January 05, 2011|By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun
Maryland is reconsidering the size of a proposed women's jail in Baltimore amid falling crime rates and budget problems, while a Washington nonprofit has simultaneously called for an end to the project.
"It's money the state doesn't need to spend," said Jason Fenster, a spokesman for the Justice Policy Institute, which released a report Wednesday saying that Maryland should concentrate its corrections efforts on alternatives to incarceration and on improving existing jails instead of building new ones.
"Even building a smaller facility" is unacceptable, Fenster said.
Maryland corrections officials said it is premature to criticize the proposed $181 million project, which would be added to the city's downtown detention complex. It is years away from construction, and its design already had been put on hold in November so officials could review projections for the female jail population, said corrections spokesman Rick Binetti.
The female jail population — women detained while awaiting trial or those serving short sentences — was once estimated to require about 820 beds by 2025. But there has been a 15 percent decline in the number of women jailed in Baltimore since the projections were developed about five years ago, and the city's crime rates was down last year.
In 2009, there was a daily average of about 400 female inmates, according to the Justice Policy Institute, which says it is dedicated to "reducing society's reliance on incarceration"— particularly in Baltimore, where members say a higher percentage of people are jailed than in comparable American cities.
The apparent population shift, along with "the current economic state," led to the delay in design, Binetti said.
The Women's Detention Center, and a $100 million jail for juveniles charged as adults, were proposed after the U.S. Department of Justice found that overcrowded conditions violated inmates' constitutional rights.
In 2000, the Justice Department determined that the Baltimore City Detention Center — which houses a mix of men, women and children — was "deliberately indifferent" to certain inmate needs, including fire safety and sanitation. The Justice Department has been monitoring the jails ever since.
Corrections representatives say improvements have been made at BCDC, particularly in the areas of medical and mental health care and security staffing. But the facility still operates over capacity and is subject to violence that leads to lengthy lockdowns.
"It's a difficult situation over there," Binetti said.
The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services entered into an agreement with the Justice Department in 2007 that promised to comply with federal standards by this year, in part by developing the new detention centers to house women and juveniles separately.
Yet the proposed women's prison and the 230-bed juvenile facility have drawn opposition, and the state has said it will reconsider the size of each.
The Just Kids Partnership, a youth advocacy group, released a report in October saying that the money for the juvenile jail would be better spent on prevention programs instead of increased capacity for incarceration. And several hundred city residents gathered on the proposed construction site, chanting, "Educate, don't incarcerate."
The Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, also called for alternatives to detention in its report on the Women's Detention Center. The 25-page document suggests resolving nonviolent offenses such as shoplifting, trespassing and marijuana possession with citations rather than arrests, and increasing the use of pretrial supervision services.
The Pretrial Release Services Program within the state's corrections department successfully supervises about 1,100 people awaiting trial each day who are referred by judges to the program, according to the institute, which wants more cases to be managed that way.
If judges sent 100 women into that program instead of ordering pretrial incarceration, it could save $292,000 per month, the report said.
"We know that women do better when they can get the support they need in the community," said Katie Allston, executive director of Baltimore's Marian House, which provides support to homeless women, many of whom have been incarcerated. "Rather than building a larger women's jail, the state should increase the use of alternatives to incarceration for women awaiting trial and focus on improving jail conditions and providing more services."
Binetti said Maryland is examining how best to use its resources when it comes to corrections, adding that corrections agency officials meet quarterly with the Justice Department.
"Many of the areas we still need to work on would be greatly improved by a new facility, which is why that was included in the original agreement," he said. "This is really a work in progress."
tricia.bishop@baltsun.com
