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Joey N., seventeen, had spent over six months in the Baltimore City Detention Center when he was interviewed by Human Rights Watch in March 1999. "This jail's crazy," he told us. During his first three months in the detention center, when he was in the juvenile general population section, he regularly saw juvenile detainees carrying weapons. "The whole section has knives," he told us. "People got to keep them for a reason, because they fear for their life." On several occasions, all of the youth in the section were restricted to their cells for extended periods of time after fights broke out between several youth. During one such period, he reported, "C.O.'s [correction officers] came, took everything we had. Sheets, everything. They left us in the cells for two days with no clothing except for our boxers. All the windows were open. I got sick real bad. This was when it was snowing, and we didn't have no heat. We didn't have no t-shirts or blankets or nothing. It was freezing cold."
When Joey N. was placed in disciplinary segregation in January 1999, the adult detainees in the section continually harassed him by throwing excrement and urine into his cell. "I complained to the C.O.'s, but they didn't do nothing. I can't count the number of times I asked the C.O.'s to move me," he said. In desperation, he resorted to telling the guards that he was suicidal, and he was moved to the psychiatric wing for several days. "They took me to the suicide room. That's the butt-naked room. You don't get no clothes when you're there."
On his return to the segregation section, he asked the guards to place him in one of the section's isolation cells. Heavy metal sheets completely cover the bars, preventing other detainees in the section from throwing feces into the cell but also blocking all natural light. Joey N. told us, "I asked to go in this cell, they call it the dungeon. Dungeon's the one got a steel door. Ain't nothing in it, just a toilet and a bed. I'm the only person in there. I stay there twenty-four hours a day, only come out Tuesday and Friday for a five-minute shower, then get locked back in."
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