The Sun's editorial "Incarceration City" (June 15) was right to suggest that putting more people in prison isn't the way to solve the city's crime problem. That's one of the reasons I am so very troubled by the state's plan to spend more than $100 million to build a new jail for Baltimore City youths awaiting trial as adults. At a time when Baltimore is closing recreation centers and cutting back other critical public services because of budget shortfalls, it's counter-productive to spend that kind of money on a new jail. The money should be spent on after-school and youth employment programs that will do more to protect public safety and to produce better outcomes for our youths.

Reforms are badly needed for the state's long-troubled juvenile justice system, and the current practice of imprisoning many children charged as adults with adult inmates at the city jail is unacceptable.

But building a new jail to house 180 to 230 city youths awaiting trial as adults is a draconian response to those problems, one that would encourage the state to continue the kind of practices that put too many city youths — especially African-American and low-income youths — behind bars.

The city just doesn't need a new detention facility for 200-plus youths. The average number of youths age 14-17 in detention awaiting trial as adults each day in Baltimore is about 100, and that figure is down from about 140 four years ago.

Those youths have not been convicted of a crime but are locked up while they await trial. Many of them do not need to be locked up at all. Research shows that alternatives to detention not only produce better outcomes for troubled young people but save the taxpayers money. Those youths who must be locked up before trial should be housed in a juvenile justice facility like the existing Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, even as the state makes a stronger effort to make that facility a more humane one. Virginia recently passed a law requiring youths charged as adults to be housed in juvenile facilities rather than adult jails and Maryland could establish a similar policy under current state law.

Instead of building a new jail, state officials should also act quickly to determine which youth offenders can safely be released and supervised through at-home and community-based detention and supervision programs and other alternatives to incarceration. By some estimates that transition could save the state more than $10 million a year.

The state should use some of those savings to fund the kind of programs and interventions we know help kids flourish and find a better path toward adulthood. Research confirms that counseling and connections to caring adults and opportunities to earn money and develop career skills support recovery and healthy development for youth offenders and at-risk youth alike. These are better strategies for securing the public safety and constructing a more sustainable future for our city and state than building another jail could ever be.

Mary L. Washington, Baltimore

The writer is a candidate for the House of Delegates in the 43rd District.