One staff member was sleeping on the job and another wasn’t adequately supervising youth at a Maryland juvenile detention center when two detainees escaped this summer, according to a new report.
The state’s Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit said in its report that there was a “complete lapse in safety, security and supervisory procedures” when two boys, ages 14 and 17, absconded in the early-morning hours of July 15.
The two youths left the center’s Cornish Cottage at about 1 a.m. after cutting a hole in the security fence with a bolt cutter, according to the report. From a cell hallway, they found an unlocked door to a room that had an external door, which was also unlocked.
They got out, cut a hole in the fence and walked three miles before they were apprehended by police shortly after trying to steal a car, the report said.
Cheltenham staff didn’t know they were missing for about half an hour and never issued a community alert.
The cut fence activated an alarm, but staffers didn’t immediately respond and an “incomplete fence check” did not find the opening, the report says.
The youths were taken into custody after an attempted carjacking near Southern Maryland Hospital at about 2:30 a.m.
Police interviewed the two staffers supervising the Cornish unit at the time. One “admitted falling asleep while watching a movie,” while the other “spent most of the time at the front of the unit and away from the youth,” the report says.
Video surveillance “indicates that lack of appropriate supervision enabled the youths to wander in and out of this room, in and out of the building, and back and forth along the cell hallway before they left the facility,” according to the report.
In a written response to the report, the Department of Juvenile Services said the facility has the protocols in place to prevent such incidents, but “staff failed to follow them.”
The department also noted that “disciplinary action, up to and including termination, was taken against all staff who failed to follow the Department’s policies and procedures.”
DJS spokesman Jay Cleary added that the department has also reinforced security procedures with Cheltenham staff.
Cheltenham has been a troubled facility. A teacher was raped and killed there in February 2010, and a student who was 13 at the time is charged in the slaying and scheduled to go on trial in January.
In the wake of that killing, reports by the monitoring unit found that chronic overstaffing and poor staff supervision contributed to the incident and have persisted at the facility.
