Our InitiativesThe Open Society Institute established an office in Baltimore with the aim of improving the lives of people existing on the margins of the city, who have inadequate access to its resources. OSI-Baltimore seeks to understand the interdependence of the challenges facing the city and to respond with integrated grantmaking programs that will help ensure that marginalized city residents have the services and opportunities they need to participate fully in community life.
The goal of the Criminal Justice Program at OSI-Baltimore is to increase public safety and to reduce incarceration and recidivism by encouraging support for effective and humane responses to criminal behavior and victimization. The Program seeks to infuse public debate on crime with a broader discussion of the causes of incarceration and of the strategies that can effectively reduce crime and recidivism.
Most incarcerated people are eventually released into the community. Programs that offer inmates and youthful offenders assistance with rehabilitation and transition back into the community can reduce crime and recidivism. Thus, in an effort to increase public safety and reduce the high rates of incarceration in Baltimore, the Criminal Justice Program plans to concentrate its resources on two program priorities: the successful transition of ex-offenders into the community; and alternatives to incarceration for juveniles. The Program will give special attention to the needs of youth, women, and people with drug addiction and/or mental health problems. Through grantmaking and educational forums, the Program hopes to identify effective approaches that Baltimore can employ to address the needs of youthful offenders and newly released inmates. The Program will work in close collaboration with other OSI-Baltimore programs-including Drug Addiction Treatment, Education and Youth Development, and Workforce Development- and with OSI's national Criminal Justice Initiative in an effort to establish a comprehensive approach to the challenges facing the Baltimore community.
The Criminal Justice Program believes that these initiatives ultimately will help create a more open society in which all citizens have an opportunity to participate and fewer citizens live in a shadow society behind bars. The Program is eager to create partnerships with public and private entities in an effort to bring about effective reforms that will benefit our society at large.
Incarceration in the United States
Identifying strategies that will help reduce the epidemic rates of incarceration and recidivism in the United States is critical to promoting public safety. More people are spending longer periods of time in American prisons than ever before.The national incarceration rate has more than doubled since 1985. As a consequence, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world with the exception of Russia. Significantly, over 60 percent of the prison population is serving time for nonviolent offenses. Nationwide, 62 percent of ex-offenders are re-arrested and 41 percent are re-incarcerated. These high rates of incarceration and recidivism reflect policies that are largely ineffective for preventing crime. In order to reverse these trends, it is important to consider who is being incarcerated and the reasons for their incarceration.
Mandatory minimum sentencing, "three strikes" and "truth in sentencing" laws have fueled rising incarceration rates. In addition, other criminal justice policies contribute to this increase. The fact that drug addiction is treated as a criminal offense, rather than as a public health problem, has been a principal cause of these high incarceration rates, particularly in the dramatic increase in the incarceration of women. Although a significant majority of prisoners have drug addictions, very few of them receive drug treatment. Similarly, many people with mental illness are held in prisons instead of mental health facilities and the mental health treatment they receive is often woefully inadequate. The number of mentally ill people admitted to U.S. jails each year is nearly eight times the number of patients admitted to state mental hospitals. Incarceration also has a disproportionate impact on racial minorities. More than six in every ten persons held in correctional facilities are African-American or Hispanic. African-Americans are incarcerated at seven times the rate of whites.
Women represent the fastest growing incarcerated population. Most women who are incarcerated have children, who are then at higher risk for incarceration themselves. This creates a cycle of incarceration within families. Indeed, the United States is incarcerating more young people than ever before. The lack of youth intervention programs makes it likely that these juveniles will continue to commit crimes and return to prison as adults. Services that research has shown to be effective, such as educational, drug treatment and job training programs have been eliminated, while ineffective punitive programs, such as prison boot camps, have proliferated. Recidivism rates are high, in part, because of these ill-conceived crime policies.
Incarceration in Baltimore and Maryland
Incarceration in Maryland and in Baltimore, in particular, mirrors national patterns. Baltimore City accounts for almost half of the people incarcerated in all Maryland state correctional facilities. On any given day, there are over 28,000 residents of Baltimore City who are incarcerated or under the supervision of probation or parole. The vast majority of people incarcerated in Baltimore are imprisoned for nonviolent offenses. In 1998, only 15 percent of the inmates held at the Baltimore Detention Center were charged with felonies. The remaining 85 percent were charged with misdemeanors and nonviolent offenses.
In Maryland, drug offenses constitute one of the largest categories for which people are admitted into the state correctional system. Police estimate that drugs are involved in nearly three-quarters of the City's murders and in nearly all serious crimes-about 85 percent of all felonies. According to the Division of Pretrial Detention Services, 85 percent of the people processed at the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center report that they engage in drug use. Nevertheless, most inmates do not receive drug treatment during or after incarceration.
Nationally, Maryland ranks sixth in the nation for juvenile violent crime arrests, and thirteenth in total juvenile crime arrests. The vast majority of juvenile arrests are for nonviolent crimes, property offenses, drugs and misdemeanor assaults. The drug addiction problems found in the adult prison population are also prevalent among juveniles. Almost half of the children committed to the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice have a substance abuse problem, but most do not receive drug treatment Moreover, approximately 30 percent of the juveniles held at the Baltimore Detention Center have learning disabilities, compared to 12 percent citywide. There is a strong link between low levels of education and high rates of criminal activity, for both juveniles and adults. Inmates who receive effective education in jails and prisons have a much lower level of recidivism. The higher the education an inmate attains, the less likely he or she will return to prison.
The racial disparity in incarceration rates that exists nationally is also in evidence in Maryland. Although African-Americans constitute 25 percent of Maryland's population, they constitute 77.8 percent of Maryland's prisoners. Maryland's prison population grew significantly between 1990 and 1997. African-American prisoners accounted for nine out of every ten new inmates imprisoned during this period.
In the past decade, many states have significantly increased the amount of tax dollars spent on incarceration and decreased spending for other governmental functions, such as education. Maryland experienced massive prison growth during this decade. From 1990 to 1997, yearly general fund expenditures for prisons increased by $147 million dollars. During the same period, annual funding for higher education dropped by $29 million dollars. In 1990, Maryland was spending twice as much on its universities as its prisons. If this funding shift continues, however, Maryland will be spending more on its prisons than on its entire state university system by 2001.
This funding trend exists in Maryland and throughout the country although violent crime, and crime overall, has been decreasing since 1993. The dramatic increase in incarceration rates is largely due to policy decisions to lock up nonviolent offenders for extended periods of time. For instance, non-violent offenders account for 52 percent of the increase in Maryland's inmate population since 1990.
The price the community pays for these policies is extremely high. Large amounts of tax dollars are allocated to incarcerate a significant percentage of the local population, and at a very expensive per capita rate. Yet programs that would increase public safety, lower the recidivism rate and reduce overall rates of incarceration could be funded for much less money. Programs such as prevention services, drug treatment, transition services, education, job training and alternatives to incarceration would be more effective in breaking the cycles of violence, victimization and incarceration. The result would benefit both incarcerated individuals and the community at large.
