Maryland’s Attorney General and Public Defender have announced a new initiative to address the over incarceration of African Americans and other marginalized groups in the state. Anthony Brown and Natasha Dartigue say the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative will work to reduce mass incarceration through committees that will address specific issues that contribute to incarceration rates. Attorney General Brown says it’s a sad reality that the vast majority of people who have been removed from communities across the country and put behind bars are Black. He says African Americans constitute about 30-percent of Maryland’s population but make up 72-percent of the prison population which is the highest percentage of imprisoned African Americans in the country.