The hallways of a conference center at Maryland’s Bowie State University on Tuesday were lined with tables packed with information on community services, education, jobs, and even transit information.
The 2025 Maryland Statewide Diversion, Reentry, and Justice-Involved Conference, hosted by the university and the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services focused on programming aimed at making a prisoner’s reentry into their community a successful one.
Carolyn J. Scruggs, secretary of Maryland’s DPSCS, told WTOP that the need for programming that follows former prisoners out into the community when their sentences are completed are vital.
“We don’t need that to stop when they go home,” she said. “We have over 17,000 incarcerated men and women here in the state of Maryland, and we have over 39,000 that are currently in the community on parole and probation.”
Charles Adams, the executive director of Bowie State University’s Prison Education Program, said along with education, access to mental health programming for prisoners during and after they serve their time is critical.
“We know that trauma is one of the key factors — a key predictor of involvement in the legal system,” he said.
Attendee Willie Hamilton can tell you exactly how long he spent behind bars: “I spent 30 years, 210 days incarcerated,” he said.
“I was 16 years old, didn’t know who I was as an individual, had a lot of frustration and anger built up in me,” Hamilton said. He credits mental health aids he had access to as changing him.
Now, he works to help other former prisoners as they navigate the transition from incarceration to life outside the corrections system.
Asked what message he might have for teenagers, Hamilton said, “My message wouldn’t necessarily be to the young, it would be to society.”
“I think, for me, the youth are being exposed to too much now,” he continued, calling out excessive violence and negativity on the internet and in social media for example.
Ted Sutton, a former gang member turned consultant and motivational speaker, agrees that often the focus on crime prevention is not where it needs to be. Often, there are programs for young people focused on an individual’s behavior and, perhaps, they get a mentor, he said.
“But then you send them back into a toxic situation” in their homes or communities, Hamilton acknowledged.
Sutton and Hamilton said there needs to be a continuation of programming and wraparound services throughout communities on an ongoing basis.
Sutton is a big advocate for what he calls “urban youth specialists,” which he describes as, “people who’ve been there, done that, wrote the book, starred in the movie, but they now denounce the life” that led them to criminal activity.
Sutton said he believes teenagers need to know that they don’t have to be a gangster to be cool. “Gangster is bringing groceries to your family. Gangster is walking your daughter to school,” Sutton said.
He urges young people to hold to what they know is right and recalls the advice he gave his own daughter: “I need for them to know: don’t follow the crowd, lead the crowd.”
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