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.”