{"id":7263,"date":"2025-08-05T19:23:46","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T19:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=7263"},"modified":"2025-09-07T19:25:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T19:25:59","slug":"marylands-shameful-legacy-youth-of-color-still-funneled-into-adult-courts-and-prisons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=7263","title":{"rendered":"Maryland\u2019s Shameful Legacy: Youth of Color Still Funneled into Adult Courts and Prisons"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Stacy M. Brown<\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

A disturbing discovery in Maryland has reignited calls for urgent reform to the state\u2019s youth justice system\u2014 one that critics say still reflects the racism and cruelty of its 19th-century past.<\/p>\n

In a wooded area near the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center<\/a> in Prince George\u2019s County, at least 100 unmarked graves of Black children\u2014some dating back to the 1800s\u2014have been uncovered near the former House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children. Originally established in 1870 to detain Black boys as young as 5 years old, the facility operated under brutal conditions that included forced labor and systemic neglect. The site, long ignored by state officials, serves as a chilling reminder of the state\u2019s history of warehousing Black youth.<\/p>\n

But according to The Sentencing Project<\/a>, that past is tragically still present.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaryland\u2019s shameful legacy of racism, neglect, and abuse in its treatment of young lives continues to this day,\u201d said Olivia Naugle, Youth Justice Campaign strategist at The Sentencing Project. \u201cMore than 150 years later, though desegregated by the courts and operating under a new name, it still overwhelmingly detains youth of color, who are often charged as if they were adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Maryland now ranks fourth in the country for incarcerating people for crimes committed as children. Per capita, it charges more youth as adults than almost any other state, second only to Alabama. Black children are seven times more likely to be charged as adults than their white peers.<\/p>\n

Naugle and other advocates point to Maryland\u2019s expansive list of 33 offenses that require automatic adult charges for youth, one of the most extreme in the nation. While over half of U.S. states have moved to restrict or eliminate such automatic charging mechanisms, Maryland remains an outlier.<\/p>\n

State Senator William C. Smith Jr. (D), who chairs the state Senate\u2019s Judicial Proceedings Committee, has vowed to reintroduce legislation narrowing the list of crimes that send children directly to adult court.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the opportunity to reckon with the injustices of the past through action in the present,\u201d Smith wrote in a Facebook post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His proposed reform would reserve adult charges only for the most severe offenses, such as murder and rape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a critical step toward addressing the racial disparities that plague Maryland\u2019s youth justice system,\u201d Naugle added. \u201cWe applaud Senator Smith for tackling this deeply flawed system of youth injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black and Brown Youth Disproportionately Tried as Adults\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Sentencing Project\u2019s \u201cYouth in Adult Courts, Jails, and Prisons\u201d<\/a> paints a damning picture nationwide, but particularly in states like Maryland.<\/p>\n

Although the number of children tried as adults in the U.S. has dropped from 250,000 annually at the turn of the century to 53,000 by 2019, the overwhelming majority of those still being transferred are youth of color. Black youth\u2014who make up less than 15% of the national youth population\u2014comprise 63% of those detained pending criminal court hearings.<\/p>\n

The practice of treating children as adults in the legal system surged in the 1990s, fueled by racist myths about so-called \u201csuper-predator\u201d youth. The policies disproportionately targeted Black and brown children and have been thoroughly debunked by crime data and behavioral science.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2001, the U.S. Surgeon General\u2019s report found that \u2018there is not evidence that the young people involved in violence during the peak years of the early 1990s were more frequent or more vicious offenders than youth in earlier years,\u2019\u201d according to the Sentencing Project report<\/a>. \u201cYet, the damage of these punitive, racist policies had already been done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Violent juvenile crime has declined, and neurological research shows that young people are less capable of impulse control and more amenable to rehabilitation than adults.<\/p>\n

Still, children sent to adult prisons are at a significantly higher risk of suicide, sexual assault, and long-term trauma.<\/p>\n

The Sentencing Project reports that housing children in adult jails increases recidivism and severely hinders their ability to reintegrate into society. Youth convicted in adult court often lose access to record expungement, educational and vocational programs, and community-based rehabilitation services.<\/p>\n

In 2019 alone, 76 minors were held in adult jails in Maryland. Another 16 were housed in adult prisons. Most of those detained were youth of color.<\/p>\n

In January, the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative (MEJC) released 18 recommendations to the Maryland General Assembly in order to address mass incarceration in the state. Recommendations included: providing trauma-informed mental health treatment, expanding community-based reentry programs, and limiting the charging of youth in adult criminal court.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo single person created mass incarceration, and no single person can correct its devastating effects on communities of color across Maryland,\u201d\u00a0 Attorney General Anthony Brown, who serves as MEJC co-chair, \u00a0said in the statement. \u201cThese recommendations are a crucial first step in making our state fairer, and safer, for all. Just as this crisis has harmed Black communities for decades, our efforts will impact Maryland families for generations, helping them heal from the trauma of mass incarceration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2018They at Least Deserve Some Respect in Death That They Didn\u2019t Get in Life\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Advocates say the rediscovery of the graves near Cheltenham offers a sobering parallel between past and present.<\/p>\n

The boys buried there were labeled \u201cinmates\u201d on death certificates dating as far back as 1898. They died behind bars for offenses ranging from petty theft to simply being labeled \u201cincorrigible.\u201d Their names and lives were long forgotten\u2014until now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t be made whole,\u201d said Rosemary Clark, a genealogist who uncovered over 100 death certificates tied to the reform school. \u201cBut they at least deserve some respect in death that they didn\u2019t get in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Smith and former Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi have applied for funding to preserve and memorialize the site. However, advocates insist that memorials alone are insufficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to make sure we don\u2019t repeat the mistakes of the past,\u201d Schiraldi told The Washington Post<\/a>. \u201cThey were segregating kids by race and treating the kids of color more poorly and burying them in a potter\u2019s field. But at least they were taking them out of the adult prisons of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Naugle and The Sentencing Project, Maryland\u2019s modern policies show that not enough has changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is long overdue that Maryland ends this harmful, ineffective policy,\u201d Naugle said. \u201cIf we want to break the cycle, we must stop pretending children are adults. We must finally treat them like children, especially children of color who\u2019ve borne the brunt of this system for over a century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Published without changes from Washington Informer Newspaper<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Stacy M. Brown A disturbing discovery in Maryland has reignited calls for urgent reform to the state\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-regular-column","category-social-justice"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7263"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7265,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263\/revisions\/7265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}