When Anne Arundel County police said they couldn't charge a 12 year old with a crime, WMAR-2 News first looked into the new law behind that.
But, as part of our commitment to digging deeper, we also spoke to a public defender about what processes and services are in place to address potentially dangerous child misbehavior.
Jenny Egan is the chief attorney in the Juvenile Division at the Office of the Public Defender (OPD) in Baltimore City. She served on the Juvenile Justice Reform Council that put together the recommendations that turned into last year's Juvenile Justice Reform omnibus bill.
"Arrest is completely inappropriate for young children - for elementary school-aged children," she says. "But that doesn't mean that children don't find themselves in serious and dangerous situations. What we want to do is make sure that children in dangerous and serious situations have help and support, rather than simply punishment and prosecution."
Egan says that there are already programs and services in place to help kids.
"The first and the foremost largest system is the 'child in need of assistance," says Egan. "If a child has been unsupervised, or is chronically facing problems, around negligence or abuse.. that is not just removing children, it also includes family supports and meeting family's needs to better supervise and care for their young people."
The second system in place, she says, is 'a child in need of supervision.'
"That is for a kid who has found themselves in all sorts of situations and just needs some support or some guidance from the court and a more official setting," she explains.
The third support in place is available in every county, and is called the 'local care team.'
"The Governor's office has a list available of the local care team in every county, and that is heads of every agency, from the Department of Mental Health, to the Department of Juvenile Services to the Department of Social Services, as well as other agencies, the Education Department, and other child-serving agencies," says Egan.
Community members, family members and police officers can refer kids to local care teams.
"That local care team is a multidisciplinary team that can provide age and developmentally appropriate supports for families and children," Egan tells WMAR-2 News.
We reached out to Anne Arundel County police to find out if they've been referring the cases on their list to any of these services and have not heard back.
Egan also spoke to the science behind the recommendations and the laws in the first place.
"Evidence and science show us that the vast majority of children under the age of 13 simply don't have that capacity to understand the difference between doing something wrong and doing something that breaks a law, because they are fully and completely under the care of adults. It is illegal to leave a child 12 or under unsupervised in the State of Maryland," she says.
And while locally we've focused on a case of a 12-year-old brining a weapon to school, just to our south, in Virginia, a first grade teacher is recovering after she was shot by a 6-year-old student.
Egan shared her thoughts on how to think about this case in terms of juvenile justice.
"When very young children, children who still don't know the difference between imagination and reality, children who still have their baby teeth, children who.. still believe in the tooth fairy - I don't know what it means to hold that child responsible for living in a world where they found—and could bring—a gun to school. Even the notion or those terms, I think are inappropriate and offensive. We should be talking about what we're doing to take care of children, how we're going to respond to that child.. that child is a victim in the situation," she says. "And my heart goes out to that teacher, the way she cared for her students and removed them from the room, including this young student, I can't imagine that."
She added, "the people who need to be held responsible in this are the adults. And I don't just mean that child's parent. I mean the adults who are in control—the world that he found himself in and where a six year old could access a weapon."
