Downplaying youth crime at a time complaints are rising is a bad strategy for Maryland DJS
Two months after Baltimore’s worst mass shooting occurred, injuring 28 people and killing two at the Brooklyn Homes, with most of the victims teenagers — and for which four teenagers have so far been criminally charged — the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services released a much-anticipated “research brief ” observing, among other things, that public concerns about juvenile crime are greatly overstated. DJS Secretary Vincent Schiraldi is set to discuss the report, along with others in law enforcement, during a 1 p.m. virtual hearing Wednesday that’s scheduled before the Maryland House of Delegates’ Judiciary Committee, and they ought to be prepared to hear from some skeptical lawmakers.
To suggest that Schiraldi’s timing is bad is merely to state the obvious, unless, of course, one is concerned about book sales. The secretary’s new tome, “Mass Supervision: Probation, Parole, and the Illusion of Safety and Freedom” — a critique of parole and probation stemming from his day’s as New York City’s probation commissioner — was released this week, too. So perhaps a bit of controversy is just what he, and Amazon.com, would like to see right about now.
And it’s true that an in-depth review of juvenile justice in Maryland — particularly the efficacy of Maryland’s system and whether it helps reduce the number of repeat offenders — was overdue. But is this it? Is this the “comprehensive examination of juvenile services” the secretary intended? It seems awfully light on DJS analysis for that to be the case. Such an effort might better have been left to an independent group, much as was done in the Kirwan Commission’s evaluation of K-12 public education a half-decade ago.
We don’t doubt that many of the
DJS report’s conclusions are accurate, including that Maryland’s juvenile crime experience echoes national trends, and that the number of crimes being committed is below pre-pandemic levels. And it’s fair for the department to question media coverage of these issues, which can receive outsized attention and, in turn, spur outsized fears. The fact that young people are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators is unsurprising as well, though we would caution that many crimes don’t result in arrests, making the picture less clear than we’d like it to be.
What we’d really like to know, however, is whether DJS is fulfilling its goal of improving outcomes and opportunities for justice-involved youth. Are young people in their care coming out better prepared to function in society? After all, punishment is not the mission of DJS — rehabilitation is. It’s also the only substantive method the department has to prevent crime from taking place, by showing young offenders another way and giving them the means to achieve it, something they can carry into adulthood. We know the “lock them up and forget ‘em” strategy doesn’t work, especially not in the long-term.
But what kinds of interventions are working, and which are not? On this, the DJS report is much more vague, with mentions of various fledgling efforts, including the “Thrive Academy,” mentoring Baltimore and Baltimore County youngsters; and the $5 million “Safe Summer” initiative, which focused on 12 counties with high gun violence rates. Are there signs they will prove effective? We don’t know. What about efforts that have been around longer? It’s clear all involved, from Gov. Wes Moore on down, would like the department to succeed, but the proof is so far lacking, and the stakes are high: DJS failures today lead to adult crimes tomorrow.
We are largely in agreement with Schiraldi’s reform-minded vision for juvenile
justice, which emphasizes a “developmentally appropriate response to offending by young” people, and we even share his concerns about misinformation. But Baltimoreans have too much personal experience with crime to be comforted by a state agency appearing to dismiss an uptick in juvenile offenses statewide to 12,363 complaints in the fiscal year ending in June, compared to 7,100 complaints in the fiscal year ending two years ago. It might not be as bad as some think, but the numbers are not exactly good, either.
Among our worries is that impatient lawmakers are itching to take action; indeed, their constituents might be demanding it. And one of the first opportunities to do so may be in scaling back the state’s new Child Interrogation Protection Act, which went into effect last year. It’s clear police in Baltimore aren’t fond of the act’s requirement that an attorney must explain rights to young offenders before questioning, and neither are a number of prosecutors, including Baltimore State’s Attorney
Ivan Bates. Will Schiraldi be heard on this topic or discounted as someone who is insufficiently concerned about public safety?
We appreciate the desire to put crime committed by juveniles into context. Now let’s see some more data on the difference DJS can make.