Op/Ed: Maryland Needs a New Approach for Educating Juvenile Offenders
New Law on Services for Incarcerated Youth Gives State Opportunity to Get It Right
By Peter Leone
Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle
Professor of Education Peter Leone helped develop the education program for the Maya Angelou Academy, a school for youths incarcerated at New Beginnings Youth Development Center in Laurel, Md.
The state of Maryland has long stumbled when it comes to providing education to youths who’ve been locked up, according to Peter Leone, a professor of education who’s worked for decades to help ensure that the disabled and other young people behind bars can prepare for life back in their communities.
It’s time for state officials and policymakers to take up structural reform to help Maryland’s most academically deficient group of young people, he writes in an op-ed published in The Baltimore Sun.
The 2018 Maryland General Assembly passed, and Gov. Larry Hogan signed, House Bill 1607, authorizing a pilot education program in one facility of the Department of Juvenile Services, beginning next school year. The legislation also established a work group to submit recommendations on juvenile justice to the governor and General Assembly by December 2019. Having worked with the agencies responsible for education in Maryland juvenile facilities (and many other states) for more than 30 years, I see this as an opportunity for the state to do the right thing.
Read more in The Baltimore Sun.
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