Updated July 22, 2025 at 11:55 AM AKDT
Last week, Maryland State Sen. William Smith visited a government-owned property in Prince George's County that dates back to the 19th century.
On that property lies an overgrown cemetery, once part of the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children. More than 100 unmarked graves are believed to hold the remains of Black children sent there decades ago.
Smith, a Democrat representing part of Montgomery County, says the site should be cleaned up and the children's deaths acknowledged. He also sees the graves as a symbol of a larger systematic issue — how Maryland continues to treat its youngest offenders.
"I'm chair of the judicial proceedings committee in Maryland, and so juvenile justice falls under the purview of the committee that I chair," Smith told Morning Edition. "We're still sending more kids to adult prison facilities than any other state except for Alabama, and nine out of the 10 of them are children of color. Eight of 10 are Black children. Also, 80% of these children that start off in the adult system will end up going back to the juvenile system. We're just wasting time and money, and we're ruining lives in the interim."
To address Maryland's treatment of juvenile offenders , Smith introduced Senate Bill 422 earlier this year. The bill would raise the age at which juveniles can be automatically charged as adults from 14 to 16. It would also eliminate a number of offenses that currently make 16-year-olds eligible for adult charges under Maryland law.
Smith says the state's approach is out of step with the rest of the country and hopes the history of this site will help spark change.
In this conversation with NPR's Michel Martin, Smith shared what he described as the history of a neglected cemetery for Black children at a juvenile facility and his push to reform Maryland's laws that send youth to adult prisons.
The following interview is edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Michel Martin: First of all, tell us where you went. What was there?
Maryland State Sen. William Smith: We went down to this facility, which is the Cheltenham facility. It's a juvenile detention center in Prince George's County. It's still in use. This center opened up in the 1870s and the history is amazing if you go back. In 1830 the Maryland General Assembly said and recognized that children should not be placed in adult jails, and so they set forth to create a facility for white children only. And so that's when you had the House of Refuge created for white children. Only 40 years later, the General Assembly gets around to creating the house of reformation and instruction for Black children in the juvenile justice system.
Martin: And what is your understanding about these graves? What do these graves tell you?
Smith: We have records of 80 children buried on these two plots here, mostly in unmarked graves. There are only four gravestones still visible. Only three are legible today, and so you've got over 100 graves, unmarked graves, of children as young as 9, 8, 6 years old, who were buried here, never reclaimed by their families. You wonder, did the family ever know what happened? Was there a ceremony where they just kind of unceremoniously placed them in a sack and buried? It's something that's lost the time in history.
Martin: Why is it that Maryland is so out of step with the direction the rest of the country seems to be going in?
Smith: The structure of Maryland's law now is that there are a number of crimes that are automatically charged or eligible to be automatically charged as an adult crime, and that means that that kid goes into an adult facility, an adult jail, pending the outcome of that case.
Martin: But it's also the case that sometimes juveniles are involved in things that the public finds very disturbing. So what are you saying should happen?
Smith: First of all is that the most violent crimes are excluded from this modest proposal that I'm putting forward, things like murder, gun crimes are out the majority of the crimes, though, that come back into the juvenile system. Here's why it's important to do this, because you're going to get better public safety outcomes. You're going to get better attention and resources for that youth that is justice involved, and you're going to save a lot of money that can be redirected for prevention measures.
Martin: Maryland has a list of about 30 crimes where juveniles are automatically sent to the adult court system and it's up to a judge or to intervene and say, "actually, no, this isn't appropriate to that." You want to raise the age when people can be tried as an adult from 14 to 16. [Are] 14 year olds eligible to be tried as adults in Maryland?
Smith: For certain crimes, 14 year olds are eligible. What happens in the adult system is that the child will linger and languish in the adult prison for months without services, without care, without treatment, and in that time, they're getting exposed to some terrible things, and they're not being treated for the underlying reasons they committed the crime in the first place.
Martin: Before we let you go, let's loop back to where we started our conversation, this particular grave site. And I do want to note that there's a veterans cemetery very nearby, which is kept in pristine condition. I've attended services there. What do you think should happen to the site?
Smith: So it actually abuts the site. The way that we treat veterans and the way that we treat these lost souls is so evident when you go to this site, because it's pristine, manicured lawns, rightfully so, next to overgrown foliage, downed trees. We understand that these youths may have been justice involved, but they were people's futures, and every one of those headstones, to me, represented a lost opportunity, a lost future and a failure of our system. And also, you can't deny it, that it's a direct result of how we treated Black youth in Maryland, and that that legacy cannot be forgotten.
This interview was edited for digital by Majd Al-Waheidi, Treye Greene and Kristian Monroe. It was produced and edited for radio by Lisa Thomson and Claire Murashima.
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