'Pacing and Praying': Advocates For Jailed Juveniles Seek Release As Positive Tests Raise Fear Of Infection Spreading

Courts have been slow to extend the same benefit to young people who are incarcerated that they're allowing for some adults. Staff members and youths at facilities in at least a half-dozen states have tested positive. In Washington, D.C., a staff member in the juvenile justice system has died.

A 17-year-old girl spends nearly 24 hours a day in an 11-foot-by-11-foot room in the Lower Eastern Shore Children’s Center, the benignly named detention facility in rural Maryland where the coronavirus first entered the state’s juvenile justice system. With her classes suspended and her counselor on leave, she steps out only to use a bathroom she shares with five other girls. Her human interactions are down to 10-minute phone calls with family members, who are barred from visiting. (Green, 4/14)

Nicole Hingle hasn’t seen her son Jace in over a month. Jace, 17, has spent the past year in the Bridge City Center for Youth, a long-term detention facility near New Orleans; he has nearly three years left on his sentence for battery and resisting arrest, stemming from a fight with neighbors. Like many juvenile detention facilities, the Bridge City Center cut off family visits in March as a measure to stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. (Kingkade, 4/13)

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