‘Pacing and praying’: Jailed youths seek release as virus spreads (NYT)

While some states have moved to release adults from prisons where the coronavirus poses a threat, efforts to free juveniles from detention have met resistance.

A 17-year-old girl spends nearly 24 hours a day in an 11-foot-by-11-foot room in the Lower Eastern Shore Children’s Center, the benignly named detention facility in rural Maryland where the coronavirus first entered the state’s juvenile justice system.

With her classes suspended and her counselor on leave, she steps out only to use a bathroom she shares with five other girls. Her human interactions are down to 10-minute phone calls with family members, who are barred from visiting.

At the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, at least one staff member and two youths have tested positive for the virus. A 17-year-old and three other boys in his unit are reusing masks when they leave their rooms to shower. They speak to each other through the crack at the bottom of the door and eat and sleep in the same room as their toilets, but often lack soap.

“I have been very nervous about possibly getting infected,” a 14-year-old in the Baltimore facility declared in a sworn statement to his public defender last week, one of several in which incarcerated youths detailed deteriorating conditions, hoping to persuade the state’s high court to set them free. The New York Times is not identifying them because juvenile arrest records are sealed. “When I first found out about the Covid-19 positive staff member, I started pacing and praying…”

To read the entire article from The New York Times, click https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/politics/coronavirus-juvenile-detention.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage