The Baltimore jail that was run by a gang, by Betsy Kulman

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Closing of Baltimore Detention Center Marks a Milestone
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JULY 31, 2015

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ANNAPOLIS, Md. — An announcement by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan that he is closing the Baltimore City Detention Center marked a milestone in long-standing problems with the state's dangerously decrepit correctional facilities.

The Republican governor said Thursday that the state would save $10 million to $15 million a year by closing the state-run complex, where inmates and corrupt guards had run a criminal conspiracy that garnered national attention and where hundreds of inmates are held while awaiting trial or serving short sentences.

"Given the space we have, it makes no sense whatsoever to keep this deplorable facility open," Hogan said.

Problems with the jail have bedeviled state officials for years and spanned Democratic and Republican administrations, providing a steady flow of ammunition for political sniping. Hogan, standing by the crumbling building with walls dating to the 19th century, repeatedly cited failures in leadership in creating what he called "a black eye in our state for too long."

"For too long Maryland had been led down the wrong path," Hogan said. "Out of touch politicians in Annapolis made a practice of clinging to the status quo instead of finding common sense solutions to the many challenges that this state faces."

The Republican governor sharply criticized his predecessor, former Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is now seeking the Democratic nomination for president. He blasted O'Malley for his response to a sweeping federal indictment in 2013, which exposed a sophisticated drug-and cellphone-smuggling ring involving dozens of gang members and correctional officers at the jail. The investigation also exposed sexual relations between jailhouse gang leader Tavon White and female guards that left four of them pregnant.

Forty of the 44 defendants charged in the racketeering conspiracy were convicted, including 24 correctional officers. Thirty-five defendants pleaded guilty; eight defendants went to trial and one defendant died. White pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Hogan criticized O'Malley for characterizing the indictments at the time as a positive step in rooting out corruption.

"It was just phony political spin on a prison culture created by an utter failure in leadership," Hogan said.

O'Malley, for his part, took a dim view of the correctional infrastructure he inherited upon taking office in 2007, after Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich's tenure. In his first year, O'Malley closed the notorious House of Correction, which first opened in Jessup in 1879. Serious problems with juvenile justice centers had plagued Maryland for years, bringing critical reports from the U.S. Justice Department for civil rights violations.

Maryland Democrats criticized Hogan on Thursday for not including them in any discussions about closing the state-run Baltimore City Detention Center.

"Consistently, the governor has circumvented the Legislature rather than working together to find bipartisan and consensus-driven solutions," said Sen. James DeGrange, D-Anne Arundel, and Sen. Guy Guzzone, D-Howard.

Hogan said he was convinced he was making the right decision.

"We would never have been able to accomplish this had it been discussed in committee and public without taking the decisive action today," Hogan said.

The governor noted that the building's roof was crumbling. It has regular flooding and sewage problems. And blind corners make the facility unsafe for employees.

Stephen Moyer, the secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said the unsafe and obsolete facility should have been closed years ago.

"Part of this structure pre-dates the Civil War," Moyer said. "Much of it is literally falling apart."

Moyer said inmates will be transported to other nearby facilities. A special phone line has been created so relatives will be able to find them.

The state has run the jail since 1991 and says it is one of the largest municipal jails in the country. Parts of the complex, which also has wings housing women and juveniles, date to 1859. Only the men's detention center is being closed. The men's facility had 841 pre-trial detainees on Thursday. About 750 are expected to be moved, because other buildings in the complex could accommodate some, said Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

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Maryland’s Governor Orders Immediate Shuttering of Long-Troubled Baltimore Jail
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
JULY 30, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Gov. Larry Hogan at the Baltimore detention center on Thursday. The jail grabbed headlines in 2013 after a federal indictment exposed an almost dystopian environment rife with corruption. Credit Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

The man who until recently ran the huge, fortresslike city jail in Baltimore impregnated four corrections officers, bought fancy cars and demanded unchallenged loyalty, investigators would later say.

“This is my jail,” he was heard boasting on a wiretap.

That boss — Tavon White — was not the warden. He was an inmate himself, the head of a gang that actually ran the jail, according to federal prosecutors who brought racketeering and drug charges against him and 43 other inmates and guards.

Now, the state-run jail faces its own reckoning. On Thursday, the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, ordered the facility, known as the Baltimore City Detention Center, shuttered immediately, and the remaining 750 male prisoners moved to other facilities.

The jail, which dates to the Civil War, will be torn down, its nearly 800 employees transferred.

The governor cited the jail’s extraordinary history of corruption, as well as “horrendous” living conditions.

Descriptions of the detention center contained in federal indictments read like cable television scripts about a dystopian prison, where inmates intimidated and co-opted guards, slept with some and carried out a profitable drug trade that used smuggled cellphones to communicate and transfer money inside and out.


Outside the Baltimore City Detention Center on Wednesday. Credit Nate Pesce for The New York Times
Or, as Mr. Hogan said on Thursday, “Inmates were literally running this prison.”

“Making matters even worse, a number of employees either stood by, or in many cases enabled these criminals and the vast corruption that quickly followed,” he said.

“Maryland taxpayers were unwittingly underwriting a vast criminal enterprise run by gang members and corrupt public servants.”

It is a characterization that the F.B.I. and prosecutors publicly made in 2013, saying the jail was being run by members of the Black Guerrilla Family, the gang that Mr. White commanded.

Gang members had cemented control not just from payoffs or profit-sharing, but also by having sex with many of the female guards, manipulating the very people who were supposed to be watching over them.

Corrupt corrections officers, an F.B.I. affidavit said, “give their allegiance and loyalty to these inmates in an effort to make money and/or further their sexual relationships.”

By one inmate’s estimate cited in the affidavit, about two-thirds of the guards smuggled contraband or were having sex with inmates.

Gang documents recovered by officials at a Maryland prison even described how Black Guerrilla Family recruits were instructed to “target a specific stereotype” of corrections officer who could be easily manipulated: “Women with low self-esteem, insecurities and certain physical attributes.”

Mr. White, 37, pleaded guilty to federal racketeering and conspiracy charges and was sentenced in February to 12 years in prison, to be served concurrently with a 20-year prison sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty in state court to attempted murder.

All told, the United States attorney in Maryland said, 40 of 44 defendants have been convicted or pleaded guilty.

Yet the prosecutions of the gang members and their guards did not ameliorate the inhumane conditions at the jail, which, as Mr. Hogan noted Thursday, affected inmates who were largely awaiting trial.

“Still, they are forced to live in substandard, frankly appalling circumstances,” he said.

Just two months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union went to federal court to demand improvements, calling the detention center “a dank and dangerous place, where detainees are confined in dirty cells infested with vermin.”

The group said that parts of the jail were without working sinks or toilets for days at a time, while showers “were full of drain flies, black mold and filth.”

The A.C.L.U.’s national prison project director, David Fathi, said Thursday that his group was relieved that the detention center would be closed, saying it should have been condemned decades ago.

But he also called on the state to improve conditions in other jail facilities that he said have “dangerous physical conditions and shockingly deficient medical and mental health care.”