One week after Gov. Martin O'Malley took the reins from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a teenager died while in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Services. The new governor shuttered an overcrowded, privately run Carroll County facility and pledged to develop a network of small, state-run youth prisons.
But as the Democratic governor prepares for a rematch with the Republican he ousted, he must contend with another high-profile death at a juvenile facility, this time in a state-administered program. A teacher at Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County was killed in February, her body discovered just outside the doors of the small building where she taught. Authorities are expected to soon charge a 13-year-old student in the death of Hannah Wheeling, and court proceedings could bump against the November election.
O'Malley and Ehrlich each call the Department of Juvenile Services one of the most troubled and troublesome agencies in state government. Each took office vowing to reform it, with a focus on smaller facilities and community programs, and said they accomplished much in their four-year terms. They say they'll make juvenile justice a priority of the next four years.
But if history is a guide, solutions for how to handle young violent offenders could elude whoever wins in November, and the realities of slumping state tax revenue and other agenda items could quickly swamp campaign promises.
"It's not easy, because there's nothing good politically when you look under that rock," said state Sen. Bobby A. Zirkin, a Baltimore County Democrat who has studied the agency, adding that Ehrlich and O'Malley both deserve credit for paying attention to an agency that had long been neglected.
Others say neither governor moved rapidly enough to bring change to a system that, when working properly, turns kids' lives around. Child advocates point to an upward trend in the rearrest rate for juveniles released from youth facilities, an increase that comes even as the state pumps more money into the agency each year.
'Dysfunctional' system
"What I would say for both of these governors is that the juvenile justice system has remained significantly dysfunctional," said Matthew Joseph, who, as director of the Maryland Advocates for Children and Youth, has tracked the system for almost 15 years.
Sen. James Brochin, another Baltimore County Democrat who discussed the agency with governor in a private meeting earlier this year, said, "There needs to be more of a sincere interest in this issue before things will change."
The Department of Juvenile Services supervises more than 10,000 teens who have been in trouble with the law. The teens deemed by judges and juvenile agency employees to be the most dangerous — about 700 on a given day — are in secure detention as they await court hearings or their 18th birthday. Others are monitored in halfway-house-like settings or in their communities, sometimes while wearing GPS monitoring devices on their ankles.
The agency, which employs more than 2,000 residential advisers, managers, teachers, counselors and other workers, has been beset with problems for decades. Officials have long grappled with high levels of employee turnover while trying to balance punishment and treatment.
In his 2002 campaign to become governor, Ehrlich attacked Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend on juvenile justice, which she was in charge of overseeing. Townsend had touted the "success" of youth reform boot camps even as reports surfaced about extensive abuses taking place at them.
Ehrlich pledged to create a "child-first culture" and make juvenile justice reform a hallmark of his administration. He appointed Del. Kenneth C. Montague Jr., a Democrat and reform advocate, to lead the agency, which the governor renamed "juvenile services" to emphasize what he called his philosophy of "focusing on the savables."
Ehrlich said in a recent interview that he was "passionate" about juvenile justice issues. "I put energy, attention and personnel into it. I know these issues very well, and I know there are models in other states that are working," he said.
As governor, he enacted legislation that makes the Maryland State Department of Education, not juvenile services, responsible for teaching young offenders. (The change must be complete by 2012, and many facilities still employ juvenile services teachers.) He said he also improved access to drug treatment and boosted involvement of community groups in juvenile issues.
Ehrlich closed most of the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County and reduced the population of Cheltenham by about half. The U.S. Department of Justice had begun investigating poor conditions at those facilities in 2002, resulting three years later in a consent decree that allowed for federal monitoring.
But Ehrlich and Montague, who as secretary often said "change is slow," were criticized for a lack of progress. A study of the agency took 16 months to complete, and juvenile advocates and agency employees said Montague was a poor manager.
Baltimore center opens
The Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, which houses city kids awaiting trial in juvenile court, opened in 2003. Within months, workers there reported the facility was dangerously overcrowded and understaffed. A top-level facility administrator wrote memos about conditions that went largely unheeded by the Ehrlich administration.
Allegations of child abuse as part of an initiation ritual at the Alfred D. Noyes Children's Center in Rockville led to the dismissal of several employees.
"Certainly over the course of four years, Ehrlich could have made substantial changes," said Jim McComb, a longtime child advocate and former director of the Maryland Association of Families and Youth. "He did not. The talk about 'savables' — that was rhetoric and nothing more."
Ehrlich argues that he "made pretty good progress" and left in place "a solid plan" that he could have implemented had he not been defeated in November 2006.
O'Malley said in an interview this week that "anyone would be pressed to find evidence of improvement under [Ehrlich's] watch."
A former mayor of Baltimore, O'Malley says the best indicator of progress within the agency is the number of juvenile homicides in the state, which he said has dropped 46 percent since 2006. Cooperation between state agencies and police departments has grown, he said.
"Our top priority has been reducing the number of children who end up in body bags," O'Malley said.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III called the cooperation between juvenile services and his department "unprecedented."
"We've eliminated some of the hindrances to making things happen — by disclosing information, sharing information and using that information," Bealefeld said. "It has paid dividends, as the data show."
Child advocates say that, while the reduction in juvenile homicides is to be commended, they are unsure how much the Department of Juvenile Services has had to do with the drop.
Federal oversight ends
O'Malley cited the end of federal oversight of Cheltenham and Hickey in 2008, as evidence facility conditions have improved during his administration. A similar monitoring arrangement at the Baltimore youth detention center is expected to end this summer.
Meanwhile, the agency is struggling in other ways, and O'Malley acknowledged that reform has not been as swift as lawmakers — or he — would like.
The GPS program O'Malley instituted as a way to "constantly monitor offenders" and improve supervision has been criticized as ineffective. In several high-profile cases, teens with ankle monitoring devices committed crimes or became victims, with a prosecutor in one case describing the anklets as a mere inconvenience for troubled juveniles.
Inside the facilities, residential assistants — the equivalent of correctional officers — and teachers say their ranks are stretched so thin that they sometimes must work draining double shifts. The agency spent about $9 million on overtime in the past budget year and is on track to spend even more this year, said Joseph Cleary, a spokesman for the department.
O'Malley closed Bowling Brook Preparatory School in Carroll County after Isaiah Simmons, 17, of East Baltimore, died there in the days after the governor was sworn in. Witnesses said Bowling Brook counselors sat on the struggling teen during a three-hour restraint, though no one was prosecuted in the death.
The governor and his juvenile secretary, Donald W. DeVore, worked furiously to open Victor Cullen Center in Frederick County as a replacement facility. It was to be state-run and small — and serve as a model for a network of other 48-bed reform schools that the state has committed to building in the coming years, O'Malley said
But more than 70 percent of the juveniles who have served time at Victor Cullen have been arrested anew after their release. "It's clearly not a program we want to replicate," said Joseph of Advocates for Children and Youth.
Wheeling's death in February served as another stark reminder of the challenges the agency faces. Because no one has been charged, though a 13-year-old suspect was quickly identified and moved to another facility, few details have emerged about what happened. Advocates and lawmakers say the tragedy is not necessarily indicative of a system failure.
"No [leader] should fall on a single incident, but it does bring into question broader issues of safety that I thought had been resolved," McComb said. "It's hard to gauge what's going on inside."
Advocates are eager to hear what the candidates for governor plan to do over the next four years. Zirkin said "the public is owed a detailed explanation of the next steps."
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