As the 2026 legislative session winds down and committee voting approaches, it is time to urge the House Judiciary Committee to support the strongest version of Senate Bill 323 to reduce the practice of automatically charging youth as adults.

Including charges like robbery may seem like condoning violent behavior, but many circumstances show that robbery charges include kids who should have never been placed in an adult facility in the first place, kids who have no prior history or were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. In one case, a 16-year-old with no prior history spent seven months in an adult facility after being charged as an adult for robbery for allegedly stealing a Nike ski mask. Their case was later transferred to juvenile court. In another case, a 16-year-old was charged as an adult and served six months in an adult facility simply because they were in the same bathroom while another person robbed a boy of a watch. In yet another instance, a 16-year-old was charged and served seven months in an adult facility for allegedly robbing someone later confirmed to be a known drug dealer. In that case, the victim was unresponsive to the state and did not want to press charges, which led to the case being transferred to juvenile court and eventually dismissed. These situations show how shockingly easy it is for a young person to end up in an adult facility, exposing them to harm even when their cases are dismissed or sent back to juvenile court. This is how auto-charging works. This is why it is so harmful. This is why the strongest version of this bill must move forward.

In our society, deeply rooted racialized stigmas shape how people believe these young people should be treated. Racist stereotypes control how Black youth are perceived, often portraying them as inherently criminal, so when incidents occur, people automatically assume violence occurred. These stigmas make people more accepting of whatever happens to these young people, even if it means a child sitting in an adult facility while being physically, mentally, and psychologically harmed. There is no consideration that these children may not be violent individuals and do not deserve the harsh punishment of adult incarceration.

In Maryland, automatically charging children as adults disproportionately harms Black youth, who make up nearly 80% of those charged as adults despite being only about 31% of the state’s youth population.