A $1B ‘therapeutic’ illusion: advocates fight Baltimore’s new jail

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars with host Mansa Musa. We’re standing outside of Brentwood and Eagle Street, which behind me is the grounds for building a new detention center that’s going to house many and women. The name of this detention center, according to legislators, is therapeutic. The problem with this is one, it’s a detention center, but the more important the problem is, it’s going to cost a billion dollars if built. This will be Maryland’s most expensive project in the history of Maryland. That’s mind boggling. We’ll unpack this with this episode of Rallying the Bars. Instead, I’m talking to Christie Raw from LDL NAACP Legal Defense Fund. So Christ T is a part of this coalition that’s come together around stopping this from happening. So today we’ll be unpacking that and what that means in terms of organizing and abolition. Welcome, Christian.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here with you and to meet you.

Mansa Musa:

Okay as well. So how did this board coalition come about? What brought such diverse group together on this specific issue?

Speaker 2:

So in about 2024, and I really want to give credit to some great Baltimore base and investigative reporting that had some great articles about there’s this billion dollar jail. Some folks who are deeply invested and engaged in criminal legal system reforms in the state knew about the idea about this billion dollar jail and others who care about these issues or allies were just hearing about it for the first time and something smelled wrong, right? People were like, what is happening here? This is not right. Particularly given that in 2020 the state legislature committed to build this woman’s pre-release center and had not made good on that promise yet at all. And yet out of seemingly nowhere, a billion dollar jail. And so we did some research and realized the proposal came from 2020 where Governor Hogan had proposed a 387 million jail. And we were like, how did it go from that to nearly a billion dollars with also a smaller capacity?

And meanwhile, during this period, between 2013 and 2024, data showed that there was a decrease in arrest and also pretrial detention. So why are they spending all this money on a jail? And so folks were frustrated about that and we decided we needed to sort of combine efforts because there already was this active coalition on the women’s pre-release center and folks who were aggrieved and angry about the idea of a billion dollar jail. And that’s sort of what led to this coalition letter that we sent the legislature asking a lot of questions about what are you doing? And we also were not, one of the arguments that the legislature had made, at least through the budget process, was that this facility was needed to address the conditions of the Duval versus Maryland settlement. And we just questioned if that was actually true or not. So the letter goes through that we knew from people who’d been on the inside and a lot of reporting that the provision of healthcare was not great from the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. So the idea that the state was seeking to build a billion dollar jail, which they called the Baltimore Therapeutic and Treatment Center, or I’ll referred to as the BTTC, we just weren’t buying it.

Speaker 3:

Hi, good afternoon. I am Monica Cooper. I am a founding person with the Maryland Justice Project. I am also the founder of Bridges to Blossom a safe House for women. It’s a new transitional house that we have, that we have established because we understand that women coming home, that’s one of the biggest hurdles that they face besides employment’s actually housing. So we’re trying to help in that way. But I come to this issue with transitioning and transitional housing for women as they exit incarceration. 10 years ago, 10 years ago, in 2016, I decided that I was going to try and get this issue on a ballot, if you will. But the bottom line is that in 2009, they shut the women’s pre-release center that used to be located at 3 0 1 Coton Road. They shut it down. And all of the women that would normally go there now had to do their minimum pre-release and work release time inside a maximum security prison, which is MCIW.

And MCIW is the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, and it’s the only facility prison for women. It’s only one, and that’s the only one. And they have different levels of security. And that also is a part of the problem is that when you have in a male facility, when the males reach minimum status, they actually send them to a facility that’s just all minimum folks there and the like when they go to pre-release, they transfer them out of the prison into a lesser security facility. And that is part of the issue that we raised. It’s been a long time, it’s been a very long time to try and fight for the women’s pre-release center to be reopened. And the reason for having these centers in urban areas or in metropolitan areas is because it gives them access to the bus line to be able to travel back and forth to work.

It gives them access to public transportation to be able to go to college or to go to different programmings that they have been assigned to. And having it in a metropolitan area helps a woman that’s been incarcerated for let’s say 28 years. I know a woman was incarcerated for 42 years, that’s now home today and doing well. But when you are incarcerated for that amount of time, you need to be able to reacclimate yourself and it’s overwhelming when you’ve been away for so many years and it’s a culture shock. You forget how to catch the subway, you forget things. So to gradually allow people to re acclimate is really the idea and allow them to have jobs before they actually go home to their homes, to their communities. So it’s a system that’s in place to allow them to work themselves into society. But the main portion of that to me is having a job.

So the biggest asset to having a halfway house for both men and women is that when they leave, they leave with employment. The law says that this center supposed to be built, they had a timeline. The timeline gets in the way and all these other bureaucratic things. But the bottom line is that there is a violation here. They have been operating outside of the law. They are actually breaking the law. But my hope is that the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, along with that Office of Budget and Management, along with our governor himself and all of the people who are advising the governor, hoping that we can finally decide that this is important and definitely more important than a Baltimore Therapeutic Treatment Center that would cost a billion dollars. I think it’s more important than that. I think it sends a bad, bad, bad message that women are not important. It’s been 10 years.

Speaker 4:

Well, good afternoon. Thank you for having me. My name is Lawrence Grand Prix. I’m political commenter for leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. We go by our initials LBS. We’re a grassroots sink tank based here in Baltimore, Maryland. I’ve been doing work in the community for 15 years now. All of us are born and raised in Baltimore. I went to Baltimore City Public Schools, did debate coach debate, so we have experience working with youth. So about 15 years ago then Governor Martin O’Malley proposed a youth facility that would’ve been just up the street from where we are now in downtown Baltimore, the real news office. They look at the conditions and youth facilities and say, the healthcare is poor. And they say, instead of fixing the healthcare or incarcerating less youth, which would allow for the conditions to be better and the care to be better, the answer back then as it is now is build a new jail. So 15 years ago, we were part of a coalition and part of the work we did was to look at our black elders and really have them build connections to the black caucus and really push the black caucus of lawmakers who are in our state capital and Apple, many of whom were deeply afraid of the O’Malley political machine.

O’Malley was a upcoming superstar. He ran for president

In that 2016 election where if it was him, Bernie and Hillary, and then Bernie waxed the floor with him. But he was a political force that black politicians were afraid to cross. So it took pressure from us, from black clergy, from the black grassroots to make the black lawmaker stand up to O’Malley and get him to cancel that youth jail. Now jump forward 15 years to present day 2026, and instead of the obvious solution, which is to incarcerate less youth and create less charges and get them out of the facility more quickly, the solution is always to build a bigger newer jail. Because very powerful people donate to the politicians. They make money when something that big is built. So they’re very powerful interests, not just the prison interests, but also the building trades and people who want to look like they’re tough on crime, but also compassionate on crime. So that’s why it’s a therapeutic facility and not what it is, which is a jail. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you have a giant jail to lock up youth to charge them as adults, that’s going to put more pressure to lock them up, charge them as adults, and to use that jail, especially when you call it therapy,

Right? Because the idea is, and this is true, there’s a lawsuit that says the current conditions in the youth facility in terms of providing healthcare and generally Baltimore city holding facility are so poor. They’re under a consent decree, which is like a

Mansa Musa:

Core ruling to

Speaker 4:

Improve the conditions.

Mansa Musa:

That’s a Duval case.

Speaker 4:

Exactly. The Duval case, and again, they can improve the conditions without increasing the number of bids, the number of people they can lock up. And as I’m sure other people have said, the crime rate and the amount of people being arrested and detained has been declining for a decade. And despite that, they want to add into the capacity to lock people up. And I think our solution is if you need new facilities to give people healthcare build to facilitate and to give people quality healthcare, that does not require a massive new billion dollar jail.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, so let’s talk first, explain to our viewers what the Duvall case was that because that using that for coverage and then talk about how you look at the terminology therapeutic and what’s y’all position on that use of that terminology?

Speaker 2:

Duval versus Maryland is a settlement that it was a case that was filed because of to address specifically the medical and mental healthcare conditions as well as conditions of confinement that was filed by the ACLU’s National Prison Project along with Maryland Zone Public Justice Center to address those specific issues against the state of Maryland. Now, I want to be clear, LDF does not counsel on this case, so I don’t have lawyers involved with this case. But from my understanding of talking with those lawyers, because we went to them first and we were like, is this legitimate what the state is saying? And what I understand from them is that the Duval Court has never said that the BTTC is required to meet the conditions of the specific issues of mental health and healthcare for the settlement agreement. And while in fact, the state in the process of this court case has said that they have met the conditions that are required by the settlement. So if that’s the case, and meanwhile at the legislature, the state’s saying we have to build this facility to meet the conditions of this settlement agreement, and the state just can’t have it both ways. It’s one or the other

Speaker 3:

Women are important, and to have zero halfway houses, zero dedicated buildings, that house minimum pre-release and work release like the men have, it just sends a really bad message. I personally think it’s a Title IX violation. I feel like that whatever you provide to this gender, this male population, you should be providing that to the women. And there is on its face. That’s just period. That’s a violation of the law to me again, is that you are not providing equal services. And that’s again, something that may be on the table, but I do want the listening public and the listening audience and the viewers to know that I actually have a wonderful relationship with Secretary Scruggs is she can call me for anything and I’m going to be there for her. And I am one of those advocates that I don’t see us on opposing teams, but we are not always going to agree this is just the one issue that we are not going to agree on the outcome, what should be done, how it should be done.

But outside of that, I’m a great supporter of the department. If the governor is tuning in, it’s a message straight to him. Come on, bro, come on, come on, sir. That’s what I would say to the governor to say that this should have been done and there is no excuse and nothing that anybody can say that would keep it from being done a separate brick and mortar for women is what was requested by the lawmakers. And we are not settling for anything else. That’s what we want. I personally know that it works because I was there as a returning citizen myself. I know the type of therapy that I’ve received there. I know the type of programming that I received there at Baltimore pre-release unit for women. The halfway house, the pre-release center. Yeah, it was fantastic. It was great. And it allowed me to be free of this maximum security space.

My mindset changed. I was able to go in and out of a door freely. I had a key. I was like, dag, this my key. I was like, wow, man. So I had a key to actually go in my room, in my space. It didn’t feel like a jail cell because that’s what that is, you going into a cell. But when you are in this halfway house, it’s more freedom because you got to less of security, it’s more freedom, and you feel that you are free to explore how am I going to live my life? What kind of job do I really want? What kind of career do I want to build? How am I going to stay clean from drugs? How am I going to maintain the relationship with my children? How can I build the bond between me and my mother? Oh man, mothers and their daughters? How can I build that bond between me and my mother? That space provides the dweller, the persons with that opportunity.

Mansa Musa:

We already recognize that in terms of the state overall is not really they being disingenuous overall. So talk about how they use these terms like, oh, it’s therapeutic. How do that factor into acceptance of investing this money in this?

Speaker 2:

Certainly as a coalition, we do not agree that this facility, that their branding is therapeutic would in fact meet that purpose. That’s not the purpose of jails or prisons. And that there should absolutely be services available in communities to meet these needs, but you shouldn’t have to get arrested to have access to these services. Right? For folks that are arrested and arrested and are held in pretrial detention, they shouldn’t be there for very long that that’s the place that they’re getting access to these services. In theory, they’re not there for very long at all and they can have access to them in their communities.

Mansa Musa:

We was talking off camera about the fact that the government didn’t put the money in for this prison or slash therapeutic environment, that he didn’t put it into his budget. Do you think that is, as far as the coalition concerned, is the fight over with name? Did y’all win

Speaker 2:

On Wednesday, January 21st? The governor came out with his fiscal year 2027 budget and we were really thrilled to see that there is no funding for the jail this year. But what’s important to understand in the context of that, the purported reason for it is that they’ll delay funding until 2028, the fiscal year 2028. And part of that has to do with delays in their planning and review of designs, more thorough review, whatever the reason they’re stating might be. We’re certainly thrilled with the delay. But the reality is right now Maryland has a 1.5 billion budget deficit,

Mansa Musa:

Which

Speaker 2:

Is five times more than it was projected to be at the end of the last legislative session. So that’s hopefully an easy way to save some money for the state this year as the governor and the government seeks to address that budget shortfall. We certainly don’t see our work as done. And this is a great opportunity for us to get more education out and where we, I’m so thankful for this interview because it’s a great opportunity to do that about just why this jail isn’t needed in the first place,

Mansa Musa:

But talk about where this money could be best invested in the monies that they’re talking about. Setting aside where you think that money could best be spent too, that they’re talking about putting billions of dollars into buildings, the so-called therapeutic facilities.

Speaker 4:

What many people have argued has caused this unprecedented decline in shootings nationwide is investments in community-based conflict, mediation and violence prevention. People that actually go into communities before the shooting happens. While police only respond afterwards. Learning the terrain, getting connections to people, getting information to squish beefs that can escalate to shootings. I think we had a similar investment in young people, not necessarily only the young people getting in trouble, but a lot of the young people who are looking for ways to understand themselves, develop themselves culturally, spiritually, find outlets for that creativity. A lot of people think that school, but from my experience doing debate and just going to good schools, we survived school. We didn’t enjoy it. It’s not really like the space for us. Many of us found afterschool activities, be it marching band. Baltimore actually has a long tradition of African center rites of passage programs where people actually get trained in understanding their progression of boyhood manhood through traditions we’ve taken from the African continent, but done here in Baltimore for like 40, 50 years, right?

That’s right. And they had to scrape and beg for money and they’re finally getting funded now, and they have multiple cohorts of young people going through. There are similar programs, young women being developed. There are programs that take a foundation in art. So if we had a billion dollars, we wouldn’t just have these programs that focus on the small percentage of young people that are industries of adults. We need to have programs that actually don’t take a deficit version of our young people only focusing on that capacity to produce violence. How do we invest in that capacity to produce leadership, to produce culture, produce art, produce joy? If they’re doing that, then they’re not going to turn to violence. And that’s not just like a floaty conceptual thing. A lot of the work that we’re seeing stopping the violence in our streets today is not just brokering a peace agreement between gangs, it’s food giveaways.

It’s having a hotline that people can call. It’s actually being in the community doing cookouts and building relationships with people. That work is seen as soft, it’s seen as extra. It’s seen if not essential, but the best violence prevention programs that we see, like we are us here in Baltimore, some of the work happening in Newark take a community centered approach and a very intentional approach to building up people’s sense of self in their conceptual, spiritual, cultural foundations so that they can resist the negative scripts that lead them to the path where they see attacking someone that looks like them, where they see attacking one of their brothers and sisters as the release vow for the pressures of society. So I think it’s those cultural spiritual programs and those upstream affirmational programs that create a sense of possibility in our young people that will actually mirror the success we’ve seen with the violence and shootings we’ve seen for adults.

Mansa Musa:

This area right here, they used to have little markets. Now you got a lot of condominiums, chop shops, things of this nature. It don’t inspire no type of sense of investment. This is a prison, that’s a prison. Everything from between Green Mount and Madison. It’s a prison eagle. Right here is the LA Patrol projects. And then off to the back is the remnants of the Maryland penitentiary. They talking about building a joint down there called it a therapeutic, right? They going to spend a billion dollars. You spend a billion dollars on tore down the old jail DC right there. Yeah, right down the street.

Speaker 3:

I would rather have something for the community. You mean something for us to do around here? Ain’t nothing here for the community. What’s it for us to do? Not a goddamn thing that

Mansa Musa:

You have it. Not

Speaker 3:

Spend a billion dollars on that.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah,

Speaker 3:

Spend a billion dollars on us.

Mansa Musa:

A person from the community just spoke out. He said spend a billion dollars on the community. He lived here. He said that he did 10 years in the Maryland penitentiary on the outskirts of the Maryland penitentiary. This is what this does. It continue to perpetuate the drama and trauma that come from them, not probably investing money into the community.

Speaker 5:

A billion dollars. Oh, I will help these homeless people. Even though I understand that you only can help people that want to be helped,

Mansa Musa:

But

Speaker 5:

You still got to put the resources here.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Speaker 5:

See, I use resources

Mansa Musa:

And

Speaker 5:

I mean all of ’em. I got pantry food right now. So you got to put the resources here for a person to get by to move on to the next level. So for these kids to look forward to, I got a 4-year-old grand baby. She tall, she can play basketball. She ain’t in school right now, but once she get there, how she going to start playing basketball? Stuff like that. All the, what you call the head starts, they want you to pay

Mansa Musa:

Now, right?

Speaker 5:

Who got money? I don’t even have a cash income. So

Mansa Musa:

They’re going to bean

Speaker 5:

Die. You can put the head start. Head start. You what? I’m saying something for all the kids so they can not be on these computers on their phone house. You know what I’m saying? Give ’em something to do. Articulation. So yeah, resources.

Mansa Musa:

We need to abolish prisons. They need to invest that money into the infrastructure to help people live a better life. That’s the solution. You give people the opportunity to live humane. They don’t live humane. If you had the ability to have this kind of money, where would you think the coalition think the money could be best served in terms of investment?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think because the coalition is very much wants to continue to see progress on this state promise statutory effort around the women’s pre-release condition, absolutely we should give some money to that because even last year, so last year the state was going to spend $90 million towards the BTTC. They ended up settling at 45. The women’s pre-release center got maybe $1 million that was agreed to in 2020. So it’s really frustrating and unfair that this facility that’s intended to help folks reenter is so stagnant and not being moved versus a facility that’s intended to lock folks up when there’s data and increasing programs that are sort of decreasing the need for that. And so that’s something that I think we would probably all agree should see some funds. And I would say we haven’t necessarily agreed on exactly what we would do with a million dollars as a group, but I’ll speak on behalf of LDF and that certainly we believe that in order to create community safety and think about wellness, we have to really limit and prohibit contact with law enforcement in the criminal legal system in the first place. And the way to do that is by investing in communities in a bunch of different ways. Certainly in access to green spaces, talking about equitable accessible and affordable housing. And of course having jobs that create a more sustainable economy

For folks who need it to be able to provide for their inherent dignity. That those things are actually important drivers of safety in a way that we don’t think about in the same way, but certainly don’t live under the budget of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections in the state of Maryland. Right. And there have been some efforts throughout the state to do this in various jurisdictions and that those are positive things, but certainly it’s both a more humane and cost effective way to bring some safety to communities. It’s important to really understand what our government is telling us they’re doing. I think we’re in a political moment where people understand that, but not just the federal government, but I think all levels of government, we should all be participating in a way and questioning whether this right decisions or decisions we want are being made with our own tax payer dollars.

Speaker 3:

We don’t need no whole bunch of new prisons. We don’t need that. We need to reduce the prison population. But if I had a billion dollars, the first thing that I would do is I would allocate the necessary funds for a standalone pre-release center just like it used to be. They can go back and do it and look at that plan, look at the brew plant and build that center with some added things. We need the support to make this happen, to finally have a facility dedicated for women because it’s discrimination. It’s not right. And that says to me that even though folks talk about we care about what happens to women after 10 years, that’s not the message people get. It’s been too long. 10 years says to me, maybe you don’t care as much. Maybe other things are a priority. This should be a priority.