Thursday, November 3, 2011
Justice Reinvestment
How Baltimore gets used and abused by the state, and what we need to do about it
Posted by Michael Corbin on Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 4:00 AM
At the center of my November feature on the human dimensions of incarceration and reentry is a clear way forward. Nationally, a fundamental rethinking of what we want our crime and punishment policies to accomplish is underway. Maryland needs to join the conversation and begin the systemic change taking place in other states.
Whether Maryland undertakes this effort is of fundamental importance to the city of Baltimore. More than half of thirteen thousand prisoners released each year from Maryland prisons return to Baltimore. They return to just a few neighborhoods. The impact of a strategy of mass incarceration has had devastating personal, economic, and social costs to the city of Baltimore for the last thirty years. The state of Maryland uses Baltimore as a human dumping ground for an ideologically driven, extremely costly, and demonstrably failed approach to crime and punishment.
Justice Reinvestment is a growing bi-partisan, many-voiced movement attempting to make that change and provide a model for doing it. Justice Reinvestment is a national movement, but it could dramatically improve the city of Baltimore if we systematically and vigorously pursued it in the state of Maryland.
Listen to North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue as she announces Justice Reinvestment legislation that her state passed earlier this year: "What we have done with Justice Reinvestment is one of the most important things done in North Carolina and it was done with bi-partisan support ... They thought a southern state ... would never be willing to publicly take a stand for forcing some folks out of the prison system while standing up strong community systems ..." Maryland, its wealth and allegiance to Democratic party politics, obscures its continuing commitment as a southern state unwilling to take a public stand for forcing folks out of the prison system and standing up strong community systems for the formerly incarcerated ..."
Bev Perdue announcing Justice Reinvestment legislation
Citizens of Baltimore should demand of their local and state representatives that Justice Reinvestment be a policy priority. It is the way to save money, improve public safety, and have a more just society.
As Todd Clear, the dean of Rutgers University's department of criminal justice says in the article: "Morally, it is the idea that the operations of the criminal justice system should be judged partly on whether they leave communities hard-hit by crime as better places for people to live, work, and raise their families. Strategically, it is a recognition that the justice system must partner with the community in order to prevent crime."
"Liberation is not deliverance," wrote Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, and like in his classic novel examining our beliefs about the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, our present system of crime and punishment is a window into understanding what kind of society, what kind of state, what kind of country, and what kind of city we want.
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