City Jail

For more than five months, Kenyatta Costes was locked up at the Baltimore City Jail. Her crime: She's a reluctant witness in a murder case. Yesterday, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge released the 19-year-old mother of two. Because Costes has failed to appear in court five times, including once when she fled as the trial began, she was first ordered to give a videotaped deposition that could be used as evidence in the trial of Marvin Lee Buckson, which...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Welcome to the city that calls itself The Fun Side of the Potomac, an elegant colonial seaport with a peerless collection of art galleries, antique shops and - ahem - international terrorism suspects. It is so. Imprisoned just a short horse-and-buggy ride from shops that sell Amish quilts and British tea cozies are two of America's most wanted: John Walker Lindh and Zacarias Moussaoui. The American Taliban member and the alleged "20th hijacker" are both locked up in the city jail, waiting for their criminal cases to unfold down the street, at Alexandria's federal courthouse.

When Dawn Downing says attendance is mandatory at her high school, she means it in a way no other principal can: All of her nearly 120 students are locked up at the Baltimore city jail on charges ranging from armed robbery to murder. The students, who wear military-style fatigues with "B.C.D.C." printed on the back, take English, math and science much as other high school kids do. They just do it in six portable trailers staffed with guards and surrounded by a barbed-wire fence at the Baltimore City Detention Center.

If the federal prison that gets Tavon White is anything like the last one I visited, even a charmer such as Bulldog will have a tough time recreating the life of the libertine he had at the Baltimore City Detention Center. White, a reputed leader of the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang, is accused of attempted murder; he's been on trial twice for that charge since 2009. Both trials ended in hung juries, and that explains why White, or "Bulldog," had enough time at the jail to get four of its correctional officers pregnant, one of them twice, according to recent federal indictments.

As critics of Martin O'Malley sensed a new political vulnerability, the governor insisted Tuesday that last week's indictment of inmates and correctional officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center was "a positive achievement" in Maryland's fight against violent gangs. A day after returning from a weeklong trade mission to Israel, O'Malley said that the state instigated and acted as a full partner in the federal investigation that found widespread corruption and smuggling at the city jail.

Gov. Martin O'Malley on Tuesday called last week's indictments of 25 inmates and correctional officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center "a very positive development" in the state's fight to dismantle violent gangs in state prisons. A day after returning from a weeklong trade mission to Israel, the governor told a State House news conference that he is standing firmly behind Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services Gary D. Maynard in the wake of a federal probe that found widespread corruption and smuggling at the city jail.

Back in 2005, Baltimore police officers arrested so many people (108,447) that judges freed arrestees from the city's booking center because they couldn't get court hearings within the 24 hours required by law. The year ended with 269 homicides. Three years later, a new police commissioner, armed with a new strategy of targeting only violent offenders instead of every offender, sent arrest numbers plummeting — to 83,439 in 2008 and 77,595 in 2009. The yearly homicide figures stood at 234 and 238, respectively.

I could not agree more with The Sun's editorial regarding Gov. Martin O'Malley and corruption in the city jail ("Spinning corruption," May 1). Governor O'Malley is running for higher office and is not taking responsibility for the corrections system corruption that has been going on for decades. Heads should roll and replacements be made, rather than allowing the current "leadership" to fix the system that is broken and needs rebuilding. Allowing the current secretary to continue in office sends the message that a Band-Aid is being placed on cancer.

The NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union have reached an agreement with the state on a nearly four-year-old lawsuit alleging improper strip searches and detention of innocent people at the state-run city jail, part of a broader suit that targeted the city's high number of arrests. The suit was filed in 2006 on behalf of 14 people, who alleged their arrests indicated a broad pattern of abuse in which they say thousands of people were routinely arrested and in turn held for hours without charges and subject to "filthy and overcrowded" conditions at Central Booking.

A $10 million lawsuit filed in Baltimore Circuit Court alleges that city and state officials were negligent in the suicide in 2000 of a detainee at the Central Booking and Intake Center. Robert W. Clementson, 27, a heroin addict and father of two, was arrested after his mother reported to police that he stole thousands of dollars of jewelry from her Carroll County home, according to the suit. His mother, Lois Kunkoski, also told police that her son would be suicidal if arrested, the suit alleges.