Baltimore Beat’s story “After bail reform effort, Baltimore residents are being held in jail at higher rates than before” won a public service award from the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association.
The organization exists to provide support for local news organizations. This year, they received over 1,620 entries among 86 categories.
The story, which was reported by freelance criminal justice reporter Madeleine O’Neill, took second place in the independent journalist division.
The story found that “While the use of cash bail has dropped since the bail reform effort, nearly two-thirds of all initial appearances in Baltimore — the first hearing an arrested person has before a court official — now end in a bail denial, a rate that has surged by about 300% since the state judiciary changed the rules surrounding pretrial release in 2017.
The population at Baltimore’s main pretrial detention center has actually risen since 2017, even as arrests have declined during the same period.”
“It is quite painful, the reality that whenever we have a massive policy win for equitable criminal justice reforms, it does seem as if the state finds non-legislative, non-policy ways to thwart those successes,” Christopher Dews, a lobbyist who represents Out for Justice, a nonprofit that supports formerly incarcerated people, told O’Neill.
Read the full story here: