• Monica Cooper: ‘We were all born to be in the service of others’

    By Special to The Daily Record Adam Bednar Maryland Justice Project founder Monica Cooper created the organization to champion solutions to issues of economic justice hindering formerly incarcerated people. She knows firsthand the struggles those individuals face in earning a living and building a prosperous future for themselves and their families once their sentence is [...]
  • OSI Fellow alum celebrates Lumbee culture in Baltimore

    Today, the Baltimore Sun featured Ashley Minner, an American Studies professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a 2008 OSI Community Fellow, who spoke about the project she is working on that will create an archive of the history East Baltimore’s Lumbee Indian Community. Minner is an enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe. […]

  • OSI’s Danielle Torain joins discussion with emerging leaders

    Last week, OSI Director Danielle Torain spoke to the 2020 cohort of the Baltimore Young Leaders Professional Development Program. The program, run by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Community Wealth Partners, was inspired by OSI’s 2018 report, Young, Gifted, and Underfunded, which documented local funders’ low rate of giving to youth-led movements and recommended […]

  • Opinion: It’s Time to Expand Concept, Scope of Police Reform

    By Gabriela Sevilla and Christopher Dews Maryland’s legislature will convene again in January; though anything but a typical year, bills will be introduced to reform the criminal justice system. Many bills, as currently drafted, focus on the important issue of police reform – which has received much deserved attention in recent months. But a critical [...]
  • OSI supports city’s coordinated violence-reduction strategy

    OSI-Baltimore is among several funders supporting a new collaborative, community-based approach to reducing violence in Baltimore City, called the Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS).  Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the Baltimore Police Department, and the Office of the State’s Attorney co-released a statement announcing the strategy last week, suggesting […]

  • OSI’s Rachel Moler testifies at City Council hearing on Overdose Prevention Sites

    Today, Baltimore City Councilman Kristerfer Burnett, chair of the Council’s Health Committee hosted an informational City Council hearing on Overdose Prevention Sites (OPS) for the stated purpose of “inviting representatives from the Health Department, the Baltimore Police Department, the Fire Department, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and the Law Department to provide information about […]

  • OSI’s Tara Huffman joins panel to discuss “Building an Anti-Racist Economy”

    On Thursday, Tara Huffman, director of OSI’s Criminal and Juvenile Justice Program, participated in a panel discussion on “Building an Anti-Racist Economy” as part of the Maryland Center for Economic Policy’s (MCEP) third annual policy summit. “None of what we’re doing is making any of us safer and it’s most certainly not making those Black […]

  • OSI’s Karen Webber joins educators and academics to discuss restorative practices in city schools

    Last week, the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law’s Center for Dispute Resolution hosted a webinar on “Building a Restorative School District,” sharing the results of OSI’s recent report, co-released with the Center, Johns Hopkins’ School of Education, and Baltimore City Schools, which detailed the initial impact of integrating restorative practices into […]

  • OSI Community Fellows Participate in the Season of Giving

      OSI would like to highlight some of the events and projects the Community Fellows are hosting or facilitating this season: This Sunday, November 22, Building Our Nations Daughters, Inc (BOND), the organization founded by Ateira Griffin (2020) will be providing no-contact delivery of full Thanksgiving baskets to single-parent families in need in Baltimore City […]

  • OSI, Pratt host expansive book talk on Five Days, I Got a Monster

    Last night, OSI and the Pratt Libraries co-hosted a rich, expansive conversation with the Baltimore-based authors of “Five Days” and “I Got a Monster,” along with activist Tawanda Jones, who is profiled in “Five Days.” State Senator Jill Carter moderated the conversation, the Pratt’s Kelli Shimabukuru offered a welcome, and OSI’s Tara Huffman introduced the […]