Montgomery County’s jail system is footing the bill for inmates who should be housed in state facilities, leading to cuts in programs and services that could mean higher numbers of repeat offenders, officials said.
In most states, inmates sentenced to more than a year in prison are sent to state facilities while those with lesser sentences are sent to a county lockup, said Art Wallenstein, director of the county’s Department of Correction and Rehabilitation. But for 30 years Maryland reimbursed counties to hold inmates sentenced up to 18 months in a bid to save costs on building and operating state prisons.
The arrangement worked beautifully until state lawmakers axed funding for reimbursements last year in a little-noticed budget cut, leaving counties responsible for paying for prisoners who would otherwise be in the state’s system, Wallenstein said.
“The county’s got to get angry about this,” Wallenstein said. “The money was taken and the prisoners were left.”
The county estimates that the funding cut costs the county $3.4 million a year — money that could be used to shore up some of its vaunted prisoner treatment and education programs.
County Executive Ike Leggett’s budget proposal calls for abolishing 33 corrections positions, which county staff said may “have an impact on increased recidivism.”
Making matters worse, officials said, are county judges who rarely assign sentences of more than 18 months.
“The county corrections system is almost the victim of their own successes,” State’s Attorney John McCarthy said. He said he has seen many dangerous prisoners who deserve to be sent to state prisons being housed in the county because the judge thought the prisoners would have a better chance of rehabilitation there.
A classic example, he said, was the case of Ruthann Aron. Aron was a former Montgomery County Planning Board member and U.S. Senate candidate who tried to hire a hit man to kill her husband and a lawyer. A judge structured her sentence so she was sent to a county facility, McCarthy said.
Circuit Administrative Judge John Debelius III said there is a widespread belief among judges that there are better and more accessible programs in county jails than state prisons. He also noted that judges have been receptive to Wallenstein’s complaints that too many prisoners who have little chance of benefiting from the county’s programs are being sent to county jails.
“I think we hear that loud and clear,” Debelius said.
