Inmate

A cabal of corrupt corrections officers and members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang enjoyed nearly free rein inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal authorities allege, smuggling drugs and cellphones into the jail and having sexual relationships that left four guards pregnant. An indictment unsealed Tuesday names 25 people - including 13 women working as corrections officers - who face racketeering and drug charges. Twenty of the accused also face money-laundering charges.

Amid the unfolding jail scandal in Baltimore right now, there are two things relevant to the gay community that I want to bring up. I'm not sure if there are any connections between the two, or if one affects the other. But viewed together, they do present some interesting questions. First: Non-heterosexual inmates in jails and prisons across the country reported a far greater degree of sexual victimization in the last two years than their straight counterparts, according to a study released by the U.S. Department of Justice last week.

A 26-year-old inmate at a state prison in Jessup died Friday after he was found with severe head injuries on Thursday night, Maryland State Police said. Javaughn A. Young was found lying on a walkway in a wing of the Maryland Correctional Institution about 7 p.m., after another inmate alerted correctional officers that an inmate needed assistance, police said. More than 60 inmates are housed in the wing. The officers found Young with severe head trauma and called for medical assistance, police said.

Maryland corrections officials are taking advantage of new technology designed to block the use of contraband cellphones by inmates - a problem at the heart of recent indictments at the Baltimore City Detention Center. In a program being used at another prison facility in Baltimore, phones smuggled inside have been severed from the network and rendered inoperable, officials said. The new system, which the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services hopes to expand, could supplement efforts to find the phones using metal detectors or trained dogs to sniff them out. The department says it is catching more illicit phones than ever - more than 1,300 were found in the last fiscal year - but the federal indictments show the limits of those efforts.

Nine current and former guards at a state prison in Hagerstown were charged Wednesday in a federal indictment that alleges they conspired to assault an inmate and covered up the incident. The U.S. Department of Justice indictment refers to two separate beatings of an inmate, identified only as "K.D.," in the same weekend in March 2008. K.D. was beaten so badly that he had to be taken to a hospital, the indictment says. None of the current and former prison officers was actually charged with assault.

A co-founder of the Dead Man Incorporated prison gang pleaded guilty Wednesday to his role in the group's murder-for-hire and drug-dealing conspiracy — ensuring that the former Baltimorean serves a life sentence even as he promised followers in missives from behind bars that he would continue to defy the government. The plea agreement will spare James Sweeney, 35, a possible death sentence in a separate case in which he is charged with killing a fellow inmate. The former Locust Point resident, who is being held in federal prison in Texas, admitted under the agreement that he was a leader of Dead Man Inc. and that he ordered "hits for hire in order to raise money and also to enable white prisoners to retaliate against black gangs" in Maryland, court records show.

A Cecil County man who was being held at the Harford County Detention Center in connection with a recent string of armed robberies died Friday, the Harford County sheriff's office said Saturday. According to the sheriff's office, inmate Michael Ray Malpass, 26, was found unresponsive in his cell about 10:55 p.m. Thursday. He was taken by Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company to Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air, where he was pronounced dead at 12:08 a.m. Friday. A spokeswoman for the sheriff's office said Malpass was detoxing from heroin use and was on medical watch at the time of his death.

The way Omar Broadway sees it, Maryland prisons are overrun with gangs, disciplinary rules are ignored and inmates pass the time playing video games and making wine in their cells. You don't have to take his word for it: He says he's getting it on film. Broadway, a New Jersey native serving a 12-year sentence for carjacking, has gained notoriety as an amateur documentarian of life behind bars. The choppy footage he captured in a Newark prison was turned into a full-length feature ("An Omar Broadway Film")

A 64-year-old inmate at the Anne Arundel County Detention Center died late last month of an apparent heart attack while serving jail time for drunken driving, jail officials said Monday. Joseph Powell, of Severn, entered the Ordnance Road facility in Glen Burnie on March 25 to serve the third of five two-day sentences for a drunken-driving conviction. On March 27, Powell was set to be released, "when it appeared he had an upper respiratory episode," said Brenda Shell Eleazer, the correctional facility administrator of the Jennifer Road Detention Center in Annapolis.

Responding to last week's mistaken release of a violent inmate serving a life sentence, corrections officials said Tuesday that they will revamp inmate release procedures, including implementation of portable fingerprinting machines at a handful of prisons across the state. Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said the agency plans to begin using portable fingerprint scanning machines called "Fast ID" as an extra safeguard during the release process.

The Baltimore City Detention Center had the nation's second-highest rate of sexual contact between jail staff and inmates, according to a U.S. Department of Justice study released less than a month after federal prosecutors accused corrections officers at the jail of sleeping with gang members. The report, released Thursday, also found higher-than-average rates of inmate abuse at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup. Women in prison are generally subjected to more abuse than men, and nearly 13 percent of inmates at that facility reported being abused either by a fellow inmate or staff member.

In the black market of Maryland's prisons and jails, where the right price can secure cellphones and drugs, transactions unfold through a complex system of currency. Among the key elements: 14-digit codes, prepaid debit cards and text messages. One brand of cards - Green Dot - is so ubiquitous that it has become part of the lexicon on the inside. The recent federal indictment of two dozen inmates and corrections officers in an alleged Black Guerrilla Family corruption scandal at the Baltimore City Detention Center notes several instances in which suspects refer to "dots" in transactions.

Months before a federal indictment detailed allegations of corruption at the Baltimore City Detention Center, the smuggling and sexual improprieties at the core of that case had already been outlined in an inmate's lawsuit. Calvin Hemphill, in a handwritten civil complaint filed in federal court in July, alleged that fellow inmate Tavon White was a gang leader who held a startling degree of jailhouse power. Cellphones - illegal in the jail - were readily available to White, he held control over the jail's "working man" program, and he was able to come and go from his cell as he pleased, according to the court papers.

A federal grand jury indicted 18 alleged gang members on racketeering charges, including a detainee at a state-managed detention center, news that could draw more scrutiny to Maryland's beleaguered correctional system. Federal officials say the members of the Bloods, most of them operating out of Howard County, broke into houses, stole money and other items, and sold drugs, including oxycodone, ecstasy and marijuana. Eighteen Bloods members were charged with racketeering, and three others not in the gang were charged with selling drugs, federal officials said.

The inmates' requests often start small, former corrections officers say: a ballpoint pen, for example, or a sandwich from beyond the prison walls. "You may think it's insignificant," said former Cpl. Sheila Hill, who retired last year from the Patuxent Institution in Jessup. "But it's not. " Even small gifts cross the clear line that should be drawn between inmates and officers, Hill and others said Tuesday. It's a line that federal officials say was flagrantly broken at the Baltimore City Detention Center.

The federal racketeering and drug charges unveiled this week against 25 inmates and guards at the Baltimore City Detention Center raise serious questions about the state's management of the facility. Investigators detailed a pattern of corruption and criminal behavior that was so widespread that for much of the last few years, the inmates were literally running the asylum. It will take drastic action to root out the crooked corrections officers and incompetent higher-ups responsible for this debacle, but that's only a start.

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.

We have a great capacity for placing people into categories and minimizing their humanity. One such category is "felons" and another is "drug addicts. " We can easily forget that men and women who have been convicted of crimes or are suffering from substance abuse issues are the same as the rest of us at the core - fallible but resolutely hopeful. Here in Baltimore, a celebration of that capacity for hope and a reminder that redemption comes in many forms took place earlier this year in a small chapel within a church on Cathedral Street.

I noticed with all the gun control talk and various politicians knocking each other over for the microphone to create a new law to save lives, those same politicians failed to do the same for the seven inmate deaths in the last seven months ("Senate gives final approval to gun control bill" April 4). How could this be? A controlled environment (government run) where no weapons are allowed, let alone guns, has seven homicides in seven months! Surely, a politician during this most recent session in Annapolis would have sponsored some bill, right?