MD. Assaults, crowding plague Prince George’s Youth Detention Center

The Prince George’s County youth detention facility where a teacher was killed last year remains plagued by assaults, security lapses, crowding and understaffing, according to a new report.

Maryland’s Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit, a watchdog for the state’s youth detention centers, says assaults and disturbances at the Cheltenham Youth Facility spiked in July, August and September compared with those months last year.

Reports from the agency have slammed Cheltenham since February 2010, when instructor Hannah Wheeling was killed. A student who was 13 at the time has been charged in her death. This summer, two detainees briefly escaped, partly as a result of shoddy supervision, according to the monitoring agency.

The new report says there were 97 incidents involving injuries during the three months studied, up from just 53 during the same time last year. Youth-on-youth assaults climbed from 48 to 76, youth-on-staff assaults jumped from one to 12 and group disturbances “increased exponentially” from zero to 26.

“Twenty-six group disturbances in a three-month period is cause for great concern and action must be taken to uncover and address underlying issues driving such incidents,” the report says.

Comment: the monitoring unit should take a look at Maryland’s use of force policy which is ineffective to maintain a safe juvenile environment. This policy was implemented by the prior administration who have since been forced to retire and have now moved on to implement these failed policies in other jurisidictions like California and New York.

The facility is persistently overcrowded. Since some cottages were closed after Wheeling’s death, Cheltenham can only accommodate 86 youths, the monitoring unit says. The average population was 109 in July, 103 in August and 113 in September.

Cheltenham says 112 staff members are needed for optimal operations, but only 91 staffers are available for work, the report found. Comment: wonder if the report found that there are only 91 workers available for work due to work-related injuries.

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