Over 50 years, Maryland has adopted a “tough on crime” agenda: punitive sentencing, restrictive parole and collateral consequences affecting life after incarceration. While these policies sounded “tough,” they did little to deliver on promises of safety while simultaneously increasing the justice system’s disproportionate impact on people of color, Ryan King and Keith Wallington of the Justice Policy Institute write in the Baltimore Sun. One year ago, the state enacted a Justice Reinvestment Act (JRA). Drug penalties were amended, and mandatory minimums were recalibrated. Resources were earmarked for drug and mental health treatment, opportunities were created to reduce prison time, and parole was expanded for older and infirm individuals.
Reforms were projected to reduce the prison population by about 1,200 people, saving $80 million over 10 years. This first anniversary of the JRA provides an opportunity to assess these reforms. Because of a lack of data, we can’t document the impact of — and can’t fully implement — the JRA, King and Wallington say. It’s impossible to know if the JRA is working absent individual-level data linked across agencies including law enforcement, courts and corrections. Maryland tracks system-level trends, such as the number of people in prison or the use of county detention facilities, but those are affected by factors having little to do with the JRA. An oversight board is required to “monitor the progress and compliance” of implementing the JRA, but Maryland has done too little to make cross agency individual-level data available to enable that monitoring, say King and Wallington. Because we have no idea how many people have been sentenced, or have not received a mandatory minimum, we can’t identify how much money was saved; it’s impossible to reinvest money we can’t identify. If Maryland fails to produce data, it will be unable to fund crucial crime prevention programs, the authors write.