Maryland's attorney general and public defender go on barbershop tour to discuss incarceration
BALTIMORE -- Barbershops have long been the social hubs that bring people together. They're often the common ground for sharing ideas and discussing issues in the community. On Saturday, the topic of discussion was incarceration.
This weekend, there was a historic collaboration between Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown and Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue as they took a barbershop tour in hopes of sparking conversations about how to repair the cycle of incarceration.
Brown sat down in a barber chair at Conscious Heads Barbershop and Natural Hair Salon in East Baltimore to spark a dialogue with Baltimoreans.
It was the first barbershop on his barbershop tour. He and Dartigue visited three neighborhood barbershops to discuss mass incarceration.
"We're coming into the community, having conversations and listening to the community in terms of viable solutions," Dartigue said.
The prison policy initiative says that while only 9% of Maryland Residents live in Baltimore, 40% of those residents in the state prison system are from Baltimore.
Some people pitched ideas for how to keep young people out of the system.
"We need to change their mentality. If we're going to be doing something in schools, we need to be teaching financial literacy, entrepreneurship," one man said.
The duo heard from the community on issues like blight, long waitlists to get a GED, policies, records expungements, and other factors that contribute to recidivism.
"You invest in people. You invest in communities, you'll reduce crime," Brown said. "You'll reduce the cost to taxpayers and then you'll have a more humane system."
Although there is no simple solution, the informal discussion was a step in the right direction for some people.
"Coming into this community is a step in and of itself as opposed to having us come to somewhere else or being in a different area, coming here is an intentional step," Christopher Ervin, the president of the Lazarus Rite, said.
Community leaders plan to hold an expungement fair and job resume fair at a park Heights barbershop next month.