The Cheltenham Youth Detention Center in Prince George’s County today. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
The discovery recently of more than 150 unmarked graves at a juvenile detention center in Cheltenham has exposed uncomfortable truths not only about the state’s history of mistreating poor Black children in the justice system, but also about its ongoing, racially disproportionate practice of automatically charging young people accused of crime in the state’s adult criminal courts.
The children and youths buried more than a century ago in newly discovered unmarked graves beside the Cheltenham Youth Detention center may have broken the law. Some, however, may have been the equivalent of today’s status offenders — kids who do things that are illegal only because they are not yet adults, like skipping school or running away from home. Others may have been sent to the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children — as the original facility was called — simply because their families were poor…