1,000+ Children Buried at U.S. Youth Detention Sites

Researchers have identified the graves of more than 1,000 children buried at or near youth detention and reform institutions across 29 states, according to a national investigation published Wednesday by NPR and WAMU. The findings, released by Georgetown University’s Center for Youth Justice, reframe burial grounds once treated as isolated tragedies as part of a widespread and largely erased national history.

A National Accounting

The Forgotten Children Initiative, launched in February 2026, set out to answer how widespread the practice of burying children near the institutions where they died had been. Its answer: burial sites tied to youth institutions exist in more than half the country, from Salem, Oregon, to Augusta, Maine.

“The findings show that the stories uncovered in Florida, Maryland and New York were not isolated tragedies, but rather part of a much larger national history,” the center wrote in its research brief. The institutions span more than two centuries, and in some cases the facilities where children died — or successor institutions on the same sites — remain in operation today.

The initiative’s initial confirmations came from a small number of states, including Maryland’s House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, Florida’s Dozier School for Boys, and a largely overlooked burial site tied to the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York.

The Largest Site: Cheltenham, Maryland

The single largest burial ground is in Cheltenham, Maryland, where more than 230 Black boys were found buried in woods across the street from what is now the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center. Some graves bear named headstones; more than 200 are marked only by gray cinder blocks with no names or dates.

Established in 1870, the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children was the first juvenile detention facility for Black children in the American South. It was created to divert Black youth from adult prisons, drawing roughly 400 children out of the adult system. The youngest was 5 years old.

Children were incarcerated for criminal offenses and for non-criminal reasons alike — being poor, homeless, or orphaned, researchers found. According to a Maryland Department of Juvenile Services report, boys were forced to work without food and disciplined by white guards with a “brass-studded belt.” In the 1920s they were leased to neighboring farms, with the institution taking most or all of their pay, and forced to work in a broom factory that Baltimore City labor union investigators in 1926 described as a “firetrap.”

Families Confront the Record

For the descendants of the children buried there, the investigation has reopened wounds that were never fully closed. Veronica Spears learned only recently that her grandfather had a brother, Arthur Hamilton, who was incarcerated at the institution and died at age 12 in 1917. Family members were told he died of tuberculosis; his remains have not been found.

“I don’t have any proof, no,” Spears said, placing her hand over her chest as she stood among the cinder blocks. “I felt it in my chest. I felt a heaviness. I knew then he was crying out to all of us — they all were — to let us know we’re here and we were mistreated.”

Her cousin, Chuck Copeland, a pastor, read aloud from one of the headstones: “Thirteen years old from Baltimore, Mark Davis, 1885.” Then he recited the Pledge of Allegiance, gesturing toward the graves. “Liberty and justice for all,” he said, shaking his head.

Phyllis Hammond, a commissioner on the state panel studying the site, learned in April that her uncle, Amos Hammond, was buried there at 18. A death certificate shows he died in 1921 of acute peritonitis. “It’s heart-wrenching,” she told NBC 4 Washington. “They didn’t grow up easy. I think that’s why my father never talked about his family.”

A Reckoning Underway

As the national scope of the burials has come into focus, some states have begun to act. Maryland lawmakers created a commission — the Commission on the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children — housed in the state Attorney General’s office and chaired by Attorney General Anthony Brown. It is charged with researching the institution’s history and producing a complete public accounting of the children who died and were buried on its grounds, with a final report due by December 31, 2029.

At the commission’s first meeting, Brown described the treatment of the children in stark terms. “They were beaten … forced to labor,” he said. “They were denied an education. They were malnourished and medically neglected.”

Maryland has also taken steps that lawmakers say connect the past to present practice. Governor Wes Moore unveiled a state historical marker at the site in May 2026. “Loving our state does not mean lying about its history,” Moore said. “It means telling the truth — even when the truth is hard. What happened on these grounds was state-sanctioned harm, and acknowledging that is only the first step.”

Separately, the legislature passed a bill removing some offenses, such as firearm possession, from the list of charges that automatically send young people to adult court, effective this month. State Senator Will Smith, who sponsored both measures, told NPR that understanding how the history connects to current practice is “almost probably more important” than the history itself. Maryland sends more young people to adult prison than every other state except Alabama — about twice the national average — and 8 in 10 of those youths are Black, according to figures cited in earlier reporting by WYPR.

Other states have pursued their own forms of restitution. Florida lawmakers established a $20 million fund for survivors of an infamous reform school that closed in 2011, and Arkansas officials created a memorial honoring 21 Black boys who died in a 1959 fire at a correctional facility.

What’s Next

The Forgotten Children Initiative says its research is continuing and that additional findings will be reported in the future. Its interactive map and brief now provide the fullest public accounting to date of where children died in the custody of youth institutions.

Marc Schindler, a research professor at Georgetown who leads the initiative and previously served as a senior official at Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services, said he hopes the map will prompt a broader response. “I’m hopeful that in states around the country, people will step forward and we can see an appropriate response to what I think is unquestionably a national tragedy,” he said.

For the families at Cheltenham, the work is both historical and deeply personal. Former Maryland juvenile services secretary Vinny Schiraldi, who helped rediscover the site, has publicly apologized. “We did this before. We need to apologize for it. And I, as secretary, apologize for it,” he told NPR in 2025. “It was a terrible thing for the state and the system I ran to do this to young people.”

Hammond, the commissioner, said she wants the site treated as what it is. “Make that site a memorial, a place of dignity to recognize these young men,” she said. “I’m still grieving; all the families are still grieving. But I’m just so thankful that this has been revealed.”