Congratulations, Maryland taxpayers. You’ve just been sucker punched.
The poor saps who regularly get hosed for taxes in the Free State put up about $1 million of their hard-earned money for GPS trackers, which are used to monitor juvenile offenders who are allowed to roam around free. This applies to the simply mischievous ones and the truly dangerous ones. You see, the folks who run what should be jokingly called our “juvenile justice system” make no distinction between the two.
So here was the idea: Last year Gov. Martin O’Malley — call him the lead sucker puncher in this saga — set aside the $1 million for the tracking units. One is an anklet that is attached to the juvenile miscreant’s ankle. The other is a transmitter that allows juvenile justice officials to keep track of the offender’s movements in what’s called “real time.” In the past, if the offender undid the device, it would take hours before officials knew of it. With the newer anklet and transmitter, it was supposed to take only minutes.
Crackling good idea. Too bad the darned things don’t work.
The scandal was revealed last week. Whom should taxpayers thank? Well, a diligent media, for one. But most of our thanks should go to Lamont Harris, one of the miscreants in question. Yes, he’s a worthless, bona fide thug, but if it weren’t for him, we still wouldn’t know how badly we’ve been chumped.
A little more about Harris: He’s a resident of the town nicknamed, sadly but appropriately, Bodymore, Murderland. He’s 17 years old and had his first brush with the law at the ripe old age of 10. Oh, this story gets better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.
Between the ages of 10 and 17, Harris managed to get himself arrested 15 times. The charges varied, apparently, with Harris’ mood. Some days he felt like dealing drugs. Other days he may have wanted to pull a stick-up job. He had no moral objections to pulling a carjacking either.
Did any of these arrests lead to Harris being confined for a lengthy period to a juvenile facility? Surely you jest. He did these things in the state of Maryland, home of what I call the “sweet little dear” approach to juvenile offenders. To you, me and probably thousands of other reasonable people, Harris is a dangerous career criminal in the making.
But to advocates of the “sweet little dear” approach to juvenile offenders, Harris is a guy who needed treatment, not incarceration. So early this month, after admitting to a robbery, he wasn’t confined. He got hooked up to one of those newfangled monitor thingies and was sent home.
By now you’ve figured out Harris isn’t the sort of guy who will stay put just because he’s supposed to. Within days, according to Baltimore police and prosecutors, he was on the street. He allegedly got in a fight. He allegedly left the scene and allegedly returned with a handgun. Then he allegedly fired into a crowd, striking a 5-year-old girl in the head.
The girl, Raven Wyatt, clings to life in a Baltimore hospital. Harris was arrested on suspicion of the shooting and has been charged as an adult. What happened to the anklet and transmitter, and why didn’t officials know he was on the street?
His girlfriend, 16-year-old Dynashaya Hall, told a local television reporter why: The transmitter was in Harris’ house. When police picked him up, Harris was at Hall’s house. Apparently, when the transmitter is not with the person wearing the anklet, then the entire unit is absolutely worthless.
“He wasn’t supposed to be outside at all,” Hall told the reporter. “At all,” she added for emphasis. “He went outside every day.”
Didn’t I promise you this story would get better? Or worse? Now here’s the kicker: According to news reports, Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services — which should be renamed Chump the Taxpayer Headquarters — spent more than $581,000 for 170 of these units last December. Do the math: That comes to more than $3,400 per unit. Why do they cost so much?
And even if that exorbitant figure can be justified, isn’t that quite a bit of money to pay for things that don’t work?
Examiner columnist Gregory Kane is a journalist who lives in Baltimore.
