Maryland lawmakers worsened criminal justice in three ways this year | GUEST COMMENTARY

During this legislative session, Maryland lawmakers had an opportunity to build a better criminal legal system, make our communities safer and our democracy more representative.

They fell short in three ways.

The status quo in Maryland and across the country is unacceptable. America is currently experiencing a mass incarceration crisis, with our prison population rising more than 500% since 1973. As a result, almost 2 million people are incarcerated in our prisons and jails.

In Maryland, approximately 15,000 people are incarcerated in state prisons. Nearly 72% of Maryland’s incarcerated population is Black, compared to 31% of the state population. For our youth in long-term placement, the ratios are even worse: 78% are Black.

This crisis has destabilized entire communities, diminished trust in law enforcement and made our democracy less inclusive given the denial of voting rights for all persons impacted by the criminal legal system.

Instead of taking action to fix this failed system, Maryland legislators fell for outdated rhetoric instead of following established research on what can truly build safer communities.

For example, last month, the Maryland Assembly failed to pass the Second Look Act, legislation that would allow courts to assess the growth and rehabilitation of incarcerated people, and potentially revise their sentences if certain criteria are met.

This bill was based on years of research demonstrating that lengthy prison sentences do not have a significant deterrent effect on crime. Instead, they divert financial resources from programs that could have a meaningful impact on public safety in Maryland.

The Second Look Act was also built on research demonstrating that people age out of crime. Even people who engage in repeat offending beginning in young adulthood usually desist by their late 30s. In Maryland, 21% of the incarcerated population is aged 51 or older.

Keeping these people in prison, in many cases long past their physical ability to even commit a crime, isn’t making us any safer. It’s a massive waste of resources — one that the legislature failed to do something about.

The Maryland Assembly also failed to advance legislation that would have ended felony disenfranchisement by expanding the vote to over 16,000 Marylanders completing their felony sentence inside of prison and jail.

The disenfranchisement of the justice-impacted population is an affront to the basic tenets of our democracy. If the government can take away one person or group’s right to vote, it was never a “right” to begin with. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you can lose your right to vote.

It is also important to recognize that the history of disenfranchising justice-impacted people has its roots in reconstruction-era policies that were explicitly designed to deny the right to vote to Black people. They stem from the same motivations that led to the creation of poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and cross burnings.

Again, Maryland lawmakers should have looked at the data. Expanding voting rights is an effective community safety strategy. That’s because voting is a pro-social behavior that helps people feel connected to their communities, and therefore, are less likely to reoffend.

It’s also politically popular. Polling from Lake Research Partners shows that the majority of Americans who are likely voters believe that voting should be a guaranteed right for all — including for persons completing their sentence inside and outside of prison.

While lawmakers failed to pass effective reforms, they also proactively passed legislation backtracking on the effective policy changes the state overwhelmingly passed in 2022 under the Juvenile Justice Reform Act (JJRA). This bill limited young children’s involvement with the justice system, avoided detention and commitment of youth except for the most serious cases, and limited their terms of probation.

The reforms in that bill were overwhelmingly recommended by the state’s Juvenile Justice Reform Commission, which studied research on youth justice policy and practices for 18 months and received feedback from experts about evidence-based responses to youth offending.

Unfortunately, the legislature decided to ignore that expertise and opted toward a vast expansion of the number of youth — particularly Black youth — under court supervision. The overuse of probation, detention, and incarceration will undermine community safety and harm Maryland’s youth.

Rather than following the data, Maryland legislators chose to perpetuate a failed system of punishment and disenfranchisement that costs taxpayers millions of dollars every year.

Maryland residents deserve better.

Nicole D. Porter (nporter@sentencingproject.org) is senior director of advocacy for The Sentencing Project.