“We articulated a number of priorities coming into office, and a focus primarily on what we needed to accomplish in the first 90 days in the legislative session,” said Brown in an interview with Capital News Service. His “top priority” was the establishment of “civil rights enforcement authority” in his office, said Brown in an interview with Capital News Service.
Attorney General Anthony Brown was among the winners in the race to get legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly in the session that ended Monday. Despite serving only three months, he was able to shepherd his top two legislative priorities, civil rights enforcement and the authority to prosecute police-involved fatalities through the legislature, and both are expected to become law.
State Roundup: Bill would end ICE contract renewals, future private detention jails; pandemic relief bill expanded
An ice sculpture of the State House st the Red Red Wine bar in Annapolis in January 2017. A lobbying firm paid for the sculpture. MarylandReporter.com file photo
BILL WOULD BLOCK NEW ICE DETENTION CENTERS: The General Assembly is considering legislation that would essentially put an end to privately run immigration detention centers in the state. But currently, there do not appear to be any in the state, writes Bryan Renbaum of Maryland Reporter.
The Dignity Not Detention Act would prevent the state’s detention centers from renewing existing contracts with ICE or private prison companies and prevent the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency from coming into Maryland in the future to build new detention centers, Audrey Decker of Capital News Service reports.
Excess COVID cases just latest of major systemic problems in Md. prisons
Photo from Division of Correction FY 2019 annual report
By Phil Caroom
The COVID-pandemic has exposed major systemic problems in Maryland’s prisons that have been ignored for years.
Let’s compare the population and COVID impacts on two populations:
Area
20.8%
With a population half of Central Annapolis, the prison infection rate is roughly three times that of the state’s capitol. And these statistics exclude the huge impact on prison staff who also have become infected.
Why? Prisons, of course, are “congregate living” facilities – people are housed close together. The faculty at the Johns Hopkins medical and public health schools recommended early in the pandemic for the state to release nonviolent and vulnerable elderly, so that the remaining prisoners could have “social distancing.” But the state has failed to do so except for a small percentage.