Maryland officials, in deciding whether to treat mentally ill juvenile criminals or merely lock them away as punishment, are prescribing treatment for many of the white kids and punishing most of the black ones.

Some of Maryland's severely mentally ill delinquents receive minimal psychological help and instead are locked in state training schools, or juvenile jails, and fed tranquilizers and other psychotropic drugs.

At the same time, other teens -- with similar offenses, criminal histories and mental problems -- are placed in residential centers that specialize in treating mental illnesses.

Which juveniles get treatment and which go to jail correlates highly with their race, according to data recently compiled by the state Department of Juvenile Justice and obtained by The Sun.

"I think you get into a labeling problem of who's bad and who's sick, and at its core it's explained by a racial bias and really nothing else," says Howard Snyder, director for systems research for the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh.

"Let's be frank. There's a feeling out there when a black kid commits a crime of, 'Oh, well, blacks will be blacks.' A white kid commits the same crime and the reaction is, 'This kid needs some help.' "

Adds James P. McComb, chairman of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition, a statewide advocacy group:

"It's just reinforcement for a population of children of color that they're bad and not worth a damn. The long-term consequence is they're totally denied opportunity. They're singled out to be excluded from the mainstream, and that means they're more likely to commit crimes as adults.

"If people don't care about this on a moral basis, they ought to care on a practical matter of what it means to them, to their property and their safety."

Nationally and in Maryland, it has long been a pattern for justice officials to push more cases involving minority delinquents into court while dismissing those against white teens.

But numbers obtained by The Sun provide the first hard evidence of how black and white juveniles are dealt with differently in Maryland once they have been found to have committed an offense.

The racial disparity in sentencing juveniles is statewide but most pronounced in Baltimore and its suburbs.

In Maryland, one out of every three white delinquents is sentenced to confinement in a treatment center, compared with one in six black delinquents.

That means that in 1998, 120 white juveniles were sentenced to treatment in Maryland's residential centers and 223 white juveniles were jailed. At the same time, 132 black juveniles received treatment -- but 672 were locked away with no treatment.

In Baltimore, only about one in nine black delinquents was sentenced to treatment. In the metropolitan area's five suburban counties, that dropped to only one in about 13.

Those sentenced to jail were sent to either the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Cub Hill or the Victor Cullen Academy in Frederick County, anther training school without mental health treatment for the seriously ill.

Because they are juveniles, they will be released before they are 21 years old, their mental illnesses still largely untreated.

State juvenile justice officials say they compiled the data on race and sentencing because they are concerned that a disproportionate number of mentally ill blacks are being denied treatment.

"There is, undeniably, unquestionably, a problem," says Jack Nadol, deputy secretary in the department.

"The split is along racial lines, but why that is we just don't know yet. Our intention is to find out and try to correct it."

Many of those who decide whether to treat or punish juveniles are black, so the sources of the problem might go beyond racism, state officials say, mentioning other factors:

A shortage of beds for juvenile delinquents who need mental health treatment. Residential treatment centers, most of which treat juvenile offenders under state contracts, often reject Baltimore kids because they have been tougher to treat, officials say. (The vast majority of Baltimore juveniles in the justice system are black.)

A long-standing dispute between juvenile justice authorities and the state's mental health agency over how mentally ill kids in the state should be treated and by which agency. Juvenile justice officials want more mentally ill delinquents confined to secure residential treatment centers -- which has been resisted by mental health officials, who want to move away from such centers to less secure, community-based facilities.

A juvenile justice bureaucracy so daunting that kids with parents unable to navigate it are likely to be sent to Hickey or Victor Cullen. Given that a higher proportion of blacks than whites in the juvenile system come from single-parent or no-parent homes, this may translate to a lesser chance of getting treatment.

"I think what you basically have is a system where there's lots of kids who need services, you have limited dollars, and the kids who get the better services have more sophisticated parents or better advocates -- and that doesn't describe poor black kids from West Baltimore," says Susan Leviton, an attorney who has represented juveniles in Maryland for 20 years.

Gilberto de Jesus, secretary of the Department of Juvenile Justice, says his agency is taking aggressive steps to address the disparity in sentencing.

"We know that human lives are at stake here," de Jesus says.

He has formed a committee to review past sentencings. Officials from juvenile justice, the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, residential treatment providers and Maryland Health Partners -- the company responsible for managing mental health treatment -- are taking part.

More room for treatment

The Hickey School is scheduled to transform a portion of its grounds to a residential treatment center by summer's end, providing an additional 22 secure beds for some of the severely mentally ill delinquents who are on a waiting list for treatment.

Juvenile justice officials say the new beds will only begin to address the problem.

"Our focus has to be on the delinquency issues," says Norman Townsel, Hickey's director. "I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a corrections professional. We really aren't commissioned or set up to deal with serious mental health issues."

Yet the files of many delinquents jailed at Hickey and Victor Cullen read like they could have been pulled from a psychiatric hospital.

Among the diagnoses of black juveniles jailed there: psychosis, schizophrenia, major depression, sexual compulsion and post traumatic stress disorder. A number of them have attempted suicide and remain suicide risks.

"This young man is extremely unstable prone to paranoia and pseudo-schizophrenic and sociopathic actions," reads a report in one juvenile's file.

Mentally ill at age 7

Of another delinquent, diagnosed with major depression, his file notes, among other problems:

"At the age of 7, the boy went to out-patient counseling for suicidal gestures; he required similar treatment at age 11 engages in head-banging has experienced auditory hallucinations (hearing the voice of his dead grandmother)."

As many as one-quarter of the teens sentenced to Hickey and Victor Cullen have similar diagnoses and are in immediate need of intensive mental health help but are not receiving it, according to a study commissioned by the juvenile justice agency.

The same study shows that as many as half of the juveniles at Hickey and Victor Cullen could benefit from mental health help not available there.

At Hickey, 81 of about 355 delinquents were on psychotropic drugs on any given day in March.

"It's an indication of just how many kids we deal with have some degree of mental problems," says Walter G.R. Wirsching, a juvenile justice assistant secretary. "It's obvious to us that Hickey and Victor Cullen are not the places for many of them."

Here are details of two cases of delinquents who needed help. At least one of them still does. While two cases cannot define the disparities in sentencing, they illustrate the problem.

The first juvenile is black, from Baltimore, 16 and charged with cocaine possession, armed robbery and assault and battery. The second is white, from Frederick, 15 and accused of robbery and assault and battery.

Both have been diagnosed as suicide risks. Both have been diagnosed with conduct disorder, impulse-control disorder and clinical depression.

The white juvenile's sentence: help at the Woodbourne Center, a residential treatment facility in Baltimore.

The black juvenile's sentence: jail at Hickey.

"They told me it'd be good because he'd go on medication there," says the father of the black juvenile sent to Hickey.

"I said, 'He needs counseling and prayer and God, not a bunch of these mind-altering drugs.' But they said he's trouble, so he's going to Hickey."

Before juveniles are sentenced to treatment or to jail, caseworkers meet with their supervisors and a resource coordinator to find appropriate options for sentencing.

If that group suspects a delinquent needs treatment, he is sent to a psychiatrist or psychologist. If the clinician agrees, the group can recommend to a judge that the delinquent be placed in treatment.

Except in rare cases, judges follow these recommendations, partly because they know the difficulty justice officials have in finding places for delinquents.

Residential treatment centers -- there are 14 in the state -- can decide whether to take juveniles, and finally an independent review board from various state agencies decides whether treatment recommendations are appropriate.

Juvenile justice officials say they are not sure at what stage of that process black delinquents such as the troubled 16-year-old from Baltimore are being denied treatment.

Enough blame to go around

"I'm not casting any aspersions here, but all of the players in the system have to take some responsibility here," says Martin P. Welch, judge in charge of juvenile court in Baltimore.

"The court can only make a decision on where to send a juvenile based on the information it receives and the resources available to treat them."

Often, he says, diagnoses of city delinquents are not as sophisticated as those elsewhere in the state, so a shortage of beds for mentally ill delinquents in secure facilities leads justice officials to frequently recommend Hickey or Victor Cullen.

"Clearly, if we're told at the time that the child needs medication or is schizophrenic, we simply assume the Department of Juvenile Justice can meet those mental health needs regardless of where the placement occurs," Welch says.

But juvenile justice officials, by their own admission, cannot meet those needs. Neither Hickey School nor Victor Cullen has a full-time psychiatrist or psychologist on staff, or programs to address inmates' underlying mental problems.

In the background is a 13-year squabble between juvenile justice officials and their peers at the state's Mental Hygiene Administration.

At its core is a shortage of treatment facilities: The state's residential treatment centers have only 702 beds available for mentally ill delinquents and additional teens referred by state social workers and private agencies.

Juvenile justice officials argue that additional secure treatment facilities are needed for mentally ill delinquents.

But mental health officials and child advocacy groups argue that many delinquents who have been sentenced to residential treatment centers would be better served at less-secure, community-based facilities.

By moving them to community-based facilities -- which do not yet exist in Maryland -- more beds would be freed at the secure treatment centers for juveniles now housed at Hickey School and Victor Cullen, mental health officials argue.

Oscar L. Morgan, director of the Mental Hygiene Administration, the agency responsible for mental health care in the state, says he is not aware how long some delinquents have been waiting for treatment.

"I understand there are children in juvenile justice who need treatment," he says. "How many, I don't know."

While the bureaucratic disagreement continues, the state has a backlog of more than 30 mentally ill delinquents and other juveniles awaiting placement in the residential treatment centers.

An additional 70 or so ill teens should be awaiting placement in treatment centers but were inappropriately sentenced to Hickey School or Victor Cullen, according to justice officials.

Some juveniles wait as long as six months in jail for a place at a treatment facility, and justice officials say the wait may be driving some of its caseworkers to recommend direct placement at Hickey or Victor Cullen instead at a treatment center.

It is that kind of situation that frustrates such advocates as Maceo Hallmon, program director of East Baltimore Youth and Family Services. His group provides counseling for troubled kids, 98 percent of them black, and tries to find them treatment.

"The one thing that should be focused on, more than any other approach, is treatment and prevention," he says.

"That's a priority for some people. Unfortunately, it's not a priority for enough people."

Pub Date: 6/25/99