Correctional Officers

The seven inmates who were stabbed in a fight Thursday night at the Metropolitan Transition Center were treated and returned to the facility yesterday, segregated from the rest of the inmate population, a state prison spokeswoman said. Maj. Priscilla Doggett said the prison's internal investigators are working to determine why the fight started shortly before 8 p.m. Doggett said the inmates who fought in the prison's outdoor recreation yard were all housed in the same cellblock. After the fight, correctional officers searched their cells and found five home-made knives, but none was believed to have been used in the fight.

Man killed, wife hurt in fire A 55-year-old disabled man was killed and his wife was seriously injured when she tried to save him from their burning Charles County house, according to the state fire marshal's office. The couple's daughter and their two grandchildren were injured, said a fire officials. Two fired guards are reinstated The state prison system has reinstated two correctional officers fired as part of a crackdown stemming from abuse allegations, officials said. The investigation of Maryland's penal system has led to about two dozen correctional officers being fired or placed on leave.

About 130 inmates at a prison in Hagerstown staged a 30-hour protest this week over living conditions, refusing to return food trays and blocking windows of their cell doors so correctional officers could not see inside, prison officials confirmed yesterday. The protest at Roxbury Correctional Institution was over restrictions on personal items prisoners are allowed to keep in their cells, according to Major Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of Correction. She said the protest began at 5 a.m. Wednesday when inmates refused to return their trays after breakfast and blocked their door windows.

A fight that broke out among detainees on a transport van at the Baltimore City Detention Center was brought under control by a an elite response team of correctional officers who happened to be gathered across the street. The team of about a dozen officers was outside Supermax, a maximum-security prison in the 400 block of E. Madison St., when the fight began shortly before 4 p.m. yesterday. A van returning from court with five detainees entered the gate at the detention center. Once the van was inside, two detainees in the vehicle began fighting, according to Barbara Cooper, a spokeswoman for the city detention center.

An inmate at the Maryland House of Correction Annex stabbed one of several correctional officers who had entered his cell yesterday morning to subdue him, a state prisons spokeswoman said. The incident began about 10:30 a.m., when the inmate refused to comply with staff orders while breakfast was being delivered to cells at the maximum-security Jessup prison. Capt. Priscilla Doggett, the spokeswoman, said officers used pepper spray on the inmate before entering, but he lunged at them with a shank -- a homemade knife -- and stabbed one in the upper right arm. The officer, whose name was not divulged, was released after treatment at a hospital, Doggett said, adding that the inmate, who also was not identified, was not injured.

Correctional officers at the Eastern Correctional Institution have handed Warden Earl D. Beshears a vote of no confidence because of problems that they say have turned the prison near Salisbury into a "powder keg waiting to blow."Carl McVeigh, staff representative of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 92, said the unanimous no-confidence vote was taken at a union meeting Thursday night in Salisbury.About 100 of the union's 250 ECI correctional officers represented by the union were at the meeting and voted, he said.

Maryland prison officials agreed yesterday to extend a lockdown of the House of Correction Annex in Jessup, the scene of a violent inmate uprising last week.The maximum-security prison will remain locked down until a thorough "shakedown" of its cells has been completed and a task force made up of employee representatives and prison officials makes recommendations on improving security."We can't overemphasize what a significant step this is," said Joe Lawrence, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, part of a union coalition representing state prison guards.

Nine correctional officers at a medium-security prison in Hagerstown were fired yesterday amid allegations that they assaulted an inmate last month, according to a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. The nine officers, who worked at the Roxbury Correctional Institution, plan to appeal the decision, according to the union representing correctional officers in the state of Maryland. "These mass firings are a reckless rush to judgment on the state's part," said Joe Lawrence, spokesman for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

HAGERSTOWN -- Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. met yesterday with the wardens of five Western Maryland prisons where correctional officers are voicing increasing unhappiness over staff shortages they say have made their jobs less safe. After the meeting at the Roxbury Correctional Institution, Ehrlich spoke publicly for the first time about an RCI officer killed last month, allegedly by an inmate attempting an escape from a hospital. The governor described Officer Jeffery A. Wroten's death as a tragedy, but said his death "had nothing to do with staffing levels."

The Baltimore City Jail is "dangerously understaffed" and ill-equipped to provide a safe, secure environment for employees and inmates, according to a report by a city grand jury.The grand jury also found that correctional officers at the jail were not receiving yearly training on firearms, first aid and suicide prevention, as required by law -- a deficiency the jail has since admitted and is in the process of correcting. The grand jury met between September and early January and released a report of its work this past week.