In adult jails across Maryland, minors spend up to 23 hours a day in isolation, go without schooling, and in some cases avoid showering for the fear of being raped. Some are also forced to spend more than a year in adult jail before they see their day in court.
There are federal standards to protect youth from conditions like these. But in recent years Maryland has violated the criteria more frequently than any other state. The failures are so numerous that the federal government has characterized Maryland as an “outlier” and removed it from a national analysis assessing compliance.
Maryland law requires minors as young as 14 to be charged as adults for certain crimes, and most go to an adult jail when they are arrested.
Erin Seagears, a youth defender in Anne Arundel County, said she sees “terrified children” when she visits her clients in the jails.
“I see, literally, the uniforms hanging off their shoulder, because they're adult uniforms on children,” she said. “That first meeting, especially, it's just me sitting there with sobbing children.”
The violations are expected to cost the state “upwards of $500,000” in federal funding over the next two years, according to a state legislator looking to change state law.
According to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, a minor may not spend more than six hours in an adult detention center without a judge’s approval. The law also requires detention facilities to separate adults and minors so neither group can see or hear the other, a rule known as “sight and sound” separation. While the rule is meant to protect minors, it has also forced some to spend entire days in de facto solitary confinement.
The U.S. Department of Justice releases an annual threshold for the acceptable number of violations a state can incur before losing federal funding. Maryland’s violations were seven times greater than the threshold, according to a report by a state advisory group that oversees compliance.
The federal threshold allowed for 14.68 violations per 100,000 youth in the state between October 2023 and September 2024. Maryland had 112.34 violations during that period, according to a report by a state advisory group that oversees compliance.
This is the first year the federal government has enforced the law since it was updated in 2018. Only Wyoming and Texas have opted not to participate, according to a Justice Department report.
Maryland lawmakers are considering a measure that would bring the state into compliance with these rules by prohibiting minors from being held in adult jails.
‘He took birdbaths in the sink’
In interviews and court hearings, teens held in Maryland’s adult jails described sharing jail cells with adults; being shouted at, threatened and coerced by adult inmates; and fearing sexual assault. Some described spending months in de facto solitary confinement because of the sight-and-sound restrictions.
One 16-year-old boy spent about a week in the Charles County Detention Center in 2023 before transferring to a juvenile detention center, according to court testimony.
The teen “shared that when he first arrived to the Charles County Detention Center, that another person, an adult who was incarcerated there, showed him a shank and told him, ‘I'm not afraid to use this,’” social worker Aubrie McCarthy told a Charles County Circuit Court judge in a July 2023 hearing attended by WYPR. The teen “was also threatened and coerced into giving other people who were incarcerated his food. He reported he did not remove any of his clothes or shower for the entire week he was there for fear of sexual violation. He referenced he took bird baths in the sink,” with his clothes on, she said.
The teen has an intellectual disability that affects his ability to read and had trouble navigating the phone system to call his mom, McCarthy said. When he asked adult inmates for help with the phones and commissary, they sought favors in exchange for helping him, she said.
“He woke up in sweats, had nightmares about this experience,” McCarthy told the judge. She said the nightmares didn’t stop after he relocated to a juvenile facility.
Youth in adult jails are often held in what Maryland law calls “restrictive housing.” They typically remain in a cell for up to 23 hours a day and are released for an hour or two to shower and make phone calls. They are sometimes given recreational time.
A 17-year-old girl detained in the Prince George’s County Detention Center said there were days when she couldn’t leave her cell at all. The experience gave her panic attacks.
“I was crying, and I felt like I couldn't breathe, like it was bricks on my chest. I couldn't breathe,” the girl said, describing the first panic attack, during an interview in 2023.
The girl, whose name WYPR isn’t using because she was a minor at the time, spent a month under those conditions.
If the jail were in compliance with the federal standards, the girl would neither hear nor see adult inmates.
Instead, she said she could see and hear adults on her unit through her cell door and walls.
When it came time to leave the cell for an hour, the adults on the unit had to be locked in their cells. The girl said they yelled at her through their doors while she made phone calls.
By the numbers
Adult jails must log the arrivals and departures of minors and submit the logs to an auditor with the state, to comply with the federal standards. WYPR and APM Reports obtained logs from January 1, 2018, through the end of September 2024 from the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy.
An analysis of the data reveals the sheer scale of youth incarceration in adult jails in Maryland. It also shows some teens have spent more than a year in adult jails waiting for the courts to rule on their charges.
Between January 1, 2018, and the end of September 2024, Maryland law enforcement booked teens in adult jails nearly 4,800 times, according to the analysis. While the data tracks each booking, it does not specify when the same individual has been booked repeatedly, which may happen if a youth is transferred between facilities or is detained on new charges.
Roughly a quarter of the minors’ stays lasted longer than 30 days. Some lasted more than a year. The number of times youth were booked in adult jails each year has also increased. Last year was on pace to have the highest number of bookings in the seven-year period, based on the nine months of data available from 2024.
Black boys made up the vast majority of bookings in adult jails.
Nearly all of the minors booked in adult jails were waiting for their cases to be heard by a judge or jury, which can take longer in adult court than juvenile court. Just 3% of the jail stays involved youth who were convicted of their alleged crimes at the time of the booking.
Maryland has 33 crimes that automatically land juveniles in the adult court system. As a result, the state automatically charges more youth as adults than almost any other state. Most are Black boys.
Not all of those 33 crimes are felonies. And in 25% of the bookings in that nearly seven-year period, staff recorded a misdemeanor as the youth’s most serious charge.
‘The whole jail gets locked down’
For years, corrections officials across the state lobbied lawmakers to prevent minors from coming to their facilities.
Adult jails in Maryland are not designed to house minors or meet the federal sight-and-sound separation standard. As a result, youth in adult jails are often held in isolation.
At the Harford County Detention Center, Warden Daniel Galbraith said more youth began arriving at his jail about a year ago. Since then, he said he’s tried to increase the amount of time minors are released from their cells per day. His goal is to give them 2 1/2 hours of daily time out of their cells, but he said it’s difficult because of the sight and sound separation rules.
“Whenever I take a juvenile out of his cell, I can't have any adults moving around,” he said. “I have to lock down the jail.” If a minor needs to get medical care, take a program, meet their attorney or receive visitors, he said, “the whole jail gets locked down because I can't have the chance of them walking down a hallway and walking past another inmate.”
The Baltimore County and Prince George’s County jails have juvenile units for boys because they house so many of them.
But even with a separate unit, it’s nearly impossible to keep juvenile and adult inmates completely separated, said Emily Virgin, director of advocacy and government relations at Human Rights for Kids, a nonprofit that advocates to end youth incarceration.
Adult facilities also lack the educational and therapy programs that are available in facilities run by the Department of Juvenile Services, Virgin said.
Galbreath said youth in the Harford County jail who are enrolled in the Harford County Public Schools system work with a tutor “a few hours every day or every couple days” while there.
Not all adult facilities in the state offer even this much schooling to young inmates.
The girl in Prince George’s County said she received no schooling while in jail and spent her days watching movies on a jail-issued tablet in her cell.
After a month, the girl was briefly moved to a juvenile detention center, which has a school, but she returned to the adult facility after a judge ruled that her case would remain in the adult court. She said she asked the judge if she could stay in the juvenile facility to attend school, but her request was denied.
Many juveniles held in adult jails in Maryland are also unable to access mental health services, according to interviews with youth and court testimony.
The overwhelming majority of youth charged as adults in Maryland have already had numerous traumatic experiences before being arrested, according to a report released last year by Human Rights for Kids.
“Those mental health diagnoses are exacerbated and are really heightened when they're in such a harsh environment that is not meant for children in any way,” said Seagears, the youth defender in Anne Arundel County. “They're not getting therapy there, mentorship, guidance. It's not trauma-responsive or trauma-informed care in any way.”
Research shows that therapy reduces teens’ likelihood of reoffending.
Maryland’s juvenile detention facilities offer a range of trauma-informed therapy programs and other rehabilitative services. Each year, Maryland taxpayers spend more than $25 million on those programs.
Seagears said many of the teens she represents have never been to a juvenile detention center before coming to the adult jail.
She said teens confined to their cells for 23 hours a day told her they often cried several hours a day.
“‘It’s messing with my head’ is a phrase I’ll hear clients say. ‘It's messing with me being confined in just my cell all day, every day,’” Seagears said.
She said she sees the children “deteriorate” the longer they spend in jail.
“Bit by bit, you know, smiling less or not smiling at all, or being more agitated or just a little bit more just frustrating and not able to really converse with me so much like we used to,” she said. “I can see a tangible difference in the demeanor over time.”
Surprising alliances
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would prohibit any minors, even those charged as adults, from being detained in adult jails, unless the juvenile facilities don’t have room, or a court finds that moving the minor to a juvenile facility would pose a risk to the minor or others. The legislation also would require jails to let minors out of their cells for at least two hours a day.
The measure is designed to bring the state into compliance with the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, said bill sponsor Sen. Sara Love, a Democrat representing part of Montgomery County, in a Senate hearing last month.
It has broad support, including from those who often sharply disagree on policy.
Ryan Ross, director of the Charles County Detention Center and president of the Maryland Correctional Administrators Association, testified in support of the bill.
The Office of the Public Defender also supports the bill. While the Maryland State’s Attorneys’ Association hasn’t taken a position, the organization noted in written testimony its support for the exception allowing judges to send youth to an adult jail if detention in the juvenile facility would pose a risk.
The Department of Juvenile Services opposes the legislation. According to a DJS official, the agency’s preference is to stop automatically charging youth as adults altogether.
“Although DJS believes no youth should be placed in adult correctional facilities, without other statutory changes the proposed framework will result in overcrowding, and unnecessary delays, and will require DJS to build new facilities,” the agency wrote in written testimony submitted to the Senate committee.
Judges have ordered about 50 youth to be transferred to juvenile detention, according to DJS and corrections officials. But the officials said the youth are being forced to continue serving time in adult detention until space becomes available.
If the bill becomes law, the agency said the state might have to open two new 24-bed facilities. It would cost $90 million to build the two facilities and as much as $15 million a year to operate, according to the bill’s fiscal analysis.
About the data
The Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy noted when providing its jail log data that the data was entered by many individuals and may contain data entry errors.
The analysis excluded 285 records that appeared to be duplicates. When analyzing the length of stays, the analysis excluded 306 records where a departure date was not provided.
This story was produced with APM Reports as part of the Public Media Accountability Initiative, which supports investigative reporting at local media outlets around the country.
