*Kamryn Washington
I. Introduction
When the United Nations International Experts Advancing Racial Justice and Equality in Policing, visited detention centers in several different cities in the U.S., including Washington D.C., Chicago, and Atlanta, between April and May of 2023, they saw blatant racism, child slave labor, and pregnant women giving birth in shackles.[1] Their report released on September 28, 2023 describes the shocking human right violations in the U.S. criminal system, particularly they witnessed inmates[2] “freezing without blankets, covering themselves with plastic bags to stay warm, going hungry, denied prescribed medications, suffering delusions and stuck in dirty living quarters.”[3]
The investigators discovered disturbing issues with the detention centers–one of the most striking aspects being “stark racial disparities among the subjects of the worst rights violations, including practices that are rarely documented in comparable countries.”[4] The report discussed how the “U.S. is the only country in the world that sentences children to life without parole,” with 62% of juveniles serving life without parole being of African descent.[5] It also discussed how the prison system is a “free Black workforce” and how Black pregnant women are more likely to be shackled during labor, increasing the chances of a stillborn.[6] Finally, the investigators discovered an “incommunicado detention” center in Chicago, where an arrest was made and the detainee was not provided access to a lawyer and his family was not provided information about his whereabouts.[7] 82% of the detainees in that facility were Black.[8]
To many Americans, the UN report is not surprising. If you have family members who have been in the prison system, you likely are aware that you are no longer treated as an American citizen once the government charges you with a crime. Many local efforts have been made to help fix these atrocities, yet little improvement have been made. For example, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, Juvenile Protection Division, investigated Baltimore County Detention Center (BCDC) and documented many federal law violations; however, BCDC has made little to no change. [9] Hopefully, the UN report will help more Americans care that the prison system is another form of racial slavery–not always used to bring about justice but instead used to create further injustices and inequities among minorities.
II. Human Right’s Violations in Baltimore’s Juvenile Detention Center
The Thirteenth Amendment freed all enslaved people—except those charged with a crime.[10] This exception has caused Americans to disregard the mistreatment of citizens who are convicted of a crime.[11] The UN issued a report detailing the human rights violations that occur in America’s prison system on a national level, but such abuse is also happening right here in Maryland.[12] On March 6, 2023, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender released a letter urging an immediate transfer of minors from the BCDC to a state facility, alleging Baltimore County correctional services had failed to address years of violating federal laws enacted to protect minors and students with disabilities.[13] In 2018, the Juvenile Protection Division (JDP) investigated the BCDC.[14] It discovered that juveniles were not separated from adult prisoners, there was inadequate supervision of juveniles, and the prison failed to provide education and mental health care as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).[15]
The JDP investigation found that kids and teenagers at the BCDC are denied access to basic health, hygiene, and education needs.The JDP investigation revealed that newly detained kids and teenagers sleep on mats on the floor of their cells, despite rodents and human feces infesting the units.[16] The kids and teenagers detained at the BCDC remain locked in their cells for 23 hours each day. Individually, they may be permitted out of their cells around 2:30 a.m. to use the phones and face a Hobson’s choice of showering or speaking to their family––not both.[17] The kids and teenagers detained at the BCDC receive no laundry services and must wash their own jumpsuits and underwear in the sink in their cell. Their only method to get the attention of guards involves banging on their cell doors, which often goes ignored.[18]
While the kids and teenagers remain in the Intake Unit, the facility provides no schooling, despite several individualized education plans (IEPs) that federally mandate these services.[19] Additionally, requesting medical treatment is an arduous process resulting in children not seeing the doctor or nurse—before processing a sick call, these children must have a $4.00 co-pay authorized by Correctional Services § 2-118 subtracted from their inmate account.[20] Several of the children detained are Children in Need of Assistance (CINA) and do not have parents, but rather, a DSS Social Worker overseeing their legal care.[21] Consequently, they do not have access to necessary funds for medical care. Children with concussions and dental issues requesting to see a doctor have been documented waiting for 30 days for an appointment.[22]
The kids and teenagers detained also do not go outside. One child, who had been held for two years at the time of the report, had not been outside once during his detention.[23] Additionally, the children detained also do not participate in any recreation or large muscle exercises.[24]
The kids and teenagers detained do not receive mental health services despite requests to speak to a counselor (BCDC asserts juveniles receive unspecified “behavior counseling”).[25] The children detained must purchase their own hygiene products like soap and shampoo.[26] Food provided is unhealthy and inadequate,[27] and there is poor food hygiene, as plates are shoved through an opening in the cell door.[28] Additionally, if the child is asleep or simply does not answer to receive the tray, no food is given.[29]
Despite the JDP’s findings, it is now 2023, and things have yet to improve.[30]
III. Implications
Congress has enacted many federal statutes to address the appalling treatment of children in the prison system, including Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), which requires juveniles to be separated from adults unless there is reasonable cause, and the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which sets up regulation to help mitigate sexual abuse among juveniles in prison.[31] Still, such regulations rarely hold prison systems accountable because the only consequence of violating the Acts is a potential decrease in funding.[32] Managers of the prison systems are supposed to respond to the Public Defenders’ accusations of abuse; however, the response is often short, and failing to respond does not lead to enforceable consequences.[33]
Considering the monumental findings from the 2023 UN report, it is clear that BCDC is not the only detention center openly violating fundamental human and constitutional rights.[34] Children are arrested and detained prior to being convicted of a crime, denied efficient education and mental health treatment, and once they are free, they have long-term mental health issues resulting from the mistreatment that often leads them back to prison.[35] If more powerful institutions speak up about the nationwide racial prison abuse in America, more people will open their eyes to the mistreatment and help create real prison reform.
IV. Conclusions
Currently, African Americans are five times more likely to be incarcerated, with an estimated three out of four Black men expected to serve time in prison.[36] Many scholars have written books on mass incarceration as the new Jim Crow; however, few civil rights leaders are fighting for prisoner’s rights.[37] Most prisoners lack the resources to fight for their rights, so many acts and regulations are enacted to help the problem of prison abuse, but they are rarely enforced and therefore, legal tools passed for their benefits are not self-effectuating.[38] Many people write prisoners off as people who deserve mistreatment because of their alleged actions.[39] The stakeholders and victims most directly affected by these abuses do not have the political or legal capital to effectuate enforcement of laws designed to protect them. To believe in human rights is to fight for the human rights of all, so hopefully, this UN report open up Americans’ eyes so they can notice the genocides going on in their backyard. Thus, lawyers must work to enforce and strengthen prisoner’s rights enacted by Congress, yet rarely enforced.
*Kamryn Washington is a second-year student at the University of Baltimore School of Law. At school, she enjoys being a Writing Fellow, a Law Review Staff Editor, a Research Assistant for Professor Nancy Modesitt, a Teaching Assistant to Professor Michael Meyerson, and a Law Scholar for Professor John Bessler. When not in school, she enjoys serving as a judicial intern to the Honorable Judge Julie R. Rubin at the United States District Court District of Maryland. During her first-year summer, Kamryn was a legal intern at Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service. In May, she is excited to join Semmes Bowen and Semmes as a summer associate.
[1] Daniel Dickinson, U.N. Rights Experts Slam ‘Systemic Racism’ in US Police and Courts, UN News (Sept. 28, 2023), https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1141652.
[2] Id.
[3] Sam Levin, UN Group to Tour Los Angeles Jails Accused of ‘Squalid, Inhumane’ Conditions, The Guardian (Apr. 28, 2023),
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/28/united-nations-tour-los-angeles-jails-meet-families.
[4] Dickinson, supra note 1.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Letter from Natasha M. Dartigue, Pub. Def., Md. Off. Pub. Def., to Crim. Just. Stakeholders (Mar. 6, 2023) https://www.wmar2news.com/infocus/officials-working-to-improve-conditions-for-kids-held-at-baltimore-county-detention-center [hereinafter “Dartigue Letter”].
[10] 13th Amendment to the US Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865), Nat’l Archives, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#:~:text=The%2013th%20Amendment%20to%20the%20United%20States%20Constitution%20provides%20that,place%20subject%20to%20their%20jurisdiction.%22 (last updated May 10, 2022).
[11] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 13 (10th anniversary ed. 2020).
[12] Dickinson, supra note 1.
[13]Dartigue Letter, supra note 9.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] Id.
[17] Id.
[18] Id.
[19] Id.
[20] Id.
[21] Id.
[22] Id.
[23] Id.
[24] Id.
[25] Id.
[26] Id.
[27] Id.
[28] Id.
[29] Id.
[30] Id.
[31] Id.
[32] Id.
[33] Id.
[34] Dickinson, supra note 1.
[35] Dartigue Letter, supra note 9.
[36] Alexander, supra note 11, at 9; Ashley Nellis, The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons, The Sentencing Project (Oct. 13, 2021), https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/the-color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons-the-sentencing-project/.
[37] Alexander, supra note 11, at 11.
[38] Id. at 11, 13.
[39] Id. at 17.
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