Baltimore County is disputing allegations from Maryland public defenders of unhygienic environments and barriers to education at the county’s detention center, but identified “areas for improvement.”

In a six-page letter released Friday, Baltimore County Director of Corrections Walt Pesterfield wrote that each of the half-dozen minors incarcerated at the detention center in late March told him they had adequate access to showers, exercise, education, medicine and “acceptable meals.”

“None of the juveniles listed complaints about the living conditions or the services available,” he wrote, noting that at the time of the letter’s publication only four juveniles remain at the detention center. The facility houses juvenile offenders who are charged as adults and ordered by the court to be held there, as well as adult inmates.

He wrote that hosting youth in a primarily adult facility raises concerns shared by county officials “regarding appropriate placement for juvenile offenders at a facility that was not designed to house juveniles.”

According to his letter, the county is “actively working with potential partners to identify alternative housing options for Baltimore County juvenile detainees charged as adults” and will share more in the coming weeks.

The county Department of Corrections began an investigation into the center following assertions from the Maryland Office of the Public Defender laid out in a March 6 letter, which alleged that officials were mistreating minors by withholding basic resources, subjecting them to unsanitary living conditions and confining them in cells for all but one hour a day.

Deborah St. Jean, the director of the state office’s Juvenile Protection Division and author of the letter, said in a statement she stands by the concerns raised in it.

We “believe our clients, whose accounts are consistent with what we have heard from other children for years,” she said. “The incarceration of children in adult jails is a systemic issue and mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure that moving forward all children are housed in facilities designed to provide for their care and education, rather than providing a band-aid to the concerns that can be addressed.”

Despite the county’s best efforts, the jail cannot physically or practically meet the constitutional requirements of housing youth in the same facility as adults, she added, pointing to Pesterfield’s acknowledgement that the center was not designed to house minors.

Pesterfield, who was named corrections director late last year, had previously denied OPD’s allegations but had yet to specifically respond to them.

Boys are housed in a separate pod “out of sight and sound from adult inmates,” the letter reads, but due to limited space, girls “are either housed together, or alone, in a separate single juvenile cell (up to two female juvenile detainees)” located in the adult women’s housing unit.

According to the county, female minor detainees do not have physical contact with the adult female detainees — “they eat, shower, and recreate separately.”

Pesterfield said the alternative to this arrangement “would be complete isolation for a female detainee, which BCDC finds less acceptable.” Best practices require agencies to avoid that for safety reasons, he said.

The facility housed only one female minor when Pesterfield interviewed detainees in late March. No female minors are currently detained there.

His letter addresses each claim, from an allegation of a rodent infestation (”It is not uncommon for mice to be occasionally spotted in a detention facility; however, rodents have not infested the Unit”) to regularly flooded plumbing (”There is no issue with the plumbing system within the detention center. There have been occasions where a juvenile detainee has purposefully ‘flooded’ their cell by clogging their toilet ... On those occasions, a cleaning crew of correctional staff cleaned up the ‘flood’ in a timely manner“).

The public defenders’ letter alleged minors had just one hour outside their cells each day. Pesterfield wrote that the facility has operated under strict COVID-19 restrictions for the past three years, but that he has relaxed restrictions since he was appointed in December.

The “juvenile detainees are restricted to their cells for approximately 5-6 hours each day,” he wrote, adding that they are out of their cells for daily homework assignments, medical and mental health appointments, counseling and recreational activities, such as exercise and television.

County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. reiterated in a statement that the internal investigation found conditions at the facility do not match what has been alleged and that the county is seeking alternatives for detainment of juveniles.

“We agree that BCDC was not designed for juvenile offenders, and so even as we continue making improvements to the facility, we are also actively pursuing alternative housing options that are more appropriate for youth charged as adults,” the Democrat said.

emily.sullivan@thebaltimorebanner.com