Criminal justice

Maryland’s underfunding of its Office of the Public Defender has left hundreds of positions unfilled, making it harder for the office to provide clients with the services they need, says Marci Tarrant Johnson, president of the Maryland Defenders Union.

YesCare will keep providing medical care to incarcerated people while the state reviews bids for a new contract.

A West Baltimore priest on Monday led a group of Baltimore residents on a prayer walk to remember the 258 people who have died by homicide in the city in 2023. The walk included a reading of the names of victims, who ranged from 2 to 80.

Baltimore typically sees a small increase in homicides at the end of the year, but not this year.

Through fashion shows, sip-and-paints and slumber parties, the women remind themselves that hobbies are healing.

Instead of trying to fill the void, some bereaved moms search for other women who have one, too.

The Maryland bar counsel on Friday filed a petition to suspend the law license of former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who was convicted of federal perjury charges last month.

My friends from Birmingham, Alabama, wonder how I will deal with all the crime when I move to Baltimore. Crime rates are generally higher in my hometown.

Anthony Barksdale, a former deputy police commissioner, returned to the city in 2022 as the deputy mayor overseeing public safety.

Four other people were shot and wounded Saturday morning in the incident in Woodlawn.

One person is dead and four others were injured in an early morning shooting Saturday in Woodlawn.

A national annual scorecard gives the state a passing grade for the strength of its gun safety laws.

The city will likely record fewer than 300 homicides this year, but Baltimore’s young people were shot and killed at the highest rate in at least a decade.

A federal judge took the unusual step of reversing a jury’s guilty verdict against a Maryland doctor for health care fraud.

Joseph Black, 37, faces retrial on assault and weapons charges.

Boxer Gervonta “Tank” Davis is giving back by helping to renovate the same West Baltimore neighborhood he grew up in, city officials announced Thursday at a press conference.

Luis Rodriguez filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Baltimore Police Department for what his attorney Malcolm Ruff described as a “traumatic and unnecessary” injury. The suit claims gross negligence and battery, and it requests a jury trial.

Even with the reduction in killings — Baltimore will record its lowest homicide total since tallying 211 in 2014 — the city’s murder rate remains among the highest in the nation and is similar to what it was in the 1990s.

Baltimore is seeing fewer murders than in recent years, but many residents say the city doesn’t feel any safer, and they express a lack of confidence in the ability of city leaders to reduce violent crime, Goucher College political scientist Mileah Kromer says.

Since stepping down as police commissioner this summer, Michael Harrison has consulted in Memphis and New Orleans, and may soon be in Chicago and Minneapolis.