The city prosecutor's office in Baltimore has been plagued by staffing shortages for years. When Ivan Bates was sworn in as State's Attorney last year, taking over from the scandal-plagued administration of Marilyn Mosby, the office had lost more than 80 prosecutors and faced growing morale problems. Today, the office is on track to be fully staffed with line prosecutors by September and has a new strategic plan to address gaps in its treatment of crime victims, the Baltimore Sun reports. The strategic plan, which Bates said is the first in the history of the State’s Attorney’s Office, also focuses on training prosecutors in a standard set of skills, expanding the use of technology and tracking employees’ performance.
The office will begin surveying crime victims and witnesses to assess whether their needs are being met and will redesign its waiting area to ensure they have a private space away from the other parties who come to court for criminal proceedings. Heather Warnken, the executive director at the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform, praised the office’s effort to examine how it treats victims and witnesses of crime but emphasized that building trust will require a collaborative effort that cuts across a variety of agencies and organizations. “This whole thing is an ecosystem,” said Warnken, who also was the lead author of a critical 2021 report on victim services in Baltimore. “However the State’s Attorney’s Office is treating victims and witnesses, those people are still coming into contact with other parts of the system and they need to strengthen this approach together.” Bates reintroduced the prosecution of low-level “quality-of-life” offenses last year, a campaign pledge he made after Mosby stopped charging those cases during the coronavirus pandemic. Bates created a citation court docket aimed at diverting people who commit those offenses into community service and supportive programming.
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