December 22, 2000|By Doug Colbert
LIKE FLORIDA'S uncounted voters, we will never know the intent of Baltimore County's electorate, who favored the proposed $94 million jail expansion. Surely, most accepted without challenge the county's assertion that a larger pretrial jail is needed. Other voters undoubtedly preferred it be built in Towson rather than in their community.
Few questioned why a new jail was being proposed when violent crime in the county continues to decline. When serious crime goes down, one expects to find fewer people in pretrial detention. Yet during the past three years, the county's pretrial jail population has increased 20 percent. What accounts for this phenomenon?
First, nonviolent, low-level arrests have increased sharply, presumably part of the county's unofficial zero-tolerance police law enforcement strategy.
Second, fewer arrestees are accepted into the county's supervised pretrial program, which is the judges' primary alternative for releasing nonviolent offenders other than setting bail. Last year, a paltry 220 people -- down from 882 in 1996 -- were found eligible for supervision. This represented just 3 percent of the 7,000-plus people who appeared in District Court. No county official has adequately explained this startling 75 percent decline in such a brief period.
Third, Baltimore County fails to provide a public defender to lower-income people at the crucial bail hearing. As the Baltimore City Lawyers at Bail Project showed, depriving indigent defendants legal representation ensures that many will remain in custody for lengthy periods because they cannot afford bail money when charged with nonviolent offenses. Baltimore County has a similar proportion of lower-income people in its pretrial population. Many are incarcerated because they cannot post bail of $1,000 or less.
When a county fails to use pretrial release supervision and does not provide lawyers for the poor, it is following a sure-fire recipe for increasing the jail population. What makes these decisions even more shameful is that more than half of Baltimore County arrestees charged with District Court offenses had their cases dismissed or not prosecuted in 1998 and 1999. Though ultimately freed after spending a lengthy period in jail, many detainees lost jobs while families suffered the loss of an economic or home provider.
What if voters had been told that the county sought taxpayer funding for an expanded pretrial jail to incarcerate people charged with nonviolent, nuisance-type crimes? Surely this would have balanced officials' public fear campaign that implied every detainee was a violent criminal.
Would citizens still have favored spending limited government resources when there existed a more sensible and fair solution to pretrial jail overcrowding at a fraction of the cost? Not likely.
Instead of pitting community against community, many would have joined the substantial opposition, which overcame political shenanigans that forced opponents to simultaneously cast a vote against worthwhile senior citizen and public library projects.
Had this choice been clearly presented, the electorate could have urged their public officials to move more cautiously to determine whether funding pretrial release and the public defender, at a fraction of the cost of the expanded jail, would be a more efficient use of public monies.
Instead, the county produced a jail assessment study, written by trade architects and designers, which never informed the citizenry about the incarcerated pretrial population. How many were charged with low-level crimes and were unable to afford bail? How many should have been released conditionally or on home detention? How many are occupying bed space that ought be reserved for more serious charges?
It is difficult to know what is the driving Baltimore County's decision to build a jail. Politics? Self-interest groups? Private bail bondsmen, for instance, toast the building of a jail in counties without an active pretrial release program or legal representation. Bondsmen know their profits skyrocket when they hold the only key to freedom for most detainees.
There is still time. The Baltimore County Council should order an objective analysis before approving additional money. The highly respected National Institute of Corrections, a group of former wardens and correction officials, is well-known for evaluating a county's pretrial population and determining whether it is operating efficiently. Best of all, the institute's study is free.
The decision to build the Towson jail is one that Baltimore County will live with for the next 50 years or longer. Such a decision has monumental consequences for Maryland taxpayers, who are sure to be asked to pick up the tab in other counties, too.
It is much too important a decision to rush forward without first obtaining the necessary information.
Doug Colbert, a professor of constitutional and criminal law at the University of Maryland School of Law, was the director of the Lawyers at Bail Project.
