montgomery County makes it hard to pay and retain good staff members. In response to staff and teacher shortages there, salaries were recently raised.
Problems persist at the new Baltimore facility, as well, according to the Justice Department.
“We find that children confined at the Justice Center suffer significant harm and risk of harm from the facility’s failure to: (i) adequately protect children from youth violence; (ii) adequately safeguard youths against suicide; and (iii) adequately provide behavioral youth services,” the department said in an August report.
Montague said he disagrees with the findings. “There were no systemic constitutional violations there” last year, he said, “and there are none now.”
And problems sank the Ehrlich administration’s brief flirtation with a military-style camp.
After the Lower Shore DRILL Academy opened in Salisbury in late 2003, under the management of the Wicomico County Sheriff’s Department, the state began referring young offenders there, including Phil Sisler of Elkton, then 16, who had gotten into trouble for fighting.
His mother, Monica Sisler, hoped the place would give her son positive male role models and a sense of discipline. Then allegations of abuse started to circulate. Phil said boys were regularly forced to drink until they vomited and were lined up to vomit upon one another. His mother became alarmed and fought to bring him home.
After five months there, the department removed him and other students. The academy was closed down and has not reopened.
Montague said the state acted swiftly once the problems came to light. “As soon as we knew what was happening, we took our kids out.”
© 2006 The Washington Post Company