A Collaborative comprised of the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of the Public Defender, and representatives of dozens of organizations and agencies published its first-ever report on Thursday.
The aim of the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative (MEJC) is to find ways to address the racial inequities seen in mass incarceration in the State.
According to the report, while Black Marylanders make up 30% of the State, they make up 71% of the incarcerated population in the State.
"This is a profound crisis in our State that demands urgent action."
-Letter from Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown and Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dratigue
The group spent over a year researching and coming up with recommendations and have come up with 18 detailed in this report.
"In recognition of the all-encompassing nature of racial disparities in our criminal legal system, MEJC's recommendations address comprehensive aspects of an impacted person's experience, from how and why a person first encounters law enforcement to how the system supports or does not support a person's journey back from incarceration."
-MEJC Report
The recommendations are split into seven categories.
- Law Enforcement Policies & Practices
- Criminal Law & Sentencing
- Health & Human Services
- Prison, Jail & Detention Facility Reform
- Promoting Successful Reentry
- Education, Workforce Development & Economic Opportunity
- Youth Justice Reform
"Racial disparities remain entrenched in Maryland's criminal legal system, even as arrests, incarceration, and community supervision populations have declined."
-MEJC Report
The report delves into the historical background that has led to our current situation, going all the way back to the establishment of the Maryland colony in 1634 and the immediate establishment of enslavement.
"Maryland's colonial government formalized slavery by enacting laws imposing punishments intended to maintain a tight grip on the Black population," the report reads. "The abolition of slavery in 1864 did not dismantle the racial hierarchy that had been established over centuries in Maryland. Instead, new systems of control emerged."
The historical discussion covers the weaponization of the legal system against Black Marylanders after the Civil War, through the Jim Crow era, redlining, the school-to-prison pipeline, the disparities in health access, and the criminalization of poverty.
"The compounding effect of these historical events is the evolution of a present day criminal legal system that unjustly treats Black people."
-MEJC Report
The report moves on to current policies and practices and how they are disproportionately impacting Black Marylanders.
This includes practices such as racial profiling, which can be seen in arrest data, where Black people are almost twice as likely to be arrested than White people.
Systemic biases can also be seen in pretrial detention and bail practices.
"Specifically in Maryland, Black people are detained pretrial more often than White people," the report reads. Bail is also consistently set higher for Black defendants than White defendants and sentences tend to be longer for Black defendants when looking at national data.
"In Maryland, these stereotypes have manifested in Black people serving an overwhelming percentage of the State's longest sentence of life in prison at 82%, with over half of those serving a lif term having been convicted as a young adult (aged 18-24). These disproportionately long sentences for Black people are yet another source for the current staggering overrepresentation of Black people in Maryland's prisons."
-MEJC Report
Based on the MEJC's findings, its 18 recommendations across seven categories are as follows:
- Law Enforcement Policies and Practices:
- Conduct a statewide needs assessment for crisis response
- End non-safety-related traffic stops
- Mandate cognitive behavioral theory training for Maryland law enforcement officers
- Criminal Law and Sentencing
- Analyze the criminal legal process from arrest to sentencing to assess its impact on racial and geographic disparities in Maryland's adult prison population
- Develop and adopt a needs-based sentencing pilot program in collaboration with the Divison of Parole and Probation
- Reduce unnecessary pretrial confinement through systemic reforms
- Health and Human Services
- Enhance access to trauma-informed mental health services in Maryland jails and detention centers
- Empowering primary care physicians to prioritize adverse childhood experiences screenings through community-led interventions
- Prison, Jail and Detention Facility Reform
- Expand eligibility for early parole due to a serious medical condition or advanced age
- Enhance transparency, consistency, and efficacy in Maryland Parole Commission Decisions
- Expand an emerging adults program (ages 18-25) focused on community building and intensive services
- Promoting Successful Re-entry
- Expand and enhance community-based reentry programming
- Enact a comprehensive second look law
- Study the financial obligations imposed on people on probation and parole and their impact on successful reentry
- Education, Workforce Development j& Economic Opportunity
- Implement comprehensive strategies to address the criminalization of in-school behavior and mitigate implicit bias in school discipline policies
- Amend compulsory school attendance requirements to facilitate GED completion for justice-involved use
- Youth Justice Reform
- Limit automatic adult charging of children
- Review and enhance judicial training programs to emphasize implicit bias, cultural competency, and trauma-informed practices and provide public summaries of training content
"Achieving meaningful change will depend on confronting the historical injustices that shape present outcomes and implementing the reforms recommended in this report, which are grounded in the analysis and data provided," the MEJC Report concludes. "These actions represent a critical step toward dismantling structural barriers, ending mass incarceration, and ensuring a more equitable future for all Marylanders."