Victor Cullen Center

For more than two years, employees at the Victor Cullen Center, one of the state's three largest juvenile jails, falsified documents to hide the number of assaults by guards against teens. Juvenile justice investigator Peter Keefer concluded in an internal memo, written in September 2000 and obtained Tuesday by The Sun, that at least 229 reports were altered, destroyed or simply not filed. "This would lead one to reasonably conclude that physical abuse occurred at Victor Cullen and went unreported," the memo stated.

Every year, Baltimore City asks: "Why?" Why is the homicide rate in this city so high? Why is there such rampant addiction to drugs? Why are so many kids growing up to be violent criminals? The answer may lie, in part, within the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, whose most striking feature is its sheer amount of infrastructure. There is a school equipped with dozens of computers, a built-in basketball court and a lounge with video games and movies. On Thanksgiving, the center hosted a dinner for all of the juveniles in the facility and their parents.

Every year, Baltimore City asks: "Why?" Why is the homicide rate in this city so high? Why is there such rampant addiction to drugs? Why are so many kids growing up to be violent criminals? The answer may lie, in part, within the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, whose most striking feature is its sheer amount of infrastructure. There is a school equipped with dozens of computers, a built-in basketball court and a lounge with video games and movies. On Thanksgiving, the center hosted a dinner for all of the juveniles in the facility and their parents.

The Baltimore Sun Chronic staffing shortages and a dearth of security equipment such as radios plague some of the state's youth detention facilities, problems that extend beyond the Cheltenham Youth Facility where a teacher was killed in February, according to a report by an independent monitor. The Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit, which reports to the Attorney General, warns that eight months after Hannah E. Wheeling was bludgeoned to death, allegedly by a 13-year-old detainee at the Prince George's County center, "All staff still do not have basic, essential security equipment at their fingers.

Silver Oak Academy, a reform school for juvenile delinquents, will open this month in rural Carroll County with nine boys, slowly expanding to four dozen - just a fraction of the size it could be. The sprawling facility, with a 20,000-square-foot vocational training center and six dormitories, can accommodate at least triple that number, a legacy of the ambitious expansion plans of its previous owner, Bowling Brook Preparatory School, which was...

As top administrators resigned from two of Maryland's largest jails for teen-age offenders, the chief of Maryland's Juvenile Justice Department said yesterday that reports of violence at the facilities were "misleading" and "inaccurate." The resignations followed child advocacy groups' demand that Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend close one of the jails, Victor Cullen Center, and improve conditions at the other, Charles H. Hickey Jr. School. The Sun reported in Sunday's editions that guards at the two facilities and at Cheltenham Youth Facility have assaulted youths in their care and that the jails lack effective mental health treatment.

A report released yesterday by the state's independent juvenile justice monitor says that conditions are worsening at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center and that programming is lacking at the Victor Cullen Center, a new secure facility in Western Maryland. The monitor's findings are the latest in a string of reports critical of conditions in the 144-bed Baltimore center, where observers have documented youth-on-youth violence and assaults on staff members. Department of Juvenile Services officials say improving safety there is a priority, but yesterday's report suggests that more could be done.

The Maryland director of juvenile services told lawmakers Tuesday that he has expanded treatment options for the state's youngest criminals and improved the system. But youth advocates and some elected officials said Secretary Donald W. DeVore's reform efforts are not enough. DeVore pointed to the creation of research-supported treatment options for juvenile offenders who stay in their communities and the opening of a secure facility in Western Maryland two years ago as signs that the long-troubled Department of Juvenile Services has turned a corner.

L ast year the state Department of Juvenile Services served some 53,000 troubled youths and their families, most for minor violations that never make the headlines. But a handful of the department's toughest cases did raise serious questions over whether officials there were on top of things. Last summer saw a violent incident at the Victor Cullen Center, the state's flagship secure juvenile treatment facility, in which several youngsters managed to escape after injuring staff members.

New ways to help youths in trouble The monitor's report highlighted in The Sun's article "Monitor faults conditions at state juvenile centers" (May 21) raises concerns that programming is lacking at the Victor Cullen Center, a new secure facility in Western Maryland. Advocates for Children and Youth released an analysis last week that amplifies the same concerns. The state has invested $20 million in reopening the Victor Cullen Center and is planning to spend hundreds of millions more to replicate that model in Baltimore and in Prince George's County.

Bowling Brook Preparatory School opened its doors in Carroll County in 1957 as a small school for orphans. But by the time 17-year-old Isaiah Simmons died there after being improperly restrained by staff in 2007, Bowling Brook had grown into a large, privately run juvenile detention center housing more than 170 boys. A law passed after Simmons' death capped the number of beds allowed at state-run residential facilities at 48, but left privately run programs open to expansion.

L ast year the state Department of Juvenile Services served some 53,000 troubled youths and their families, most for minor violations that never make the headlines. But a handful of the department's toughest cases did raise serious questions over whether officials there were on top of things. Last summer saw a violent incident at the Victor Cullen Center, the state's flagship secure juvenile treatment facility, in which several youngsters managed to escape after injuring staff members.

The Maryland director of juvenile services told lawmakers Tuesday that he has expanded treatment options for the state's youngest criminals and improved the system. But youth advocates and some elected officials said Secretary Donald W. DeVore's reform efforts are not enough. DeVore pointed to the creation of research-supported treatment options for juvenile offenders who stay in their communities and the opening of a secure facility in Western Maryland two years ago as signs that the long-troubled Department of Juvenile Services has turned a corner.

Silver Oak Academy, a reform school for juvenile delinquents, will open this month in rural Carroll County with nine boys, slowly expanding to four dozen - just a fraction of the size it could be. The sprawling facility, with a 20,000-square-foot vocational training center and six dormitories, can accommodate at least triple that number, a legacy of the ambitious expansion plans of its previous owner, Bowling Brook Preparatory School, which was...

New ways to help youths in trouble The monitor's report highlighted in The Sun's article "Monitor faults conditions at state juvenile centers" (May 21) raises concerns that programming is lacking at the Victor Cullen Center, a new secure facility in Western Maryland. Advocates for Children and Youth released an analysis last week that amplifies the same concerns. The state has invested $20 million in reopening the Victor Cullen Center and is planning to spend hundreds of millions more to replicate that model in Baltimore and in Prince George's County.