368/Maryland Manual

Annual Revision of State Comprehensive Juvenile Services Three-Tear Plan to General Assembly due Feb. 1.
Quarterly Report to Secretary of Personnel on part-time positions.

Report to Secretary of Budget &Fiscal Planning & Legislative Auditor on account examinations of private
care providers under State contract due periodically.

Semi-annual Report to State Treasurer on anticipated debt dwringnexc seven-month period due Jan. 1 &July 1.

ORIGIN 8c FUNCTIONS

The Department of Juvenile Services works with troubled youth. In the colonial period, children who
turned to crime, begging, or vagrancy could be jailed with hardened criminals or, by the end of the
eighteenth century, committed to an almshouse. County courts and local trustees of the poor also could
bind out such children to learn a trade and prevent them from becoming financial burdens on the county
As Maryland built its first prison in 1811, the idea came into vogue that the State ultimately could save
money by stopping children from embarking on a life of crime. Children would be separated from adults
in places of detention and given a home, education, and training for a trade.

In 1830, the legislature passed "An Act to establish a House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents"
(Chapter 64, Acts of 1830). A private corporation supported by member subscriptions, the House of
Refuge nevertheless had ties to the State. Of its twenty-four managers, eight were appointed by the
Governor and Council, eight by the membership, and eight by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore.
The managers were to report annually to the legislature and its buildings and grounds were tax-free. The
managers were authorized to receive minor children of either sex who were: arrested for begging in the
streets of Baltimore; convicted of any criminal charge in the courts of Baltimore City or County; found
too refractory by almshouse trustees; convicted by any county court of an ofTense punishable by
imprisonment in the penitentiary; or arrested and awaiting trial in either Baltimore City or County Instead
of granting an outright appropriation to the fledgling institution, the General Assembly designated for its
support up to $5,000 annually from the profits of the State Penitentiary for five years. Financial difficulties
were encountered, for in 1841, the managers sought to return to contributors the monies collected to
build the House of Refuge (Chapter 3, Acts of 1841). In 1849, however, the original Act of 1830 was
further supplemented and modes of admission clarified (Chapter 374, Acts of 1849).

A select committee of the House of Delegates, in recommending State aid, noted in 1852 that the
House of Refuge had been contemplated for thirty-eight years, with $20,000 contributed thus far by the
City of Baltimore, $22,000 from private subscriptions, and not one penny from the State. By December
1855, the House of Refuge opened. A year later, another select committee visited and found it "a grand
and noble institution," and the General Assembly appropriated $10,000 annually to its support for five
years (Chapter 288, Acts of 1856). By 1867, according to the annual report, the House of Refuge had
housed 1,638 children, 1,394 boys and 244 girls.

Meanwhile, private charitable institutions proliferated, especially in Baltimore City They included
orphanages and reformatories. The Home of the Friendless was incorporated in 1854, followed by the
Children's Aid Society in 1862, House of the Good Shepherd in 1864, and St. Joseph's House of Industry
and St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys in 1865. With State appointees on their governing boards and
fairly regular legislative appropriations, all of the above institutions became quasi-public in nature and
received children committed by courts, magistrates, justices of the peace, or parents or guardians.

Of all the quasi-public reformatories established in the last half of the nineteenth century, three, together
with the House of Refuge, ultimately became Stare institutions. The first was the Maryland Industrial
School for Girls, incorporated in 1866 for the "care, reformation and instruction of such girls as are not
admitted into either the House of Refuge, the Home of the Friendless, or the Children's Aid Society, but
who need the care of some public reformatory institution" (Chapter 156, Acts of 1866). Initially, directors
of the School were chosen from the membership or appointed by the Mayor of Baltimore; the School
received no State aid but its property was tax-exempt. By 1870, however, the Governor appointed ten
out of thirty directors who were given all the powers and duties in regard to female juvenile delinquents
as formerly belonged to the directors of the House of Refuge (Chapter 391, Acts of 1870). The School
was renamed the Female House of Refuge in 1880 (Chapter 173, Acts of 1880).

Reformatory institutions for youth, established after the Civil War, were segregated by race and gender.
Perhaps in response to the "Memorial of the Grand Jury of Baltimore City Praying that a Place of
Punishment may be Provided for Minor Colored Children" (House Documents, X, February 5, 1867),
the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children was incorporated (Chapter 392, Acts of
1870). The Governor appointed two of sixteen managers, buildings and grounds were tax-free, a report