Recently, the Baltimore Sun published an op-ed by Maurice Vann, juvenile justice policy director at Advocates for Children and Youth (ACY), an OSI grantee, in which he expressed his organization’s concern that the recent increase in crimes will lead to the harsher, “broken windows” policing of the past and a “crack down” on youth crime.
He pointed out that this incorrect assessment, namely that the increase in crime is due to “out of control youth” led to harmful bills being introduced in this legislative session—bills which would cause more young people to be charged as adults and disproportionally affect people of color.
He also pointed to the recent launch of ACY’s Rethink Baltimore, a juvenile justice awareness campaign project supported by both OSI and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, that gathers stories from communities around Baltimore in an effort to understand the “complex reality that youth face,” in the hopes of finding solutions that will help to change the narrative and improve the lives of young people in Baltimore.
