When Lamar arrived at the Youth Detention Center, the state-run facility in Baltimore for teens charged as adults, there were no available beds in the housing units or even in the medical unit, which typically functions as overflow when the detention center is full. Lamar was directed to the gym, where he estimates he slept for two weeks.
WYPR isn’t using Lamar’s real name because he’s a minor and because he worries that speaking about his experience at YDC could hurt his ongoing court case.
Though the facility is designed to hold up to 50 boys and up to 10 girls at a time, data from the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, the agency that runs the facility, shows YDC was over capacity every day in June and July. Because the facility houses only minors charged as adults, the trend is a sign that the Maryland criminal justice system is treating more teens as adults than in the past.
The number of teens sleeping in the gym fluctuates as they cycle in and out of the detention center. Some days, there are no teens sleeping in the gym. On July 5, for example, the facility had 56 boys but seven of them were sleeping in cells in the medical unit and none was in the gym, according to DPSCS.
Lamar said there were nine other teens in the gym on the day in early June when he arrived and six when he finally got a bed in a normal housing unit.
The hardest part about sleeping in the gym was actually sleeping, he said, in part because at least some of the lights in the gym remain on throughout the night. He would put his blanket over his head to try to block the light.
He said his anxiety also contributed to his sleep issues.
“When I first got down here, they wasn’t giving me my medicine at all, so my anxiety was getting worse and I was hypervigilant,” Lamar said. “So, on top of the fact that I’m trying to go to sleep around a bunch of people I don’t know, they won’t even cut the light off, so now that’s messing with my nerves, too.”
The crowding issues seem to predate the summer by several months at least. On Jan. 4, the YDC facility administrator testified in court that the detention center had 66 teens, at least six more than it’s meant to hold.
The Office of the Public Defender has been hearing from clients that they have been sleeping in the YDC gym as far back as October, according to Baltimore public defender Brian Levy. Based on conversations with his clients and other public defenders’ conversations with their clients, he believes there have been as many as 21 teens sleeping in the facility’s gym at a time.
YDC holds two groups of teens. Those charged as adults in Baltimore can be held there pretrial. Minors sentenced in adult courts statewide remain there until they turn 18.
“If there’s more children at YDC than there was previously, it means there are more children being prosecuted in the adult system than there were previously,” Levy said.
Data shows juveniles arrested in Baltimore are more likely to be charged as adults than they were a few years ago. Levy said he has also noticed judges transferring fewer of those charged as adults to juvenile court.
This system disproportionately affects Black boys. According to state data, more than 80% of teens charged as adults in Maryland in the last five years were Black, and more than 90% were male.
An overcrowded detention center affects more than just where the teens’ beds are.
All of the teens who sleep in the gym share one bathroom that doesn’t have a shower, Lamar said, so they have to borrow the showers in the housing units.
And, when the teens assigned to sleep in the gym go to the housing units to shower, the teens assigned to those housing units get locked in their cells, essentially in solitary confinement, Levy said.
It also affects safety, Levy said.
“When you have children sleeping in cots next to each other on a gymnasium floor, that is not how that facility was designed to care for and ensure the safety of those children,” he said.
And he said having more teens at the facility strains resources such as the detention center’s lone psychologist.
DPSCS declined an interview for this story. In a statement, a spokesperson said the sleeping arrangements do not affect the quality of life for YDC’s residents.
“All youth in our care at the facility are receiving the same services and support, including library access, meals, shower and restroom facilities, medical care, recreational area access, and onsite educational opportunities through our partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools,” the statement reads.
When asked whether DPSCS officials were taking steps to reduce the crowding issues, the spokesperson indicated there’s not much they can do. Court commissioners decide where teens stay pretrial, judges set sentences, and lawyers are the ones who advocate one way or another.
“I don’t blame the Youth Detention Center for being overcrowded. I blame the system that’s placing juveniles in the Department of Corrections’ purview in the first place,” Levy said. “The way to undercrowd or decrowd the Youth Detention Center is to try children in the juvenile system, not the adult system.”
