A historic partnership formed with the Maryland attorney general and public defender has come to an end.
Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) and Public Defender Natasha Dartigue announced in a letter dated Wednesday that the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative has been dissolved, a little more than two years after its October 2023 launch.
The collaborative — which included working with about three dozen groups that included state agencies, law enforcement personnel and nonprofit and community organizations — has fulfilled its original charge to deliver recommendations on ending mass incarceration, the letter said.
“The structure that guided its work has now reached its natural conclusion. However, the mission and momentum it created are continuing through multiple, coordinated efforts designed to carry the recommendations into implementation,” Brown and Dartigue wrote in the letter.
“Although the MEJC has officially concluded, its core values and partnerships remain strong. The relationships, trust, and ideas built through this collaboration will continue to influence Maryland’s reform efforts,” they wrote.
The collaborative released a more than 100-page report in March with one main statistic: Blacks account for about 30% of the state’s population, but make up about 71% of the state’s prison population. The report also pushed for several criminal justice reform bills that eventually became law this year, such as the Second Look Act.
That legislation, sponsored by Baltimore County Democrats Sen. Charles Sydnor III and Del. Cheryl Pasteur, gives those incarcerated for at least 20 years the ability to petition for a sentence reduction, if they met several other criteria. It excludes sex offenders, people sentenced to life without chance of parole, individuals who were older than 25 when they committed their offense, or those convicted of killing a first responder.
The collaborative also backed medical and geriatric parole, which finally became law this year after being pushed by Sen. Shelly Hettleman (D-Baltimore County) for at least four years. It requires parole hearings for those over age 60 who are incarcerated with severe medical conditions.
“Our focus was to really articulate the problem, identify solutions on best practices and make recommendations … to solve the problem of mass incarceration,” Brown said in an interview. “As we are going to this implementation phase, the collaborative isn’t really designed to drive implementation. That I believe is done better through existing structures, whether it’s advocacy groups that do their work in the community or in Annapolis.”
Future work
Some collaborative-backed bills failed this year, but at least one — to stop the state practice of automatically charging youth as adults — will be reintroduced in the 2026 General Assembly.
Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery), the chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, will reintroduce his bill, which didn’t advance beyond a Senate committee in 2025. His bill would raise the age at which a youth would be tried as an adult, from 14 to 16. It also would have made those 16 and younger eligible for juvenile court if charged with crimes that include first-degree assault, third-degree sex offense and certain offenses involving firearms.
Besides the collaborative, Smith’s proposal has also been endorsed by the Commission on Juvenile Justice Reform and Emerging and Best Practices, which noted in a report that Maryland youth spent 90 to 180 days in adult jails before being transferred back to juvenile court. Federal guidelines say youth must not be held in adult facilities for more than six hours “unless a court finds it is in the interest of justice based on a seven-factor test.”
Gordon Pack, who served on the collaborative’s prison, jail and detention facility reform work group, said Monday he’s disappointed to see the collaborative dissolved.
“I didn’t anticipate that happening, at least not this soon. It allowed people to come together and present different viewpoints,” said Pack, who was released in 2022 after serving 42 years in prison on charges of rape, kidnapping and armed robbery when he was 15.
One particular measure Pack would like to see returned for the upcoming session is parole reform, specifically a measure sponsored by Del. Elizabeth Embry (D-Baltimore City).
Her bill would have required the Maryland Parole Commission to report on the number of cases it has heard and approved in a year, breaking it down by the race of those incarcerated, the number of cases granted or denied, and the number of those eligible for parole but never granted it. Those incarcerated have to currently ask for that information.
Embry said in a text message Monday she plans to bring the bill back. It passed the House this year but did not advance in the Senate.
“When we do something, we have to do things together. I will be talking with Del. Embry if she brings this bill back up, again,” Pack said. “We will try to achieve something that will really make a difference in Maryland.”