When Lamar arrived at the Juvenile Detention Center, the state-run facility in Baltimore for teenagers charged as adults, there were no available beds in the residences or even in the medical unit, which usually serves as overflow when the detention center is full. Lamar was directed to the gym, where he estimates he slept for two weeks.

WYPR is not using Lamar’s real name because he is a minor and because he worries that talking about his experience at the YDC could harm his ongoing legal case.

Although the facility is designed to hold up to 50 boys and up to 10 girls at a time, data from the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, the agency that runs the facility, shows that the YDC was overcapacity every day in June and July. Because the facility only houses juveniles who are charged as adults, the trend is a sign that the Maryland criminal justice system is treating more teenagers as adults than in the past.

The number of teenagers sleeping in the gym fluctuates as they cycle in and out of the detention center. Some days there are no teenagers sleeping in the gym. On July 5, for example, the facility had 56 boys but seven of them were sleeping in cells in the medical unit and none were in the gym, according to DPSCS.

Lamar said there were nine other teenagers at the gym that day in early June when he arrived and six when he finally got a bed in a regular home.

The hardest part about sleeping in the gym was actually sleeping, he said, in part because at least some of the lights in the gym stay on all night. He would put his blanket over his head to try to block out the light.

He said his anxiety also contributed to his sleep problems.

“When I first got here, they wouldn’t give me my medicine at all, so my anxiety got worse and I was on high alert,” Lamar said. “So, on top of the fact that I’m trying to sleep around a bunch of people I don’t know, they won’t even turn off the lights, so now it’s getting on my nerves too.”

The crowding problems seem to precede the summer by at least several months. On January 4, the YDC facility’s administrator testified in court that the detention center housed 66 teenagers, at least six more than it is supposed to hold.

The Office of the Public Defender has heard from clients that they have slept in the YDC gym as far back as October, according to Baltimore Public Defender Brian Levy. Based on conversations with his clients and other public defenders’ conversations with their clients, he believes there have been as many as 21 teenagers sleeping in the facility’s gym at a time.

YDC has two groups of teenagers. Those charged as adults in Baltimore can be held there pending trial. Minors convicted in adult courts across the country stay there until they turn 18.

“If there are more kids at YDC than there were before, that means there are more kids prosecuted in the adult system than it was before, Levy said.

Data shows that juveniles arrested in Baltimore are more likely to be charged as an adult than they were a few years ago. Levy said he has also noticed that judges transferred fewer of those charged as adults to juvenile court.

This system disproportionately affects black boys. According to state data, more than 80% of teenagers charged as adults in Maryland in the past five years were black, and more than 90% were male.

An overcrowded detention center affects more than just where the teenagers’ beds are.

All the teens who sleep in the gym share a bathroom that doesn’t have a shower, Lamar said, so they have to borrow the showers in the residence halls.

And when the teens assigned to sleep in the gym go to the residences to shower, the teens assigned to those residences are locked in their cells, essentially in solitary confinement, Levy said.

It also affects safety, Levy said.

“When you have kids sleeping in cots next to each other on a gym floor, that’s not how that facility was designed to care for and ensure the safety of those kids,” he said.

And he said having more teenagers at the facility is straining resources like the detention center’s lone psychologist.

DPSCS declined an interview for this story. In a statement, a spokesman said the sleeping arrangements do not affect the quality of life for YDC residents.

“All youth in our care at the facility receive the same services and supports, including access to libraries, meals, showers and restrooms, medical care, access to recreation areas and on-site educational opportunities through our partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools,” the statement read.

When asked if DPSCS officials were taking steps to reduce the congestion problems, the spokesperson indicated that there is not much they can do. Court commissioners decide where teenagers stay before trial, judges decide sentences, and lawyers are the ones who advocate one way or the other.

“I don’t blame the juvenile detention center for being overcrowded. I blame the system that places juveniles in the purview of the Department of Corrections in the first place, says Levy. “The way to overcrowding or reduce overcrowding in juvenile detention is to try kids in the juvenile system, not the adult system.”