Maryland courts run out of money to pay for poor defendants’ pretrial home detention

Maryland courts have run out of money to pay for indigent people charged with crimes to be released on home detention pending trial, putting hundreds of such defendants at risk of reincarceration, according to documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun. In 2021, the state sent $5 million to its Administrative Office of the Courts for a program that would pay private home detention companies to monitor defendants pending trial, so long as judges determined they qualified for release and couldn’t afford the service on their own, the documents show. The money came from the state’s allocation from the Congress’ Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.