OP-ED: What’s Our Solution to Crime?
A 17-year-old student charged with murder walked into a classroom in a high school across the town from mine. Later that day, he was arrested and was found to have had a handgun in his backpack. The incident sparked outrage and fear across my community. The emotion was palpable; headlines and social media posts flooded with those advocating for more stringent regulations and accountability. Lawmakers called for special sessions, drafting legislation and rules. But panic never writes good policy, and fear had influenced Maryland’s future. This event echoed a pervasive pattern of reactive legislation that has continued to worsen Maryland’s already ineffective criminal justice system, creating a cycle of crime and poverty. Just as endangering our children should never be tolerated, our solutions should be as strictly scrutinized.
In an effort to fight crime and ensure public safety, Maryland has repeatedly fallen back to “tough on crime” policies. The results are evident: Maryland’s criminal justice system is ineffective. Maryland has a recidivism rate of 40%, meaning two in every five released prisoners will reoffend and find themselves back in prison. Over-policing has torn communities apart: the racial disparity in Maryland’s prisons are double the national average. When “tough on crime” policy is always the answer to any problem, a feedback loop emerges. Fundamentally ineffective “tough on crime” policy creates incidents that endanger the public, fear influences our motivations, and lawmakers call for even more stringent policy.
This feedback loop created by “tough on crime” policy started through a combination of the War on Drugs in the 1980s and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Hallmarks of these movements have permeated every aspect of the criminal justice system: mandatory minimum sentences, long prison terms, zero-tolerance drug and violence policy, and emphasizing retribution over rehabilitation. Preceding the movement was even harsher rhetoric: President Nixon asserted that “lawlessness is crumbling the foundations of American society” and then-Senator Biden warned of “predators on our streets.”
Recently, however, there have been determined efforts in certain states or localities to treat crime with other methods. A decade ago, Maryland made a determined shift away from the incarceration of juvenile offenders. Instead, they placed juvenile offenders in family therapy interventions that allowed young people to stay at home and stay enrolled in school. It was a move away from “tough on crime” policies and a move toward “smart on crime” efforts. Eight years after these policy changes were enacted, Maryland saw an 83% decline in juvenile offenders. In just eight years, the number of juvenile offenders in Maryland every year dropped from the thousands to the hundreds. Intervention gave these young people to continue their education and helped them solve the issues at the root of their offenses.
In the last two years, Maryland shifted their stance; after less than a decade of reform, they reentered the feedback loop of “tough on crime” policy. Maryland increased funding for correctional facilities and planned the construction of more prisons. On May 16, 2024, the pattern continued. Among a variety of bills signed into law, a series of juvenile justice measures decreased the minimum age of juvenile detention jurisdiction to 10 years old and decreased the processing period of youth offender’s cases to 15 days. State delegate Luke Clippinger, sponsoring the legislation, and other supporters cited the need to decrease crime in Maryland, motivated by inflammatory headlines in local newspapers citing incidents of car theft and gun violence by juveniles. Unlike the legislative movements of the late 1900s, however, Maryland legislators weren’t responding to rising crime rates. Since 2014, Maryland has consistently seen declines in juvenile crime year over year when excluding the pandemic. Increasingly, youth were more likely to be victims of gun violence than perpetrators. However, for Clippinger and the majority of the state legislature, protecting public safety meant putting fourth graders into juvenile detention. For supporters of these measures, reducing crime meant falling back to “tough on crime” policy and placing blame onto demographics that aren’t the drivers of crime.
However, this ongoing pattern found in Maryland is found almost nowhere else. California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah have all enacted laws in 2023 limiting eligibility for youth incarceration in state facilities. Several states in that list increased funding to alternative intervention programs and shortened the durations for confinement for those who are incarcerated. In the same year that these juvenile justice measures were passed, Massachusetts and North Carolina both passed “Raise the Age” laws, increasing the age of criminal responsibility to 18 and preventing 16- and 17-year-olds from being charged as adults. States across the country– big states like California, small states like Hawaii and Kentucky, blue states like Massachusetts and Illinois, and red states like Mississippi and Texas– are limiting the jurisdiction state facilities have over youth offenders and passing measures to decrease the number of youth in prisons.
Then, the situation a youth offender faces in Maryland is vastly different from one in other states across the country. 10- to 12-year-olds now find themselves in court and juvenile detention instead of intervention programs led by community organizations and local nonprofits. Their future looks bleak; incarceration is so significantly deplorable it's worse than nothing at all. A study by MIT economist Joseph Doyle found that those who were incarcerated as juveniles are 23 percentage points more likely to end up in jail as an adult when compared with juvenile offenders who avoided incarceration. For a fourth grader in Maryland, a single mistake and a series of legislation means that their future has been dictated for them: they’re much more likely to end up in jail again. But there are no inflammatory headlines advocating for these children; instead, their situation is illustrated in statistics on unread government reports.
On the other hand, reform and rehabilitation are proven to be effective. Education and workforce programs in prison reduce recidivism by 14.8%. When incarcerated individuals learn skills that help them integrate into the community after serving their sentence, they’re less likely to reoffend. They can depend on well-paying jobs to pay their bills instead of feeling forced to commit crimes to survive. For many individuals in prison today, however, they aren’t able to re enter society after they’re released. They lack education and experience that’s crucial for certain jobs and they don’t have housing or transportation that’s crucial for work. Even after serving their sentence, they are isolated from society and face impossible barriers. Experts, like the Public Defender of Maryland Natasha Dartigue, advocate for a different reality: pour money into our communities and not into corrections.
Her advocacy isn’t without reason: to incarcerate a juvenile offender in Maryland, it costs $415,000 every year. Incarceration is expensive and unpopular– when presented the choice between solving juvenile crime with rehabilitation or incarceration, the public was willing to spend more in taxes for rehabilitation than incarceration. Instead, effective intervention tackles the root cause of the issues through treatment at multiple levels: the individual, family, and community. Delegate Clippinger and the Maryland state legislature want to solve violent crime from more serious offenders and repeat offenders. His step goes in the opposite direction. While incarcerating juvenile offenders creates more repeat offenders, intervention in the form of therapy and counseling decreases recidivism by 12%– with even better effectiveness in more serious offenders. Moreover, even the most involved methods of intervention like multisystemic therapy, a method where therapists work with youth offenders and their parents for hours a day for four to six months, cost a fraction of the $415,000 figure: multisystemic therapy costs taxpayers less than $10,000 per child every year.
“Pour money into our communities and not into corrections. ”
Intervention doesn’t have to come after the crime occurs, either. Unlike punitive measures, treatment can actually prevent crime. Intervention comes in many forms, targeting the individual, family, or community through coordinators, therapists, or mentors. Treatments like multisystemic therapy can help youth who are at-risk for out-of-home placement. Even for serious environmental issues that a child might face at home, like substance abuse, child abuse, or neglect, multisystemic therapy has shown, over decades of research, to produce positive outcomes. Intervention gives youth a second chance even before they commit a crime.
Instead, Delegate Clippinger’s legislation completely ignores these situations that children, all too often, are put into. Under his legislative reality, a child who commits a crime as a result of neglect faced at home would be placed in juvenile detention, exacerbating the issue. Young people sent to correctional facilities develop physical illnesses that they suffer from into adulthood. Youths put into juvenile detention are more likely to experience negative outcomes related to learning challenges and school failure, even though higher levels of education lead to more positive outcomes in the community when released. When children that commit crimes face serious environmental issues at home, instead of providing a solution to these issues, these juvenile justice measures worsen physical and mental illnesses. When receiving higher levels of education can prevent juvenile crime, these measures put youth in places where they’ll face even greater educational disparities.
For juvenile offenders, incarceration only sets them up for recidivism and further offenses. Upon release, they’ll struggle to get back on track, get an education, and find work. When they go back home, they might find that the same problems they faced before their time in prison still persist. When “tough on crime” advocates call for public safety, remember that children are part of the public as well– call for their safety, too. For juvenile offenders to be safe, our response to crime has to attack the root cause. While incarceration exacerbates the problems at the root of crime, intervention has the power to solve it.
“While incarceration exacerbates the problems at the root of crime, intervention has the power to solve it. ”
But recent shifts towards incarceration and away from evidence-based intervention signal a wider move in Maryland’s attitude towards criminal justice. Legislators called for Maryland Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi to step down, calling his philosophies “disastrous” and claiming his policies are “degrading public safety.” State’s attorneys are going after the Maryland Child Interrogation Protection Act, a law that mandates all juveniles must talk to an attorney before being questioned by police, under the belief that taking the law down will allow more juveniles to be “exposed” to punishments, prevent re offenses, and ensure public safety. Taking away a child’s civil liberties, however, doesn’t result in a more safe society– only a more unjust one.
For many, the inflammatory rhetoric and headlines can unconsciously shift attitudes. Delegate Luke Clippinger, the sponsor of the legislation bringing down the minimum age of juvenile detention jurisdiction, worked on creating new pathways to allow adults to get their high school diplomas. His years of work securing access to education meant he understood how education can affect the paths available to someone. However, rhetoric incites reactions that aren’t always based in logic or experience. For nearly a decade, Maryland was at the forefront of criminal justice and juvenile justice reform, passing legislation to prevent crime through intervention before incarceration was necessary. For years, Maryland has seen decreases in crime rates among youth offenders. Instead, Maryland’s future in criminal justice looks vastly different from its very recent past. Rehabilitation has been pushed aside for retribution, hope and second chances have been replaced by punishment, and fear has taken over evidence-based policy.
“Taking away a child’s civil liberties, however, doesn’t result in a more safe society– only a more unjust one. ”
Delegate Luke Clippinger isn’t the only victim to inflammatory headlines– we all are. Criminal justice and mass incarceration is never at the forefront of the public consciousness; we have accepted prison as the only solution to crime. Mass incarceration is part of the identity of America, ingrained into our cornerstones alongside freedom and liberty, but we have been betrayed. We can’t build a nation on a foundation of incarceration. We believe crime to be an illness: we quarantine it and contain it. Our first reaction to rising crime rates is to reinforce these cycles– build more prisons and isolate more people. If we truly believe crime to be an illness, we should treat it like one. We would supplement quarantines with careful, evidence-based treatment. We would discover and research new medicines. We wouldn’t ostracize and stigmatize patients. We wouldn’t treat our children with the same methods as we do adults. Instead, years of legislation have hidden the uncomfortable truth: our solution to crime is hurting our country.
