With the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services under new leadership, Baltimore-area residents have mixed opinions about how the state should handle juvenile justice.
Gov. Wes Moore told The Baltimore Sun that he ordered Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi’s Monday resignation after seeing too little progress from the agency head. Betsy Fox Tolentino, a DJS veteran who also served as a managing director with the Roca violence intervention program in Baltimore, was tapped by Moore to take over as acting secretary of the over 2,000-employee department. DJS’s responsibilities include recommending to courts treatment and services for juveniles in the justice system; managing cases; developing re-entry plans; and supervising, detaining, educating and caring for young people itself.
Complaints of juvenile crime fell 39% from fiscal year 2015 to fiscal 2024, according to DJS data. The number of complaints has been rising since fiscal 2021, but are still below pre-COVID-19 pandemic numbers.
For a sense of what the public expects from DJS at this moment of change, The Sun interviewed residents around the Baltimore region.
This story was reported by Stella Canino-Quiñones, Gabriella Fine, Shaela Foster, Hannah Epstein, Irit Skulnik, Kat Mauser, Brendan Nordstrom, Tori Newby and Katharine Wilson.
Lisa Young, 59, North Baltimore
Young said that she does not want the state to seek harsh penalties for children “because they’re still kids and I think kids’ brains are still developing and everybody’s entitled to one mistake.”
Alex Dominguez, 63, Fells Point
“Has anyone ever enforced the truancy laws? I mean, if it’s 2 p.m. on a Thursday, and you see kids out there washing windows, and they’re 14 years old, maybe you should take them to a school or ask what school they’re supposed to be in.”
Dolton Hunt, 22, East Baltimore
“Growing up in Baltimore City was definitely a bunch of twists and turns. It was mostly figuring out where I fit in,” said Hunt, who said getting a job at Baltimore Aquatics helped him in high school and now as he attends Morgan State University. “So, trying to figure out the right path for myself, seeing how everyone else moves around me, just trying to make sure that I pick the best path for myself.”
“The people who chose that other path aren’t really with us anymore,” he added.” I would just say it’s not even a thing of choosing. I guess some people get sucked into that lifestyle … just listen to your mom, do what you’re supposed to do, go to school, find a success route that doesn’t involve things that will get you arrested.”
Alden Campo, 29, Lutherville
“Honestly, I think that we need a significant increase in productive services. Having more in the way of [rehabilitative] services would be very beneficial. A lot of problems, I think, stem from the school systems not being up to snuff, not providing necessarily the structure that many of the juveniles in the state need.”
Annette Redfers, 68, Baltimore County
“Give them the full extent to the law,” Redfers said of how she would like juvenile crime handled in Maryland. “You do crime, you do time.”
Dave Schaum, 54, Baltimore City
“I don’t know what they could be doing, but I know I don’t see them doing anything,” said Schaum, who said that as a bartender at Duda’s Tavern in Fells Point has seen young people being “belligerent” outside the establishment but has never witnessed violence nor had problems walking home from work at 2 a.m. “I don’t see them doing anything at all to curb this. They put up curfew signs, but they didn’t do anything besides put up signs…it’s just an empty promise.”
Kevin Wade, 58, Westminster
“There has to be accountability on both ends,” said Wade, a school social worker. “I really think we need to put a lot more efforts into the family systems, making sure they have the ability to provide for their kids. I think that’s where it begins. Kids see they can make fast money so they take advantage of that. They don’t see the long-term so it’s a struggle.”
Jameson Lawrence, 52, Columbia
“I think that most of the time, the state will have a separate adjudication process for juveniles under a certain age. I think that’s important,” said Lawrence, a former prosecutor. “I think that Maryland has enough resources to allocate so that juveniles are processed by administrative law judges to take the pressure off so that they’re not finding the most harsh punishments for young people. I think that’s very important.”
Joseph Gaines, 46, Westminster
“Tougher restrictions for them, incentives they can use to better themselves and the community and help people out, and come out and be upstanding citizens, give back. Just fun things for them to do so it can kind of put a curve on the crime. Change their way of thought, pretty much.”
Amber Wagner Gaines, 44, Northeast Baltimore
“In terms of juvenile crime, and I teach high school, I think that many people would agree that the problem is a lack of programming, after-school centers, you know, rec centers, things that the kids can do. But personally, I have not seen an uptick in juvenile crime where I live or where I work.”
Martin Shpuntoff, 31, Annapolis
“If there’s a way to convince kids that there’s something that makes it not worth stealing, that would help,” said Shpuntoff, who has witnessed shoplifting attempts at this convenience store job.
Patti Schuster, 61, Mount Airy
Schuster said juvenile offenders should be treated more like adults. “I think they need to crack down on these kids and stop letting them go free, and they need to pay consequences for what they do wrong,” she said. “It’s just like the big people.”
Billy Lyve, 45, Westminster
“If I would’ve had somebody leading me when I was 17, 18 years old, I probably wouldn’t have went through everything that I went through. And I didn’t really get my stuff together until I was well into my thirties,” said Lyve, founder of the Westminster-based nonprofit Find Your Purpose. “So, I would say programming, but the right programming with the right people, not what everybody’s been doing.”
Marcus Custer, 30, Edgewood
“Yes, I am aware of the changes that are being made within the system, and it will affect me and my family. We have three sons, and I am from the foster care system myself. I grew up in the DJS and DSS system, so I’ve been impacted my whole life from the DJS system and the things that have happened inside of it and the lack of care that’s been affected in the system,” said Custer, who runs a nonprofit in Harford County called Project Safe Space.
“I was on the wrong side of the juvenile crime, never anything too serious. But just the general problem with the juvenile system, in my opinion, is that it’s a lot less about rehabilitation and it’s a lot more about punishment. They paint it to be like it’s about rehabilitation, but in effect, it doesn’t work. And I’m sure the numbers and statistics can prove that point in their own right,” he said.
“So yeah, just the lack of care and the lack of actual, you know, programs that were effective as a child that I was part of, at least, and I’ve been to a lot of juvenile facilities and a lot of juvenile programs just didn’t really help. I really didn’t break the bear or break the mold until I was 18,19 years old. It didn’t happen as a kid.”