By Tashi McQueen
AFRO Staff Writer
tmcqueen@afro.com
A recent report by the Abell Foundation finds that juvenile crime data is fragmented and siloed across agencies involved in youth crime and justice, including the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) and the Baltimore Police Department (BPD).
This breakdown can make it challenging for the public, policymakers and media to accurately understand youth crime trends and the effects of the juvenile justice system in Baltimore.
The Abell Foundation, a Baltimore-based nonprofit supporting education and justice reform initiatives, commissioned the report, authored by Robin Campbell. He analyzed and compared data from BPD, DJS, the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy, and Maryland’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
The AFRO reached out to BPD for comment several times but received no response. The Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy and the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services also did not respond in time for publication.
Campbell laid out the main point of this report.
“The public should be able to go to a reliable resource to fact check allegations about youth crime,” said Campbell.
He said that when youth crime is described as “out of control” based on a few high-profile news stories, the public should be able to access authoritative data showing long-term trends. Campbell said the data is currently difficult to find.
He added that navigating youth crime data can be confusing, even for experienced analysts.
“If you look at the data sources…some of it fits together and some of it doesn’t,” he said. “It can be head spinning to figure it out.”
The report emphasizes the importance of accessibility and cohesiveness in understanding youth crime, particularly as concerns over repeat offenses and juveniles being re-arrested for similar crimes are a recurring topic of conversation.
Despite the media reports of heightened youth crime, Campbell’s analysis found that juvenile crime in Baltimore has been in long-term decline, interrupted only by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which helped skew perceptions.
“Considering how little activity there was…the number of people who were system involved fell very significantly,” said Campbell. “In the subsequent years, as things went back to normal, there was a substantial increase — not because people were acting worse than they have historically, but because we were getting back to normal trends of extremely depressed numbers.”
Campbell recommended including at least one data point from before 2020 when analyzing trends, noting that overall youth arrests had decreased 46 percent from 2012 to 2017, according to the report.
Among agencies, DJS has the most cohesive and accessible data stated Campbell in the report.
“DJS has a long-standing commitment to providing access to our data, in every possible way,” said Betsy Fox Tolentino, acting DJS secretary.
Tolentino said the agency examines data in multiple ways to align reporting with other stakeholders.
“When multiple stakeholders talk about it differently, it does create a level of confusion,” she said. “You could have one complaint that has multiple assault charges, and you can have one kid who may have multiple complaints. When you look at those differently, the numbers will look different. You almost have to interpret exactly what definitions different stakeholders are using. That’s where a lot of the confusion comes from.”
To improve accessibility, DJS has launched a new data dashboard that presents a more succinct version of the annual report, which can be hundreds of pages long.
The report shows that Baltimore’s youth justice system and its partners need a more cohesive, accessible approach to help the public accurately understand juvenile crime trends and how the system is being improved.