The Prince George’s County youth detention center where a teacher was killed in 2010 saw a huge jump in assaults last year, according to a new report.
The report by the Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit, the watchdog for Maryland’s youth facilities, found that youth-on-youth assaults at the Cheltenham Youth Facility climbed from 221 in 2010 to 370 in 2011 — an increase of 67 percent. The number of those assaults involving injuries jumped 40 percent, from 108 to 151.
Reports from the monitoring unit have criticized Cheltenham since instructor Hannah Wheeling was sexually assaulted and killed in February 2010. A student who was 13 at the time of the slaying has pleaded guilty.
| Cheltenham by the numbers | ||||
| Type of incident | 2010 | 2011 | ||
| Youth-on-youth assault | 221 | 370 | ||
| Youth-on-youth assault, with injury | 108 | 151 | ||
| Youth-on-staff assault | 11 | 44 | ||
| Youth-on-staff assault, with injury | 2 | 16 | ||
| Serious group disturbance | 12 | 65 | ||
| Restraints used | 298 | 555 | ||
| Contraband | 22 | 14 | ||
| Suicide ideas, gestures, attempts or behavior | 44 | 74 | ||
| Source: Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit | ||||
The monitoring unit said Cheltenham was “consistently and chronically overcrowded throughout 2011,” which affected safety and security at the center. Two boys sleep in every cell, one in a “plastic boat bed” on the floor, and employees work mandatory overtime to compensate for staffing shortages, the report found.
“Cheltenham remains an inappropriate environment for youth residence,” the report said.
Other types of violence also spiked last year. Youth-on-staff assaults climbed from 11 in 2010 to 44 last year, and group disturbances that involved injury or property damage rose from 12 to 65.
Cheltenham should “provide a comprehensive and individualized program for youth involved in aggressive incidents,” the monitoring unit said.
The report noted that new management took over at Cheltenham in September — after two detainees briefly escaped from the facility in July, in part because of poor supervision — and violent incidents declined in the latter part of the year. Just six serious group disturbances and 76 youth-on-youth assaults were reported in the final quarter of 2011; those numbers had been as high as 26 disturbances and 108 assaults during earlier quarters.
In a response to the report, the Department of Juvenile Services said it has made other security improvements in recent months.
Those include increasing random inventory audits of tools, identifying blind spots in the video surveillance system, and ordering additional cameras, testing alarms and reviewing security procedures with staff.
The department also said that “at no time is a DJS facility so overcrowded as to affect the safety of or services to the youth we serve.”
