Has Hogan Delivered on Crime Reduction?
Four years ago Governor Hogan declared a state of emergency on opioid use and the general uptick in crime. Since then Baltimore's crime rate has increased to one of the highest in the U.S.
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Hogan vetoed a bill to extend voting rights to felons
Hogan vetoed the law saying it improperly restored rights to people who had not yet paid their debt to society. He waged an aggressive social media campaign urging his supporters to lobby lawmakers to side with him and his "common sense" veto.
The legislature narrowly overturned Hogan's veto of a bill to extend voting rights to felons before they complete probation and parole.
The current system requires felons to complete probation and parole before registering to vote. But proponents argued that the system is confusing, unnecessary and demoralizing to ex-offenders trying to rebuild their lives.
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Hogan crime bills won't actually reduce crime.
Violence in Baltimore continues at soar and city residents are desperate for solutions. Unfortunately, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has proposed crime bills that sound tough but that won’t actually reduce crime. Straight from the Trump-Sessions playbook, the governor’s plan relies on lengthy mandatory-minimum prison sentences. This approach wastes taxpayer dollars and results in higher recidivism rates. This outdated model of fighting crime that reflects a desire to “do something” to look tough shows little evidence that longer, mandatory sentences work. The Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice has found that it is the certainty of being caught and the swiftness of the response, not the length of the sentence, that deters future crime. Cities with record-low crime rates, like New York City, pursue tactics such as “hot spot” policing that target high-crime street corners and focusing resources on closing cases and getting convictions.
Hogan failed on forfeiture reform
Hogan vetoed a civil asset forfeiture reform bill that had been passed almost unanimously by the State Senate. Senate Bill 528 would have closed the "equitable sharing" loophole that incentivizes Maryland law enforcement agencies to circumvent state forfeiture laws for financial gain. Senate Bill 528 sought to rebalance a system that is prone to abuse. Financial incentives built into civil forfeiture encourage law enforcement agencies to seize property, often on dubious grounds, since typically they get to keep some portion of the proceeds of their forfeitures. Meanwhile, tortuous legal processes make it exceedingly difficult and prohibitively expensive to challenge seizures when they do occur. To prevail in court, property owners typically must prove their own innocence. And if they are too poor to afford a lawyer, they must do so on their own. Innocent people like Randy and Karen Sowers have been forced to fork over half their farm's earnings to the government because of an alleged "structuring" violation. Their business which involved direct-to-consumer sales often led to dealing with large amounts of cash. A bank teller advised them to deposit in increments of less than $10,000 to avoid government scrutiny. This act alerted the IRS which accused them of trying to bypass currency transaction reporting laws. Despite never being accused of earning the money illegally, they were forced to pay the government nearly $30,000 as part of a settlement. While SB 528 would not have solved all these situations, it would have gone a long way to help prevent what happened to the Sowers family to happening to other innocent Marylanders.
