The title pretty much covers it. No report was issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Senate Bill 354 by the Maryland General Assembly's March 30 "cross-over" deadline, which means the bill is dead for this year.
That's the bad news. The somewhat encouraging news is that since the bill simply was not let out of committee, there was no unfavorable report issued on it. So while we did not get what we wished for this time around, those who pushed for an unfavorable report on the bill didn't quite get their way either.
The support we did receive from several members of the SJC was invaluable, and Sen. Nancy King has already indicated that she would be willing to bring the proposed legislation back for the 2010 legislative session. Hopefully by then we will have drawn more attention to the issue of lenient sentencing for violent offenders and be able to drum up more support for the bill.
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Part of the dynamic that makes bills like this an uphill battle in Maryland is the prevalence of liberal anti-incarceration organizations. Truth-in-sentencing proposals get caught up in the dubious but prevailing notion that we, as a society in general and the state of Maryland in particular, send too many people to jail for too long.
It may be possible to soften this opposition from anti-incarceration orgs if you get with some of the more moderate ones and focus loudly on violent criminals, working to eliminate the perception that this proposal focuses on non-violent drug offenders.
Learn who is the central opposition within the Assembly, too. Dead bills don't always have obvious fingerprints on them.
Might also want to leave *some* sort of margin or incentive for good behavior while in custody. That's a BIG worry at DOC. Or a scalable, earned incentive for good behavior that is more readily available to non-violent offenders. Or perhaps, easier terms for DOC staff re-claiming any early release credits in the event of misconduct by inmates.
Finally, it might be worth taking a shot at that fiscal note by generating, or finding, research that shows the admin and other costs associated with recidivism that would be avoided if original sentences were enforced more fully. Pitch it as saving parole and re-entry resources for those who (a) most deserve it, and (b) are more likely to succeed at staying out of jail.
Might want to make some contacts at the state Sentencing Commission in College Park, too, if not done already. Learn the players there.
But, overall, I'm afraid the zeitgeist in Maryland is toward shorter and not longer stretches in prison. And the state's twisted racial politics tend to reinforce that bias. In any case, I wish you luck.
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