Herb Hoelter, criminal justice advocate and believer in second chances, dies

Dillon Mullan, Baltimore Sun
·4 min read

Herb Hoelter, a criminal justice advocate who believed in second chances, died May 2 due to complications from heart failure and DRESS syndrome at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 73.

Herbert Joseph Hoelter Jr. was born in Yonkers, New York, to Herbert Hoelter Sr., a former assistant city manager of Niagara Falls, New York, and Helen Hoelter, a homemaker and head of the local parent-teacher association. Mr. Hoetler was the third of eight siblings.

“He came from a very humble upbringing in his family of eight kids and his parents His older sister told me even as kids in the neighborhood he was always the one to help others,” a daughter, Katie Hoelter, said. “I don’t know how really, but that part of him was always there.”

Mr. Hoelter graduated from Bishop Duffy High School in Niagara Falls in 1968 and the University of Buffalo in 1972. In 1976 he earned a master’s in social work from Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Growing up, Mr. Hoelter worked in a doughnut shop, laying asphalt, as a garbage collector and delivering newspapers. Ms. Hoelter said her father was working for the Niagara Falls Police Department as a youth mentor and coaching basketball when a handful of his players were arrested.

“He said he went to go find them and the jail conditions were so terrible that it opened his eyes to the injustice of the criminal justice system and set his eyes on reform,” she said. “He saw the value in what second chances could do.”

He married Susan Marie O’Keefe in 1969, and they had three children. The family moved to North Baltimore in 1977. He was a season ticket holder to the Orioles and Ravens and always made friends tailgating and coaching youth sports. The family home off Edmondson Avenue also frequently took in foster children.

In 1977 Mr. Hoelter co-founded the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives alongside Jerry Miller and got to work reforming the juvenile justice system by both drumming up public support against individual facilities and lobbying for policies on Capitol Hill. The two earned a major early victory when they successfully moved youths out of the Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, corrections facility, which had been housing 800 adults and 400 children.

“At the time they would just lock kids up. Herb and Jerry got so much political flack for trying to change that. Nobody wanted to shut those facilities down in the ’70s,” said Carole Argo, current CEO of NCIA, which is still headquartered in Baltimore. “I never met anyone like him. He never saw anyone he didn’t think the best of and believed, ‘Hey, with the right support, this person could be amazing.’“.

In the 1980s, Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer enlisted the NCIA to close the Montrose School in Reisterstown following the suicide of a 13-year-old in solitary confinement.

Earl El-Amin, currently NCIA’s vice president of community and external affairs, was a caseworker alongside Mr. Hoelter finding alternatives for the youths formerly housed in the Montrose School. The two were also running partners, as Mr. Hoelter completed several marathons and triathlons.

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“He had a commitment to improving the human condition. His humanity was on another level than what I’ve seen before,” Mr. El-Amin said. “He fervently believed that individuals deserved a second chance. He fervently believed that, so he established NCIA and made sure the organization continued to grow.”

Mr. Hoelter and Mr. Miller also lobbied for years to close the Rosewood Center, a mental hospital in Owings Mills that shuttered in 2009. They also edited “The Real War on Crime” by Steven Donziger, an influential examination of the failure of tough-on-crime policies, while growing NCIA from localized struggles to a national organization providing pro bono legal support and championing rehabilitative justice practices. Mr. Hoelter also taught at American University and the National Judicial College, and lectured across the country on sentencing advocacy

Mr. Hoetler’s first wife died in 2000. He married Martha Jane Ginn in 2002 and the two later moved to Catonsville. Mr. Hoelter served as a trustee of Stevenson University from 2013 to 2023 and launched a foundation dedicated to expanding NCIA’s reach and impact.

Mr. Hoelter is survived by his wife, Martha Ginn Hoelter, of Catonsville; his siblings, Joan Castellani, of Sarasota, Florida, Melanie Hoelter, of Durham, North Carolina, Peter Hoelter of Hampstead, North Carolina, and Moria Saviola of University Park, Florida; his children, Jeffrey Hoelter, of Baltimore, and Sarah Coble and Katie Hoelter, both of Charlotte, North Carolina; and 10 grandchildren.

A memorial service to honor Mr. Hoetler will be held June 6 at 2 p.m. at Stevenson University’s Owings Mills campus gym complex.