Editor’s note: Being charged with a crime doesn’t mean that a person is found guilty. Additionally, these interviews were conducted in January 2025.

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The Prince George’s County Courtwatch, a program under Life After Release, a non-profit organization based in Prince George’s County (South County), is expanding its work to Charles County, Maryland.

The organization aims to expand its services further south to ensure that the Charles County court system upholds the law and delivers fair sentences.

“We want to make sure that bond hearings are adhering to Maryland Rule 4-261.1,” said Dr. Carmen Johnson, director of Court Watch PG. Johnson has trained over 400 court watchers and has attended over 6,000 bond hearings. The Maryland Rule “is designed to promote the release of defendants on their recognizance or, when necessary, unsecured bond,” according to a legal document.

“[They’re also being held] for things like a failure to appear in court, or a crime that doesn’t even involve another person.”

— McKayla Wilkes

Courtwatchers’ are trained community volunteers who attend scheduled bond hearings. Volunteers, trained by instructors at the PG Courtwatch, record the events that occurred at the bond hearings. After court volunteers debrief with courtwatch staff about the proceedings, especially noting how judges treated defendants in court, they decide whether the judge upheld Maryland Rule 4-261.1. If they verify that the rule of law is not upheld, in various ways, they advocate for judges to do so. Additionally, on more than one occasion, they have paid bail for those who could not afford it. Volunteers also comfort families by attending bond hearings with them. Sometimes advocates provide food, money, and clothing to those who are released after serving pre-trial jail sentences.

There is a reason they want to expand to Charles County. McKayla Wilkes, community outreach organizer at Life After Release, has visited courtroom hearings in Charles County. Wilkes said she has witnessed community members' rights violated by being sentenced to pre-trial jail for non-violent crimes.

“[They’re also being held] for things like a failure to appear in court, or a crime that doesn’t even involve another person,” she explained.

To combat these issues, Wilkes said the county needs pre-trial services. Pre-trial services help to prevent community members who have been charged with a crime from being incarcerated in pre-trial jail while they await a court hearing. Members who work with this unit assess cases and provide an alternative to incarceration. Prince George’s County, Montgomery, Anne Arundel, Washington, D.C., and Fauquier County, Virginia, all have pre-trial services. There are 94 federal districts in the U.S. that provide this service for community members charged with a crime.

The court could order those charged with a crime to be placed on community supervision, which entails wearing an electronic ankle bracelet. Yet, even ankle bracelet monitoring is connected to mass incarceration. Unless the judge says otherwise, community members who are charged with a crime and are required to wear an electronic monitor are responsible for paying the cost of it.

“[Jails are] one of the hidden harms of the carceral system.”

— Michael Weiss

Additionally, pre-trial services provide resources that help community members charged with a crime to attend their court hearings on time, which can prevent re-arrests. Often, community members are rearrested for not appearing in court, a feature of the system that disproportionally impacts Black and Brown people.

“Jails are an important and often overlooked aspect of the criminal legal system,”said Michael Weiss, communications director at Prison Policy, a non-profit organization that tracks prison and jail populations in America. “People often think of prisons, right? They don't think nearly as much about the role that their local jail plays in mass incarceration.”

Weiss said that there are about 10 million people who circulate through “the doors of jail, yearly.”

Maryland incarcerates about 475 per 100,000 people, according to Prison Policy. This figure is a combination of juvenile justice facilities, prisons, immigration detention centers, and jails. According to its latest analysis, there are about 12,000 people incarcerated in Maryland's local jails. Baltimore City and the Eastern Shore communities have the highest jail incarceration rates in the state.

“[Jails are] one of the hidden harms of the carceral system,” Weiss explained. There is also a class angle. Most of the people incarcerated are poor and unhoused. (This includes poor white people as well). This population’s annual income is nearly $10,000 a year.

According to numerous studies, most people incarcerated in pre-trial jails are disproportionately Black and Brown. “Overrepresentation of Black individuals in jail is longstanding; for at least the past two decades, Black people have made up more than a third of jail populations nationally, despite constituting only about 14% of the general population,” according to a 2023 Pew Research article. “However, recent Bureau of Justice Statistics reporting shows that although the number of Black and White people held in jail fell significantly between 2019 and 2020, the decrease was greater for White people than for Black people.”

Weiss said Black people are incarcerated more because their communities tend to be policed “more readily and more heavily handed.” He said behaviors among white middle-class folks are more tolerated than those in Black neighborhoods.

“For example, I think that if you walk through a park in a white neighborhood, you'll often see people drinking wine on a picnic, sitting on a blanket in the park, and, like, it's no big deal. But if you go into a Black neighborhood and some folks are drinking wine or drinking something, they're [likely] going to have an encounter with the police,” he explained. “They’re likely going to be harassed. I think it really exemplifies one of the different ways that Black communities are policed over white communities.”

For Wilkes and Johnson, as well as other activists, pre-trial incarceration puts community members, who have been charged with a crime, at risk of losing jobs and in danger of death. According to research conducted by Life After Release in collaboration with the University of UCLA, community members incarcerated at the Prince George’s County Correctional Center died within the first ten days of being incarcerated in pre-trial jails.

The study collected data on 10 cities in Maryland where community members charged with a crime were held in pre-trial jail. They observed incarceration deaths from 2008 to 2019. The Intersection reached out to one of the researchers, Dr. Terence Keel –professor of Human Biology and Society at the University of California, Los Angeles, and founding director of The Lab for BioCritical Studies – for comment. He did not respond to our questions about the research. During those years, Charles County recorded 7 in-custody deaths (2 Black men, 3 white men, and 2 white women) at the Charles County Detention Center. The study shows that these individuals were in jail for approximately 3 days before death. Causes of death entailed, three by suicide, one by drug use, and one labeled “natural.” They were in pre-trial jail and “unconvicted.” From 2019 to 2023, Maryland data for in-custody deaths at Charles County jails and prisons records show 5 male deaths (2 Black, 2 White, 1 Asian). According to the data, two were accidental deaths, one labeled “other,” one by suicide, and one by use of force.

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