Over 1,000 Children Buried at US Youth Detention Sites

An investigation by NPR and WAMU has identified the graves of more than 1,000 children at juvenile detention centers, reform schools, and youth institutions across 29 states, exposing a largely hidden national history of deaths in state custody that spans more than two centuries.

The findings, published by NPR on October 7 and drawn from research by Georgetown University’s Center for Youth Justice, indicate that what were long treated as isolated tragedies in Maryland, Florida, and New York are instead part of a far broader pattern. The center’s Forgotten Children Initiative, launched in February, has now tied graves to 40 institutions from Salem, Oregon, to Augusta, Maine.

A Nationwide Accounting

According to the center, research has identified burial sites associated with youth institutions in 29 states, and across those sites, over 1,000 children died in custody and were buried at or near the institutions where they were held. The center stated that its findings show the stories uncovered in Florida, Maryland, and New York “were not isolated tragedies, but rather part of a much larger national history.”

The institutions represented in the research span over two centuries. In some cases, the institutions where children died, or successor institutions on the same sites, remain in operation today.

The largest burial site is located near the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in Cheltenham, Maryland, now the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center. More than 230 Black boys were found buried in woods across the street from the facility.

Established in 1870, the House of Reformation was the first juvenile detention facility for Black children in the American South, according to Georgetown researchers. It was created to get Black youth out of adult prisons. Children as young as five were incarcerated, not only for criminal offenses but also for non-criminal reasons such as being poor, homeless, or orphaned.

Conditions Behind the Graves

A report from the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services documents the conditions children endured. 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. They were also forced to labor in the reformatory’s broom factory under conditions that Baltimore City labor union investigators in 1926 described as a “firetrap.”

Family members of the dead are now confronting a history they were never told. When Veronica Spears read a letter informing her that her grandfather had a brother who died at a reformation institution at age 12, she began to shake.

“The letter said they found out that my grandfather had a brother that was in a reformation institution,” she told NPR. “And he passed away at the age of 12. We never knew.”

Spears’ family is one of 16 that researchers have linked to children who died at the Cheltenham institution. Her great-uncle, Arthur Hamilton, was reported to have died of tuberculosis in 1917; researchers have not found his remains.

Visiting the site, Spears’ cousin Chuck Copeland, a pastor, read aloud from a headstone: “Thirteen years old from Baltimore, Mark Davis, 1885.” Later, gesturing toward the graves around him, he invoked the Pledge of Allegiance. “Liberty and justice for all,” he said, shaking his head.

At the burial ground, rows of gray cinder blocks with no names or dates mark more than 200 graves. Spears said she believes Hamilton is buried somewhere among them.

“I don’t have any proof, no,” she said, placing her hand over her chest. “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.”

A State Reckons With Its Past

Maryland has taken steps to confront the history. In 2026, lawmakers created a commission to research and identify all children buried in Cheltenham, housed in the state attorney general’s office and chaired by Attorney General Anthony Brown. The commission includes family members, who will weigh in on the future of the site and how the state should make amends.

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

Among the commissioners is Phyllis Hammond, whose uncle, Amos Hammond, died at age 18 in 1921. She has called for the site to be made a memorial.

“I just wonder sometimes, if those woods could talk, how many lives could have been saved?” she said, quoting from her own poem.

Marc Schindler, a research professor at Georgetown who leads the Forgotten Children Initiative, formerly served as a senior official at the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services when the state rediscovered the burial ground in 2024. He said he hopes the findings 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.

From Graves to Current Policy

Reformers are connecting the historical burial sites to ongoing juvenile justice practices. Maryland sends more young people to adult prison than every other state except Alabama, at twice the national average, according to WYPR reporting. Of those youth, 91 percent are youth of color and eight in ten are Black.

State Senator Will Smith, who sponsored the commission bill, said understanding the past is inseparable from current policy.

“Understanding this history is tremendously important, but understanding how this history connects to our current practices is almost probably more important,” he told NPR.

Smith pointed to Maryland laws that result in hundreds of children being charged as adults each year. This year, after more than a decade of advocacy, the legislature passed his bill removing some offenses, such as firearm possession, from the list of charges that automatically send young people to adult court. The change took effect this month.

Smith credited a trip the legislature’s Black caucus took to the Cheltenham gravesite with convincing lawmakers to support the change.

A 2025 WYPR investigation found that Maryland violated federal standards for protecting youth in adult jails more frequently than any other state, drawing an “outlier” designation from the federal government. Minors spent up to 23 hours a day in isolation, often without schooling, and some waited more than a year in adult jail before their cases were heard.

Restitution and What Comes Next

Some states have begun exploring restitution. In Florida, lawmakers established a $20 million fund for survivors who attended the Dozier School for Boys, an infamous Marianna reform school that closed in 2011. In Arkansas, officials created a memorial honoring 21 Black boys who died in a 1959 fire at the Negro Boys’ Industrial School in Wrightsville.

Governor Wes Moore unveiled a state historical marker at Cheltenham in May 2026. “Loving our state does not mean lying about its history,” he said. “It means telling the truth—even when the truth is hard.”

The Forgotten Children Initiative says its research is continuing and that additional findings will be reported in the future. For families like the Spears and Hammonds, the work has already changed what they know about their own histories — and, they say, what the country must confront.

Copeland, the pastor, said he wants the children to know they aren’t forgotten anymore. Standing among the cinder blocks, he led the family in prayer.

“Thank you for this opportunity to remember our uncle Arthur Hamilton,” he said.