During a 12-month period, Human Rights Watch visited five jails in Maryland and interviewed more than 60 juvenile detainees. We found staff not trained to handle juveniles, children not getting enough education or recreation, and jails that lack appropriate medical and mental health care. The children we spoke with complained that they were not getting enough to eat. Children held in the Baltimore City Detention Center endure particularly appalling conditions and face daily threats to their physical safety. They are confined to grim, poorly lit cells crawling with cockroaches and rodents.
Violence is rampant.
Children held in adult jails are as much as eight times more likely to commit suicide than those held in juvenile detention centers. Yet the Baltimore jail offers almost no counseling to juvenile detainees, either in groups or individually. Detainees in crisis may be placed under suicide watch, but they then are kept naked, with nothing but paper sheets to cover their bodies. Clearly, the state is failing its children. While some children, particularly those accused of committing violent offenses, may need to be detained in juvenile institutions pending trial, they do not belong in jail with adult inmates.