Baltimore Might Have Too Many Judges

Does Baltimore City have more judges than it needs?

The I-Team has learned that an internal audit is underway to answer that question. It follows a dramatic drop in caseloads over the past decade.

Baltimore's district courts can be pretty quiet places, some days with no need for all courtrooms on some days to even be open. The caseload has dropped that much.

There are 28 judges assigned to Baltimore's district courts. The internal audit by the state's top court officials is to answer how many are really needed to handle the current caseload.

Here's what's happened: In 2005, the city's district's courts handled an average of 6,528 criminal cases each month. Now, they handle an average of 2,252 criminal cases per month -- a drop of 66 percent.

The court's criminal caseload follows what police do, and over the same time, city police arrests have plummeted, too.

In 2005, the height of a zero-tolerance policy, city police made an average of 7,447 arrests per month. Now, the monthly average is 2,095 arrests. That reduction since 2005 is 72 percent.

The caseload and arrests did not drop all at once but started declining steadily.

The state's more lenient marijuana law has taken hundreds of cases off the docket each month. Police arrests took a dip after the death of Freddie Gray but then leveled off.

The monthly data does not show any noticeable effect on arrests since the signing of the federal consent decree for reform.

The state's corrections system has already adjusted to lower criminal cases in Baltimore. It closed the old city jail. It also closed the women's detention center and changed a section of Central Booking, once an overcrowded facility, to accommodate female detainees.

A spokesman for court system said the audit is looking at caseloads statewide, as well. Its audit should be complete in the fall.