STATESTAT UPDATE:
Improving Public Safety in Maryland

October  29, 2009

 

Hello I’m Governor Martin O’Malley.   In these times of budget cuts and spending reductions, there are some priorities we can’t afford to cut back on.  Highest on that list is the safety of neighborhoods throughout our One Maryland.

I wanted to take a few moments to talk to you about our progress on public safety.

Last year, we achieved the highest decrease in homicides in the last decade – at 11 percent.  Juvenile homicides are down by the same rate, and new initiatives are now in place to monitor juvenile shooting victims, who are often at the greatest risk of committing violent acts themselves. 

In addition, we’ve reformed our Division of Parole and Probation, and have implemented the widely renowned Violence Prevention Initiative, a program that tracks our most violent offenders and requires enhanced supervision by specially trained officers.  More than 2,100 offenders now fall under this initiative.

We’ve implemented the same program for violent juvenile offenders, where nearly 350 young people now participate in aggressive monitoring and contact with law enforcement officials.

As public officials, our most solemn obligation is to the safety of the public we serve.  We’ve enacted tough new innovative ways of accomplishing that goal, including unprecedented cross-border information sharing among regional law enforcement agencies of neighboring states and the District of Columbia, so criminals who jump the borders can’t evade justice.  Maryland is leading the way by moving our State from an outdated patchwork of fingerprinting systems to new digital technology, and we’ve eliminated a backlog of over 24,000 DNA samples that we inherited from our predecessors.  We’ve now matched more DNA samples with violent offenders in the last two and a half years that the program ever did in its previous eight years.

With your help, we’re creating safer neighborhoods for our families.  Thank you.