Jealous seeks 30 percent cut in prison population
Some fear reduction would be too much
As he campaigns throughout Maryland, Democratic candidate for governor Ben Jealous often talks about his plan to reform the state’s criminal justice system by shrinking the prison population by 30 percent and saving an estimated $660 million from the state’s budget.
Jealous has said reducing the prison population by about a third could be achieved within a “few years” by moving toward smarter policies that don’t incarcerate nonviolent offenders and addicts.
But elected officials who have worked on the state’s Justice Reinvestment Act — which is credited with helping reduce Maryland’s prison population — question whether such a quick reduction can be achieved on top of the state’s already rapid decline in incarceration.
Further declines in the prison population could jeopardize public safety, some critics warn.
Jealous argued his plan would focus the state’s crime fight on the most dangerous felons as violence has escalated during Gov. Larry Hogan’s first term.
Maryland led the nation with a 9.6 percent drop in prison inmates in 2017, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. Over the past decade, the state’s prison population has dropped by almost 23 percent — fifth in the nation. But since the Republican governor was elected, violent crime has increased 10 percent statewide, mainly driven by surging crime in Baltimore.
Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger, a Democrat who sits on the Justice Reinvestment Coordinating Council, said the state has already been shrinking its prison population by putting more addicts into treatment rather than behind bars.
Hogan in 2016 signed the Justice Reinvestment Act, which seeks to divert nonviolent offenders from prison to drug treatment and other programs. It ended various mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, expanded expungement of misdemeanors, and reformed how parole violations are handled and good-time credits are calculated. The governor later pushed for mandatory minimum sentences for repeat gun offenders.
Shellenberger said he worries about safety if the prison population were to decline even faster.
“My concern about lowering the prison population below where it is now is we’d have to look at letting out violent offenders, and that’s certainly something I would oppose,” he said.
About 9 percent of Maryland’s approximately 19,000 prison inmates are currently incarcerated for drug offenses, while 26 percent are behind bars for murder convictions; 14 percent for assault; 9 percent for sexual assault; and 7 percent for burglary.
The Jealous campaign says about half of inmates in state prisons and local jails are behind bars for probation violations, not new crimes — a population the candidate hopes to get treatment for, rather than seek punishment.
Kevin Harris, a spokesman for Jealous, said no violent offenders would be released under his plan.
“What Ben’s plan calls for is more efficiently managing our public safety resources and ensuring our focus is on the most violent repeat offenders,” Harris said. “We’re making sure we aren’t wasting public safety dollars on people who could be dealt with through other means. A lot of folks in that population need rehab not jail.”
The budget for the state’s prison system is about $1.4 billion. The Jealous campaign said the $660 million in projected savings would come not just from the prison system, but from the state court system, state police and local aid to public safety programs, which total $2.52 billion.
Doug Mayer, a spokesman for Hogan, said, “Ben Jealous has no problem spending tens of billions of dollars on his unaffordable schemes but is willing to put Maryland families at risk by cutting the public safety budget in half,” Mayer said. “Most of his ideas are irresponsible, but this one is unequivocally dangerous.”