Detention Center

As you approach Thomas J.S. Waxter Children's Center, a sign cautions that you are under camera surveillance. Notices warn against bringing in contraband - glass bottles, cigarettes, weapons. A metal detector sits in the front hall. You pass through a locked metal door to reach the residential wings. Down the hallway, the staff supervision room is separated from the children by a thick metal cage. On a Wednesday in September, a girl stands shackled in the hall, the cuffs around her hands and ankles connected by a metal chain.

An inmate serving a 10-year prison sentence for second-degree murder walked out of a Baltimore detention facility on Friday morning, never reported to his scheduled work-release job and was considered escaped by Friday afternoon, according to Maryland State Police. Jermaine Jeter, 30, left the Baltimore Pre-Release Unit at about 10:30 a.m., and was supposed to arrive for work at an area Checkers restaurant at 12:30 p.m., according to police. He never did, nor did he arrive back at the unit at 3 p.m., as he was scheduled to do, police said.

Officials at the Baltimore City Detention Center today were investigating the death of an 18-year-old man who may have strangled himself in the institution's hospital ward.Roderick Wade Jackson, of the 600 block of Fremont Ave. in West Baltimore, was found about 4 p.m. Monday in a bathroom in the hospital ward.A rope made from a hospital gown was around his neck and attached to the bathroom door, said Barbara Cooper, a Detention Center spokeswoman.Ms. Cooper could not say why Mr. Jackson was a patient there.

A Dundalk woman who was sentenced last week to 60 years in prison in her husband's murder pleaded guilty Thursday to assaulting an officer at the Baltimore County Detention Center last August, said Deputy State's Attorney John P. Cox. Jaclyn J. Martin, 31, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor second-degree assault in an altercation with a woman officer on Aug. 21 and was sentenced to the time she has served since the charge was filed on Aug. 31. ...

BALTIMORE -- A 29-year old Baltimore City Detention Center prisoner was stabbed as he returned to his cell from recreation time at 9:22 a.m. yesterday, prison officials reported..Jail spokeswoman Barbara Cooper said injuries to Thomas Woodell, 27, of the 2000 block of Edmondson Ave., were not life-threatening.Mr. Woodell was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital for stab wounds to his chest, lower back and arm. He was reported in stable condition last night, Ms. Cooper said.No suspect or weapon was found immediately, prison officials said.

A 22-year-old man who was arrested Friday during a countywide drug sweep was found dead yesterday morning in his cell at the Howard County Detention Center in Jessup, according to a county spokeswoman.An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death of Parrish Michael Spinoso of the 3200 block of Normandy Woods Drive, according to Vicki Cox, the county spokeswoman. Spinoso, identified as a college student, was arrested at his Ellicott City apartment on a warrant charging him with distribution and possession of heroin.

Two men escaped through a third-story window in a medium-security portion of the Baltimore City Detention Center overnight -- the first escape since state government took over the beleaguered former City Jail three years ago.Commissioner LaMont W. Flanagan, who oversees the detention center for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, identified the escapees as John A. Wagner, 21, of the first block of S. Monroe Street, and Edward G....

A 28-year-old Delaware man was found dead in his cell at the Harford County Detention Center after apparently suffocating himself with a pillowcase, officials reported yesterday.Sheriff's deputies found William Ford of Wilmington lying face down on his bed at 4:35 p.m. Sunday with the pillowcase wrapped around his neck, said Officer DeWayne Curry, a spokesman for the sheriff's office.A preliminary investigation has termed the death a suicide, but a state medical examiner will perform an autopsy, Officer Curry said.

Concerned about plans to bring a juvenile detention center to its neighborhood, Children's Hospital has arranged a meeting of government officials, business and community leaders in the Cold Spring Lane-Greenspring Avenue area.The meeting is set for 1 p.m. today in the hospital's Bowles Auditorium. The hospital is at 3825 Greenspring Ave.City and state officials are considering a site on Cold Spring Lane between the Jones Falls Expressway and Greenspring Avenue for a juvenile justice center, which would include a courthouse and a 144-bed detention facility.

The troubled Cedar Knoll youth detention center in Laurel is a breath away from being ordered to close, just as the District of Columbia was making a last-gasp effort to improve the minimum-security facility.U.S. House and Senate negotiators agreed yesterday on a spending package for the District of Columbia that eliminates money for Cedar Knoll.The House is expected to vote on the bill today, and the Senate is to take up the matter tomorrow. Sara Broadwater, a spokeswoman for Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, D-5th, said the bill is assured of passing.

A studious young man with an aptitude for computers, Majid Shoukat Khan was working as a database administrator in a high-rise office building in Tysons Corner, Va., on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. After American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the western face of the Pentagon, the recent Owings Mill High School graduate watched from his office window as the smoke rose over the capital. Osama bin Laden would claim credit for the attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad would boast of planning them.

A month after being evicted from a park near the Inner Harbor, members of Occupy Baltimore sought Monday afternoon to establish a five-day encampment at the site of a proposed juvenile detention center in East Baltimore. As Maryland State Police watched, protestors began erecting a plywood structure — painted red and labeled "school" — on the site near the city's complex of jails and prisons. About 50 protestors were at the site by late afternoon. State police at the site would not say whether the five-day encampment would be allowed.

Maryland State Police sought Monday evening to work out a peaceful solution with Occupy Baltimore protesters who were building an encampment at the site of a proposed juvenile detention center in East Baltimore. As troopers watched, several protesters began erecting a plywood structure — painted red and representing a schoolhouse — inside the fenced site at East Madison and Graves streets near the city's complex of jails and prisons. But state police spokesman Greg Shipley said Occupy members were not permitted to erect a structure on the property, which is owned by the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Maryland State Police arrested six members of Occupy Baltimore Monday evening for allegedly trespassing on the state-owned site of a proposed juvenile detention center in East Baltimore. The arrests of four men and two women came about two hours after they began erecting a plywood structure — painted red and representing a schoolhouse — inside the fenced site at East Madison and Graves streets near the city's complex of jails and prisons. State police spokesman Greg Shipley said the six individuals were told they were entering private property, which is owned by the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

An employee at the Harford County Detention Center was exposed to a substance that investigators believe is narcotic, police said Thursday night. About 5:30 p.m. a female staff member was sorting incoming inmate mail at the detention center in Bel Air when she came into contact with an unknown substance and then started feeling light-headed and experienced a metallic taste, according to a statement by the Harford County Sheriff's Office. The mail room was evacuated and quarantined.

A guard at the Harford County Detention Center found a noose in an inmate's cell, but the inmate said he had no intention of using it. Around 3 p.m. May 15, a corrections employee was making rounds at the jail when he found a noose made out of a bedsheet attached to the bed in the cell, according to an official report of the incident from the Harford County Sheriff's Office which operates the jail. Upon finding the noose, guards immediately put suicide prevention policies into effect.

Can learning to read keep a jailbird from returning to the slammer?County detention center administrators aren't sure, but they will give it a try.On Tuesday, the detention center launched a reading and writing program for functionally illiterate inmates. The new skills, say detention center administrators, should help inmates cope when they leave prison."If we help inmates lower their probability of returning to prison, I think the program will be viable," said Lt. Cole Nelson, the detention center's inmate services commander.

State prison officials are reducing the size of a proposed youth jail in East Baltimore, a move that could delay by a year construction of the $70 million detention center originally designed to hold up 230 young offenders. The announcement comes after advocate groups opposed to the facility — who say money would be better spent on other programs — commissioned a study that shows the number of teen arrests is projected to decline over the next three decades. The National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a nonprofit dedicated to juvenile justice research based in Oakland, Calif., released a report on Thursday concluding that just 117 beds will be needed over the next 30 years under current sentencing guidelines and policies.

Baltimore needs a better way to handle juveniles who are charged as adults. The current system of housing them in a wing of the city's detention center is dangerous and inefficient. But a new report from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency confirms what youth activists have been saying for six years — that a plan to fix the problem by building a $100 million, 230-bed juvenile jail next to the adult jail is the wrong approach. Gov. Martin O'Malley needs to scrap the current plan, which got its start under the Ehrlich administration, and at the very least propose something half the size, though some of the ideas in the report for further reducing the number of youths locked up while waiting for trials in adult court merit serious consideration.