Maryland’s prison system struggles to police guards and inmates
The Baltimore City Detention Center is seen earlier this year after several crimes allegedly were committed by a prison gang and correctional officers. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
By Annys Shin and Aaron C. Davis By Annys Shin and Aaron C. Instead, corrections officer Antonia Allison was allowed to resign from her canada goose factory sale job at the Baltimore City Detention Center in 2006 without any mark on her personnel record and then return to the state run jail nine months later, prison system officials acknowledge.
Last month, Allison, 27, became one of 13 corrections officers indicted in a corruption case uk canada goose outlet so widespread and brazen that it astounded law enforcement officials across the country. The guards are accused of helping a violent prison gang operate a drug trafficking and money laundering operation canada goose uk black friday that involved smuggled pills cheap Canada Goose and cellphones, sexual liaisons and thousands of dollars in cash payments. Allison plans to plead not guilty to the charges, said her lawyer, Chris Purpura.
How Allison wound up being rehired even as she later agreed to pay a settlement to the inmate attacked on her watch in 2006 is emblematic of a Maryland correctional canada goose clearance system that cheap canada goose uk has struggled for years to police its 7,500 guards and nearly 26,000 inmates.
A review of court records and canada goose uk shop interviews with current and former law enforcement officers, jail administrators, state officials, union representatives and corrections experts paints a picture of a failed disciplinary system, with little if any deterrent for corrections officers who smuggle contraband or even have sex with inmates.
The prison system’s small cadre of full time permanent investigators just 19 in a state with 24 corrections facilities has remained virtually the same since Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) took office more than six years ago.
Their ranks did not grow after a report, issued the month O’Malley was elected to his first term, warned that there were nearly 300 gang members inside the detention center. Drug Enforcement Administration found a hive of corruption and flagrant gang activity at the Maryland Correctional Institution in buy canada goose jacket cheap Jessup and the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore. Evidence from that probe suggested the problems were just as serious at the Canada Goose Parka detention buy canada goose jacket center, the state’s largest canada goose uk outlet jail and long one of its most troubled.
“There was a sense that this isn’t going to get fixed until we get a case so big, so shocking that it would reallocate resources or change laws,” said a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the current investigation. “We figured we needed national attention to force the Maryland legislature to act.”
The problems appear to be deeply rooted.
Allison, who could not be reached for comment, might have Canada Goose online faced criminal charges in the assault on inmate canada goose store Tashma McFadden, who was stabbed 32 times in July 2006, said one former jail supervisor, who agreed to discuss the incident only on the condition that he not be identified by name. But an internal investigation was derailed when a sympathetic supervisor Canada Goose Jackets suggested she quit after the attack, he said.
Allison, who denied any role in the assault, later attributed her resignation to injuries suffered canada goose black friday sale in a car accident, according to canadian goose jacket a court deposition she gave in 2009.
Prison system officials said guards who resign in lieu of dismissal are supposed to be “red flagged” and barred from being rehired. They said that there was no explanation in Allison’s personnel file for her 2006 departure and that they could not explain why she was able to return. But they confirmed that by July 2007, she was back in uniform at the canada goose coats jail, canada goose where prosecutors allege she eventually went to work for Black Guerilla Family operative Tavon White smuggling marijuana and prescription pills.
The jail supervisor said he was astounded when Allison was rehired. “Dishonest officers feel empowered” when they beat the system, he said. “And you see what happened.”
Sex, drugs and prisoners were all involved in this recent FBI sting. The Washington Post’s Ann Marimow explains what Canada Goose Outlet was happening behind the prison walls. (The Fold/The Washington Post)
A dysfunctional system
Allison and the 12 other indicted officers operated in an environment where there was “no effective punishment,” federal investigators said in charging documents. The guards allegedly served as drug mules and, in several cases, had sex with inmates, with little fear of serious consequences. Four of the indicted officers became pregnant by White, and two tattooed his name on their bodies. Only one of the guards has entered a plea on the charges, saying she is not guilty; https://www.canadagoose-coats.ca Allison and the others have yet to be arraigned.
O’Malley and Gary D. Maynard, the head of the prison system, have expressed revulsion at the allegations, while defending their record of rooting out corruption.
Statistics show the department’s disciplinary system does work, said Rick Binetti, state corrections spokesman.
Since O’Malley took office, 112 corrections officers have uk canada goose been fired or forced to resign because of alleged wrongdoing, Binetti said. When officers challenge the dismissals, judges uphold the firings three quarters of the time.
But departmental records cheap canada goose also show that Maryland relies heavily on forced resignations: 41 of the 112 resigned in lieu of dismissal or charges being filed in court. Maryland, in fact, rarely prosecutes officers for Canada Goose Coats On Sale offenses short of violent abuses of inmates, state and court records show. By comparison, Virginia fired nearly 100 of its 12,000 guards last year, state officials there said.
Maryland officials acknowledged that changes Canada Goose sale are needed, especially at the detention center. The governor’s office said Monday night that O’Malley will soon announce the creation of a task force to investigate and prosecute gang activity and corruption at the jail. The 10 person task force will be made up of corrections investigators, Maryland State Police officers and an assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore.
The chief canada goose coats on sale of security at the Baltimore jail has been replaced. This month, Maynard moved his office into the detention center and vowed to cleanse the jail of its culture of complicity.
The head of the prison Canada Goose Online system’s internal investigations unit announced his resignation two weeks ago, though officials maintain that his departure is unrelated to the probe at the jail. And O’Malley has ordered a review of the disciplinary canada goose clearance sale process, which was altered three years ago to give corrections officers the right to appeal certain suspensions, firings and other punishments to a board of their peers. The Correctional Officers’ Bill of Rights was criticized by federal investigators last month for making it too hard to weed out compromised guards. But, as the Antonia Allison case demonstrates, the disciplinary dysfunction at the jail existed long before those protections were signed into law.
It isn’t clear whether the extraordinary scope of problems at the jail exists anywhere else in the prison system. But the system’s internal investigation and disciplinary process is undermanned, undertrained, and underfunded statewide, a review of policies, staffing levels and caseloads shows.
While the number of full time investigators has stayed the same, their caseload has doubled over the past six years, from 700 to 1,400 part of an effort to prosecute inmates who obtain cellphones and use them to conduct criminal business behind bars.
Although investigators are supposed to police both corrections officers and inmates, the vast majority of the state’s resources are devoted to convicts. Last year, more than 90percent of the cases pursued by investigators involved crimes committed by inmates.
The unit also does not have enough staff to keep investigators on shifts overnight or on weekends. Investigators are on call for major cases but have to come in from home.
Asked if they have pressed for more resources in a system with an operating budget of $1.3billion, two corrections officials sidestepped the question.