Report on Escapes Cites Multiple Failures

Multiple security breakdowns and poor staff supervision, including a failure to respond to an alarm, allowed three teenagers to escape from the Cheltenham Youth Center in Prince George's County in August, a report by an independent monitor said.

The report released yesterday by Juvenile Justice Monitor Marlana Valdez also found that the facility had no camera surveillance in place around a fence that the youths cut through. The residential staff failed to notice that one of the detainees had stolen a wire cutter from the wood shop.

The weekend escape was the 11th in 16 months from Maryland's secure detention facilities. A total of 30 youths fled in those incidents.

"Many of the same issues resurface each time an escape occurs," Valdez wrote. She urged the Department of Juvenile Services to issue a "coordinated and comprehensive" set of precautions to prevent escapes. One of the teenagers who ran from Cheltenham was on a suicide watch and should have been more closely monitored, she noted.

The detainees, two of them 18 and one 17, used wire cutters they stole from the wood shop to cut a hole in a fence surrounding the detention center. They were apprehended within a few days of their escape.

Tammy Brown, a spokeswoman for the agency, acknowledged the security breaches but noted that the teenagers were caught. She said many of the escapes at other detention centers over the 16-month period cited by Valdez took place within a short time after Donald W. DeVore's arrival as chief of the state' juvenile justice system.

"When he came on board, he inherited a system that was neglected for years," Brown said.

She said two supervisors and two staff members were fired or reprimanded after the Cheltenham escape. The staff failed to do an inventory of the tool closet in the wood shop, she acknowledged, and the agency is reviewing its policy on use of potentially dangerous tools by detainees.

Brown said the facility's perimeter alarm was ignored because a large number of false alarms preceded the escape. And the camera surveillance system was in place, Brown said, but had not been reset after a test.