On Wednesday, February 2, the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services presented a plan to the Charles County commissioners to build a juvenile detention facility in Nanjemoy. The facility would be built on an undeveloped piece of the Doncaster State Forest adjacent to the Southern Maryland Criminal Justice Academy. The facility, staying in line with industry standard capacities for juvenile detention facilities, would accommodate only 48 juvenile males and no females.
As reported by SoMDNews.com:
According to figures from the Department of Juvenile Services, in 2010 there was a total of 615 youths from the Southern Region admitted to detention centers around the state. The average stay for one of these juvenile inmates in 2010 was 19 days…The Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George’s County took in 559, or 91 percent, of those admitted minors from the region. Baltimore City’s Juvenile Justice Center had the next highest number at 19 admissions followed by 16 admissions at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County.
The process of the transfer of State land from the Department of Natural Resources to the Department of Juvenile Services and all accompanying permits, architectural plan approvals and budgetary actions will take at least 5 years and the facility is estimated to cost $46 million.