The movement to stop prosecuting low-level crimes gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Baltimore’s chief prosecutor Marilyn Mosby was among those leading the way.
 

Early in the pandemic, as courts drastically cut operations, Mosby stopped prosecuting nine low-level offenses—including drug possession, prostitution, and trespassing—so her prosecutors could focus on serious crimes.
 

Then in March, Mosby appeared to be the first state prosecutor in the country to make the no-prosecution policy permanent.

She said her policy had cut numbers of both arrests, and incarceration, without endangering public safety, often citing a John Hopkins University study to support her view.
 

Her model, along with the Hopkins study, has been used by other state prosecutors to push similar changes in their jurisdictions.
 

For example, Georgia’s Dekalb County chief prosecutor, Sherry Boston, told The Epoch Times that she was considering following Mosby’ footsteps to make a similar policy permanent.
 

But Mosby’s cost-and-benefit analysis on the no-prosecution policy ignored a number of costs, which might have public safety consequences, according to former Baltimore prosecutor, and researcher, Sean Kennedy.
 

Kennedy, a visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, said the crime statistics Mosby and the Hopkins study cited are not as self-evident as they appear.
 

He said even before Mosby’s no-prosecution policy, Baltimore police officers were not going around rounding up junkies and hookers anyway.
 

Kennedy focused on data-informed research on crime policy. Baltimore is Maryland’s largest—and most violent—city.
 

Due to understaffing, Baltimore officers had been stretched to cover patrols and many were smart enough to focus their limited energy on the most violent offenders, Kennedy said.
 

A lot of times, officers were only using on-the-book low-level crimes as a leverage to get people to stop what they are doing, or get them to seek help, he said.
 

“A junkie is shooting up on someone’s lawn in front of children, so the cops come up and say, ‘Get the hell out of here, or we are going to arrest you.’ And the junkie moves on.”
 

Now, as Mosby does not prosecute these crimes at all, junkies are less likely to move on, Kennedy said.
 

Meanwhile, Baltimore’s drug overdose deaths rose from 434 in first half of 2020 to 485 in 2021, according to Maryland Department of Health data.
 

Even in cases where officers arrested low-level offenders and got them into the criminal justice system, prosecutors seldom sought jail sentences, according to Kurt Nachtman, a former Baltimore prosecutor.
 

Like police officers, prosecutors often used the potential prosecution as a leverage to get people help through specialty treatment courts and outside therapeutic services.
 

For instance, at Baltimore’s drug treatment courts, participants get substance abuse and other support services for at least 18 months to recover from addiction and become productive citizens again.
 

“When you don’t get them into the criminal justice system—when there is no threat of any potential prosecution—there is little incentive for them to seek treatment,” Nachtman said.
 

“It is very hard for people who are engaged in drug use to quit on their own, because it is a disease, right?”
 

In his seven years as a Baltimore prosecutor, Nachtman observed some common traits of repeat violent offenders, one being that they usually started with small crimes.
 

“If you get someone engaged in the system early on with a low-level offense, you could potentially save him from getting engaged later on for more serious charges,” he said.
 

Sometimes, these low-level crimes were also used as a tool to get the worst offenders.
 

Nachtman said police officers and detectives often knew the big-time drug dealers, or trigger pullers, in a certain neighborhood, but a lot of times they couldn’t arrest them for lack of evidence.
 

However, if police caught them doing small-time crimes, they could arrest them for prosecutors to launch a full-fledged prosecution.
 

For example, while it is hard to catch a drug dealer in the act of distributing drugs, police might get to catch him in possession of drugs.
 

“If you say, I’m not prosecuting drug possession cases, you take the tool out of the arsenal for law enforcement to target those types of individuals,” Nachtman said.
 

At other times, police could arrest underlings on low-level crimes, and later prosecutors could get them to testify against their bosses, using potential prosecution as a leverage, according to Kennedy.
 

“You need leverage to get addicts, and prostitutes, to testify against dangerous drug dealers, and sex traffickers,” Kennedy said.
 

Crime Statistics

When Mosby announced in March that her pandemic no-prosecution policy was permanent, she proudly said Baltimore’s violent crime was down 20 percent since the new policy took effect.
 

Kennedy questioned that assertion.
 

According to FBI’s crime reporting standard, there are four violent crimes: murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault (including shootings).
 

The last two crimes make up 80 percent to 90 percent of Baltimore’s violent felonies in an average year, which means even a modest shift in these two crimes could lead to a big swing in the overall crime rate, Kennedy said.
 

For example, the decrease in robberies alone contributed to 83 percent of the decline in Baltimore’s overall violent crimes since Mosby’s policy took effect, according to Kennedy’s analysis.
 

And that decline was not due to Mosby’s policy, Kennedy said.
 

During the pandemic lockdowns, far fewer people were out on the streets and thus robbers had far fewer targets to hit, he said.
 

As for murders and rapes, both are up since last year.
 

By Nov. 27, 2021, Baltimore had 310 homicides, up from 300 for the same period in 2020. The city had 284 rapes, up from 269 in 2020, according to Baltimore Police Department data.
 

In the John Hopkins University study, researchers found fewer than 1 percent of 741 people let go on drug and prostitution offenses, later committed serious crimes.
 

The study did not examine if they reoffended with low-level crimes.
 

Also, researchers found a big drop in the number of 911 calls complaining about drug, or prostitution, offenses.
 

Based on the above two metrics, the report suggests Mosby’s new policy reduces arrests without jeopardizing public safety.
 

The report also pointed out these were only preliminary findings and causality could not yet be established.
 

Kennedy said, “If you knew that the police wouldn’t respond—or if they did respond, they did nothing—would you call 911? So less complaints do not mean less crimes.”

Cara is a Chicago-based Epoch Times reporter. She can be reached at cara.ding@epochtimes.com.