Prison System

Here, recycling is the name of the game. Copper and aluminum obviously, but also steel, brick and even seemingly worthless nuggets of concrete from demolished buildings find their way to new and productive uses. Grasses are planted to protect critical wetlands near the Chesapeake Bay, and further toward the Appalachian Piedmont, new trees will help protect tributaries of the Potomac River. Dedicated individuals pick up trash along miles of highway and reclaim historic sites. The mission spans the generations, as well; kids tend raised beds, pick cucumbers and make friends with writhing red worms in rich black soil.

A tier of the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup remained on lockdown Friday, a day after three inmates were stabbed in an argument among several prisoners. Two men suffered wounds that were not life-threatening. Another man, who was stabbed several times in the upper body, was "seriously injured," but his condition Friday was unknown, said Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Paramedics were summoned to the medium-security prison in the 7800 block of House of Correction Road at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

Here's something you won't hear much about in the coming Maryland gubernatorial election: The United States has the world's highest incarceration rate and a de facto racial caste system that discriminates against hundreds of thousands of black men in the way Jim Crow laws once did. You won't hear anything close to that from Martin O'Malley, the Democrat and present governor, nor from Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., the Republican and wannabe-governor-again who,...

Gov. Martin O'Malley proposed a $39 billion state budget Wednesday that puts more money toward education, prisons and the environment, but calls for no new fees or taxes. "This budget should be an articulation of who we are and what's important to us," O'Malley said as he delivered the final budget of his two terms as governor. The proposal for the next fiscal year — about $2 billion larger than this year's budget — seeks more spending on initiatives that O'Malley described as investments in public safety and expanding the middle class.

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 teenager who has been at a pretrial detention center for almost a year in spite of a felony conviction and five-year sentence has been transferred to the state's prison system. Moshe Khaver was being held yesterday at the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center in Baltimore, where he will be assessed before moving to a prison to serve out the rest of his term. Khaver, 19, pleaded guilty last fall to first-degree assault. He admitted running over another teen, who spent five weeks in a coma and suffered permanent injuries, during a dispute about $20 in marijuana.

SAN FRANCISCO - California's enormous prison system, the largest in the Western Hemisphere with more than 162,000 inmates, could be radically altered in the wake of voters' overwhelming approval Tuesday of a measure that will sentence nonviolent drug offenders to treatment instead of prison. Nearly one in three prisoners in California is serving time for a drug-related crime, more per capita than any other state. The new law, Proposition 36, puts California at the forefront of a national movement to reform drug laws.

Inmates in Maryland's prison system are sometimes set free months early or, in other cases, weeks late because of errors in calculating time off for good behavior and other such credits, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. The audit of 65 inmates at two prisons who were released in 2003 showed that one-third of them got out on the incorrect date. One prisoner was released more than three months early, while another remained behind bars three weeks after he became eligible for release, according to the report.

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.

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.

Our ridiculous, mandatory sentencing in drug matters not only destroys lives, it costs the taxpayers a fortune ("A misguided drug policy," Dec. 23). And it's not just the racial discrimination rampant in crack and powder cocaine offenses that needs to concern us. I also became aware of this cruelty in a case involving shotgun shells, and there was no bias perceived. The requirement of a presidential pardon to commute the life sentence of a woman incarcerated for hiding her boyfriend's stash of crack demonstrates the injustice of these mandatory minimum statutes.

I became aware of the cruelty of mandatory minimum sentences in a case involving shotgun shells, so it's not only drug convictions that apply here ("President commutes terms for 8 offenders," Dec. 20). Nevertheless, when I learned the extent of the sentences handed out to the eight offenders President Barack Obama pardoned, I was shocked. It's easy to see such injustice as racially motivated, but we need to look further. Our prison system has expanded immensely, and the "gulag archipelago" across the land is a disgrace to our nation.

During the last decade, the percentage of people released from Maryland's prisons who re-offend within three years has dropped by more than 11 points - and by 3 points in just the last year. Considering the cost to society of the revolving door prison has become for too many in this country, that's a laudable achievement. Yet the fact that more than two in five who are released from prison will still get arrested or violate parole within three years shows just how much more progress remains to be made.

The percentage of Maryland ex-offenders likely to return to prison within three years of release has fallen by double digits since 2000, state prison officials reported Monday. Secretary Gary D. Maynard, the top official at the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, credited the prison system's improved educational and job skills training programs, as well as stronger partnerships with state agencies that provide medical and mental health services to inmates and upon their release.

A prison inmate is being treated for stab wounds he suffered during a fight among three prisoners at the medium-security Maryland Correctional Training Center near Hagerstown on Monday night, a spokesman for the prison system said. Mark Vernarelli said the 32-year-old man from Frederick County was injured in an altercation outside of his cell at about 8:30 p.m., and officers "quickly controlled the situation. " The prisoner — serving 10 years and six months for four convictions on second-degree assault and burglary — was flown to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was being treated for several puncture wounds.

It is good news that the Maryland Court of Appeals used common sense regarding the unfair trials that occurred as a result of the faulty instructions given jurors prior to 1980 ("13 Killers go free after court decision," July 11, 2013). In most European countries the corrections system recognizes that a person incarcerated for a crime is not the same person 20 years later. In the cases described in the newspaper, all the defendants had served 32 to 45 years in prison. Is further retribution really necessary?

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.

The first words of Elvis Presley's classic hit, "Jailhouse Rock," were: "The warden threw a party at the county jail. " In Maryland, the entire prison system is having a party thrown by gangs and official mismanagement ("Assembly leaders to be briefed on jail problems," May 4). The recent scandal that exploded at the Baltimore City detention center is just the tip of the iceberg. The media and the press are being misled into believing this problem is isolated and of recent vintage.