By Marc Schindler
I started my legal career in the mid-1990s as a Baltimore public defender representing children in juvenile court. In the late 1990s I joined a civil rights law firm addressing juvenile justice policies statewide and across the nation. These experiences taught me two things: The Maryland detention facility where many of my clients were held—referred to then as “Cheltenham”—had once been a segregated facility known as the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children; and Maryland’s practice of automatically prosecuting youth in the adult criminal justice system was harmful and had no positive impact on public safety.
When I returned to Maryland in 2023 to serve as assistant secretary and chief of staff for my longtime colleague Vinny Schiraldi at Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services (DJS), I initiated an effort to research the segregationist history of DJS and the juvenile justice system in Maryland. I believed strongly that in order for us to change the way the system and our agency operated to make it fairer and more effective, we had to understand where we had come from, particularly the system’s record of treating youth of color, especially Black youth, more harshly than their White counterparts.
This research revealed that in 1850, Maryland became one of the first southern states to open a separate facility to get young people out of adult prisons—but only for White youth. It was not until 20 years later that the state opened the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children to remove Black youth from adult prisons. Both of these facilities remained segregated until 1961, when Maryland’s first Black woman lawyer, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, and Thurgood Marshall sued the state based on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education desegregating public schools.
While we were doing this historical research, a former DJS staff member who had worked for the agency for more than 40 years—and whose father had worked there for more than 40 years before him—told me about a burial ground for youth who died at the old House of Reformation. In time, we found the long abandoned site and learned that as many as 100 youths are buried there, mostly in unmarked graves in a heavily wooded area near Cheltenham. We were determined to make sure these long forgotten youth were afforded the dignity and respect they deserved and which they clearly didn’t receive when they were buried nearly 100 years earlier.
Sadly, when I started at DJS I also quickly learned that Maryland now incarcerated a higher percentage of its youth in adult jails and prisons than any other state except Alabama—about 1,000 youth a year. Also, fully 60 percent of the youth in DJS’ pretrial detention centers were automatically charged as adults, spending extended stays in a facility designed for much shorter stays (an average of 123 days for youth charged as adults vs.16 days for youth charged in the juvenile system). We calculated it was costing the state nearly $20 million a year just to hold those youths while the court process reached a decision of whether a youth would stay in adult court or be returned to juvenile court. About 80 percent of the cases were either returned to juvenile court or dismissed, begging the question of how this approach made any sense.
“A century ago, our legal system threw them (Black youth) away in unmarked graves. Today it throws them away into an adult criminal justice system. In both cases, the message is the same: your life is not valuable enough for us to recognize you or even try to help.”
Not surprisingly, the state’s “autowaiver” policy that resulted in youth being placed in adult facilities was not affecting all kids equally. Ninety percent of youth currently charged as adults are youth of color; 80 percent are Black. If this policy was improving public safety it would be one thing, but all of the research shows that’s not the case. Youth prosecuted as adults are more likely to reoffend and to do so in a violent manner and more quickly upon release. Youth held in the adult system are also more likely to be sexually assaulted and to attempt suicide than youth in juvenile facilities.
The information we had learned – that the original facility at Cheltenham was created by the Maryland General Assembly over 150 years ago to remove Black youth from adult jails and prisons and that there was a lost burial ground nearby – was shared with Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Chair William Smith Jr., D-Montgomery County. We all agreed that there needed to be efforts to rehabilitate the burial grounds with dignity, and Sen. Smith also said he was more determined than ever to pass legislation curbing Maryland’s practice of automatically trying so many youth as adults. As Smith said, “Segregation was terrible. Secretly burying young people in unmarked graves is indefensible. But at least the leaders of that day were taking young people out of adult jails and prisons.”
The through line of these practices and policies – from the 1800s to today – is the overwhelming impact felt by poor, mostly Black youth, who tragically are too often viewed by our society and our legal system as throwaway youth. A century ago, our legal system threw them away in unmarked graves. Today it throws them away into an adult criminal justice system. In both cases, the message is the same: your life is not valuable enough for us to recognize you or even try to help.
It is past time to afford the long-deceased youth the dignity they deserve and to stop throwing today’s youth into an adult system that fails everyone involved.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.