NCJ Number
105061
Journal
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin Volume: 56 Issue: 3 Dated: (March 1987) Pages: 1-5
Date Published
1987
Length
5 pages
Annotation
Maryland's Repeat Offender Program Experiment (ROPE) was designed to incapacitate repeat offenders through improvements in all aspects of criminal and juvenile processing.
Abstract
Its principal features include systemwide coordination, executive support, information-sharing, reallocation of resources, and planning. Local ROPE's are now in place in five counties. In Baltimore County, the program involved six key strategies: targeting of violent and repeat offenders, documentation of prior records, limits on plea bargaining, formal handling of serious juvenile offenders, tighter community supervision, and a police Repeat Offender Unit. In the 3 years since 1983, the program has been successful in having 37 offenders sentenced under mandatory sentencing laws for violent and repeat offenders and has resulted in the incarceration of an additional 124 threshold offenders. The goals of the juvenile ROPE program included identifying violent and serious juvenile offenders, removing them from the community as soon as possible, detaining them pending adjudication, obtaining waivers to adult court for repeat violent offenders, and ensuring cases are adequate for obtaining a conviction. As of April 1986, 102 juveniles have been identified and tracked by the program; in 1985, of 40 separate waivers requested on 25 juveniles, 28 resulted in waiver to adult status.