Violent Offenders

Faced with a steadily growing population of violent criminals, Maryland's public safety chief is proposing construction of a nearly $50 million maximum-security prison for more than 500 inmates on the grounds of the state's Cumberland correctional complex.Bishop L. Robinson, the secretary of public safety, told legislators yesterday that he is asking Gov. Parris N. Glendening to scrap plans to build a $13 million medium-security unit at Cumberland.Instead, Robinson said, he has asked the governor to budget $2.5 million in his fiscal 1999 budget to begin planning and designing a 512-cell facility at the Western Correctional Institution to house violent criminals.

HAGERSTOWN -- Some 1.6 million Americans are incarcerated, an unprecedented number, and a doubling in just over 10 years. Yet actual crime rates have been declining and the economy has been improving. The explanation probably involves growing public intolerance of crime and frustration over ineffective corrections.The baby-boom ''echo'' will bring forth in the next 10 years a tidal wave of 18-to-24-year olds, the age group with the highest crime rate. Female crime rates are also rising steadily.

A sweeping anti-crime proposal that would crack down on repeat violent offenders won the unanimous approval of a state Senate committee yesterday.The bill, endorsed by the Judicial Proceedings Committee, would force violent criminals to serve at least half of their prison sentence before parole, rather than one-fourth.The measure also includes a "three-time loser" provision, an idea backed by President Clinton on the federal level. People convicted of a third violent crime in Maryland would receive life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

WASHINGTON -- The pace of crime in Maryland is slowing as more and more criminals are imprisoned, but the state is far from a safe place to live, according to a conservative group that released a Report Card on Crime yesterday.Maryland was ranked fourth-highest in terms of violent crime rates, behind Florida, New York and California, and had the eighth-highest crime rate, said the American Legislative Exchange Council.The solution, say leaders of the bipartisan group of state legislators, is to put criminals -- especially repeat violent offenders -- in jail longer by establishing minimum sentencing guidelines and ensuring prisoners serve at least 85 percent of their sentences.

If you want to know why the $30 billion crime bill, now put into law, doesn't really matter much, all you have to do is look at the latest headline-grabbing murder.This one, set in Chicago, had everything.An 11-year-old, with a rap sheet taller than he was, fired a semi-automatic pistol into a crowd, police say, killing a 14-year-old girl, who was your classic innocent bystander. We mourned her, but too briefly. There was more mourning ahead.That came when the 11-year-old cold-blooded killer, the one who had an "I Love Mommy" tattoo and hadn't quite yet grown to 5 feet tall, was killed himself, probably by the gang members he was trying to impress in the first place.

The House Judiciary Committee approved yesterday an anti-crime bill that would require Maryland's Parole Commission and prosecutors to deal more harshly with violent criminals.Violent offenders would have to serve at least 50 percent of their sentences before becoming eligible for parole, rather than the current one-fourth. Violent crimes include murder, rape, arson, kidnapping and robbery.The bill resembles one passed by the Senate last week in its parole reforms, but the measures differ in their approach to the sentencing of violent career criminals.

A bill aimed at cracking down on violent criminals was unanimously approved by the Maryland Senate yesterday.Under the measure, violent offenders would have to serve at least half of their prison sentences before parole, rather than the current one-fourth. And a third conviction for a violent crime could bring a mandatory sentence of life without parole.Other provisions would open up secret parole hearings and require the Maryland Parole Commission to deal more harshly with former inmates who are arrested while on parole.

A "two-strikes-and-you're-out" plan proposed by Republican gubernatorial candidate Helen Delich Bentley would create severe security problems in the state prison system and end up costing taxpayers millions, Baltimore's chief administrative judge said yesterday.Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan said increasing the ranks of lifers without chance of parole would require construction of separate prisons to hold those offenders, who would have no incentive not to escape or harm other prisoners and correctional officers.

Two thousand people convicted of violent or serious crimes are free on parole and probation in Maryland but are being virtually ignored by the authorities charged with supervising them, according to documents obtained by The Sun.In an internal memo, the state's new chief of parole and probation, Nancy J. Nowak, called the situation "a time bomb."Altogether, more than 8,000 people on parole and probation receive virtually no supervision under policies devised in recent years to assign priority to cases and cope with understaffing.

House Minority Leader Ellen R. Sauerbrey said yesterday that parole should be eliminated for all violent offenders in Maryland, a change she said would require the state's prison system to add another 4,000 beds by the end of the decade.Mrs. Sauerbrey, a conservative, four-term delegate from Baltimore County and a Republican candidate for governor, said that eliminating parole for those convicted of violent crimes is a move the state should make to crack down on the "small group of violent predators" who move in and out of the criminal justice system.

Amid a surge in homicides, Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said yesterday that police are turning up the pressure on violent offenders who have open warrants for minor violations. Bealefeld said 50 officers, pulled from patrol and specialized units, have been assigned to serve 500 to 600 priority warrants during early-morning hours, which he hopes will help take troublemakers off the streets and reinforce a message that police are watching. Twenty people were arrested yesterday morning as part of the effort, he said.

Frederick H. Bealefeld III has been doing police work for too many years to be giddy about the reported drop in murders in Baltimore. As the city's police commissioner, he can take a certain amount of credit for the apparent milestone: 50 murders in the first three months of this year, marking the lowest quarter in 23 years. But his guarded optimism about what the statistic means for Baltimore is a wise sentiment. Since Mr. Bealefeld was tapped to lead the department in August, homicides have been declining.

Constance Fowler sees a change when it comes to crime-fighting in Baltimore. For her, it's not about police overtime or broad shifts in policy, but about the police who show up at her neighborhood association meetings every month. "They're out there getting in the community. They will stop and talk with you if you flag them down or, if you need them, they're there for you," said Fowler, president of the Carrollton Ridge Community Association in Southwest Baltimore. "They want to free us from what we had through the years before."

LAST WEEK'S ISSUE: -- Eugene Waller, a twice-convicted sex offender, was charged earlier this month with repeatedly raping a woman at a Linthicum light rail station. The 49-year-old man had been arrested twice for violating a state law requiring sex offenders to register their addresses every six months and when they move. With the responsibility for monitoring Waller's whereabouts unclear, law enforcement agencies weren't keeping tabs on him. How should the state track transient offenders whose addresses frequently change?

Gun violence remains a pernicious, corrosive influence in the life of this city. And we're not just talking about Baltimore's steady run of murders, which are outpacing last year's total. Shootings also are on a steady incline across the city. Certainly, taking guns off the street helps, but it can't be the mainstay of a crime-reduction strategy. The harsh truth is that illegal guns pass through too many hands too quickly. More critical is identifying repeat violent offenders and locking them up. In the city, that can prove troublesome.

Low-level, nonviolent drug offenders in Maryland are often imprisoned when they would be better off in treatment, and they are often locked up for longer periods than those who commit more violent crimes. Such disparities are costly - to the state and to the offenders - and ought to be addressed more aggressively by the state's Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, which meets today. Created by the General Assembly in 1999, the commission establishes sentencing guidelines for serious criminal cases that are handled in the state's circuit courts where jury trials are held.

Alternatives to prison serve juveniles better The problem of older, violent offenders being housed in detention facilities with younger, nonviolent offenders is not that our state needs new facilities to incarcerate youths ("Right facility for youthful wrongdoers often elusive," July 11). The problem is that we all seem to have agreed that all the youths locked up in these facilities need to be there. This could not be further from the truth. Youths are housed for long periods of time at facilities such as the Cheltenham Youth Facility waiting for space to become available in the various programs to which they have been sentenced.

THE SUN held a forum last week on violent crime in Baltimore. And while panelists suggested some ways to stem the tide, they aren't in position to make it happen. That's because the answers to thwarting the crime wave lie in Annapolis, not Baltimore; in the governor's office, not the mayor's office. Crime prevention still isn't a major priority in the state capital. No one wants to identify what needs to be done because it might prove unpopular. It would surely cost a lot of money: Tough, unyielding prison sentences for violent offenders.

THE ESTIMABLE ACTOR, director and ex-con Charles S. "Roc" Dutton offers a grim -- yet not inevitable -- view of the future. In a recent interview with The Sun, Mr. Dutton, who directed the powerful HBO mini-series "The Corner," said: "The prison is being planned for the 17-year-old black kid who's not even born yet. There's a cell being planned for him. That's an industry now." Probably true. Maryland, for example, is completing a maximum security wing in Cumberland. It's a 512-bed fortress to house many of the state's most violent offenders -- a frightening number of whom are currently in inadequate dormitories at the state's 7,000-bed Jessup complex.

A court will open next month to hear cases of illegal gun possession, which Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy hopes will mean tougher punishment for gun-toting criminals. Jessamy said yesterday that the so-called "gun court" will operate one day a week in the city's two District Courthouses on North and Wabash avenues. The court is expected to begin May 2. "I hope that we get better sentences in gun cases," Jessamy said yesterday. In the past, "sometimes things fell through the cracks.