MD. Baltimore’s “Baby Booking” Juvenile Justice Center serves to harden criminals, not reform them

Every year, Baltimore City asks: “Why?”

Why is the homicide rate in this city so high? Why is there such rampant addiction to drugs? Why are so many kids growing up to be violent criminals?

The answer may lie, in part, within the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, whose most striking feature is its sheer amount of infrastructure.

Comment: The other answer might lie, in part, with the fact that Maryland created such a complicated and unusable set of regulations for its juvenile and residential centers that Maryland can no longer care for its incarcerated youths and are forced to send them out of state for placement and treatment because Maryland laws have the youths in control of the facility.

Maryland law dictates that detention facilities must not only hold juveniles awaiting their trial but also adjudicated minors who are awaiting placement into rehabilitation facilities.Frederick County. But after a riot in 2009, it has become less likely to approve a violent juvenile from Baltimore.

What that essentially means is that juveniles wait for their trials in the detention center, get adjudicated, and then are bounced back to the detention centers, where they await placement in a more permanent residential treatment facility, or RTF.

In addition to draining money, the juveniles who commit the most violent crimes (and therefore are in need of the most immediate treatment) are frequently the hardest to place into one of these facilities. There is only one RTF in Maryland that even purports to take the most violent offenders: the Victor Cullen Center in

Comment: what the authors of this article fail to realize is that Maryland created regulations and policies that made it impossible for RTFs to accept violent juvenile offenders because Maryland has outlawed intervention techniques that would protect staff and other youth from violent assaults.  Thus the politicians and advocates have created  an untenable situation where Maryland Juvenile Facilities opted to close entire sections of its facility as the youths were running havoc .  It’s no wonder that when these youths are released they continue to run havoc and re-engage in criminal activity – they were not taught any differently when they were in custody.

As a result Maryland has a high homicide rate, rampant drug use and an overrepresentation of youths growing up to be violent criminals. 

These bad political decisions to gain favor with special interest groups come at the expense of common sense and have unvocalized effect of costing the taxpayer more money in terms of 1. reincarceration of repeat offenders; 2. incarceration of the offender as an adult when s/he ages out of the juvenile facility; 3. increased crime and drug use rates; 4. transporting and supporting these minors in out-of-state facilities.

 The cost of housing a juvenile at the Juvenile Justice Center is estimated at $400 a day where  the time spent waiting for placement — which, in extreme cases, can last for more than six months — doesn’t count toward time served. 

Full Story: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-juvenile-justice-20101227,0,7097550.story

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