Is public access to Baltimore’s Gun Offender Registry helping — or hurting?
The facts in the firing last week of accountant Dana Hayes Jr. — nine days after he took a job as chief of fiscal services for the Baltimore Police Department — are, in a word, fuzzy.
Police Commissioner Michael Harrison says a background check failed to turn up past gun charges, despite Mr. Hayes being listed on the city’s public Gun Offender Registry, which is maintained by the commissioner. The check also failed to catch that Mr. Hayes is currently a “person of interest” in a murder (he has not been named a suspect).
Mr. Hayes says the murder victim was his stepfather, and, although he’s been questioned about the man’s death, he had nothing to do with it. He also says that his 2018 gun charges, which included possession of a stolen firearm, were expunged after he completed a period of probation and therefore shouldn’t be part of a background check or a disqualifying factor for employment.
The dynamic details of Mr. Hayes’ case have left us with significant questions. Among them:
Why is Mr. Hayes still listed on the registry if his charges were indeed expunged, meaning removed from public access? Is that information reaching the right agencies in a timely manner?
How thoroughly is the police department vetting applicants, particularly those who could gain access to sensitive information?
And is the registry working as was intended when it was created 15 years ago — namely as a “deterrent to people not to get involved with illegal gun activity,” as stated by then Mayor Sheila Dixon, who spearheaded its development?
After Mr. Hayes’ termination, Baltimore’s current mayor, Brandon Scott, called for a “comprehensive review of BPD’s civilian hiring practices.” Considering the department announced earlier this month that it would become the first in the nation to begin hiring civilians to investigate certain complaints and crimes, such a review seems a particularly prudent undertaking. We also would urge the mayor to call for a full review of the city’s Gun Offender Registry with the goal of answering one overarching question: Given what we know about the inequitable distribution of justice, does keeping such a registry open to the public — especially if it’s not up-to-date — do more harm than good?
The registry requires those who’ve been convicted of a gun offense — such as illegal possession, sale, use or transportation — to register and update their information every six months for three years. Failure to comply is punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine. The database has been compared to sex offender registries, which bring the public into the policing process by enabling them to monitor neighbor offenders. Unfortunately, studies show that those registries largely fail to prevent future assaults for a variety of reasons.
Baltimore’s gun registry, on the other hand, showed initial promise, according to a cursory review after it was formed. A dozen years ago, Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University and a professor, studied data from the registry’s first year, in 2008, finding that those on it did appear to have fewer subsequent charges than those charged with gun offenses a year earlier.
But there are several important points to note: Those who made it onto the registry were typically minor offenders with simple possession charges; violent gun offenders often weren’t included because their cases, involving multiple charges, ended in plea deals, and the first charges to be dropped were frequently gun related. And Mr. Webster doesn’t think it was the public stigma of being on the list that kept people from recidivism; it was the effort police made to reach out to the individuals to both keep an eye on them and connect them with services to help.
“I don’t think anyone decides not to pick up a gun or use a gun because they’re worried they’re going to be on a registry,” Mr. Webster said in an interview Monday. But, “undoubtedly, being on that registry is going to be harmful to someone’s ability to get back on the right path.”
The database is publicly available on the city’s Open Baltimore website. And appearance on it can make it difficult to find housing and work. It also — to borrow an argument from legal gun owners who protest the idea of public databases with their information — can make the individual a target for crime or vigilantism.
Mr. Hayes is one of 2,884 people listed on the registry as of Monday, when we accessed the data. Almost all of those registered — 95% — are Black men, like Mr. Hayes. Their names, dates of birth and addresses are listed, along with their case numbers. For Mr. Hayes, that number turns up no records on the state’s court case database, supporting his expungement claim.
The whole idea behind expungement is to offer someone a second chance at a clean record if certain conditions are met, so they’re not saddled forever with erroneous charges or the stigma of having made a mistake. An out-of-date public registry nullifies that chance. And while gun charges might not seem to merit second chances to some, it’s not quite that simple when you’re living in a region where guns are ubiquitous.
That’s among the reasons we support the continued use of a registry, assuming it’s being used today to connect police with people they want to keep an eye on. But we strongly question why it needs to be public. Court records for cases that haven’t been expunged, been dropped by prosecutors or resulted in acquittal remain publicly available — and they include those gun charges that were dropped in plea deals with violent offenders.
In 2019, as City Council president, Brandon Scott pushed to strengthen Baltimore’s Gun Offender Registry to, as his office put it, “better identify straw purchasers, illegal users of assault weapons and individuals who sell guns to minors.” Those are worthy goals. But they shouldn’t come at the expense of another of his initiatives: helping those with criminal records get back on their feet and break the cycle of crime. Reviewing the registry, comprehensively, will ensure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to.