Open Society Institute – Baltimore
Open Society Institute (OSI) – Baltimore : Audacious Thinking For Lasting Change
On Tuesday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a grantee of Open Society Foundations, filed a class action lawsuit against an unlicensed bail bonds company operating in Baltimore. The lawsuit challenges 4 Aces Bail Bonds Incorporated’s unlawful and predatory practices, including collecting bail bond premiums without a license. Bail bond companies must be […]
“It’s an unfair system,” says Bill L, who was detained for 40 days in the Montgomery County Detention Center on $7,500 bail. “You are guilty until proven innocent. The average person won’t have the money unless you’re rich. For the poor man, $750 might as well be $10,000, or $100,000. There are people in here […]
A new story in the Maryland Daily Record reports on the dramatic reduction on the use of cash bail in Maryland (“With cash bail down and releases up, stakeholders turn attention to pretrial services“). Perhaps most notably, while the use of cash bail dropped from around 40 percent of criminal cases in 2016 to about […]
Jones received a fellowship to implement a Media Education Program designed to teach Baltimore inner city youth to be critical consumers of the electronic media. The Program is also designed to help youth produce media messages.
Harold Bailey’s three siblings went to Brown, Yale and Loyola. At the age of 23, Bailey went to prison. His near 20-year incarceration—for a fight that resulted in a homicide—affected his entire family. But instead of turning their backs on him, family members’ support helped Bailey muster the determination to keep learning and improving through […]
This week, the Daily Record reported on the recent publication of two studies that suggest that while Maryland’s new pretrial release rule decreased the use of cash bail, additional education and resources are needed. One of the studies, published by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender and funded by Open Society Institute, sent 64 […]
At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee in Annapolis Tuesday, judges and public defenders testified that a Court of Appeals ruling that went into effect in July has been successful at reducing the number of people held in jail because they can’t afford to pay bail. The Daily Record noted that Baltimore County State’s Attorney […]
The Maryland Daily Record reports today that the use of cash bail in Maryland has declined since a new Court of Appeals rule, asking courts to prioritize non-monetary conditions for pretrial release, went into effect in July: In the six months since Maryland’s retooled bail rule went into effect, nearly 60 percent of criminal defendants […]
Members of the OSI-Baltimore-funded Coalition for a Safe and Just Maryland (CSJM) have made series of media appearances in recent weeks, renewing the fight for bail reform months after the state legislature turned back an attempt by the bail industry to roll back the unanimous state appeals court ruling requiring judges to consider non-financial pretrial conditions […]
OSI-Baltimore has permanently closed. It has been our honor and privilege to partner with and serve the Baltimore community for the past 25 years.
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