The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) applauds Governor Moore’s announcements of key legislative provisions and an initiative to invest resources to reduce gun violence, improve the lives of youth, and make Maryland safer. JPI’s new online interactive resource, The Right Investment 2.0, found that Baltimore neighborhoods most impacted by the criminal legal system are also among the city’s most disadvantaged across a broad range of indicators. The disparities fall along racial lines, JPI researchers found, and can be traced to policy decisions that have led to chronic disinvestment in the city’s Black communities. These proposed reforms arrive at a moment of real need in Baltimore and across Maryland, and can mark the beginning of a wholistic response to crime that would make everyone in our state safer.
About The Right Investment 2.0
The Right Investment 2.0: How Maryland can create safe and healthy communities is a new interactive, online report from the Justice Policy Institute (released January 9, 20924) that combines data from the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services and the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicator Alliance to reveal how neighborhoods with the highest number of residents in state prisons experience the lowest levels of community wellbeing as measured by an array of more than 60 indicators covering employment, education, health, housing and more. The study is a follow up to JPI’s 2015 report, The Right Investment, which found that the state of Maryland annually spends nearly $288 million to incarcerate people from the city of Baltimore—as much as $17 million each year in the Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park community alone—yet none of those resources reach the communities in need.
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The Justice Policy Institute, based in Washington, DC, is a national research and policy advocacy organization that partners with communities affected by crime and the criminal legal system to build better safety solutions.