Maryland's psychiatric waitlist for jailed defendants hits a record as a judge presses the health department
At a March 2025 hearing in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, the Banner reported, the number waiting had eased slightly to 230 from the February record. Maryland law requires admission within 10 days of a judge's order, but the department's own averages were 54 days at its regional hospitals and roughly six months at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, the maximum-security facility. The department's 1,056 psychiatric beds are perpetually full.
Judge Ronald Silkworth, who was deciding whether to continue his December 2024 order holding the department in contempt and fining it $416,000, said the problem had long been a crisis of constitutional proportions. Per his December opinion, the department had also been hit with about $2 million in sanctions from other judges. A department official described a planned "waitlist challenge" aiming to admit 75 patients a month, spending of $1.6 million from the governor's administration on community beds, and a Montgomery County pilot to treat some misdemeanor defendants in the community instead of waiting for a hospital bed.
Source: Record number of people with mental illness languishing in Maryland jails waiting for hospital beds — The Baltimore Banner, by Alex Mann
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