Office of the Public Defender
The Digital Forensics Lab will serve OPD clients who may have exonerating evidence or other valuable data on their mobile devices or social media accounts that are not available to or disclosed by the prosecution. In addition to potentially reducing outside expert fees for digital forensics analysis and testimony, this project will allow for an increasingly important avenue of investigations that is currently untapped. With support from the Abell Foundation, OPD can obtain the equipment, software, and training needed to conduct in-house data digital investigations, including: cell phone data extraction; internet, social media and cloud-based tracking and analysis; and mapping of digital data.
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
Drug checking services (Check-It) will be offered in a mobile van during 4-5, 4-hour sessions a week targeting Baltimore City neighborhoods with high rates of overdose identified through mapping drug arrest and overdose data. Testing will take approximately 2 minutes per sample and the results will be provided verbally to the participant. After providing the results, staff will engage in micro-counseling around overdose risk, with information tailored to the participant’s knowledge and practices. Staff will also provide participants with ancillary services i.e., fentanyl test strips, naloxone, as well as referrals to services as needed.
Charm City Care Connection
Abell Foundation support will allow CCCC to open a daytime Harm Reduction Drop-in Center (HRDC) for people with a substance use disorder to provide a safe space to access needed services and support. The HRDC will include low barrier and easy to access services, including the following:syringe exchange,fentanyl test strip distribution, naloxone distribution, community meals and case management.
Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service
The Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS) is the largest pro-bono legal services organization in Maryland and its small, paid staff leverages a large network of volunteer lawyers to provide free legal assistance to people who otherwise would not have access to an attorney. Funding from the Abell Foundation will support the rebuild of MVLS’ CLUE (Client Legal Uitlity Engine) data scraping tool. CLUE is owned by MVLS and used by many community partners to scrape public data from the Maryland Judiciary Case Search to support social justice reform. MVLS and its community partners have used CLUE to assist in areas such as identifying class action lawsuits, bail reform, consumer debt issues, and fine and fees related to court proceedings.
The Baltimore Station
The Baltimore Station provides residential treatment for over 250 men annually. It operates out of two facilities in Baltimore City (South Baltimore and Sandtown-Winchester) providing 144 beds for men in recovery. Funding from the Abell Foundation will support start-up operations for an on-site Psychiatric Rehabilitation Program (PRP) to help its clients transition successfully to permanent housing.