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From the Baltimore Sun
Sun exclusive
Violent prison shuts down
Public safety head moved to close Jessup's 128-year-old facility after
March stabbing
By Josh Mitchell and Greg Garland
sun reporters
March 18, 2007
State officials have abruptly shut down the Maryland House of
Correction, an antiquated and notorious maximum-security prison in
Jessup where inmate violence had spiraled out of control and corruption
had run rampant.
Prison administrators had planned to convert the 128-year-old prison -
where a correctional officer and three inmates have been killed within
the past year - to a minimum-security facility in coming months. But
the state's top correctional official said yesterday that he began
laying plans to close the prison within hours of the non-fatal March 2
stabbing of a correctional officer there.
"The House of Correction was one of the worst in terms of officer
safety and efficiency of operation," said Gary D. Maynard, who took
over in January as Maryland's secretary of public safety and
correctional services. "You can't put enough officers here to make it
safe."
The last few dozen of the 842 inmates who were there when Maynard put
his plan in motion were scheduled to move out of the prison yesterday.
Inside the prison's south wing, prisoners shuffled through the hallways
yesterday afternoon carrying trash bags stuffed with their belongings,
and guards wearing plastic gloves dragged mattresses down a stairway.
They walked by empty jail cells.
Inmates were transferred in groups of 15 to 40 in vans and buses during
daytime hours, said John A. Rowley, acting commissioner of the Division
of Correction. Each operation was carried out in secrecy in the past
two weeks to ensure security.
Most of the prisoners were sent to other facilities in Maryland, many
to the North Branch Correctional Institution in Cumberland. Officials
said that 97 of the "most disruptive" inmates were moved to federal
prisons across the country or to state facilities in Kentucky and
Virginia.
The House of Correction's 438 employees will be transferred to other
facilities in the region.
Union leaders have long complained about conditions at the antiquated
prison, which opened in 1879. It was long known as a place where drugs,
tobacco and other contraband flowed freely, earning the nickname "House
of Corruption" among some veteran officers.
"It's been a dangerous prison for a long time for both inmates and
staff," said Sue Esty, interim executive director of the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 92.
A series of incidents at the prison made headlines in the past year.
Last summer, three prisoners were killed in inmate-on-inmate violence
at the prison. In July, Officer David McGuinn, known as a "by the book"
officer who strictly enforced the rules, was stabbed to death -
allegedly by two inmates wielding homemade knives. Prison officials
said the inmates had jammed open their cell doors, which had locks long
known to be faulty.
Earlier this month, correctional officer Edouardo F. Edouazin, 28, was
returning an inmate to his cell - unaccompanied by another officer -
when a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder attacked him with a
homemade knife, officials said. In addition, there have been dozens of
stabbings and other inmate-on-inmate attacks over the years.
Maynard said that after that incident, he presented a plan to Gov.
Martin O'Malley to close the prison.
Under his plan, about 60 prisoners were sent to federal prisons out of
the state. In exchange, the state will accept an equal number of
nonviolent female prisoners from federal facilities, a spokesman for
O'Malley said.
Another 37 prisoners were sent to either Virginia or Kentucky under a
program called Interstate Compact. Instead of receiving inmates from
those states, Maryland will pay a monthly per diem for housing inmates
from the House of Correction.
Maynard said that the expense of moving the inmates and reimbursing
those states would be covered by the savings on overtime expenses for
officers at the House of Correction and that the department would be
able to cover the expenses in its current budget.
The public safety secretary said the move of House of Correction
inmates to other state prisons would not overburden those facilities
because the department had sufficient space at the other prisons to
accommodate the influx.
O'Malley said yesterday that he had been considering closing the prison
when Maynard presented the idea to him at a State Stat meeting two
weeks ago. "As long as I can remember, people have been saying we
should close the House of Correction," O'Malley said. "I'm very proud
it's our first order of business really in cleaning up our prisons."
Kimberly Haven, executive director of Justice Maryland, which advocates
for prisoner rights, said she knew the facility would eventually be
closed and she understood the reasoning behind it. But she questioned
the wisdom of potentially moving inmates farther away from their
families.
"We know the role that families can play in how someone does their
time," Haven said. "To move them out of state just fractures an already
fragile bond."
Transferring the state's most hardened convicts to faraway prisons was
a major undertaking, officials said. Inmates were told the morning of
their move that they were being shipped out, and they weren't told
where.
"The inmates would have no idea where they were going," Rowley said.
Two specially trained, six-member "response" teams were assigned to
each transport, sorting inmates' belongings and closely monitoring
prisoners on the buses. Four "chase" vehicles followed each bus.
"The special response teams practiced taking down a bus," referring to
the act of stopping prisoners who become rowdy, Rowley said. "They were
very well-trained going into this."
Even the wardens at their destination prisons did not know the House of
Correction was closing, Rowley said.
State officials have not decided the fate of the four-story brick
building on a sprawling parcel off of Route 175. Two facilities
adjacent to the House of Correction - the maximum-security Jessup
Correctional Institution, formerly known as the Annex, and the
medium-security Maryland Correctional Institution-Jessup - will remain
open.
Gary Hornbaker, the House of Correction's warden, said the design of
the prison made it difficult to control inmates. Walking through the
facility's south wing yesterday afternoon, he pointed to a narrow
hallway, no more than 3 1/2 feet wide, lined by cells. He pointed out
that old-fashioned cell bars made it easy for prisoners to stab
officers as they walked by.
He also pointed to the ceiling, known to shed paint chips and leak
water. "There were times when, if you had to get to my office, you had
to use an umbrella," he said.
In the south wing yesterday, the only sounds were inmates chatting as
they walked through the hallways, followed closely by correctional
officers. One side of the room contained four floors of
9-foot-by-6-foot cells, all empty, with the doors open.
Many of the empty cells had decorations - newspaper clippings featuring
pictures of Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts taped to a wall;
a Washington Redskins emblem painted next to a porcelain sink; a
Playboy bunny stenciled on a floor. Metal racks that once held
mattresses were suspended from chains attached to the wall.
William W. Sondervan, who ran Maryland's prisons from 1999 to 2003,
agreed that the House of Correction's configuration made it
particularly hard to control.
"The architectural design was from 1878," Sondervan said. "It was big
and it was sprawled out. We had maximum-security inmates in dormitories
and more than we should have had there."
He described the House as "essentially one big building, with lots of
little places for inmates to hide contraband" and conceal other
activities from prison officials.
"Everybody has to walk through pretty much the whole building to eat or
go to shops to work. The design made it not conducive to good
security," he said.
Sondervan said he and three other former Maryland prison commissioners
and a former director of parole and probation held a five-hour meeting
with Maynard on March 10 to discuss problems with the system.
"Our concern was for the safety and well-being of the employees of the
department," Sondervan said.
josh.mitchell@baltsun.com greg.garland@baltsun.com
Sun reporter Andrew A. Green contributed to this article.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun