Prison Officials

The prospect of spending years behind bars in a tiny cell is sufficiently chilling to deter most people from ever committing a crime. Those who willfully break the law anyway and get caught have no one to blame but themselves when a judge sentences them to prison. But even convicted felons shouldn't have to suffer the extralegal indignity and physical trauma of being raped by fellow inmates and prison staff while they're serving their time. Sexual assaults in the nation's prisons are alarmingly common.

The prospect of spending years behind bars in a tiny cell is sufficiently chilling to deter most people from ever committing a crime. Those who willfully break the law anyway and get caught have no one to blame but themselves when a judge sentences them to prison. But even convicted felons shouldn't have to suffer the extralegal indignity and physical trauma of being raped by fellow inmates and prison staff while they're serving their time. Sexual assaults in the nation's prisons are alarmingly common.

State prison officials said a 26-year-old New York man serving a triple life sentence for attempted murder was accidentally released from a downtown Baltimore prison Thursday. Officials said Raymond Taylor, who was sentenced to life in prison on an attempted first-degree murder charge in 2005, was erroneously released at 2 p.m. from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center. The Baltimore Sun reported at the time that Taylor tried to kill his ex-girlfriend and her two daughters at their Pentland Drive home in Northeast Baltimore.

A story for Black History Month. Bryan Stevenson is director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery, Ala.-based organization he founded in 1989 to provide legal representation for the indigent and incarcerated. The EJI ( www.eji.org ) doesn't charge its clients but, says Mr. Stevenson, he will sometimes require them to read selected books. Last year, Mr. Stevenson sent two books to prisoner Mark Melvin, who is doing life for a murder he committed when he was 14. One was "Mountains Beyond Mountains," about a doctor's struggle to bring medical services to Haiti.

State prison officials were investigating yesterday the stabbing of a 35-year-old inmate at the Maryland House of Correction Annex. Lorenzo Hazel was stabbed multiple times in his upper body about 7 p.m. Monday in a recreation room at the maximum-security prison in Jessup, prison officials said. Correctional officers found prison-made knives in the recreation room, but no one had been charged yesterday, said Lt. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Division of Correction. Hazel, who is serving a life term for murder and armed robbery, was in critical condition yesterday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, officials said.

A growing prison population of tough, young gang members and the lack of enough educational and rehabilitation programs for other inmates is fueling much of the violence in Maryland's prisons, corrections officials told a legislative panel yesterday. "Most of it is from gang-related activities, but not all of the violence is from gangs," said John A. Rowley, acting prisons commissioner. "We need to isolate these folks, and that's going to take some time." He and Public Safety Secretary Mary Ann Saar told legislators serving on a joint Senate and House of Delegates oversight committee that they are taking several steps to address security concerns.

As machines thud and clank in the background, Melvin Powell quietly sprays large metal rectangles -- the brackets for electrical switches -- with a plume of gray paint. Minutes later, he inspects his work as it emerges with a glossy finish from an oven burning at 400 degrees."I think they look pretty good," says Powell, his face partly hidden behind a mask and his hands covered with gray paint. "Maybe when I get out, I can get a job with this company."Powell, 49, isn't an average employee.

The case of a Baltimore drug lord who ordered executions from federal prison is a prime example of how inmates have run deadly criminal enterprises with unfettered access to telephones, a government inquiry has concluded.The Inspector General's Office, an investigative arm of the U.S. Justice Department, accused the Bureau of Prisons of "taking insufficient steps to address this abuse" despite being aware of widespread problems for years."A significant number of federal inmates use prison telephones to commit serious crimes while incarcerated, including murder, drug trafficking and fraud," Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich concluded.

JERUSALEM - An estimated 1,500 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons launched a hunger strike yesterday, demanding more visits with family members, an end to strip searches and better overall conditions. The demonstration began in three Israeli prisons, and advocates said they expected it to grow to include hundreds more Palestinians held in other facilities on security-related charges. Advocates said the strike sought to halt frequent searches of cells and strip searches of inmates and to ease restrictions on family visits, including removing glass partitions that separate prisoners from visitors.

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence investigators who complained about the treatment of detainees in Iraq were harassed and threatened by U.S. military prison officials, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency has told Pentagon officials. Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby said in a memo, made public by the ACLU yesterday, that his DIA interrogators and de-briefers saw prisoners with "burn marks on their backs" and some suffering from "kidney pain." He said two of his DIA subordinates saw prison personnel "punch a prisoner in the face to the point the individual needed medical attention."

He was on probation and wearing a GPS monitoring device. He was also armed with a rusty machete, and prosecutors said he carjacked a woman as she checked the oil in her car on Ravenwood Avenue in May. On Tuesday, a Baltimore Circuit Court jury convicted the teenager, Terrell Singleton, of carjacking and car theft, and he faces up to 69 years in prison when he is sentenced in April. Prosecutors said the GPS device he was wearing, so that prison officials could keep track of him, put him at the scene of the holdup.

Baltimore police and correctional officers were searching Wednesday for a man who escaped from the downtown booking center and forced authorities to briefly shut down the Jones Falls Expressway when he apparently ran across the highway. In an unrelated incident at the city detention center, located near the booking center, prison officials said a detainee was stabbed during an altercation. Correctional officials said the detainee who escaped, Maury Figueroa, 29, got through a secured, controlled entryway while working on a sanitation detail.

A man released from prison in September and put on a watch list of the state's most violent offenders has been arrested in the rape of a 14-year-old girl who police said was lured into a van in West Baltimore and attacked by five men. The suspect, 22-year-old Lucky Christopher Crosby Jr., was wearing a state prison-issued GPS monitor on his ankle when he was arrested this weekend, police said, allowing detectives to pinpoint his precise movements when...

When RCA introduced its first television, the set was encased in clear Lucite, so visitors to the 1939 World's Fair in New York could see the electronic innards and walk away confident that the sound and video were not a mere trick. Decades later, the venerable electronics company resurrected clear-case televisions for a different purpose: to ensure prisoners could not hide contraband in their cells. And though RCA has dropped out of the market, prison cells in Maryland and other states still are filled with the unusual TVs made by other companies.

As Stanley Dunham neared the end of a 15-year sentence for attempted murder, prison officials had approved him for a work program that had him assisting in making deliveries around the region. Day after day for six months, he went out on his rounds, and each time returned to the facility. But on Wednesday afternoon, officials say, the 33-year-old walked away from his supervisor at a Southwest Baltimore shopping center and got into an argument. He was shot twice, and was last reported in critical condition.

A 63-year-old former classroom aide was sentenced Monday to 18 months in jail and is expected to receive a similar sentence later this week for molesting two girls in his Crofton neighborhood — a sentence crafted to keep John Riva, who has no previous criminal record, out of state prison. "I am aware of the implication of sending a 63-year-old man to the Division of Correction," Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Paul A. Hackner told Riva. He said that although he wanted to punish Riva, "it is not my intention to sentence you to death.

Facing a potentially contentious legislative hearing, prison officials announced disciplinary action yesterday against four more corrections officers whose negligence contributed to the recent escape of two inmates from a Jessup prison.The firing of another guard, the demotion of a captain to lieutenant and written reprimands of a major and another corrections officer complete the internal disciplinary review at the Maryland Correctional Institution, officials said.That brought to nine the number of officers disciplined or transferred as a result of the May 18 escape.

When RCA introduced its first television, the set was encased in clear Lucite, so visitors to the 1939 World's Fair in New York could see the electronic innards and walk away confident that the sound and video were not a mere trick. Decades later, the venerable electronics company resurrected clear-case televisions for a different purpose: to ensure prisoners could not hide contraband in their cells. And though RCA has dropped out of the market, prison cells in Maryland and other states still are filled with the unusual TVs made by other companies.

It is of unending confusion — and frustration for victims — that people convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison rarely serve the sentences the judges dole out. Convicts are required by Maryland law to serve at least half their sentence for violent crimes and a quarter of their sentence for nonviolent crimes. Corrections officials say that most inmates locked up for violent offenses serve 70 percent to 80 percent of the sentences given by judges. In addition to parole and probation, inmates accumulate what are called "diminution credits" — in layman's terms, "good conduct" credits — that help them to freedom.