Ferguson blasts judiciary for home detention funding issue

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson criticized the state judiciary Friday for remaining silent as it was running out of money to pay for poor people charged with crimes to be on home detention while awaiting trial, as it had been for the better part of three years.

The top Democratic lawmaker also questioned whether the judiciary’s delay in raising the issue stemmed from its reluctance to oversee the home monitoring program.

“To just kind of throw one’s hands up, or an entity’s hands up, because they’re uncomfortable with having the program in the first place is just the wrong approach,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson’s comments to reporters represented continued fallout from the revelation that Maryland’s Administrative Office of the

Courts ran out of money for the program last Friday, effectively ending it, as The Baltimore Sun previously reported.

The program’s abrupt end has raises questions about what the future for poor defendants awaiting trial in Maryland looks like. It had been funded to date with a one-time $5 million appropriation of federal coronavirus pandemic relief funding, and a longterm solution has not yet materialized.

Judge John P. Morrissey, chief judge of the state’s District Court, told a subcommittee of lawmakers Thursday that the judiciary had known since December that the courts had spent $4 million of the $5 million allocated for the private home detention program in 2021.

As Morrissey noted, the program was slated to continue until the end of 2024 or until the money ran out, whichever came first.

But, according to Ferguson,

the judiciary has “plenty of money.” In recent years, it has rolled over roughly $5 million per year, creating cash reserves within its budget, he said.

He argued that the judiciary could have allocated some of those reserves to “keep this program running,” and said he looked forward to “taking a much closer look at the judiciary’s budget.”

State Court Administrator Judy K. Rupp told lawmakers Thursday that her office would need to do an “analysis” to make sure that they don’t need to funnel the surplus money elsewhere.

A spokesman for the judiciary did not respond immediately Friday to a request for comment about Ferguson’s remarks.

Ferguson said he believed the state should cover the cost of home monitoring for poor people accused of crimes, even if the program operates through another agency or with different oversight.

“Just because you can’t pay doesn’t mean you should lose your freedom,” Ferguson said. “That’s a fundamental cornerstone, bedrock of democracy — you are innocent until proven guilty — so we should be facilitating that in all the systems that we have.”

In 2021, the legislature sent $5 million from the larger sum it received under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act to the courts to stand up a program where the state would pay private home detention companies to monitor indigent defendants charged with crimes, so long as judges approved their release.

The program sought to reduce the number of people incarcerated pending trial to limit the spread of COVID-19 in jails, a setting where the virus spread rapidly. It also represented continued reform to a bail system that historically incarcerated poor defendants disproportionately.

In a letter last Friday, court officials told the private home monitoring companies to notify the defendants they were monitoring that the state no longer would be paying for the service.

Those who couldn’t come up with the money to pay the companies, or find someone who could on their behalf, would “be set for a hearing” in court, the officials wrote.

Lawyers who regularly represent people accused of crimes were quick to raise alarm, noting that some people faced the prospect of reincarceration despite abiding by the rules set for them.

Morrissey said the program cost somewhere between $100,000 and $140,000 per month, but that the courts received an influx of invoices adding up to $600,000 from the private detention companies at the beginning of February. The judge lamented to lawmakers that the courts lacked authority to enforce timely submission of invoices from the companies.

Ferguson said the judiciary’s failure to be forthright about the issue has put lawmakers in a position where they have to come up with an 11th hour solution, and added it’s made it “much, much more difficult to see [the judiciary] as partners in the work of figuring out the long-term solution.”

A discussion about what agency or branch of government should oversee the program is fair, Ferguson added, but should have been taking place much earlier.

“I wish we were having it back in the fall or winter before we came into session, so that we would have a plan right now,” he said. “In the meantime, the program exists in the judiciary.”