Criminal Justice

Early Release for Bad Behavior

CEM — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:37:04 -0800

Criminals in federal prisons have an incentive to behave while in prison. For good behavior they get “good conduct” credits, which reduce the time they actually serve on their sentences.   Maryland awards good conduct credits, too, but not for good conduct.   Our state uses good conduct credits to get criminals out of prison early, even when they behave badly.

The Division of Correction (DOC), following Maryland law, applies good conduct credits to a prison sentence the day an inmate steps through its doors. For example, let’s say a convicted robber is arrested again and convicted for carrying a gun, for which he gets a mandatory sentence of five years “without parole.” DOC will take that sentence, immediately apply the good conduct credits, and calculate the actual time to be served at about four years. (The inmate will be released even earlier if he accumulates credits for other reasons, such as living in double cells or participating in prison programs.)

Unlike the federal system, which awards credits after the inmate has actually earned them, Maryland reverses the process. Inmates get the credits first. The burden then shifts to DOC to prove bad behavior at administrative hearings, complete with inmate rights.

We could probably tolerate this system if DOC actually took credits away for misbehavior.   But the process is not just reversed, it’s perverse. DOC won’t revoke good conduct credits even when it finds inmates guilty of violating prison.

In The Drug Addiction Sham I wrote about three inmates released early from prison in favor of residential drug treatment. All three committed violent offenses while in prison before they were released. Not once, according to DOC records, did a hearing officer revoke the good conduct credits the inmates had received up front.

Justin Bolden, who was imprisoned for an attempted robbery (that ended in the victim’s murder by a co-defendant), was twice found guilty of assaulting another inmate and once possessed a weapon, among other offenses.   He was sanctioned by being segregated and/or losing visitation rights. But he got to keep all of his good conduct credits.

Charles Ravenscroft was held in maximum security for behavior that included being “involved in stabbing of other inmate while serving [disciplinary segregation]” and for “assaultive behavior both in DOC and while [in an out-of-state prison.]” He also was convicted in state court for assaulting a correctional officer and sentenced to a year. Yet despite two DOC administrative convictions for assaults on inmates, two more for possessing a weapon and another two for disobeying orders, he kept his good conduct credits, too.

And finally there is Aaron Hatt, who compiled four assaults on correctional staff members as well as numerous other infractions.   DOC prepared an Institutional Progress Report for Judge Nancy Loomis-Davis in Anne Arundel County who was deciding whether to take Hatt out of prison and put him in drug treatment. The report described Hatt’s conduct as “absolutely unacceptable institutional adjustment.”   This made no difference to Judge Davis-Loomis, who let him out of prison anyway. But at least she wasn’t hypocritical, like DOC, which had failed to take one credit from Hatt for any of his infractions.

DOC hearing officers have complete discretion over revoking good conduct credits for most prison offenses.   The only time they must revoke credits is when an inmate fails to cooperate with getting into or completing mandatory educational or remedial programs.   (There are also certain “override” situations, such as when an inmate escapes or kills someone.)   I get the part about encouraging inmates to participate in programs that could help them when they are released (for which they also get more credits.) But getting good conduct credits without good conduct?

I doubt it’s any coincidence that neither Ravenscroft nor Bolden were ever charged with a prison offense that called for the mandatory revocation of credits, or that the two times Hatt was charged with such offenses he was found not guilty in one and the other charge was “reduced.”   Inmates and hearing officers are acutely aware of the impact of credits on prison time. It’s the one thing inmates care about. And from the case history of these three inmates, it’s also the one thing hearing officers don’t want to take.

DOC won’t talk about individual inmates.. And when I asked whether DOC tracks or monitors the revocation of credits, or whether there are unwritten polices not to revoke them, their public affairs office failed to respond.

But if Bolden, Ravenscroft and Hatt are any indication, then we need to rename the credits bestowed upon inmates when they walk through the door, since they aren’t for “good conduct.” How about a nice, truth-in-advertising acronym like HARPP credits? As in, How to Arbitrarily Reduce the Prison Population (without regard to public safety.)

By the way, it isn’t just DOC hearing officers who don’t want to revoke credits. It’s the dirty little secret of the Parole Commission as well.   More on that later. Criminals in federal prisons have an incentive to behave while in prison. For good behavior they get “good conduct” credits, which reduce the time they actually serve on their sentences.   Maryland awards good conduct credits, too, but not for good conduct.   Our state uses good conduct credits to get criminals out of prison early, even when they behave badly.

The Division of Correction (DOC), following Maryland law, applies good conduct credits to a prison sentence the day an inmate steps through its doors. For example, let’s say a convicted robber is arrested again and convicted for carrying a gun, for which he gets a mandatory sentence of five years “without parole.” DOC will take that sentence, immediately apply the good conduct credits, and calculate the actual time to be served at about four years. (The inmate will be released even earlier if he accumulates credits for other reasons, such as living in double cells or participating in prison programs.)

Unlike the federal system, which awards credits after the inmate has actually earned them, Maryland reverses the process. Inmates get the credits first. The burden then shifts to DOC to prove bad behavior at administrative hearings, complete with inmate rights.

We could probably tolerate this system if DOC actually took credits away for misbehavior.   But the process is not just reversed, it’s perverse. DOC won’t revoke good conduct credits even when it finds inmates guilty of violating prison.

In The Drug Addiction Sham I wrote about three inmates released early from prison in favor of residential drug treatment. All three committed violent offenses while in prison before they were released. Not once, according to DOC records, did a hearing officer revoke the good conduct credits the inmates had received up front.

Justin Bolden, who was imprisoned for an attempted robbery (that ended in the victim’s murder by a co-defendant), was twice found guilty of assaulting another inmate and once possessed a weapon, among other offenses.   He was sanctioned by being segregated and/or losing visitation rights. But he got to keep all of his good conduct credits.

Charles Ravenscroft was held in maximum security for behavior that included being “involved in stabbing of other inmate while serving [disciplinary segregation]” and for “assaultive behavior both in DOC and while [in an out-of-state prison.]” He also was convicted in state court for assaulting a correctional officer and sentenced to a year. Yet despite two DOC administrative convictions for assaults on inmates, two more for possessing a weapon and another two for disobeying orders, he kept his good conduct credits, too.

And finally there is Aaron Hatt, who compiled four assaults on correctional staff members as well as numerous other infractions.   DOC prepared an Institutional Progress Report for Judge Nancy Loomis-Davis in Anne Arundel County who was deciding whether to take Hatt out of prison and put him in drug treatment. The report described Hatt’s conduct as “absolutely unacceptable institutional adjustment.”   This made no difference to Judge Davis-Loomis, who let him out of prison anyway. But at least she wasn’t hypocritical, like DOC, which had failed to take one credit from Hatt for any of his infractions.

DOC hearing officers have complete discretion over revoking good conduct credits for most prison offenses.   The only time they must revoke credits is when an inmate fails to cooperate with getting into or completing mandatory educational or remedial programs.   (There are also certain “override” situations, such as when an inmate escapes or kills someone.)   I get the part about encouraging inmates to participate in programs that could help them when they are released (for which they also get more credits.) But getting good conduct credits without good conduct?

By the way, it isn’t just DOC hearing officers who don’t want to revoke credits. It’s the dirty little secret of the Parole Commission as well. More on that later.

December Short Takes

CEM — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 09:48:01 -0800

I appreciate the thoughtful responses to The Drug Addiction Sham on this website. "Steve" provides insight into those who can benefit from drug treatment and the kind of treatment they need. "Jenna" confirms from her experience what the article tried to illustrate: treatment beds are taken from those who could benefit from them and given to those who don’t.

The unknown author who raises numerous questions about the criminal justice system has obvious experience with planning and accountability. We have no criminal justice plan, with goals and tools to measure success. The system lurches along, each agency doing its thing, with piecemeal programs that sound good but may not be working. Well-meaning but uninformed officials do their best in a system so overloaded that rather than planning and measuring, everyone’s just got their finger in the dyke. And despite their best efforts, the dyke is leaking badly.

The anonymous comment "What’s your point?" puzzles me since I have said it repeatedly, but I welcome the chance to say it again. The system fails to distinguish between violent offenders who need incarceration and offenders who need alternatives, such as drug treatment. The author suggests that I "think prison is the solution to drug addiction for everyone, not just violent folks." Far from it. See, for example, What Baltimore Wants, The Swiss Experiment, and What I Really Believe.

Baltimore and the state of Maryland must sit down and create a master criminal justice plan that includes an assessment of resources and a determination of how best to use those resources depending upon the crime, the offender, and the volume. The plan needs to recognize risk factors, including arrest patterns. It must address early intervention programs, alternatives to incarceration, prison for those who need to be incarcerated and post-prison planning for when they come out. The plan must establish goals and ways to measure success, and it can’t be tanked just because new politicians are elected who want to raise their profiles with "their" programs that last the length of an election cycle.

The alternative is what we have now.

Did anyone catch Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Sylvester Cox doing his homeboy routine in court the other week? The Baltimore Sun quoted him as saying to an accused drug dealer who had dropped out of St. Mary’s College in southern Maryland, "Ain’t a lot of people look like you get an opportunity down at St. Mary’s College."

Perhaps Cox, an African-American who attended the prestigious Gilman secondary school in Baltimore, believes this use of language gives him street credibility with defendants. But why would he perpetuate the they-won’t-let-me-get-anywhere-because-I-am-black mentality in front of a courtroom full of black defendants? When he himself is an example of what an individual who looks like them can accomplish?

Cox no doubt was trying to say that the defendant, who had a partial scholarship to the school, was blowing an opportunity, and he was right. But he began with the premise that the defendant was born with the deck stacked against him because of his race, which too many young people translate into "I can’t." If we are really going to reach youth who lack hope, we shouldn’t begin by affirming that lack of hope. No hope means no reason to buy into what education offers.

And we especially shouldn’t undermine hope with barriers that don’t exist. I logged on to the St. Mary’s website and there was a photo of Kadala, a black Baltimorean and political science and Spanish major who is president of his class. Next to him was Calvin, a high school honors student from Frederick and pre-med major. And Nezia, a young Baltimore woman originally from East Africa who wants to be a news anchor. Just to be sure that St. Mary’s wasn’t taking its three black students and sticking them on their website, I called their public information office to confirm that their black enrollment is 16%.

Compare that to some other public universities in Maryland: UM College Park, 13%; UMBC, 16.7%; Salisbury, 18%; Towson, 12%, and UM Baltimore, 18%. (Johns Hopkins, a private university located smack in the middle of Baltimore, is at 6%.) Doesn’t sound like St. Mary’s is some elitist college to me. And from their website it looks like they want more black students to come.

Instead of the black-kids-have-few-opportunities message how about this: for anyone willing to work hard at their studies, opportunity awaits.

Of course, we do have to make sure our city students don’t get hit with passing gunfire, first. A judge’s credibility may have more do with how he handles violent offenders—including drug dealers who are part of the violent culture—than in his choice of grammar.

The Drug Addiction Sham

CEM — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:54:24 -0800

When I appeared on Marc Steiner’s program recently the first caller to the show stated that I didn’t “understand” what it was like to be a black male in Baltimore, and that I should call for “public education.”

So I was particularly interested to hear Mayor Sheila Dixon, a black Baltimorean,   talking about violent juvenile offenders last Wednesday at a Criminal Justice Coordinating Council meeting. She described a chilling video she had seen of a 17-year-old-male shooting another 17-year-old who was ordering food in a store while two female juveniles laughed.   And she didn’t call for public education.

“We have to begin at all levels to make things tougher [for these individuals],” she said. “We keep going in this cycle.” While acknowledging the need for youth programs to forestall violence like this, Dixon was clearly through with “understanding.”

It isn’t just Baltimore that hasn’t yet made things tougher for the right criminals.   Let’s take three cases from the counties where judges took obvious sociopaths and treated them like non-violent drug addicts, wasting precious treatment slots on persons who belonged in prison.

Justin Bolden built himself quite a rap sheet in Harford County when he turned 18 in 2002.   Assaults, handguns, fleeing from police, auto thefts, resisting arrest and trespassing—the classic arrest pattern of a budding violent criminal

Then in December of 2003 came the crime his rap sheet predicted. Bolden and some buddies got themselves a shotgun and drove around looking for people to rob. One of those buddies blasted a young man named Antonio Allen for refusing give up his money. Bolden plea bargained his role in the murder to attempted robbery and got 5 years in prison, with 10 more years suspended.

Bolden then asked Judge William O. Carr to take him out of prison and send him instead to a drug treatment program. After an evaluation by the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) Carr signed an order (called an 8-505 order) committing Bolden to DHMH for drug treatment. While waiting for a bed Bolden committed two assaults in prison and twice also possessed a weapon. Nevertheless, he was released to the Gaudenzia drug program in February of 2007 and put on probation.

A year later Bolden was arrested for assault and made bail, followed by an arrest for kidnapping and armed robbery, again posting bail. (Sound familiar?) Judge Carr finally issued a warrant for violating probation and sheriffs tried to serve it on May 20, 2008.   According to the sheriff’s office, Bolden had 15 grams of cocaine on him. (Even overloaded Baltimore prosecutors require less than half that amount to charge defendants with drug-dealing.)   Bolden fought with deputies as he tried to swallow the drugs and died from cocaine intoxication complicated by an airway obstruction.

Over in Anne Arundel County, Judge Nancy Davis-Loomis was letting another violent criminal out of prison a month after Bolden got out.    Aaron Hatt’s rap sheet boasted arrests from five different Maryland counties and included armed robbery (which was handled in juvenile court), numerous assaults, a felony drug arrest, and multiple domestic violence incidents. After going to prison on a four-year sentence for burglary, Hatt, who is now 29, asked Judge Davis-Loomis for an 8-505 order.   Even though the prosecutor pointed out Hatt’s prison record, which included four assaults on staff members, Davis-Loomis ordered his release to drug treatment.   While at the Second Genesis program he stole from other patients, was disrespectful to staff, and finally walked off altogether. He is now doing four years for violating probation.

Finally, we have Charles Ravenscroft, age 28, also of Anne Arundel County. Let’s just jump straight to when he got 18 months for theft in 2002. He tried to get out of that sentence while in prison by blaming his troubles on drug addiction. “[I] Render myself powerless to Drugs without Help. Beleive me your Honor I truely want help.” Judge Robert Heller wasn’t buying and left him in prison.

When Ravenscroft was released to probation he then refused to go to the drug treatment he had truly wanted while locked up. Meanwhile, besides beating his pregnant girlfriend, he was burglarizing the home of his girlfriend’s father, for which he got a new 8-year sentence in December, 2004.

Ravenscroft then accumulated several violent prison infractions and was sent to a prison in Virginia to get a fresh start, only to have Virginia send him back for violent behavior. He assaulted a correctional officer and got one year in Washington County, and was put in maximum security for, in part, his involvement in the stabbing of an inmate. Ravenscroft wrote to Judge Pamela North describing his criminal conduct as a “scream For Help” for his drug problem. Judge North bit. She signed an 8-505 order committing Ravenscroft to DHMH for drug treatment. He was released from prison on September 28, 2008.

Three violent men, repeatedly unable to conform their conduct to the law in or out of prison, treated by judges as drug addicts who with treatment could be released back to the community.   One committed more crimes and is dead, the other is back in prison, and the third is wait and see.

In the cases of Bolden and Ravenscroft the judges didn’t know about their prison infractions. Joe Cassily, Harford County State’s Attorney, said his office opposed Bolden’s release but needed to “tighten up the ship” in getting prison information to judges. Kristin Fleckenstein, spokeswoman for the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office, said her office uses a form to request DOC records for inmates who request 8-505 hearings. The prosecutor who handled Ravenscroft’s hearing apparently didn’t use it.

I will come back to these three criminals in another article because their prison records illustrate the utter stupidity of Maryland’s prison system of “good time” credits.   But as for the judges, I tried to talk to all three for insight into their thinking.   Were they missing any information that might have helped them in their decisions? For example, did they not know about the prior arrest records? Did they think they think they were irrelevant, or illegal for them to consider? Do they rely primarily upon the evaluation done by DHMH? Does DHMH do any evaluation of a criminal’s dangerousness?

But the judges aren’t talking. Judge North politely declined to talk to me, and Carr and Davis-Loomis just ignored me. So these questions go unanswered, the issues they raise go unaddressed, and judges pull violent criminals out of prison and put them in programs that bear little if any relation to their conduct.

Baltimore has company.

Can Swiss drug program work here?

CEM — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:29:36 -0800

In her latest article, Page Croyder takes a look at a drug program in Switzerland. Could it work here? Click here to find out more.

The Swiss Experiment

CEM — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:34:40 -0800

The little blurb tucked away on page 10 of the December 1st Baltimore Sun screamed at me like a front page headline: “Swiss heroin program made permanent.”

So the Swiss had the guts to try something different about the problem of drug addiction. First they tried an experimental program for drug addicts who have failed in other therapies by dispensing government-controlled doses. Then, apparently, the Swiss evaluated the results and decided to make the program permanent.

I have been in law enforcement most of my professional life, first as a Coast Guard officer and then as a prosecutor in Baltimore City. The Coast Guard could only interdict a small fraction of smuggled drugs. The “war on drugs” waged at the criminal justice level—police, courts and prisons—has failed. Everyone in the system knows it. But because the only alternative presented to us—“legalization”—is anathema to so many, we continue to waste criminal justice resources on what doesn’t work. We may also be contributing to the disparate views that blacks and whites have of the criminal process, as the “war” is waged primarily in black communities.

I myself have wrestled with the idea of legalizing drugs, and it’s been hard to picture. But someone has taken a bold first step towards changing the status quo. And I am not sure the Swiss have “legalized” heroin so much as they have created a legal heroin program for addicts. There’s a huge difference.

In this blog I have come down hard on the city’s criminal justice system for failing to properly focus upon the city’s violent criminals, many of whom are engaged in the drug trade. I will continue to advocate for tougher, focused handling of those individuals.

But we also have to change the street dynamics. From the Sun’s brief report it appears that the Swiss have reduced crime and improved the “health and daily lives of addicts.” Improving the lives of addicts means improving the communities in which they live, as well as the lives of the children they are raising. And, possibly, it reduces demand for drug-dealers, the ones who shoot and kill each other and so many innocent bystanders.

Instead of city leaders taking expensive junkets to foreign countries for dubious economic reasons, how about they address the city’s pernicious drug problem by sending a group of experts—health, legal and social--to Switzerland to check out what they are doing? Let them examine what seems to be working, why it is working, and what might need to be adapted for conditions here in Baltimore. Let them come up with a plan—an experiment. Not the wholesale legalization of drugs, but a controlled attempt to handle addicts differently than we do now.

Present the plan to the citizens of Baltimore and let them decide if they want to try it. If they say yes, ask the State of Maryland and the U.S. government to let the city run its experiment. It would be in their interest, too, to see what happens. Then carefully measure the results.

I doubt it could lead to worse conditions than we have now. But I can see the beginning of a new discussion based on experience and facts, not on fear and conjecture. That’s the only way to move beyond our failed, stagnant policies.

December 3, 2008

CEM — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:28:32 -0800

Page Croyder is a former Assistant State's Attorney for Baltimore. Her writings, which were given a Best of Baltimore award for Best Insider Perspective, can be accessed by clicking here. Her ideas and blunt perspective has found her both supporters and detractors in the criminal justice community. She joined Marc to discuss her ideas for criminal justice reform.

And then, Marc talked with British-Pakistani historian and writer Tariq Ali, whose latest book is Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. He joined Marc to discuss the future of Pakistan under the Obama administration and after the terror attacks in India last week.

What I Really Believe

CEM — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:56:27 -0800

Marc Steiner’s response to my article on the arrest of Charles Y. McGaney, one of the accused killers of former city councilman Ken Harris, perplexes me. He appears to sum up my position in Murder, Media and the Maddening Cycle as “playing the blame game and saying we should lock up all these guys without a second thought…”

But I never mentioned locking up McGaney prior to his murder arrest. And the criticism I leveled at State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy was for not prosecuting McGaney when she had him on drug charges, not for failing to imprison him. Marc wishes that McGaney could have had an “intervention program” for his criminal acts prior to Harris’s murder. You can’t intervene if you don’t prosecute at all.

Marc is clearly anti-prison. He thinks they create “Frankenstein monsters.” Perhaps, though I’d like to see the evidence. But McGaney spent only 85 days in county jail prior to the Harris murder, and only because he failed to appear for a court date and was arrested again. Prison didn’t make him a Frankenstein monster. Brandon Grimes, convicted this past summer of the murder of off-duty city police officer Troy Chesley, spent no time in prison before he killed. Prison didn’t make him a Frankenstein monster, either.

There are plenty of Frankenstein monsters for whom we can’t blame the prison system. We need to identify as many as we can before they shoot other people. Grimes couldn’t have murdered Chesley if the specialized gun unit of the State’s Attorney’s Office had lifted a finger to revoke his bail after he was arrested for a second handgun offense, or if the bail commissioner had kept him in jail on that second arrest. Jail is a surer prevention for murder than any intervention program when a criminal keeps breaking the law.

I support intervention programs. But they should meet at least two criteria: they should be based on research that suggests the program might work, and they must be monitored and evaluated for success. I have watched too much public money thrown away on “good ideas” that were far better in theory than in reality.

In the meantime—and simultaneously with any intervention programs-- we need to ride herd on criminals who pose a threat to kill. Prison isn’t always the first response. But it needs to be the response when offenders won’t behave. Marc says prison is for the “worst of the worst.” How do we determine who they are? After they have committed some heinous crime, or maybe a couple of heinous crimes? It’s too late then.

Some crimes cannot be predicted. The young man who firebombed the Dawson family in 2002, killing two adults and five children, wouldn’t have been on anyone’s radar screen. But Grimes was easy to pick out as a risk. So was McGaney. So are many others. The feds, thank goodness, are getting some of them. But the city has to do its part for those who don’t qualify for federal prosecution.

I will continue to criticize Pat Jessamy until she puts a competent prosecutor in charge of focusing on dangerous criminals. Without the State’s Attorney taking the lead, there can be no effective violent offender program. But Jessamy put her mendacious press aide, Margaret T. Burns, in charge, who makes it her job to obscure the facts and evade any responsibility. She does it in annual reports on the War Room (which is supposed to focus on repeat violent offenders) and she does it at Gunstat. (And she did it in the Zach Sowers case.) Her sole focus is to make Jessamy look good. It’s pitiful.

I will continue to criticize judges who won’t enforce most of the rules of probation and wait instead for dangerous defendants to commit new crimes. First-time offenders in the city almost always get probation unless they have hurt someone badly. In fact, judges are more than happy to impose probation on top of probation for second offenses and probation for violating probation. But they (and probation agents) won’t hold the probationers to most of the rules. If a defendant won’t look for work or go back to school, why are they on the street? What is probation for anyway? To the credit of the O’Malley administration, the state probation division is trying to change its ways. Are the judges?

And I will criticize the other players in the system—bail commissioners, parole commissioners, and whoever else won’t lock up those who have been given multiple chances to “turn themselves around.” Marc suggests they aren’t getting this chance. In fact, they are given it over and over again.

We don’t have a “revolving door of justice” and a murderous city because of our prison system. We have a murderous city first, and the door revolves because we won’t change the way we handle our dangerous criminals. We don’t spend extra time monitoring them, and we are reluctant to lock them up when they won’t obey the law or the rules. I am completely in favor of doing everything possible to give ex-offenders a chance at making it once they get out—and recently said so. But in the meantime, separating the dangerous from society may be the only way to protect that society. When it’s time to put them back on the street, let’s help them—and closely supervise them at the same time.

My plan doesn’t cost anything. It requires the willingness to rethink the way we do business. It requires leadership from the two most important and influential players in the criminal justice system: the State’s Attorney and the judiciary. And it requires the support of the citizens. I don’t pretend that it will eliminate Baltimore’s violent crime problem. We need an overarching plan that includes education, employment, early intervention and reentry programs. I am talking only about better using our existing resources for those charged with adult offenses. (The juvenile system is a whole other can of worms.) You can see it below.

Page’s Plan

1. Determine who poses the greatest threat to life in this city. From simply a prosecutor’s perspective, this will include young men with juvenile arrest records who are involved with drug-dealing and guns. Loitering, trespassing, car thefts and assault are typical arrest patterns. I am sure this picture can be enhanced further by specific personal risk factors—education, home life and so on.

2. Monitor, monitor, monitor. If these high risk offenders are arrested for a gun or drug-dealing offense, bail commissioners and bail review judges should keep them off the street until trial. If probation is appropriate after conviction, closely supervise—and immediately get them off the street again if they fail in any of the rules of probation. If they demonstrate to the probation judge an inability to obey the rules, revoke their probation and give them their time. Stop waiting for the offender to commit or be convicted of a new crime. And make sentences consecutive to other sentences, not concurrent.

3. Reform the current system of prison credits and parole. It defies common sense, and puts dangerous offenders back on the street early. I will write about this shortly.

4. Supervise and handle parole violations for these offenders the same way as probation violations. Get them off the street fast, and don’t wait for new convictions if they have violated other rules. Take their prison credits when revoking parole.

5. Devote more prison and probation resources to the dangerous criminal by diverting them from drug addicts, prostitutes, and others who commit self-victimized crimes. (It’s too bad that Martin O’Malley as mayor aborted the Community Court just before it was about to give birth. It would have been perfect for these offenders.) It’s not that these offenders don’t victimize the community in terms of quality of life. But prison and probation don’t have much impact on their behavior, while disproportionately punishing black drug users and women who engage in commercial sex (as opposed to men who do.) Arrest them to disrupt their public activity, fine. Offer them drug treatment and services, absolutely. But after that I would rather see what happens without prison and probation than continue the useless merry-go-round that overloads the system and keeps us from recognizing and addressing the real threats to personal safety. We don’t have unlimited resources. Let’s try a different approach and measure the impact.

Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Center
for Emerging Media. You are welcome to make comments to this article
using the form below. If you would like to submit a rebuttal to this
article, please send your article to cem@centerforemergingmedia.org. CEM regrets that we cannot publish all articles but we will give each submission full consideration.

Revolving Door of Justice

CEM — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:34:51 -0800

I love Page Croyder’s pieces. They get a lot of folks angry, others cheering and many people talking.

Let me take a stab at one of her questions today. What do we do about what some call the revolving door of justice in Baltimore? Sure, the State's Attorney Jessamy deserves some of the blame, no question about it. Judges too. Defenders too. Cops too. Prosecutors too. We need to look under the rock not just kick it around. Under the rock you will find a system that does not work.

There are a lot of bad actors on the street. Lock them up and get them off the streets. There are some bad men out there who are terrorizing our communities and must be stopped.

Let me go under this rock a bit. I see the hardheaded, unrecalcitrant rock, but what is holding it up? Maybe we should have locked up guys like Charles Y. McGaney, who has been accused of killing my friend Ken Harris, earlier in their career. I ask though, to what end? What do we end up doing when we just warehouse them in a state prison system devoid of therapy, education, libraries, and job training, without transition programs for reintegrating ex-offenders back into society and halfway houses and community corrections facilities as the main thrust of our system? What Frankenstein monsters are we creating? What are we getting for our tax dollars? Where is the investment of our public money that is now going down some endless rabbit hole of darkness?

Folks who say lock 'em up, put them away for a long time because they are dealing drugs, carrying a gun have a point, to a degree. There are those who need to be separated from the rest of us. The trouble is they come back out. So, if you say that is not my problem, because as prosecutors and judges your job is to get them off the street, then you are shirking the major part of your duty to all of us. I mean all of us, those arrested and those of us trying to lead decent lives.

Screaming lock them up just isn’t good enough. We need to turn our penal system around so the bad boys go away but where other lawbreakers can actually have the opportunity to turn themselves around. We need first to invest in the front end with community corrections for first time offenders. We need halfway houses and minimum security prisons so non-violent criminals are not housed with the worst of the worst. Lock the worst of the worst away. Isolate them, give them the tools to change but have no illusions. We need to change the way we spend our money on prisons.

If there had been an intervention program that McGaney could have taken advantage of in his earliest criminal incarnations he may have walked a different path. He may not have pulled the trigger that killed Ken Harris. Who knows? Playing the blame game and saying we should lock all these guys up without a second thought sounds cathartically wonderful but does not get the job done.

It reminds me of the three bears. Baltimore County is too harsh, Baltimore City may be too lenient and no one is getting it just right.

Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Center
for Emerging Media. You are welcome to make comments to this article
using the form below. If you would like to submit a rebuttal to this
article, please send your article to cem@centerforemergingmedia.org. CEM regrets that we cannot publish all articles but we will give each submission full consideration.

Murder, Media and the Maddening Cycle

CEM — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:05:41 -0800

When the Baltimore Sun reported that Charles Y. McGaney, one of the accused murderers of former city councilman Ken Harris, had received “time served” on a prior handgun case, my antennas went up. According to the prosecutor and judge, his sentence was “appropriate, considering McGaney's age and the facts of the case.” I thought Baltimore County prosecutors had lost their minds. Young men + guns = Trouble. You don’t let them back on the street without supervision.

Kudos to Peter Hermann for tracking down the facts and learning that McGaney really got time served because the state’s witness moved out of state. County prosecutors got what they could.

But Hermann, after the usual journalistic indictment of “missed opportunities, sloppy work, bureaucratic foul-ups, uncaring victims and uncooperative witnesses,” let city prosecutors off the hook. I get tired of reading generalized sentences like Hermann’s, or articles that describe criminals who “slipped through” the system or the cracks before they commit a truly heinous crime. In order to slip through there first must be an effort to catch them, much like fishing with a big net. Most fish will be caught if the net is strong and well-designed, though some will inevitably slip through.

But in the case of Baltimore City, there’s no net at all. Criminals don’t slip through the city system, they swim through.

Besides his county gun arrest, McGaney was also arrested in the city for possessing 10 gel caps of heroin, an amount that is consistent with drug dealing. Prosecutors knew that he was pending the county handgun case at the time the drug case came to trial. Young men + guns + drug-dealing = Big Trouble.

McGaney had also been arrested for trespassing, loitering, disorderly conduct and was on probation for malicious destruction of property. Reporters and criminal justice officials seem to treat charges like these as too minor to talk about. But this pattern of arrests is significant, pointing to an idle young man hanging on the streets and, together with his more serious arrests, paints a dangerous picture.

So city prosecutors dropped the drug case on the first court date because the laboratory report was, according to Hermann, “not available.” Exactly what plan did they make for when it did become available? Did Hermann ask?

I did, and Joe Sviatko, a spokesman for State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, ignored me. But the fact is that Jessamy has no plan to focus on individuals like McGaney. (She’s happy to hand cases off to the feds, but they can’t take everyone.) McGaney’s was just another city case that got dropped, an easy dismissal on a crowded docket. Gosh, who knew he would end up being charged with killing Harris?

No one knew, of course. And in fairness, no one can claim that Jessamy is to blame for the Harris murder. But neither did she lift a finger to slow down or change the trajectory of an individual who was developing the same kind of resume as known city murderers. Rather than take the extra steps needed to make cases like McGaney’s stick, she has instead wasted resources given to her by the state and city to focus on violent criminals.

However, she does focus heavily on one thing: her image. And nothing illustrates this better than her choice of representative to the city “Gunstat” meetings, spokeswoman Margaret T. Burns.

Gunstat is a multi-agency group that focuses on gun-related crimes, the initiative of Sheryl Goldstein from the Mayor’s Office on Criminal Justice. It has the potential to hold agencies accountable for case outcomes and for focusing efforts on the appropriate criminals. But rather than assign a prosecutor to head up her Gunstat efforts, an attorney with technical knowledge of the law and experience in criminal prosecution, Jessamy sends her press aide. It is Burns who sits at the table asking questions, and Burns who makes presentations to other Gunstat members. Real prosecutors only make appearances at Burns’ direction.

After interviewing Goldstein I had felt hopeful about Gunstat’s potential and began attending meetings to get a sense of its effectiveness. When I showed up for my third meeting Burns brought a city official in to kick me out. And well she should have. After all, if image is her thing, she couldn’t have anyone there who actually recognized how clueless she was.

But Burns was too late. I had already witnessed her in action, responding to questions about robbery conviction rates and juvenile arrests. Stumbling and bumbling her way through her explanations, Burns caused one observer to remark that he had no idea what she was talking about. I did. She was making excuses, lame and phony. She could provide no insight into a longstanding problem regarding juvenile arrests that could be fixed in a pair of seconds if Jessamy had anybody competent running her office. Burns was an embarrassment to herself and to Jessamy.

But Jessamy chose her for the job, and the mayor and police commissioner have no choice but to go along, lest Jessamy pack her tent and go home. Consequently, Gunstat will get no real accountability from the prosecutor’s office, exactly the reason why Jessamy sends Burns.

But the media doesn’t have to go along. Reporters should enlighten the public, not allow press aides to get away with sorry explanations like “lab report not available.” They should end the “woe-is-the-system” post-trauma rhetoric and stop publishing the same articles that get written after every painful murder (see example below) and after every murder suspect with a record gets arrested. They need to be specific and proactive instead, following up on issues and holding public officials accountable by name and with facts. It’s the only way for journalists to make any kind of a difference.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

When Ken Harris was murdered, I searched past articles to compare what was written about his murder to what was written about the murder of seven members of the Dawson family by a drug-dealer’s firebomb in 2002. There was the same pain and outrage, vigils and prayers, political posturing and criticism of the police. And there was similar rhetoric, too. The we-can’t-let-this-ever-happen-again kind of rhetoric.

One eloquent op-ed piece about the Harris murder was written by Baltimore lawyer Raymond Daniel Burke, a frequent contributor to the Sun. Here is an excerpt from his piece published September 29, 2008:

When the victim is someone who rose up from the mean streets of our city to graduate from college and become a city councilman, and then a serious candidate for City Council president, a part of all of us dies with him. Because he was an example—and that example represented hope....

The story of his life speaks to possibility. It confirms that it is not inevitable that the economically poor be intellectually and spiritually impoverished as well. It dispels the notion that city life means accepting feckless lack of interest in our public schools and open warfare in our streets…

[T]he public debate is filled with diatribes against troubled city youths and their frightening lack of respect for human life, as well as lamentations over how poverty and out-of-wedlock births breed violence. But if we do not go further, and embrace the critical thinking necessary to change the state of our communities, we risk abandoning hope and succumbing to acceptance of the unacceptable as the norm. We risk no longer being able to provide the venue in which vibrant and energetic lives can flourish. We risk making it less possible to produce a Ken Harris. And we will find ourselves watching hope slip away.

And here is what he wrote on June 9, 2002 about the murder of a city high school honor student who had gone on to college and was home on break:

Most of us do not know Rio-Jarell Tatum, but a part of something vital to all of us died with him on Memorial Day weekend. The 19-year-old Penn State freshman was nothing less than our hope for our city’s future.

It is not necessary that the economically poor be intellectually and spiritually impoverished as well. It is not a given that inner city life means we must accept disinterest in our schools and warfare in our streets…

But we also carry in the backs of our minds the knowledge of our failures – a public school system that is regarded as a non-option for those with the means to go elsewhere, horrific housing conditions in dilapidated neighborhoods and a drug epidemic that begets a crime wave that makes murder commonplace...

We need to act on these simple truths with all the energy we have devoted to downtown redevelopment. We cannot afford to chalk up another murder to the way things are. We must determine how things must be. Otherwise we risk the killing of our hope.

So I e-mailed Burke pointing out the sameness in the articles and asking him whether he thought anything had changed in the six years between the two murders. I asked what he had in mind when he called on us to “act” and to do the “critical thinking” necessary for change. And I asked what he himself has done since 2002 that exemplifies what he had in mind.

I got an automated response that he wasn’t in the office that day. And then I got nothing.

For all I know, he spends every spare moment working with or on behalf of inner city youth. If that’s the case, I’d rather hear about how that is going and what effect he is having. And if not, if his writing is just a call to some vague we-must-do-something action, I say enough. Keep the beautiful words on the shelf. We need to know what we can do, not just feel, about the violence in our midst. We need to hear the specifics of plans of action that could really help to stop the killing. Action, not words, will make the difference.

Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Emerging Media. You are welcome to make comments to this article using the form below. If you would like to submit a rebuttal to this article, please send your article to cem@centerforemergingmedia.org. CEM regrets that we cannot publish all articles but we will give each submission full consideration.

November 17, 2008

CEM — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:11:26 -0800

As the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, Rod Rosenstein has the authority to pursue a wide variety of cases, from going after child pornographers to targeting gangs to fighting terrorism. Yet the effect of his office is often overlooked by the media. He joins Marc in studio to discuss the work his office does, his thoughts on U.S. drug policy, the political nature of his appointment and how he avoid being influenced by it, and more.