After a string of beatings and other abuses at boot camps for teens, the Maryland General Assembly approved legislation in 2000 that set up a watchdog agency to check for problems in the state’s juvenile-detention centers.
Investigators from the Office of the Independent Juvenile Justice Monitor were to visit the state’s 19 centers and report on everything from abuse accusations to leaks in the roof.
Though the outside oversight system has resulted in some changes, the head of the monitoring office says he often is frustrated by slow response from the centers’ staffers to many of the most urgent recommendations on such issues as abuse.
“We are having an effect, but it’s not at the pace that is acceptable to us,” said monitoring chief Ralph B. Thomas. “These conditions remain.”
Mr. Thomas’ perspective was supported by a lengthy and scathing report this month from the Justice Department, which charged numerous abuses and constitutional violations at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore and the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George’s.
That report left some lawmakers wondering why the Department of Juvenile Services was taking so long if the monitor has been warning about problems for several years.
“The independent monitor is doing a good job,” said Senate Judicial Proceedings Chairman Brian E. Frosh, Montgomery Democrat, who plans hearings in the summer on the federal report. “The problem is that the dangers and deficiencies pointed out here just don’t get fixed.”
Juvenile Services Secretary Kenneth C. Montague Jr. wouldn’t comment on the Justice Department report, citing the possibility of a federal lawsuit stemming from the findings.
Mr. Montague is intimately aware of the monitor’s role. As a state delegate, he wrote the legislation that created the watchdog group. At the time, he stressed that outside supervision was necessary to ensure that juvenile detainees were protected from harm.
He said earlier this month that the state has been working to address some of the monitor’s concerns, such as increasing the number of staffers at the detention centers. The changes take time, he said, adding that it was the monitor’s job to be critical.
“They’re doing what the state says they’re supposed to do,” he said.
The monitoring agency works under the auspices of the Governor’s Office for Children, Youth and Families.
Four monitors — one for each region of the state — conduct regular, unannounced visits to the juvenile centers. They inspect the facilities, talk with staff and investigate accusations of abuse or wrongdoing. Much of the information they review is generated by the Juvenile Services’ internal investigative unit, said an agency spokeswoman.
Each quarter, the monitor produces a report detailing problems at each center. The Department of Juvenile Services receives the opportunity to reply to each complaint. However, the quarterly reports bring up many of the same issues, some of which the Justice Department also raised. They chronicle frequent fights, problems with staff underreporting incidents of violence, and purported abuse by staffers.
Much of the violence can be blamed on staff shortage, Mr. Thomas said, with overworked and underpaid staffers lashing out at misbehaving youths.
Staffers frequently work double shifts, sometimes up to 80 hours a week. The Justice Department report notes that the youth-to-staff ratio at Cheltenham is sometimes as high as 60-to-1. Most states require a maximum ratio of 16-to-1.
Mr. Thomas said it is a chronic problem, one the monitor frequently stresses to the Department of Juvenile Services, but notes little improvement.
“The system should have responded much quicker to the issues we have addressed,” he said.
Mr. Montague said the Department of Juvenile Services has been working to make those changes, but added that they take time.
The agency has cut Cheltenham’s population from 265 boys a year ago to about 100 this spring to try to reduce overcrowding and ease the burden on staff. Mr. Montague also said workers at the detention centers will get $3 million in pay increases, an effort to attract better-qualified staffers and keep those already there.
However, he admitted that until those steps are completed, incidents such as those reported by the monitor will recur.
“Until we get to a posture where we can train more staff and downsize the number of kids, those problems are going to continue,” he said.
The General Assembly passed legislation this month that will require the Department of Juvenile Services to shrink its large juvenile-detention centers, a bill that Mr. Montague helped fashion. Hickey School, for example, will drop to 48 detainees from about 260.
That reduction should do more to stamp out abuse than any effort to strengthen the monitor or change its role, said the bill’s lead sponsor, Delegate Robert A. Zirkin, Baltimore County Democrat.
“The ideal is you have a system that doesn’t need monitoring,” he said.
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