Baltimore's juvenile court system is so inept that arrest warrants go unserved, violence breaks out in court rooms and teen-agers leave the courthouse without a hearing because no one can figure out why they came.
Furthermore, a city bar association committee concludes in a new report that "much of the dramatic street crimes, killings and drug trafficking in Baltimore City are a direct result of the failures of the juvenile justice system and the low priority placed upon it by our state and local officials and citizens."
The committee, headed by George L. Russell Jr., a city lawyer and former city solicitor and Supreme Bench (now Circuit Court) judge, has been studying the drug crisis and the criminal justice system.
In a December 1990 report, Mr. Russell's bar committee made 23 recommendations concerning the city's criminal justice system. Thecommittee's recommendation to turn the City Jail over to state government was taken up by the General Assembly, and the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services began running the City Jail last year.
As a result of findings that led to this new report, Mr. Russell said he has already asked Gov. William Donald Schaefer to pay for two new juvenile court judges to handle the growing number of drug-related arrests of children.
Mr. Russell noted that there has only been one juvenile court judge in Baltimore City since World War II, yet in 1991, 20 percent of all arrests in the city were of juveniles.
The bar association also is recommending that a city-wide coalition be formed to coordinate both public and private funds against drug use, bringing together businesses, churches, schools, the media, health care facilities, and criminal justice agencies.
The juvenile justice system's inability to prevent youngsters from becoming adult criminals has been a major concern among juvenile justice advocates for more than two decades.
Now Mr. Russell's committee finds a juvenile court system under even more pressure because so many youngsters are arrested for drug-related crimes.
The city's underfunded system is severely stressed from a lack of personnel and computers to handle the 30,864 hearings it conducted last year, the committee found.
Arrests of juveniles on drug charges increased by 29 percent -- to 1,823 -- for the first 11 months of 1991, over the same period in 1990. Some 68 percent of those cases were for the distribution of drugs.
