More than $700 million in state spending to place Baltimore City residents in foster homes and prison is hurting the people it should be helping, an activist organization said Tuesday.
“This spending dwarfs every public investment made in children and families in Baltimore,” Hathaway Ferebee, executive director of Baltimore?s Safe & Sound Campaign, told a meeting of the Baltimore County Criminal Justice Council. “The majority of prisoners, once released, re-offend. Over 40 percent of foster children return to the system after reunification. Juvenile detention and early incarceration seems only to confirm a pattern of early criminal behavior rather than deter it.”
Ferebee is seeking a partnership between Baltimore County and her organization ? which tries to increase opportunities for troubled children and teenagers ? to provide more funding for programs that keep youth out of state custody. The organization also is in discussions with the city and state, she said.
“The state spends an indefensible amount of money, and the outcomes of prison are poor,” Ferebee said. “The people who enter these programs are worse off than they were before entering them.”
Though Ferebee said she did not know how much Baltimore County spends annually to detain its residents, the problems of drug addiction and crime often spread between the city and the county.
“We have a lot of families who go back and forth between the county and the city,” council Chairwoman Meg Ferguson said.
“We have a lot of pockets of need.”
The Safe & Sound Campaign proposes soliciting $2.5 million to $3 million in charitable donations from private companies to kick-start programs that divert teenagers from detention centers in Baltimore County, Ferebee said. Once the county saves money from reduced incarceration, the government would agree to fund the programs with the savings.
Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson said a major cost for his police force is locking up people with mental illnesses. He has created a six-person mental health team operating in Essex and Dundalk that responds to calls and refers people with mental health disorders to services instead of sending them to jail.
“We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars arresting, housing and punishing those with mental health disorders,” Johnson said. “We don?t have the money to expand to the west side of the county.”
Johnson said the police need an additional $2 million to expand the program countywide.
Baltimore County spokesman Don Mohler said County Executive Jim Smith would consider both programs in the upcoming budget, but worried they couldn?t be funded.
“It?s an extremely lean budget,” Mohler said. “We?re already facing $40 million in state cuts.”
ON THE NET
Baltimore?s Safe & Sound Campaign: safeandsound.org
