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Youth Justice Delayed—Unpacking Debates on "AutoCharging" Youth as Adults Reforms · Political Commentary Corner

• 0:30
  SPEAKER_05: Hello and welcome back to Political Commentary Corner.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_05: I'm your host, Tauron's Grand Prix.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_05: When you're engaged in something competitive, it's common, whether it's sports or in our case even competitive debate, to do film study, to study yourself, to study your opposition, and get insights about things you could do better, understanding of some of the dynamics in play in order to do better next time.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_05: And previously on this platform, we talked about some of the testimony from the hearings around the Second Look Act, which allowed individuals who were incarcerated for a certain period of time to have a second look at their sentence for them to possibly be released.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_05: In the episode, we saw that despite the good work that many folks in the Black Caucus were able to do advancing Second Look, the frameworks folks used to advocate for the bill opened up space for the bill to be watered down, hollowed out, carved out, and ultimately left some things to be desired in terms of centering the frame on racial justice and building up a strong platform for future policy victories and to push back against the technocratic and uh fear-mongering frames conservatives use to water down pieces of legislation that deal with criminal justice.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_05: This session 2026, folks in Annapolis, including with the advocacy of folks like us, the ECLU, and other advocates, were able to pass limitations on the ability for use to be automatically charged as adults.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_05: And again, some of the key words there are limitations.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_05: So you can still be automatically charged as adult in Maryland for many things, but we carved out seven of the offenses that were leading to a large percentage of individuals charged as adults.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_05: And key thing, again, is automatic.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_05: So you individuals can now be waived up when they start from the juvenile system, but they start in the juvenile system.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I put that in the beginning of the episode to show this is a very incremental victory.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_05: And some of the frameworks you use to advocate for the bill centers so much on this is just a small step, this is an incremental step that obscures the essential racialized violence, the inability to see black use as children, and critically the narrative framework of innocence.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_05: These are you've charged as adults, these are accusations.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_05: And we want to do a similar analysis of the floor debates around this bill as we did for Second Look, because in not centering the framework of innocence and the racialized violence that projects youths as always already guilty and always already needing more harsh sentences to deter them from their innate criminal nature, Democrats once again end up playing into the hand essentially of conservatives and Republicans, and we need to come back and improve this bill.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_05: But the frameworks used to pass the bill that's incremental, that's only a tiny tweak, that's very research-based, science-based, these are the key reforms, oftentimes work against us when we go back to legislature and improve these bills.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_05: Folks say we already did it, this was the best bill, and we need to be able to understand and interrogate the discourses used and the political choices made in order for us to do better in the future.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_05: So once again, we thank you.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_05: Go to our website, lbsbaltimore.com, please sign up for our email alerts.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_05: Check out all the other podcasts on the Black Liberation Media YouTube channel.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_05: And with that, let's get to it.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_05: Many folks are already involved in politics.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_05: So you might know.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_05: By the time a bill is up for a vote, most of the real persuasion and deals are already done.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_05: So when we play clips from floor hearings, part of this is for you to understand how the folks who have made these deals, oftentimes in backrooms with colleagues and advocates and opposition, how they choose to justify the policy on the record.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_05: So we're going to play a clip from the leader of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, Will Smith, on one of the champions behind the bill that got passed.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_05: His explanation of why we should pass this bill that limits the automatic charging of use as adults, I think, is a very good example of a democratic politician in an environment stoked by Sinclair media, fear-mongering about youth, trying to pick a strategic, pragmatic, conceptual framework for why we should pass this bill.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_05: So let's listen to Senator Will Smith give his explanation about why we should pass this bill.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_05: And then we can interrogate the strengths and limitations of the frames he chooses to bring to the table.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_05: So here's Senator Will Smith.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: So Maryland is an extreme outlier.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's something called the Juvenile Justice, Delinquency, and Protection Act, the JJDPA.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that, among other things, requires sight and sound separation from a youth that's placed in an adult facility.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maryland is the largest offender of this federal law.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: We are so much of an outlier that they don't even incorporate Maryland's data.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Those data are not even incorporated into the national report because it would skew the results nationally so much.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that means we're having youths interface with adults more than any other state in the nation.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's one thing.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Second is Maryland has 33 offenses of which uh a youth can be auto-charged.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's more than any other state in the nation.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Nine out of ten of those youth automatically charged adults are children of color.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Eight out of ten are black kids.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: We charge more youth per capita as adults than any other state except for Alabama.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we are wasting a ton of money.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: We are perpetuating racial racial disparities, and we are getting worse public safety outcomes.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you're in the adult system, you do not have access to education, you do not have access to those wraparound services to get you out of that pattern of life.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you start in the juvenile system, you will be able to be able to avail yourself to services to get yourself on the right track.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: You are still going to be under the supervision of a correctional facility, you're still going to be held in the juvenile system, except you're going to have access to better services immediately.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you start off in the adult system, you can spend anywhere from three months to two years languishing without services.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have worse public safety outcomes when you come back out.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Tying this all together is the fact that 80 to 85% of the cases that automatically start in the adult system ultimately make their way back to the juvenile system.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're wasting tens of millions of dollars, we're ruining these youths' lives, and we are getting worse public safety outcomes.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, for all those reasons, it's important to make sure that the offenses that are incorporated in this bill start off in the juvenile system where a judge can make a decision with a prosecutor and with another attorney.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: They can make an informed decision as to where that case should go.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is a smart bill.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is already happening right now, except we're wasting all that time in the adult system.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Those kids are already coming back down to the juvenile system anyway, except we're wasting that time with them not getting the services.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I understand the serious nature of the offenses.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is just a smart bill.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: A smart bill for public safety, a smart bill to save money, a smart bill to make sure that our youth are equipped with the tools they need to not reoffend.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_05: So there are a few frames here that I think are mutually reinforcing.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_05: I think one of the dominant ones is the the cost saving frame.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_05: So this idea that folks are going to adult facilities and coming back down is wasting resources and wasting money because they're coming back to the youth facilities anyway.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_05: But all the extra time and energy and cost of being in the adult system makes it inefficient.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_05: So it's an efficiency frame.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_05: I think there's also a frame of technocracy and judicial legitimacy.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_05: Smith pretty consistently comes back to saying we should allow the judges to make the rulings.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_05: This idea that judges are going to be there to check the system.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_05: So it's a moderating frame.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's not just like a free-for-all, they all automatically go to juvenile facilities.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_05: But the idea that this judicial figure, despite what we know in the past about judges uh preferring mandatory minimum sentences and harsh sentences, he relies on judicial legitimacy to say that this frame asserts that the gatekeeper and the decision maker is a judge.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_05: And I think the final frame is a frame of recidivism.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_05: And that's one of the frames I want to focus on, because this idea that it because it it comes across as a youth rights frame, but he anchors the youth rights frame in recidivism as opposed to racial justice.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's a critical distinction.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_05: Because I think that anchoring the youth rights frame in these young folk are being traumatized, they're going to adult facilities, they come out harder than when they came in, and the data shows that they're more likely to reoffend, I think is true and data supported.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_05: But by not anchoring it to a racial justice frame, which says that disproportionately African American folks are going to these facilities because of racialized conceptions around policing, disproportionate minority contact embedded in police deployment patterns, and racialized conceptions of innate youth deviance when it comes to black use.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_05: This recidivism frame can and immediately after he finishes speaking, I couldn't quite get the clip, does get redeployed right back at him to say, well, these are hardened criminals, these are dangerous, bad young people becoming super predators.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_05: So he says that 75% of youths who are charged as adults of first degree assault are waved back down to the juvenile system.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_05: And the first question, the first rejoinder by a Republican is what about the other 25%?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_05: Other 25% darn near beat someone to death is what he calls first degree assault, and we're just gonna give them a slap on the wrist, which is what they think being in the juvenile system is.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_05: So this is basically a central component where again the innocence frame is not used.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_05: These are charges, not convictions.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_05: So the innocent frame is left off, the racial justice frame is left off.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_05: And by centering on recidivism and technocracy, this is a smart bill, he says it over and over again.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_05: We leave ourselves open to attacks coming from conservatives around, well, these are innately hardened young people that need harsh sentences to be deterred.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_05: So let's actually listen to Senator Folden, a Republican, when he talks about without the harsh consequences, the adult system, this is what he believes the result of that will be.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to clarify, there's been a lot of misleading information in this in this little colloquy here.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're charged as adult, yes, you stay as an adult, if you're charged as a juvenile with first degree assault, and you by what we just killed, just struck down the opportunity to have that as an auto charge, it could go to juvenile court.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: That same juvenile gets out, has an ankle monitor, and one runs down a police officer in Baltimore, it's another first-degree assault.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: However, what you said earlier is only if they were charged as a adult the first time, which we're now taking out of the out of the discussion altogether.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: So actually, there would be another chance for a second first degree offense for this person, this this violator, this person that is very uh egregiously attacking our law enforcement or our communities to go back into juvenile court again.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: The judge will understand the facts of that of that child's history, of that youth's history, and invariably that sh that youth is going to get waved up to the adult system under that fact pattern.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it doesn't always happen that way.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um so that's why we're having this discussion today.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that back and forth is very telling because Foldon is a Republican and his uh he's former law enforcement, he's law enforcement affiliated, and his anger, his rage, he almost sounds like he's looking for a politically correct phrase to call this hypothetical young person who runs down the police officer.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_05: Like you wanted to call him a sug or maybe even something else, right?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_05: So just the ability of getting that enraged at a hypothetical youth offender is the depths of the racialized animus that is embedded in these proceedings when you talk about the issue of use and them being charged with crime.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_05: Again, these are youth charged with crime.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_05: In this case, first degree assault, which this is the nature of the performative dance.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_05: They're trying to put amendments on the bill that weaken the bill, and by talking about first degree assault as if it is attempted murder, essentially.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_05: They're framing it that these young people who again would simply not be automatically positioned as in the adult system.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_05: That uh it creates a signal that's open season on civilians, in this case open season on police officers, that use if they just know that they'll go to the juvenile system, their innate criminality kicks in, and there will be this wave of use violence.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_05: That's why citing statistics around crime being down does not satiate people when you talk about sentences like this, because their argument is that yes, only in the world where we have these extremely harsh sentences can we ever deter the innate criminality embedded in black use.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_05: So it takes a very specific response that centers on uh the racialized disparities embedded within the system, the mythologies around use as being innately violent, to deconstruct why this is so intuitively appealing and so animating to not just Republicans but so many people on a Democratic base.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_05: And what does Senator Smith retort with?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, in that case they would just charge him as an adult anyway.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_05: So no deconstruction of the ideological foundations of the argument, no analysis of the racialized animus embedded in the perception of this hypothetical youth that would be in this case charged as a youth that could actually be waived up.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_05: It's just, oh, in that case they'd be charged as an adult anyway.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_05: The bill doesn't prohibit that, so why are we talking about it?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_05: Again, you have to read this through the perspective of Mr.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_05: Smith, Senator Smith is a chair of a judicial proceedings committee, so he's part of what we call democratic leadership.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_05: And so leadership, based upon the analysis, again, people make decisions and they prep for these hearings.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_05: They don't want to have an in-depth conversation, at least based upon what we see in the hearings, about the racialized nature of these disparate charges.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_05: He doesn't even bring it up when he talks about Alabama having the most youth-charged adults.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, they also have the most severe racial disparities of any state in Maryland's right with them in terms of the percentage of black youth being charged as adults.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_05: This conceptual framework of moderation, incrementalism, oh, the bill would allow them to be charged as adults, just as we saw with Second Look, locks leadership into a vision of incremental progress that does not deal with the fundamental racialized bias that prohibits us from actually making more substantive change on the issues.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_05: So, with that, we're actually going to go to the other side of the legislature of the House.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_05: So we're going to hear some commentary from House hearings around the House version of the bill that I think replicates a very similar dynamic.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_05: So as previously stated, part of the theater of these hearings in Maryland is Republicans theatrically try to attach what they call common sense amendments to the bill, and the Democrats try to unusually successfully knock down those amendments.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_05: So this is in the House hearing, a Republican trying to attach a mandatory victim notification or victim impact uh ability for the victim to have a say as to whether a young person, again, accused of a crime is waived down uh onto the House bill.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_05: So this is the commentary from the Republicans around needing to center victims.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_07: But there's another party that seems to always be left out of the discussion.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_07: The victim.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_07: Some of these juveniles, young, they make a horrible mistake and they kill someone, or they rape someone, or they disfigure someone, they permanently disable someone, they destroy someone's life forever, they destroy family members' lives forever.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_07: And I get it, it's a juvenile.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_07: And we have a juvenile system in Maryland that focuses on rehabilitation so that hopefully these young people can turn their lives around.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_07: That's okay.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_07: What my amendment does simply forever.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_07: So that way, before someone makes a decision and says, hey, we're not going to hold this juvenile accountable, maybe we just give them a slap on the wrist.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_07: Why don't we involve the victims?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_07: Now it's my understanding that some of the jurisdictions do this already.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_07: This would require everyone to do it.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_05: So here we have all the classic tropes.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_05: Being in a juvenile facility is a slap on the wrist.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_05: So only adult consequences, only the pain and suffering of the adult system is commensurate with accountability.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_05: No understanding of, even though they talk about juvenile use development, uh brain development, they say, well, basically that's ridiculous.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_05: The only thing that will actually deter them is the harsh conditions of adult incarceration.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_05: We should punish these people.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_05: And again, this is the idea that this is someone accused of a crime.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_05: There is no finding of guilt.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_05: This is pre-child adjudication, which system you go through to determine your guilt or innocence and then your consequences.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_05: So the axiomatic belief that being arrested as a youth means you are instantaneously guilty.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_05: And the only question is slap on the wrist in the juvenile system or real accountability in the adult system is a fundamentally ridiculous frame.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_05: And yet, in the name of ushering this bill through, dismissing the Republican amendments, and believing this is the most effective way of getting through the process again of political theater, Democrats often just dismiss actually having a conversation that the young people who are subject to these harsh, unconstitutional conditions of they say you had to be sight and sound away from adults when you're in an adult facility.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_05: That means, in theory, you would essentially be in solitary confinement, which especially given young people's need for social connection is a form of torture based upon many people's interpretation of international law.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_05: But the reality is you're usually not totally sight and sound away.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_05: They make an effort, but you can easily be attacked, psychologically tortured, and we hear story after story about the psychological impacts of this incarceration to the point where these young people accused of crime, or maybe they were just affiliated and overcharged.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_05: They all get charged as adults, they all get held free trial, and just by being in a crowd of people, you are then subject to these dehumanizing conditions that makes you a victim too.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_05: And again, the racialized reality of young black kids being told that they are these super predators, they are these dangers to society, and have these traumatic experiences where they then are confirmed to be seen that way by society, the data shows they're more likely to recidivate.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_05: But the racial justice analysis says, oh, you're going to treat me like a sug, fine, I might as well be a sug.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_05: And what it means, not just in terms of general recidivism characteristics or statistics, but the racialized nature of that psychological violence.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_05: That could be a very effective retort to this analysis from the Republican delegate.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_05: But here's the response from the leader of the House Committee on this opposed proposed amendment, Sandy Bartlett.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_10: Thank you, Madam Speaker.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_10: And thank you to the good delegate from Frederick for um supplying the amendment.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_10: Um members, I ask that you reject the amendment for several reasons.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_10: First of all, it has it is not what is in the bill.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_10: The bill is very limited in the cases in which a child uh is charged as an adult.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_10: Uh some of those situations, while they are extremely horrific, are not what um is in the bill.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_10: Second of all, um a victim notification statement is already allowed in law under um the juvenile code.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_10: Um it requires that the victim has to get notice.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_10: And in fact, I can speak on this personally because um I actually was a um a victim in a circumstance and I received notice.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_10: They and the state's attorney asked me, what would I like to do?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_10: And I said, you know, I want them to pay for what they did, and I just want a letter.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_10: And that's what I got.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_10: I got a letter of apology, and the um the young person paid for the repair of my car.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_10: So my point is that this is already law, this is already um available, uh, victim impact statements are already available, but not only that, the victim is always uh taken into consideration because, as I have said many times um to this body and to my committee, that um judiciary is about balance.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_10: We do not and we cannot and we do not have the privilege of looking at one side and one side only.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_10: We must balance rights.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_10: So we look at the um individual who is the defendant, uh, and we look at the injury that is caused to the state, and we balance them.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_10: This bill is about um judicial discretion and judicial efficiency.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_10: And I agree the victims must be involved, and they are involved, especially when there is a judge involved, and um they can make their statement.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_10: So I ask you to reject the amendment and um and um follow me on a red vote.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_10: Thank you.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_05: So again, we have to put this rejoinder.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_05: By the leader of the House Committee, the Judicial Committee, Judiciary Committee, Sandy Rartley, in context of again vicious Sinclair media propaganda.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_05: What about the victims?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_05: What about the victims?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_05: What about the victims?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_05: But this presupposes there is a victim.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_05: She even said it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_05: This is about the defendants balancing the right to the defendant.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_05: They're not convicted.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_05: They're not convicted.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_05: And given the nature of the racialized, over policing, hyper-incarceration of youth, it just is completely beyond the conceptual framework to say this is someone accused of a crime.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_05: And again, I think part of it is the propaganda perpetrated by Sinclair Media and WBAR radio that it's obvious that we're not arresting anybody anymore.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_05: It's obvious that the mass incarceration has ended.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_05: The reality is arrests are actually increasing, prosecution abuse are increasing, and even if they did decrease from their highest point, they're still at a point higher than any other civilized Western nation on the planet.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_05: But just the concept of a decline from the highest point of mass incarceration means it's obvious that if you get arrested, you're guilty because they're not arresting anybody anymore.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_05: So the idea of talking about the conceptual framework of innocence and racialized prosecution goes beyond the pale.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_05: So this isn't a bill about youth rights anymore.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_05: This isn't a bill about racial justice anymore.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_05: This is a bill about judicial efficiency.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_05: And just narrowing this can and again, it's perceived to be strategic.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_05: Let's take the emotion out of it.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_05: Let's take the ideology out of it.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_05: Let's just focus on the most narrow, most agreeable framework that the judge will make the decision.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_05: So because the judge is elected and seemed to be a credible figure, then that makes them having the discretion a efficient framework for how we adjudicate accused youth uh crime.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_05: And the subtext behind that is that you can trust the judge because the judge has an incentive to be more harsh.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_05: Because that gives them political cover because they don't want to be seen as soft on crime.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_05: So baked into the fundamental justification from, again, Democratic leadership, Chief's Leader Judiciary Committee, newly appointed with the new speaker, Jocelyn Pilliam Melnick, that we want to narrow the conversation outside the context of the racialized violence that the system does to use, but to center the theoretical violence of hypothetical victims, despite the fact that we're at historic lows in crime and use crime.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_05: To say that we have to start the balancing act from the concept of the victims and not from the systemic violence that makes thousands upon thousands of youth victims com persistently was in the way that Maryland has become a national outlier in how it treats youth.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_05: So the inability to conceptualize black youth as victims, and the inability to conceptualize and indict the system as producing these victims, is understandable because you know folks are implicated in the system, they're trying to reform the system, but the complete imbalance between, again, these hypothetical victims, again, these crimes really do happen.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_05: But we're talking about worst-case scenarios, very limited cases.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_05: Again, most use, as in Miss Bartlett's case, is a little bit of property damage.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_05: That's what we're talking about.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_05: We're not talking about hardened criminals who are just seconds away from pulling the trigger and destroying families.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_05: We're talking about kids going out on joy rides.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_05: Again, things that when they happen in the suburbs or boys will be boys and girls will be girls become fundamental questions of civic viability, whereas Fox News says people are leaving Maryland, leaving Baltimore because these youths are out of control, and they stoke this consistent fear within the legislature, as David Smith has explicitly said, is his political desire.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_05: He's explicitly said that he tells his reporters to run down on lawmakers in Annapolis to bird dog them about youth crime to make them do more harsh on crime policy.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_05: Because he's a Republican.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just concerning to see Democratic leadership essentially adopt Republican framings even as they try to push reforms ostensibly based around a racial justice, youth justice framework.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_05: So just to hammer home this idea of the impossibility of innocence within a youth accused of a crime, I think it's useful to hear some more of the rhetoric coming out of Republicans in the House floor session.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_05: So this is another Republican delegate proposing an amendment.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_05: Basically, if this is your second time being accused of a particular offense, then the first time you go to the juvenile system, second time you have to automatically be charged as an adult.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_05: So this is their analysis about why we need to use this automatic charge as adult to deter quote-unquote repeat violent offenders.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: And guess what?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: One of the offenses we're trying to remove from the provisions of this bill and say you should be charged as an adult because you've already been previously convicted.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's not your first go-around.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, the juvenile system didn't work very well because you were picked up once, and if anybody believes that the very first time you ever committed a crime, the very first time in your life, you ever got a gun and you went out on the streets and you robbed someone or you used it in connection with drug, the very first time you ever did it in your whole life, that's the time the police got you.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: You were the world's worst criminal.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: The first time you ever committed a criminal act with a gun, you got caught, you got sentenced, it's over.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: If you believe that, I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: But the first time you got caught under the provisions of the man's amendment, the gentleman's amendment, the first time you got caught, you went in the juvenile system.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And what happened?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, flat out busted nothing.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because you were right back on the streets and you did it again.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: And now you get caught, well, we'll charge you with a juvenile game.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's all we're asking.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's all we're saying.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: State of Maryland says he's just going to be charged as a juvenile automatically.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: He can't do adult time.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: He'll be back here very quickly.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if Pete or Jimmy does it, it's 19 or 21 or 22, well, he's going DOC.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: Get the gun away from Pete.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: Give it to Timmy.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: Let him wave it around.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: He's 15.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: If you think that the 25 or the 30-year-old or the 40-year-old who's running the gang can't figure this out, you're not living in reality.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_05: So again, it is stunning the way that Republicans have completely evacuated the idea that any tie to reality is possible.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_05: Because within the logic of this argument, every time someone is arrested, you should basically count that as double or triple or quadruple.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_05: Because the assumption is every crime is really a repeat violent offender.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_05: And by the time you caught them, they've really done this exact same crime over and over and over again.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_05: So you should essentially treat them as if they are a repeat violent offender every time you catch them, which actually repudiates the whole point of the amendment.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_05: Because the whole point is you might as well just charge them as adult the first time because if they're again accused of a crime, they're not just automatically guilty of it.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_05: They're automatically guilty of doing it multiple times before that you just haven't caught yet.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_05: So this is a ridiculous, racist, unscientific framing of the reality of hyper-surveillance.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_05: We have cameras everywhere now.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_05: Complete understanding again the reality of policing.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_05: So it just again bakes in this assumption that the police are somehow totally underfunded, they've been totally defunded.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_05: And therefore, by the time they've caught someone, they're so it really says they're inept.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_05: They're somewhat nephew that they haven't been able to catch them the three, four, or five other times they've done it.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_05: But all this feeds into not only should we automatically charge you with adults, but because use in black civil society is innately criminogenic, adult perpetrators are intentionally feeding uh criminal intent to young people.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_05: So this is an idea that goes all the way back to the 80s.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_05: My father was an undercover police officer in Baltimore.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_05: And this was a very common tactic in the 80s for organized drug gangs, for older adults to put weapons and drugs in the hands of youth with the idea of getting lighter sentences for those people if they get cut.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_05: Now, what we know is the vast majority of offending happening now is not hierarchical organized intergenerational drug gangs like the Bloods, the Crips, or even the Barksdale crew from the wire.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_05: These are neighborhood clicks of people of the same age who are afraid for their lives, who get into beefs in community, maybe carry a gun because they are afraid because of a beef happening in community.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_05: And so, yes, the idea that the first time you carry that gun for protection, you could be caught.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_05: And the basic idea of carrying it for protection and not carrying it because you are a repeat violent offender, all of these things are evidence-based and was really, really good for Democrats to talk about to push back against this racist, ascientific, ridiculous propaganda that is the foundation of not just Republican attacks on these bills, but the inability for the Democrats to make substantive progress on the 30 summary charges that get youth charges out.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_05: This is why they felt they could only get seven.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's because this is the ideological foundation of what you're dealing with in Baltimore, and this is the opportunity to take it on and destroy it.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_05: But what do Democrats do?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_05: Let's listen.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_10: The crime we are speaking of is in the bill.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_10: And so the individual is automatically charged as an adult.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_05: If you're looking for a moral response, I think so am I.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_05: But there really isn't too much there.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_05: This is the response.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_05: They're already charged as an adult, so this is irrelevant.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_05: And again, I think that the idea is that this is pragmatic.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_05: This is political grandstanding by Republicans.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_05: They don't have the votes to get these amendments attached.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_05: They're just trying to get on Fox 45.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_05: They're trying to get viral moments that can go viral on social media that Fox 45 can clip up and say, soft on crime, hug a thug Democrats pass bill to pet on the wrist juvenile slugs when they beat up grandmothers.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_05: But this is why it's so difficult and why so many of us are so concerned when these incrementalist policies pass, because what they say is come back next year, we'll start the process of going further.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_05: But if this is the ideological framework that we've intelligently gone as far as we should by strategically measuring what should still be charges in the DOT and what shouldn't, the entire reason the bill is passed in the very conversation the leaders are having is that we should not go further.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_05: So they tell advocates, we're just starting the process, we're gonna get data, we're gonna go further, but the entire justification is don't worry about the access of the bill, we haven't gone too far.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_05: So we're stuck in a difficult position as advocates where the people passing the bills are oftentimes essentially arguing against our position, even as they are theoretically advancing reforms that are in favor of the positions we want them to take.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_05: And that's why we have to continuously advocate on not just generic rights language, but specifically deconstructing the lies that Democrats and Republicans tell about why juice crime is happening, to explain why people, yes, when the first time they're carrying guns, they are being arrested.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_05: They are being charged as adults, and that's exactly who comes out hardened that did not need to go to adult prison because they need the gun to protect themselves.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_05: Not because they're carjacking, not because they're selling drugs.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_05: And if they are selling drugs, we got people making millions of dollars selling legal weed.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_05: But if you're in the trap, you need a gun to protect your investment.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_05: You there's no way you can get your investment back if someone robs it.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_05: And if you owe your plug money, then that is a threat to your livelihood and your life.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_05: We've seen people be robbed by cops with the country's task force and then robbed with their drugs, and then because they can't sell the drugs and repay the person they got them from, they end up killed by that person.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_05: This is the reality of black life.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_05: And the entire strategy of the Democrats seemed to hide that reality.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_05: What we need to do is put it on Front Street and use it as a weapon to bludgeon the lies that Republicans tell that allow people to believe the ridiculous stories they tell about how crime works and how youth crime works.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_05: It does not require saying, oh, don't worry, that crime will just be charges in adults and don't worry about it.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_05: It requires a sophisticated political campaign of telling the world this is how crime is functioning.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_05: This is the interplay between historical trauma, racism, over policing, and economic need, and this is how this policy fits within that nexus to give you better outcomes.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_05: Because the assumption is if people understand that nexus, they'll be afraid to pass the policy because all those things will push people to do violent crimes, and without the deterrent effect of being charged as an adult, then there are going to be more violent crimes.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_05: The question is, do Democrats believe that?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_05: Because it's hard to believe any other thing from how most of them defend the policy.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_05: But the entire point, how the advocates should be framing the policy, is that that is not true.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_05: And sometimes advocates, again, for what they think is strategic or because they have anxieties about the reality of black people selling drugs or carrying guns to protect themselves, they don't educate lawmakers about how to reframe that reality in a way that isn't a threat to the bill, but the actual reason the bill should pass.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's gonna make it harder for you to message on the floor of the House against these Republican scaremongering attacks.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's gonna make it so you don't have clean rejoinders to say, oh, don't worry, they're still charged as adult, so you don't have to worry about this amendment.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_05: It is harder.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_05: It is more difficult.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_05: But in the world we have to come back year after year, decade after decade to continue to make incremental progress, how many more young people will be charged as an adult?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_05: Waiting for the next batch of five or six automatically charged as an adult penalties to get into the bill 10, 15 years from now.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_05: If we don't take on the hard work of deconstructing the mythology now, we're setting ourselves up for decades of incremental progress and thousands of young people to be lost along the way.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_05: But we don't want to present the idea that the innocence frame and some of the other youth rights, human rights frames were completely ignored by the Democrats.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_05: So here's Democrats commenting on the floor around the possibility of young people being given even harsher sentences than adults and the idea of the possibility of wrongful arrest of young people.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_10: But one text I got was very interesting to me, and that was why are we harder on kids than we are on adults?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_10: I thought that was a great point.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_10: Why would we be harder on someone who committed a crime as a child than we would an adult?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_10: Why?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_10: Oh, why?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_10: So I'll say this.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_10: What happens when you're a kid and you're charged as an adult?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_10: Before you are even adjudicated, you are held in adult detention.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_10: And what does that look like?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_10: Well, you're in for 24 hours, restrictive housing, you don't get any physical relief, meaning go out, you don't get any educational relief, you don't get um any mental health relief, you don't get any rehabilitative services.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_10: But we heard a bill today.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_10: What happens if you finally are convicted and it was a mistake?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_10: What happens if you are erroneously convicted as for a crime that you committed as a child?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_10: And so I urge you all to vote against this amendment.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_05: So I think it's important to stress that the framework of youth justice and human rights is absolutely essential to explaining why this bill is so important.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_05: In addition to that, what I feel needs to be added is an explicit conversation around the majority of young people in the system are black youth, and we have different scripts, different concepts of what punishments are needed, different concepts of what form of care and discipline works for black use than we do for other use.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_05: So it's complicated because you also have white delegates, Republicans using scripts they have for their use and applying them, in this case, to our use.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_05: So I think we need to have an understanding of how these dynamics play out.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_05: So here's a Republican directly responding to this quote, basically saying, yes, we do need to have more firm consequences for use, and she has a very interesting reasoning why.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_05: So let's hear her comments.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_04: On the topic of why would we be more aggressive in our response to young children, my gut immediately said, because there's still hope.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_04: Because there's still hope that we might be able to stop them, improve the outcome.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of times, as time goes on and someone is a serial recidivist, we've given up.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_04: We've given up.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_04: And so sometimes I think many of us feel when the problem has just begun, if you respond extremely firm, you're much more likely to have a swift turnaround than if you have a soft response and allow the problem to fester.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_04: And so for anyone who is unsure if they would support this amendment, I would say uh we have addressed the issue of child solitary confinement already on this floor this year, and uh a firm hand right from the start can sometimes save a child's life.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_05: This is something that really is at the heart of this debate, this dichotomy between the appropriate firm response and the inappropriate self-response.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_05: But I think another piece of it is the idea that incarceration is care.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_05: And also it's important to also understand the reality of black adults in the way that once you're an adult, the assumption is you're hopeless.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_05: And again, you need to qualify that with black adult, because even though we know that people of all colors and races commit these sort of violent acts, criminal acts, within the context of Maryland, in the context of its history of slavery and the ideologies of Baltimore and black Baltimore is the den of criminality.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_05: We're talking about black adults, and it's like once they are a black adult offender, it's over.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_05: They will inevitably be a menace to society and commit a violent act.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_05: So the only we should just incarcerate them, we should just lock them up.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_05: But the only possibility for use is if we give them harsh deterrent signals early in life so that maybe they'll pick the right path.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_05: Which again is very confusing because again, the idea is that, well, all adults, all we can do is lock them up.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_05: So for the youth, they're different.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_05: What we should do?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_05: We should lock them up.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_05: Right?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's ridiculous.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_05: And again, the idea is like a misunderstanding of what is driving youth criminality.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_05: It isn't like, uh, I may want to shoot that guy, I might not, I'll probably get a slap on the wrist, I'll do it.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's more like that person may be a threat to my life.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_05: And as much as I don't want to be incarcerated, I don't want to be dead more than I don't want to be incarcerated.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_05: So this idea that especially youth, given the realities they're in, brain development, peer pressure, are going to intelligently interpret deterrent signals and be able to make decisions based upon perceived consequences, all the data we have shows that that's not the case.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_05: So the question is what is appropriate accountability?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_05: Because this idea that juvenile facilities are like club fed, like they're getting seafood and massages is ridiculous.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_05: And even Republicans know it's ridiculous because what do they consistently say?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_05: We can't pass this bill because the youth facilities don't have the capacity, they'll be overcrowded, and there'll be bad conditions there.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_05: So Republicans know that these aren't club-fed level conditions, but if the idea, the idea that offends them is that somehow these young people could be treated less harshly if they're accused of a crime.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_05: So again, that's no answer to what if they are falsely accused, in part because there is not a systemic analysis that because of racialized over policing and overcharging, false accusations are relatively common or far more common than we'd like to admit.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's just a possibility, as opposed to something embedded within the system that we call overcharging, that really is a false charge designed to elicit a plea deal.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_05: So because again, we do not have a racialized critique of policing at the heart of this advocacy, we have people being able to use this false dichotomy of adult charges are tough love and youth charges are enabling, that will continuously be deployed against advocates over and over again as we come to advocate for improvements on this policy, because we haven't deconstructed this fundamental lie of the false dichotomy between accountability and justice, we're going to have to continue this debate over and over again.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_05: And because we don't have that fundamental confrontation with the racialized logic embedded within policing, we get comments from Republicans like this that again mistell the history of juvenile justice reform that frames it as if activist overreach is causing a wave of juvenile crime, and that there is no racialized bias, whatever, within the system.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_05: So it's just the injection of these false dichotomies by activists that is driving the demands for these obviously overreaching irrational policies.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_05: So here's another Republican member of the House grandstanding on their interpretation of how juvenile justice reform increases juvenile crime.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: I want to criminalize kids.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: I want to criminalize violent offenders, I want to criminalize people who wave hand guns from commerce to other people while engaged as drug traffickers.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: You want to tell me how much you hate guns, but you don't.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: You don't.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: You don't.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because the gun isn't what kills.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Causes the killing.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's the individual that pulls the trigger.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: And the people who are engaged in putting themselves in situations where they pull the trigger, we want to go light on them.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: We want to go light.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's politically expedient.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: We want to go light on them.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's what the bill does.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: We went too far because the activists demand it.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: The activists outside those doors are beating those doors down.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: The activists would have you charge everyone in this state as a juvenile if they need a certain racial characteristic.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: That is a fact.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter what they do.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter what they do, the activists will tell you it has a disparate impact, and therefore we have to treat them as juveniles.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: Why would anyone care about those characteristics when you're dealing with someone who is potentially a violent criminal?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: Violent.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Your time is up.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_05: So the Republican delegate from St.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_05: Mary's, the way he spits out the term activist, as if it is just the most egregious swear, is I think very telling.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_05: Because let's start with deconstructing his lies, then get to another point about what's happening here.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_05: So it's an obviously ridiculous lie that in a nationwide environment where school was closed because of a pandemic, young people had nothing to do, the social ties and services that sutured communities were ripped apart because we literally could not gather as a people.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, youth crime is going to increase for a couple of years.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_05: That corresponded with changes in juvenile justice powered up by the 2020 protest is now being weaponized to blame a nationwide increase in juvenile crime on Maryland-specific reforms that largely happened at the tail end of that increase in crime.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_05: And we've basically been declining in crime every year since, except for one year.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_05: And the inability for Democrats to say basically that is, I think, part of the problem with the advocacy culture.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_05: The advocacy culture, and the way he spits the term out, is because the perception is these are advocates who are not connected to the community, the people most impacted by crime.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_05: So these are folks who are usually professional advocates, many of them are white, many of them are not from communities impacted by these high rates of crime, coming in and projecting infantilizing, sort of in the minds of critics, very ignorant tropes about these young people are just misguided, all they need is a little bit of guidance, and in the Republican mind, they're like sugs and dangerous and criminal.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_05: I do think there is a concern that the advocacy culture is so wrapped up in this abstract use rights frame and this abstract notion of brain development, of trauma, that they're not focused on really centering on the idea of the community itself, the black community, using the culture and services of black community, black elders, spiritual connectors in the black community to re-socialize these folks and make them accountable to community.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_05: Again, these folks are accused of crimes.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_05: But the idea that folks may be running in a bad crowd, they may not be guilty, but they may need to be socialized in community in order to give them some context that could improve their lives.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_05: There is concern amongst not just Republicans, but also black folks in community, that the advocates that put themselves up as the people brokering these deals, brokering down the watering down of these deals, brokering the concessions behind these deals, are doing so because they don't have the connections to community that can make people feel safe enough to pass more robust versions of these bills.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_05: If we had an argument that we would invest not just a few services and a few nonprofits that people could trust or vetted and tied to evidence-based services, but are really accountable to community, that could build trust from the bottom up for a more robust package of not just seven charges, but deferring much more people starting in the juvenile system and embedding services in communities.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_05: But that would require de-centering the advocacy and service ecosystem beyond what many folks in the advocacy community feel comfortable with.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_05: Because they're comfortable with people in their networks, getting the money to do services that they feel are high quality, i.e., their friends are doing them, is oftentimes the subtext behind that.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_05: And that makes it so that advocates in general are seen as hustling off of use as a professional opportunity rather than deeply community, not just empowering them, but empowering the entire community, black elders, black adults, the entire ecosystem behind black use.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_05: Many times the advocates isolate use as this very unique sector that then needs very specific intervention specifically from their professional network.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_05: And with that, you get the othering of the activist as a well-meaning, ignorant white liberal.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_05: And we're stuck in a tough position because in this case, the argument is correct.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_05: Youth should not be starred in the adult system, it should not be automatically charged as adults.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_05: But that disbilled does not center an expansion of grassroots services empowered by the community, makes it so that some of the mythologies around the advocates that some of our critics are presenting may begin to get traction beyond the hardcore Republican communities, but even some working class black folks have these concerns.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_05: And I think it's important advocants hear that message and not get on the defensive, but actually take seriously that this is causing you political problems in Annapolis.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_05: Where again, the way that they just spit the word activist, is because there is a perception that these folks are disconnected from community.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_05: And the solution to that is not to strategically hand-select community people to voucher you, but to ingratiate yourself in community, understand the criticisms, and respond to it comprehensively, including on how you write bills like this, that figure out ways to shift resources to a more of an ecosystem powered by community to do different kinds of services as we have advocated for here in Baltimore and are trying to do in PG.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_05: Because I briefly want to play the response to this criticism from Montgomery County Delegate Moon, who I think is someone who legitimately tries to engage these issues from an evidence-based standpoint and makes good points.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_05: But again, his conceptual frameworks I think are found lacking if we center this analysis, this strategy, and this criticism.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_05: So here's Delegate Moon.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: The delegate from St.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's asks, how is this bill related to what we did a couple years ago on juvenile justice?
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: You recall that was a tortured debate, and it led to us leaving a situation where children in Maryland can be arrested and incarcerated for handgun possession.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing in the bill today changes that.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when you hear people say they wish this bill went further, I think that's what they're talking about.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing in this bill changes that children can be incarcerated for the crimes that we are now saying they're gonna start in juvenile court.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because in juvenile court, under the juvenile system, under that same bill that that delegate from St.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's was alluding to, you get services.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this body spent a lot of time debating what those services should be, auditing, and trying to get services for kids wrapped up in these crimes.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: To be clear, the bill has nothing to do with murder and rape and all of that.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's out of the bill.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: The amendments that you were discussed, again, have nothing to do with the bill going forward.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: It simply starts these cases in juvenile court.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: They may still end up in adult court, but most of them do not.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is because in Maryland, we believe children have the possibility of redemption.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_05: So again, we have a very colorblind concept of what's happening here, and we have a notion of redemption without proving there's anything needing to be redeemed.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_05: Again, we have an accusation here, but there's something subtle in what he says is in the youth justice bills a few years ago, we put more money into the service ecosystem, or we tried to, we also wanted to make sure those services were vetted, right?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_05: So again, there's this traditional professional, nonprofit, liberal notion of, you know, we gotta make sure that the evidence-based best practices are followed, and that oftentimes discriminates against community-based small service providers who don't have all the capacity to meet these evidentiary standards.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_05: And again, we're dealing with notions of racialized conceptions of black people getting money from the public tax dollars, is theft produced by the very same people that are demonizing the youth.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_05: So you demonize the youth and you demonize the services provided by the youths as stealing money.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_05: And what folks in community are looking for is in addition to a racialized argument around challenging that these youths are all needing of redemption, i.e., all innately guilty somehow, but also challenging the racialized assumptions that black people on the ground don't deserve the money to re-socialize youth.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_05: Because even if these are minor offenses and many of them may even be innocent, there may be things happening that we as a community could have legitimate concerns about, even as we as a community stand up and say we don't think that that's a criminal thing and darn sure not starting in the adult system.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_05: So I want to conclude by playing a compilation of what I think is the seeds of some of what may begin to center a more race-centered, race-conscious way of framing the bill that was prevalent or present in the House hearing.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_05: And I think begins to show the seeds of a starting point for things that we would like to see as we continue as advocates to push for them elimination of the other twenty s five semi-charges that still remain when you are automatically charged as an adult in the state of Maryland, centering an understanding of race and centering an understanding of the system is going to be very useful as we go forward as advocates and we go back to Annapolis to try to get the rest of these charges addressed.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_05: So here's a supercut of some of the testimony from the House that does talk about race explicitly.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_09: This bill is about ensuring that we don't put young people in adult jails if it's not necessary.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_09: And this bill is not perfect.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_09: It doesn't do all the things that I would like it to do in the other direction.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_09: This bill also has a racial, the bill, the bill that is being proposed as an amendment, has a racial impact note.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_09: And it says that DPSCS has already stated that prohibiting or limiting the use of diminution credits to reduce terms of incarceration would eliminate a key rehabilitative component for the affected inmates.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_09: And of course it says the largely black incarcerated population of Maryland will be impacted by the bill to the greatest extent.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, rise in support of this legislation, uh, recognize that it is not perfect as someone who believes that we still have a lot of work to do on juvenile justice.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, this bill is the first step that I think in the right direction to ensure that we are not continuing to criminalize our youth.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_06: And what's unfortunate is that really Maryland is second only to Alabama in the amount of young people that we auto-charge as adults.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_06: And that is not something any one of us should be proud of in this chamber.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_06: We don't want to be in any category with states like Alabama and Florida on any indicator.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_06: But here we are, because we choose to charge kids as adults, and more specifically, 33 offenses.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_06: The bill narrows it down to seven, and it really speaks to the work that we still need to do, but it's the step in the right direction, and my hope is that we will come back and we will do more around juvenile justice to ensure that we're not criminalizing black and brown youth who ultimately become overrepresented in jails and prisons, not because they're inherently criminal, but because of the laws that we passed here or we failed to repeal.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_06: And so I'm proud to support this, and I hope we come back and we look at police lying to kids, we look at other juvenile justice measures, and we do something on behalf of those most vulnerable.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you, Madam Speaker.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_11: Recognizing the delegate from Queen George's.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_11: Thank you, Madam Speaker.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_11: To explain my green vote, first, this bill is about charges, not convictions.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_11: When a child is charged as an adult, their name is public, their picture is public, that damage to that child is irreversible because their name is out there forever for everyone to see.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_11: What happens in this state is when you start in the juvenile system, the state's attorney has the right to request a waiver to waive that case up to adult court.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_11: They can do it in every single case.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_11: But when they start as a juvenile, that protects the integrity and the innocence of that child until they are adjudicated delinquent or proven guilty.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_11: They deserve the presumption of innocence just like every single adult.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_11: And we protect our children.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_11: That's why we don't publish their names in their pictures.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_11: But when they start as an adult, that protection is gone.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_08: This is a result of a lot of thought and work.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_08: That recommendation then came back to the chair of JPR and the chair of judiciary.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_08: There were 33 charges that a young person could receive and be charged as an adult.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_08: We've only reduced it to 26.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_08: As a chair of the legislative black caucus, I gotta look at this through a different lens.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_08: 81% of the young people who were charged as adults look like me and my kids.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_08: This is an imperative, and this is really just a small step.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_08: And folks are right.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, the advocates want all of them, and they are disappointed.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_08: And the state's attorneys don't none of them, and they are disappointed.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_08: But at the end of the day, we've taken a small step in the right direction.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_05: So we went and thank delegates Ruff, Asevero, Austin, and Phillips in order.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_05: Uh the folks you heard on that clip, because I think this shows the seeds of what we're going to need going forward in the future.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_05: Because in addition to youth being charged as adults, there's just a plethora of other policies where we keep seeing this dynamic happen.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_05: Advocates pushing for more comprehensive reform and leadership and uh taking attack towards how to frame the response as, no, this is an incremental change, this is just a technocratic, which is shifting it to judicial efficiency and everything but the thing.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just getting to the point where not just morally but pragmatically, not saying the thing.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_05: These are black youths with all of the attended stereotypes of black youth being tied to them in terms of getting used to a day, getting used to a week, maybe politically could be beneficial when it turns to months and years and larger political trajectories about how out of step Maryland is with not just what is best policy for black people, but even the rest of the country on a lot of these issues.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_05: If we're serious about achieving the outcomes that we claim to be pursuing, we're going to need to have more direct conversation about these dynamics.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_05: And the only way to build a political consensus to produce a policy that reflects that reality is to center conversations around that reality and not believing that obscuring or skirting that conversation, you're never going to achieve a legitimate outcome that addresses those core dynamics without having the debate and conversation center on that reality.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_05: Not as an acutrement, not as a garnish, not as a rhetorical flourish, but as a conceptual center of how the policy is advocated for.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_05: And embedding that conversation is in the black grassroots and passing policies that empowers black grassroots to build about programming that's designed at addressing those core dynamics, how you're going to build a political advocacy coalition that we believe is going to make more substantive reform possible, not just on youth charges, adults, but on a variety of issues where the democratic supermajority state of Maryland is so far behind other equivalent states, and most importantly, behind what black people need to achieve the outcomes that will allow our communities to thrive and survive.
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• 1:00:42
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• 1:03:20
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• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_05: I'm your host, Lawrence Grand Prix.
• 1:03:29
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