Freshly stocked with a few hundred books and magazines, the modest library at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center drew praise yesterday from Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and his top lieutenants.
So did the renovated computer lab -- signals, they said, of a transformation at the troubled youth detention center, which opened a little more than a year ago before plunging quickly into chaos.
To top off the day's positive thrust, Maryland Public Defender Nancy S. Forster announced that her office is dropping a court petition to have its clients removed from the jail for what Forster's office described last fall as "unsafe and inhumane" conditions.
But advocates critical of the state's juvenile justice system -- cited in a U.S. Justice Department investigation last year as failing to meet basic constitutional standards at two of its largest detention centers -- say the improvements at the Baltimore center do little to correct deeper, chronic problems.
"It's gone from an oversized detention facility with no services to an oversized detention center with some services," said Del. Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County).
The improvements and the Ehrlich administration's immediate plans, Zirkin said, are not addressing such problems as "a dire lack of treatment bed space, a dire lack of services in the communities and . . . the fact that we have such a heavy reliance on privatization."
The issue promises to reverberate through the General Assembly this year, with lawmakers seeking more expansive changes to the state's system. The issue has campaign overtones as well, because Ehrlich (R) made juvenile justice a key plank in his 2002 campaign for governor and criticized the programs overseen by his Democratic opponent, then-Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
Zirkin said he plans to introduce a battery of bills in coming weeks aimed at revamping the way Maryland treats juvenile offenders, including a measure to set aside money to begin planning a network of smaller facilities across the state.
Another bill from Zirkin would expand the authority of the office of the independent juvenile justice monitor, an agency charged with investigating and evaluating juvenile justice centers for chronic and serious offenders. The office has authority to investigate state-run facilities but not the private contractors who work in the system.
State officials said yesterday that $1 million in additional money will be devoted this year to providing mental health and other services to youthful offenders in community-based facilities in Montgomery County and Baltimore.
"We know that we have a problem, and that problem is that our system does not provide the services that children need," said M. Teresa Garland, special secretary for children, youth and families.
Ehrlich's budget for the Department of Juvenile Services next year shows an increase of $3.7 million -- 1.9 percent more than last year.
Mark I. Soler, president of the Youth Law Center in the District, which has monitored juvenile justice in Maryland for years, said the system has undergone "a change in attitude" in recent months.
"If you look at the history of [the department], it has largely been about locking kids up, and now the focus is largely about getting kids out of institutions," he said. "It's not clear where the money is going to come from to implement that."
In December, Soler's wife, Andrea Weisman, was appointed director of behavioral health for the Department of Juvenile Services.
In the past year, the state's juvenile detention centers have been the object of scathing reports by federal and state inspectors.
The Justice Department released a report in April that said Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County and the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore failed to meet minimum constitutional standards for such basic services as medical treatment, mental health care and suicide prevention.
In September, a state agency issued a report saying the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center had insufficient staff to keep even half of its then-106 residents safe and under control.
Forster, the chief public defender, asked a judge in October to close the new facility or order immediate improvements. The court petition said the situation was so volatile that public defenders and others were not able to visit the center "for fear of their own safety."
Yesterday, she told reporters that "there have been major changes" at the center and that there is a "newfound spirit of collaboration and cooperation" among the state agencies that oversee the state's youngest inmates. "We remain cautiously optimistic," she said.
