Letters To The Editor

Incarceration wastes money, destroys lives

On behalf of the 35,000 men and women currently incarcerated in Maryland, I'd like to thank Scott Shane for his article "Locked up in the land of the free" (June 1).

Many Maryland residents and elected officials are critical of Maryland's criminal justice system. Yet it is obvious that many of these same people remain ignorant of the real reasons why the system has failed.

This ignorance, willful or otherwise, is evident in continued calls for tough-on-crime laws and policies and increased investment in the prison system despite the fact that Maryland's recidivism rate for incarcerated individuals hovers around 44 percent, despite the fact that drug treatment and other alternative sentencing programs are proving successful and despite that fact that more than 75 percent of those incarcerated have been and continue to be African-American.

Any criticism of the criminal justice system must land at the state budget's door. Reform of the system can only be spelled out in dollars and cents, and in light of the state's (and the nation's) fiscal crisis, those who purport to improve the system cannot simultaneously pledge more support for alternatives to reduce the prison population and then commit money to build 396 new prison beds.

Taxpayers must also recognize that the over-incarceration of poor people and the conscious overrepresentation of minorities in America's jails and prisons are the worst-kept yet best-ignored secrets of our criminal justice system.

Thirty-five thousand people imprisoned in Maryland, at $25,000 a year a head, amounts to too much wasted money and too many wasted lives.

Maryland can do better. We can't afford not to.

Tara Andrews

Baltimore

The writer is director of the Maryland Justice Coalition.

CareFirst board ought to resign

In his column "CareFirst ready for a change at the top," (June 8), Jay Hancock concludes that because CareFirst has no shareholders, "there is often chaos."

The reason CareFirst lost its way is because management and the board forgot its mission. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans were established in the 1930s, during the Depression, as nonprofit health insurers, to pay for health care for groups of workers so that an individual worker or a member of his family would not be wiped out by a catastrophic illness or injury.

They were not established so that management and a board would fatten the company, make it attractive for sale and then leave with golden parachutes.

Kudos to the Maryland legislature and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. for choosing the citizens of Maryland over the greed and avarice of CareFirst's management and board of directors, all of whom should resign in disgrace.

Dr. Leon Reinstein

Baltimore

County also failed Arundel foster child

Clearly, somebody - more likely, several people - failed the 15-year-old girl placed in foster care at the Lever home ("Arundel woman fights for foster child," June 3).

The Sun's report does not examine why the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services chose a man in his mid-20s, who at that time had apparently never been a parent himself, to be a foster parent for this adolescent in dire need of a home.

The bare facts make no sense to me. It seems likely that failure to protect this child began at Department of Social Services offices with a counterintuitive (if not irrational) choice of a placement.

And if the county is so desperately short of foster care options that it had no other choice, and teen-agers at risk are being placed with "parent figures" less than a decade older than themselves, what's being done about it?

Eileen O'Brien

Baltimore

The immigrants aren't the enemy

Thanks for your excellent editorial on the illegal immigrants detained without access to legal representation ("Corroded justice," June 5).

This is a sad and dangerous chapter in recent U.S. history. Bringing the perpetrators of this gross form of injustice to account for their actions will be tough.

Law-abiding citizens will always be disturbed by the term "illegal immigrants." With a little thought, however, we must realize that illegal immigrants for the most part are here because of economic and social despair.

They do not deserve to be treated like criminals, whether the country is at peace or at war.

Elke Straub

Baltimore

Those who pay taxes deserve the rebates

The letter "Boost in child credit excludes the poor" (June 2) states that "the rich will get the lion's share of this tax cut."

But who is rich? I am part of a two-income family. Both my husband and I work very, very long, hard hours to achieve a decent, stable lifestyle.

Our taxes take away a good portion of our paychecks, and we are expected to contribute to the poor, who will not work and get giveaways such as free meals, Medicaid, subsidized day care, etc. They are already getting a free ride and do not need a break.