MAJR general meeting- Fri.,11/27/18 – Forestville, PGCEA
We began our meeting promptly at 7 p.m. with MAJR executive committee member Jerry McLaurin facilitating. We thanked the PGCEA for hosting us and Amity Pope for arranging the room. We also welcomed several new participants – incl. Darrell Hale (A.A.Co.), Tricia Christianson (Balto. Harm-Reduction-Coalition), Thornell Jones (A.A.Co.), Brenda Carr (Patapsco MM), Janice Liggins (Clarion Call-PGTV), Colby Harmon and Derrick Waggoner (Mont.Co.), Julio K.(CASA).
We began with a moment of silence to recall MAJR executive committee member, Dr. Peter Fagan, who passed away since our last general meeting. Phil also mentioned that two other longtime members, John Linton and Pat Schenck are suffering health difficulties. We agreed to send a card and plant to each. Phil also relayed our Treasurer’s report that we have about $2500 in funds, thanks to the generosity of many individual and church donors.
After a brief explanation of our agenda and MAJR history, Jerry called for workgroup facilitators to lead group discussion of pending initiatives (reversing our usual Front, Behind, Back workgroup sequence):
For our Back Door workgroup, (in absence of our coordinator) Phil reported that:
- we plan to support the 2019 REDEEM Act and other expungement initiatives, championed by partner organization Job Opportunities Task Force (JOTF);
- MAJR will seek to renew our support for improved “certificates of rehabilitation” included in the Justice Reinvestment Act, expanding these so that they are not so limited but may include a) a presumption of non-negligent hiring and b) a presumption of fitness for vocational licenses, etc.
- Becca reported that she now has communicated with a series of Maryland prison administrators, seeking to get actionable information about the numbers and locations of inmates from each county participating in reentry seminars. With this information, MAJR hopes to collaborate with county and nonprofit reentry programs to facilitate more extensive and earlier reentry services.
For our Behind the Walls workgroup, Vince reviewed that planned initiatives for 2019 include:
- A set of restrictive housing or “solitary confinement” bills, led by different partner groups including IAHR, ACLU and others. (NOTE: By dividing last year’s omnibus initiative into pieces, advocates hope to avoid a “poison pill” excuse for legislators to vote against the entire package due to only one provision.)
- Governor-out-of-lifers’ parole – Vince noted that the Governor has granted a couple of paroles (for the first time in 20 years) and may hope this will reduce demand for this bill. Phil noted that Governor Hogan’s action may make it more possible to point out “this is not a partisan attack on the current Governor.”
- Visitor Tracy Christiansen asked MAJR to consider support for a “medication assisted treatment bill” that would direct DPSCS to offer medication “other than vivitrol” for inmates with addiction issues. MAJR executive committee requested that she send links and the text for the proposed bill before a position is taken.
- Family and volunteer issues have continued to be a problem with harsh, inconsistent and arbitrary actions taken by individual correctional officers.
- Relatedly, we also have had difficulty getting DPSCS librarians to accept book donations recently, despite MAJR executive committee and former DPSCS head librarian Glennor Shirley’s efforts. If not resolved soon, MAJR will seek a meeting with the DPSCS secretary. Two more new issues also were raised:
- Shipman reported that inmate transfer requests regularly are denied to those with good records, but granted to trouble-makers, perhaps by correctional officers seeking to make their own jobs easier.
- MAJR members who volunteer within prisons report that Latino inmates are discriminated against in health care matters and have language barriers due to shortage of interpreters. (We discussed the latter with the CASA representative pending, who said he also would forward information about various CASA initiatives.)
For the Front Door workgroup, coordinator Bill Carlson reported that there are various initiatives pending including:
- renewal of the 2017 Citations Bill that would encourage police officers to issue citations, rather than arrest, for appropriate nonviolent offences and that could encourage improved training for officers to make more use of this less-costly, less-time consuming alternative;
- A new pretrial mental health screening and services bill, we hope, will emerge from a NAMI / MAJR sponsored stakeholders’ focus group to be held on 12/7/18. Currently, approximately 40% of those held in pretrial detention are estimated to suffer mental disorder but statewide screening and services are lacking.
- A new Sentencing Guidelines Bill will be drafted by Tom C. and Phil to address the 11% of serious criminal cases for which judges to not complete state guidelines and the 4% for whom sentences above the guidelines are ordered.
- A Collateral Consequences initiative may be renewed, seeking to have defendants in Maryland courts routinely warned about the side effects of a guilty plea on their later life—including employment, education, housing options, etc.
- The Kirwin Commission and “School-to-Prison Pipeline” commission are expected to propose important legislation and funding to address this major set of issues. Dave Hornbeck, a director of “Strong Schools Maryland” and a former state schools superintendent, urged MAJR members to sign up to lead “teams of 10” in support of the legislation; he noted that there are scores of such teams in 17 of 24 Maryland jurisdictions. We agreed to help recruit more teams and to find individuals or churches that might do so in the remaining counties.
Our visiting CASA representative also reported that organization will propose an “Equity in community policing” bill in PG, Mont.and statewide, noting that Latinos are arrested disproportionately and also may be recorded in a “secret suspected gang-members database” the accuracy of which they unfairly cannot challenge. Such data may be given to ICE and may result in deportation. We asked that more specific information about these initiatives should be sent to us for consideration.
Finally, we considered the suggestion of some MAJR members that the group should support the federal “First Step Act” bill which passed the House some months ago and is stalled in the U.S. Senate, due to a leadership decision, despite bipartisan and Trump administration support. We agreed to ask MAJR members to sign an online petition and to contact Senate leader Mitch McConnell to seek passage of this bill which would enable on federal level many of the same reforms adopted in Maryland and elsewhere via the Justice Reinvestment process.
We concluded our meeting at approximately 8:45 p.m. with clean up and individual follow up conversations. Our next general meeting will take place on 1/4/19 at 7 PM. We would like to hold this meeting in Balto., but have not yet confirmed locations. We invited participants to suggest a venue.
These minutes respectfully submitted – P.Caroom
