Archive

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 […]

Recently, members of the OSI-funded BRIDGES Coalition were featured on WMAR to advocate for keeping treatment clinics in Baltimore City. Members of the coalition, responding to Mayor Pugh’s suggestion earlier this summer that treatment centers are the source of neighborhood violence, argue that taking treatment centers out of the neighborhoods that need them most would […]

Tonight, 36 Baltimore City students participating in the Baltimore Young Writers’ Summer Studio will gather at the Impact Hub to interview politicians, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and others to write profiles that will be published in a September issue of City Paper. The Summer Studio is a program of Writers in Baltimore Schools, a project started by […]

2014 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow Shawn Burnett and his organization, Walks of ART, will collaborate with author D. Watkins and photographer Devin Allen to bring a two-day journalism master class to Baltimore City youth on August 15 and 16. Young people from Baltimore City age 14 to 18 can send a photo with a story (no more than […]

On Friday, the 2016 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellows hosted its monthly Fellows Gathering at Baltimore Teacher Supply Swap to hear about the experiences of two members of their cohort, Melissa Badeker and Jennifer Will-Thapa. Badeker co-founded the Teacher Supply Swap to help bridge the gap between educators who need materials and those who have extra materials […]

This week, Scott Nolen, director of OSI-Baltimore’s Drug Addiction Treatment Program graduated from the Presidential Leadership Scholars Program, an initiative hosted by the presidential centers of George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Nolen was one of 60 people selected for the program’s third cohort which ran from February […]

TODAY, the Baltimore Sun published an op-ed by Public Defender and OSI-Baltimore Leadership Council member, Todd Oppenheim. In “Baltimore’s Mandatory minimum madness,” Oppenheim calls the newly-proposed mandatory minimum sentencing for illegal handgun possession a “shortsighted attempt to curb violence through incarceration.” Mandatory minimum sentences do not increase public safety and restrict judges ability to rule […]

There is currently much debate and discussion in Baltimore City about the best strategies to reduce the violence that currently plagues our City. As policymakers, civic leaders and concerned community members come together to identify and implement the best solutions, it is prudent that we revisit what the last 40 years has taught us about […]