Finding the Racist Roots of Maryland’s Juvenile Justice System

Brush strokes in blue and yellow, with silhouette of child on top of cinderblock

(You can find an excerpt of the op-ed written by VIncent Shiraldi below, originally published by the Marshall Project on 10/24/25)

As Maryland’s secretary of juvenile services, Vincent Schiraldi exposed a history of torture, neglect and Black boys buried in unmarked graves.

When I started working for Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services in January 2023, I already had a deep knowledge of the agency’s past. I had previously researched and written about its Civil War-era history of racially segregated facilities. And I had been a steering committee member of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition in the late 1990s, when the guards at three military-style youth boot camps routinely brutalized teenagers in their care. After a multipart investigation in the Baltimore Sun, the state shut down these camps and settled a class-action lawsuit with nearly 900 plaintiffs.

This history was visceral for me. After all, the juvenile justice department was still operating two of its formerly segregated facilities and one of its former boot camps. But early in my tenure as secretary, I began to notice how little it was discussed. At a time when some in Washington, D.C., were seeking to erase unsettling information from our nation’s past to create an Ozzie and Harriet — or, rather, an Archie Bunker — version of America, new recruits had little idea about the historical violence and segregation. The same went for most legislators.

So in July 2024, some of my colleagues and I began a historical research and education project. Led by Marc Schindler, then an assistant secretary and chief of staff with the department, my team and I searched the Maryland State Archives for grand jury and other investigative reports on the Blacks-only and Whites-only facilities. We scoured old newspapers for articles about what was once known as the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, but is now the site of Cheltenham Youth Detention Center. We also consulted with Claude Waters, a retired assistant superintendent of the facility and an unofficial departmental historian who had worked at Cheltenham for decades.

What we uncovered near this facility surprised even us: an overgrown potter’s field where dozens of Black boys who had died in the House of Reformation from the late 1800s to 1939 were buried. Some of the graves had headstones, but most were marked by unnamed, deteriorating cinder blocks. The way these children were treated in death has disturbing implications for current-day practices.

Read the full article on the Marshall Project’s website.