Baltimore City law enforcement officials are arresting fewer juveniles than they were a few years ago, but charging a greater portion of them as adults.
Data from the Baltimore Police Department and analyzed by the Sentencing Project shows that on average from 2021 through the first five months of 2024, roughly 25-30% of juveniles arrested were charged as adults. By comparison, about 12% — half that rate — were charged as adults in 2018 and 2019.
State law says that when a 16 or 17 year old is charged with certain crimes, ranging from murder to misdemeanor gun possession, they must be charged as adults. This law leads to the overwhelming majority of cases in Maryland in which juveniles are charged as adults. In a small number of cases each year, judges waive juvenile defendants into the adult court system.
In many cases, the severity of the offense determines whether a teen is charged in juvenile court or in adult criminal court. For example, a teen accused of armed robbery must be charged as an adult, while a teen charged with robbery begins their case in juvenile court. Likewise, a carjacking or armed carjacking charge lands a teen in the adult court system, while other auto theft charges send teens to juvenile court.
“That leaves a lot of power in the hands of whoever is placing the charge in the first place because there is discretion of the level of offense — of whether you call an assault a more serious assault or a less serious assault, for example,” said Josh Rovner, director of youth justice as the advocacy group The Sentencing Project.
James Bentley, a spokesman for Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, wrote in an emailed statement that “juvenile crime has skyrocketed over the past year,” which explains the trend, as does “juveniles moving from vehicle theft, which is a misdemeanor, to robbery, which is a felony.”
He shared data reflecting cases involving juvenile defendants — charged in both juvenile court and adult court — from Jan. 1 through July 15. It shows an increase from 191 cases during that period in 2022 to 304 cases in 2023 and 590 cases in 2024.
However, arrest data from the Baltimore Police shows that nearly twice as many minors were arrested in the city in 2018 and 2019 — 1,566 and 1,608 minors were arrested each year, respectively — than in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, 708 minors were arrested, and in 2023, 896 were.