2015 may be the year Maryland begins to switch its criminal justice priorities from “tough-on-crime” to “smart-on-crime.” The Maryland Alliance for Justice Reform (MAJR) press release explains how this rare event will occur with: 1) a legislative commitment to reduce our state’s overuse of incarceration; and 2) bipartisan leadership of this effort that includes Senate President Mike Miller and former Governor Bob Ehrlich among many others.
MAJR advisory board members and other key actors, in the meantime, would welcome the chance to speak with you and offer more background information that could lead to other sidebars or follow-up stories of interest, such as:
- a) the “Nixon-to-China” angle of a Republican representative from Hagerstown (Senator Chris Shank – now Gov. Hogan’s Executive Director of Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention) championing a movement that may result in smaller Maryland prisons;
- b) the “little-book-club-that-could” – how two churches came together to study The New Jim Crow: Colorblindness in an age of mass incarceration and, within several months, established MAJR, an influential statewide advocacy network; and
- c) the science behind how incarceration is harmful to low-risk offenders and how it’s possible to correct their early misdemeanors without it.
- d) Also, Maryland is one of only three states in the country (with California and Oklahoma) that still requires the Governor’s personal approval for parole of persons serving life sentences, with the result that our state has a large number of aging prisoners requiring substantial medical services (and costs) serving much longer sentences than in former times here and in other states currently. WhileMarylandspends an average of $38,000/year for its incarcerated population, this cost is much higher for this growing aging prisoner population. See MAJR and MRJI weblinks for more information.
If you wish to contact us for assistance with more background on this important criminal justice policy development, please email or phone me as a MAJR press liaison. MAJR will arrange phone interviews for you as soon as possible, or work with you by email if you prefer.
Thanks for your attention to this.
Very truly,
Ed Sabin – Press Liaison for
Maryland Alliance for Justice Reform
Phone – 410-255-7362
