Prison System

A melee at the Metropolitan Transition Center that sent 18 prison inmates to area hospitals on Friday with stab wounds involved a dispute between the Bloods gang and Sunni Muslim prisoners, according to corrections sources. Maj. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the prison system, acknowledged for the first time yesterday that a gang might have been involved in the violence that erupted at the state-run prison in Baltimore. But, noting security concerns, she would not provide more detailed information.

Maryland corrections officials announced yesterday a series of security improvements at the state's prisons while continuing to deny any major problems in the wake of two escapes this year.The measures include a higher fence with razor wire at the Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup (MCIJ), where convicted murderer Gregory L. Lawrence and convicted armed robber Byron L. Smoot fled May 18 and were recaptured two days later.The state is also installing a more secure fence at the Maryland Correctional Training Center at Hagerstown, where convicted armed robber Raymond E. Dodd escaped July 12. He has not been recaptured.

WASHINGTON -- Every now and then the best of societies goes a little crazy and embraces monstrous social policies that become almost impossible to reverse. The United States has done that regarding crime, especially drug abuse.Our states are spending almost $30 billion annually on prisons, which house three times the number of inmates imprisoned 20 years ago. We are incarcerating our people at a rate never known in any civilized society.While bond issues to build schools are often failing, this country is willingly building a 1,000-bed jailhouse or prison every week.

The Maryland prison system has won a $475,000 federal grant to combat drug use by inmates, sources said yesterday.President Clinton is expected to announce the grant to Maryland and similar ones to seven other states, at a White House ceremony today.The money will be used for drug-fighting efforts at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, a maximum-security prison with about 2,400 inmates.The grant will pay for the establishment of a prison wing devoted to drug treatment, video surveillance cameras, devices for detecting drug particles and other anti-drug efforts, sources said.

The Maryland prison system has won a $475,000 federal grant to combat drug use by inmates, sources said yesterday.President Clinton is expected to announce the grant to Maryland and similar ones to seven other states, at a White House ceremony today.The money will be used for drug-fighting efforts at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, a maximum-security prison with about 2,400 inmates.The grant will pay for the establishment of a prison wing devoted to drug treatment, video surveillance cameras, devices for detecting drug particles and other anti-drug efforts, sources said.

HAGERSTOWN -- In a groundbreaking case for Maryland prison protests, a Washington County judge ruled yesterday that corrections officials may force-feed an inmate when it is deemed medically necessary to prevent death or permanent injury.Circuit Judge Frederick C. Wright III said he will issue an order giving officials at Roxbury Correctional Institution that authority over Warren R. Stevenson, 45, a prisoner who has refused solid foods since at least last March.The order is intended to settle a vexing matter for prison officials: Does a prison's right to security and the well-being of its inmates outweigh a single prisoner's right to a nonviolent and widely accepted form of protest?

In an unusual mea culpa, the state's highest court said yesterday that it did not mean for Maryland prison officials to recalculate the sentences of nearly 2,000 inmates, prompting the rearrest last spring of 53 freed prisoners.The admission came in a Court of Appeals opinion -- issued after a 4-3 vote by the judges -- that a former inmate should not have been rearrested."We inadvertently led the Division [of Corrections] to a conclusion that was both unintended and erroneous," according the opinion written by Judge Alan M. Wilner.

Donald Leroy Truitt Jr. had a solid alibi after a robbery victim identified him as being one of two men who held him up at gunpoint Nov. 20 -- he was in prison at the time.But police in the Northeastern District major crimes unit arrested Truitt anyway.Agent Ragina Cooper, a city police spokeswoman, said Truitt, 23, was arrested Friday after he was identified in a photo lineup by the victim of a 3 a.m. robbery in the 5600 block of Sinclair Lane.City police called the Baltimore City Detention Center before arresting Truitt and were told that he was not being held at the jail at the time of the robbery, Cooper said.

The hand-held vacuum looks like a Dust Buster, but it collects more than just lint. Call it the drug buster.With this new drug-detection system, called the Ionscan 400, the state is searching for the most minute traces of illegal narcotics on people who visit or work at Maryland's prisons. Officials say it's more accurate than a drug-sniffing dog -- and never gets tired or needs food or exercise."The message we're sending is if you're a bad person and trying to get drugs into our prisons, we're going to catch you," said William W. Sondervan, an assistant commissioner for the state Division of Correction, during a demonstration this week at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup.

Booking center death in chain of apathyDaniel Griffin's death in a holding cell in Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center illustrates the ills of the prison system and the ills of society that generates the prison system.When a society's only reaction to its ills is to put men in prison and forget about them, an atmosphere of uncaring is generated, which is then transmitted to the correctional officers who ignore danger signals of all kinds within the prison.No one is helped, and the ills compound themselves until there is no fixing them.

Two years ago, state Corrections Secretary Gary D. Maynard gave prison and local police officials a simple task: draw up lists of the most violent gang members being held in state custody. With the House of Correction set to be shuttered, the worst of the worst would be transported to out-of-state facilities. The agencies submitted a total of 220 names, but to Maynard's surprise, only eight appeared on more than one list. The prisons didn't know who the police thought were most dangerous, and the police departments weren't sharing the information with each other, either.

The state Board of Public Works has approved a $500,000 settlement for the family of an inmate killed in 2004 while officers attempted to subdue him using pepper spray at a Western Maryland prison. The family of Ifeanyi A. Iko had been seeking $28 million in a federal wrongful death lawsuit, which will now be dismissed. The settlement - thought to be one of the largest Maryland awards in a prisoner death or injury case - was approved at Wednesday's board meeting. Gary Adler, the Iko family's attorney, said the settlement also includes a condition that the prison system revisit policies related to Iko's death.

Friday marks 75 years since repeal of the Volstead Act, which made the manufacture, distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. As the anniversary of the end of Prohibition approaches, modern advocates of a similar repeal are calling again for the decriminalization of heroin, cocaine and marijuana - and this time they've come packing a money argument by a Harvard economist. I like money arguments. They are usually a lot more effective than emotional ones or those that exploit stubborn prejudices with the intent of maintaining the status quo. As the American economy recedes, state and local tax revenues fall and government budgets are cut, the money argument for changing the way we do things - from enforcing the laws to educating children - makes the most sense and has the strongest appeal.

A Baltimore man with two previous murder convictions and almost two decades of documented psychiatric illnesses was found guilty but not criminally responsible yesterday in the killing of a fellow inmate aboard a prison bus - and state officials aren't sure what to do with him. Kevin G. Johns Jr., who had faced a possible death penalty, suffered from mental disorders that prevented him from being able to obey the law when he strangled another prisoner, a...

When a twice-convicted killer in solitary confinement spent an entire night standing at his cell door talking to himself, a physician ordered that he be returned to the prison system's psychiatric facility. That decision was overturned. Sixteen days later, he was seated among other prisoners - not in an isolation cage - for an early-morning drive along the dark interstates that stretch between Hagerstown and Baltimore while correctional officers read the paper and watched TV. Kevin G. Johns Jr. emerged from the bus in a bloody shirt and restraints so loose that an assistant warden worried that he would step right out of them.

Organized crime was once synonymous with the Mafia. Not anymore, and there's no better example of what law enforcement is up against today than the alleged criminal enterprise described in a federal indictment unsealed Monday in Baltimore. The membership of the Bloods' Tree Top Piru may differ by race, locale and ethnicity from La Cosa Nostra, but criminal activity, violence and murder are their shared pursuits. The indictment against 28 alleged Bloods members is a primer on gang culture, its origins and its prevalence in state prisons.

Arthur H. Bremer, who has spent the past 35 years behind bars for shooting and paralyzing former Alabama Gov. George Wallace during a presidential campaign stop in Maryland in 1972, was scheduled to be released today from the state prison system. Prison officials, who have sought to keep Bremer's release low-key, refused to confirm the date, which was disclosed in an e-mail to victims. They also would not say where Bremer, 57, will live, though prison system sources said it will be somewhere in Maryland.

A melee at the Metropolitan Transition Center that sent 18 prison inmates to area hospitals on Friday with stab wounds involved a dispute between the Bloods gang and Sunni Muslim prisoners, according to corrections sources. Maj. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the prison system, acknowledged for the first time yesterday that a gang might have been involved in the violence that erupted at the state-run prison in Baltimore. But, noting security concerns, she would not provide more detailed information.

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.

Support Saar's focus on updating prisons The recent murder of correctional officer David McGuinn at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup and the stabbings of two other correctional officers at the same facility in March are disturbing and require careful analysis of staffing patterns and operating procedures at the prison. That analysis should not, however, become simply an attack upon Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Mary Ann Saar, who is a highly qualified and experienced corrections administrator ("High-level changes possible in prison system," Aug. 8)