Juveniles arrested in Baltimore riots receive unusually tough treatment

On Wednesday, 37 teenagers shuffled into a Baltimore courtroom, their wrists and ankles shackled in compliance with a long-held — and controversial — policy used in many juvenile courts around the country. They had been detained for more than 24 hours, arrested among some 200 others during violent riots Monday night that left 15 police officers injured, 144 vehicles torched, 19 buildings burned and several more stores and restaurants looted and damaged.

For many of them, this was their first encounter with the Baltimore juvenile delinquency system.

According to Melanie Shapiro, chief attorney for the Baltimore Public Defender’s Office’s Juvenile Court Division, that should have been enough to send at least the first-time offenders home long before Wednesday.

“A lot of the cases we saw yesterday were nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, and many of the kids had never had contact with the courts before,” Shapiro told Yahoo News. “Typically those cases get resolved before they make it to court, and if they do, there’s no detention involved.”

Yet nearly all of the minors arrested Monday, and a couple of others picked up after curfew on Tuesday, were hit with one or more riot-related charges (burglary, robbery, destruction of property, assault on police, disturbing the peace, possession of a dangerous substance or violating curfew) and detained until Wednesday’s hearing, where they were either ordered back into detention, released on house arrest or another detention alternative or sent home with a future court date.

Maryland Department of Juvenile Services spokesman Eric Solomon told Yahoo News that the court had ordered about 8 of the 37 back into detention on Wednesday, releasing the rest on a range of alternative to detention orders that included house arrest, electronic monitoring and required attendance at an evening reporting center, among others.

Though Solomon could not comment on the court’s decision-making, Shapiro insisted there was nothing ordinary about the way those 37 teens were treated, from their arrests to detention to prolonged hearings and beyond.

As part of the national Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative to reduce the number of children in unnecessary secure detention, the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services makes an individual risk assessment for every minor who is arrested, considering the person’s history, family situation and other factors to determine if they should be detained and whether to forward their case to the State’s Attorney’s Office, often pursuing alternatives like community service before hitting the minor with a formal charge.

“Under normal circumstances, I don’t know that a lot of these kids would have made it to court,” Shapiro said.

With Baltimore’s unrest simmering ahead of more planned protests and rallies this coming weekend, the court’s uncharacteristically stern actions seem designed to keep these particular juveniles off the street.

“Based on the arguments I heard from the prosecutors yesterday, I think there’s definitely some sort of effort,” Shapiro said. “But I don’t know where it’s coming from, exactly.”

A spokesperson for the State’s Attorney’s Office, which prosecutes both juvenile and adult cases, did not respond to Yahoo’s requests for comment. But similar reports from the 18-and-over side of the riot arrests suggest a crackdown aimed at discouraging the kind of looting, violence and destruction seen Monday.

Unable to file charges for more than 100 people arrested Monday night within the state mandated 24-hour limit (and bumping against the additional 24-hour extension ordered by Gov. Larry Hogan), a swamped Baltimore Police Department announced Wednesday night it would have to release half of the adults who had been held since the riots.

Those who did receive charges were sent to a district court, where judges set steep bails ranging from $7,500 for a man charged with fourth-degree burglary, a misdemeanor, to $100,000 for someone accused of trying to steal 132 bottles of vodka. Defending the latter, seemingly exorbitant amount, Judge Kathleen M. Sweeney said the accused booze thief had prior convictions and was a threat to public safety.

“Taking advantage of a situation is dangerous,” Sweeney said.

But Shapiro worries whether such an abject crackdown might also be dangerous for the juveniles she defends, arguing that most of the kids who were in court Wednesday, “I should have never seen.”

Maryland does not have a legal limit when it comes to detaining arrested minors without charges, unlike adults, as minors don’t even have to be charged. Nor are they eligible for bail. That's part of why, as Shapiro pointed out, Baltimore has been working hard to prevent youths from unnecessary detention — successfully shrinking the city’s population of detained juveniles by 22 percent between 2011 and 2014 (PDF).

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last couple years,” said Shapiro said. “But we got away from that yesterday.”