A new report from some of Maryland’s top legal advocates and officials calls for sweeping changes to reduce the racial disparities that exist at every level of the state’s criminal justice system.
The disparities are widespread: Black Marylanders make up less than a third of the state’s population but account for more than half of all arrests, more than half of the jail population, and 71% of the prison and parole populations.
The report from the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative calls for a far-reaching approach that acknowledges the historic precursors to today’s legal system — beginning with enslavement and followed by racist laws and practices that denied equal rights to Black Marylanders — and recognizes ongoing inequality in education, health care and economic opportunities.
The 111-page report itself is the result of an unusual partnership. The MEJC was created through a collaboration between the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which prosecutes some crimes and defends the state correctional system in lawsuits brought by prisoners, among other duties; and the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, which provides legal representation for defendants who cannot afford lawyers across the entire state. Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue and Attorney General Anthony Brown are both the first Black people to hold their respective jobs.
“We all have a part to play in dismantling unfair systems of justice and building a more just state,” the pair wrote in a letter introducing the report. “The release of this report is only the beginning of this ongoing effort.”
Several of the proposals outlined in the report were introduced as legislation before the Maryland General Assembly during the legislative session, but lawmakers largely rejected them.
The full report includes 18 recommendations ranging from expanding access to mental health care to improving GED rates among incarcerated youth. Baltimore Beat examined three of the recommendations:
ENDING NON-SAFETY-RELATED TRAFFIC STOPS
Black Marylanders make up 31.6% of the state’s population but accounted for 43% of all traffic stops by police in 2023. The disparities are even steeper in some jurisdictions, like Baltimore, where 60% of the city’s population is Black but 79.5% of traffic stops by the Baltimore Police Department involve a Black driver.
The MEJC report suggests cutting down on those numbers by ending “non-safety-related” traffic stops, a term that refers to low-risk violations like expired registration tags or a single broken tail light. Another common term for these stops is “pretextual stops.” Though some traffic stops for non-safety reasons are based on legitimate violations, police officers also sometimes use common offenses as a reason to justify stopping a driver or searching their car.
The MEJC proposal calls for reclassifying non-safety-related violations as secondary offenses that would not be enough, on their own, to justify a traffic stop. Police would need to see a more serious violation in order to pull someone over, and lower-level issues could be handled through automated enforcement systems or tickets sent through the mail.
Officers would still be able to pull people over for speeding, reckless driving and other dangerous behaviors, and supporters of these proposals say that ending non-safety-related stops would allow police to focus their attention on more serious offenses.
Philadelphia introduced a similar proposal through its Driving Equality Act, which was enacted in 2022. The act bars Philadelphia police officers from pulling over drivers for a single broken headlight or taillight, items hanging from the rearview mirror, expired or missing registration stickers, and a few other minor violations.
In the year after Driving Equality was enacted, traffic stops in Philadelphia fell by almost 7%, but racial disparities persisted. Still, Philadelphia police stopped about 8,200 fewer Black drivers and nearly 900 fewer white drivers compared to before the law.
Paula Sen, an assistant defender in the Defender Association of Philadelphia’s police accountability unit, said the disparities are falling, just not as dramatically as some hoped when the law was enacted.
“We are talking about real, living, breathing human beings that are not being subjected to unnecessary police interactions,” she told the Beat. “That’s sort of an unquantifiable good.”
“We are talking about real, living, breathing human beings that are not being subjected to unnecessary police interactions.”
Paula Sen, an assistant defender in the Defender Association of Philadelphia’s police accountability unit
“That’s sort of an unquantifiable good.”
The law also appears to have had no effect on public safety, said Mike Mellon, an assistant defender who also works in the Defender Association’s police accountability unit. Like many cities, Philadelphia has seen a dramatic drop in homicides since the COVID-19 pandemic. The Driving Equality Act also survived a legal challenge from the Philadelphia police union. Mellon said the law is just one piece of criminal justice reform efforts.
“It’s a stepping stone to trying to figure out what the right answer is,” Mellon said. “This is one possible solution, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road.”
In Maryland, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the state legislature, lawmakers introduced bills this year that would have made some non-safety-related traffic violations secondary offenses. After receiving swift and vocal backlash from the law enforcement community, neither bill made it out of committee. Without a committee vote, the bill could not be considered by the full House or Senate.
LIMIT AUTO-CHARGING CHILDREN AS ADULTS
Like many states, Maryland automatically treats teenagers as adults in the legal system when they are accused of committing serious, violent crimes. Maryland also mandates that teens who are 16 or older be charged as adults when they are accused of certain firearms offenses, including misdemeanor firearm possession.
Criminal justice reform advocates have been trying to end the practice for more than a decade. Maryland automatically charges more children as adults than nearly any other state, WYPR reported, and those who do get automatically charged are overwhelmingly Black. Black teenagers make up more than 80% of the children charged as adults, according to state data.
Misdemeanor firearm possession is the most common charge for which teenagers are charged as adults, according to the data.
Carla Barrett, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies youth crime and justice, called it “stunning” that Maryland automatically prosecutes 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for gun-related misdemeanors.
“It’s illogical,” Barrett said. “If you look at the history of the juvenile justice system, the idea of moving youth into the adult court system was for the most serious cases, the most serious crimes.”
“If you look at the history of the juvenile justice system, the idea of moving youth into the adult court system was for the most serious cases, the most serious crimes.”
Carla Barrett, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Juvenile courts traditionally bring greater focus on rehabilitation and offering young people who commit crimes access to services so they can become successful adults. That’s because there is broad scientific and legal consensus that children’s brains work differently than adults’ do, especially in stressful situations.
When teenagers are charged as adults in Maryland, they can still be transferred back to juvenile court. An investigation by WYPR, however, found that judges used questionable reasoning to justify keeping kids in adult court, including their physical size, not having severe enough mental illness to warrant treatment in juvenile court, and having mental health needs that were too extensive to be treated in juvenile court.
A pair of bills introduced this year would have given juvenile courts jurisdiction over all but the most serious crimes. Both bills died in committee, despite having powerful backers and support from the Legislative Black Caucus.
REDUCE PRETRIAL DETENTION
The MEJC report also calls for changes to reduce pretrial detention, the time someone sits in jail after being accused of a crime and arrested but before they have a trial.
The first proposal would standardize the “civilian complaint” process, which allows any regular person to accuse someone else of a crime by filling out an application for a statement of charges. District Court commissioners, who do not have to be lawyers to hold their jobs, can then issue arrest warrants based on those applications. The application does not need to be reviewed by a police officer, prosecutor or judge before an arrest warrant is issued, and the person who is accused can be held in jail based on the allegations.
A pair of bills before the General Assembly this year would have changed the law so that a court commissioner could only issue a summons, not an arrest warrant, if a regular person filed an application for a statement of charges. Arrest warrants could still be issued based on applications from police officers or prosecutors. Neither bill made it out of committee.
The MEJC also proposed requiring prosecutors to turn over evidence within a “reasonable timeframe” so that people accused of crimes and their lawyers can prepare a defense more quickly and potentially ask for release if they feel the evidence is not strong enough. (One 2019 study found that the majority of Baltimore defendants who were jailed pretrial were never convicted of a crime, either because their charges were dropped or they were acquitted.)
The report does not offer broader recommendations about changing the way bail is set in Maryland. As the Beat reported previously, the pretrial jail population in Maryland has actually gone up since a 2017 bail reform effort designed to make the bail system fairer to poor people.
The statewide population of people being held in jail while they are awaiting prosecution — and while they remain legally innocent — has risen from 5,838 in 2017, the year the state judiciary implemented a rule change aimed at reducing the use of cash bail, to 6,701 at the beginning of this year.
The Beat previously found that while the use of cash bail has fallen significantly since the rule change, judges and court commissioners have increasingly turned to denying bail entirely, which makes it even more difficult for a person accused of a crime to win their release pretrial. Since 2017, the percentage of state jail populations that is made up of people being held pretrial has jumped, rising from 68.6% to 82.5%.
Bail and pretrial release remain a politically difficult issue in Maryland, and neither the judiciary nor state lawmakers have revisited bail reform since 2017, even in the face of evidence that the rule change has backfired.
“Pretrial confinement disproportionately affects Black people and contributes to ongoing inequalities,” the MEJC wrote. “Pretrial detention can lead to loss of employment, housing instability, and family disruption, exacerbating economic and social disparities.”
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