State officials approved plans Wednesday to build a $30 million, 60-bed jail to house Baltimore teenagers charged as adults, a step to address years of concern about the practice of housing young city defendants alongside adults.

The U.S. Justice Department has said the state-run Baltimore City Detention Center has been violating the law by keeping the youths in the same facility as grown-ups, where teens often are secluded and do not receive school or other services while incarcerated.

lRelated

Baltimore City

Feds: Baltimore jail illegally keeping juveniles in solitary

See all related

The contract to renovate an existing pretrial facility on North Forrest Street near the detention center represents a compromise to an earlier proposal to build a much bigger youth jail in the city.

The Board of Public Works unanimously approved the deal without discussion on Wednesday, a marked shift from the debates that consumed plans to build a $70 million youth jail twice as large two years ago.

Advocates say they hope plummeting populations of young offenders charged as adults and changes in state law will eventually render the $30 million project obsolete.

"It's definitely not we want," said Kara Aanenson, director of advocacy at Community Law In Action, a Baltimore nonprofit that works on juvenile justice issues. "We're really hopeful that will be able to change the law and we won't need to use it for this population."

Gov. Larry Hogan signed a law Tuesday that advocates say would funnel a lot more children charged as adults to juvenile justice facilities, which are generally smaller than jails and provide schooling and counseling.

Aanenson said she and other juvenile justice advocates plan to lobby the General Assembly next year to end the practice of automatically charging many youths accused of violent offenses as adults.

Eight years ago, the state agreed to federal oversight to improve the conditions in which young offenders were kept.