Submitted to the Baltimore Evening Sun
June 27, 1991
In June, 1991, a food stamp worker with the Department of Social Services (DSS) was stabbed to death by a former inmate of the Division of Correction (DOC), who was under the (so-called) supervision of the Division of Parole and Probation (P&P).
This incident brings to my mind the early days of October, 1984, when a correctional officer with the Division of Correction was stabbed to death by an inmate on the Penitentiary's notorious South Wing. Like the food stamp worker, the officer was the first one killed in the line of duty in his Division. The same unions and even the same people from the same unions bewailed the event, citing deficiencies in security, physical plant and leadership. The same officials (mayor, governor and so forth) attended the funeral, held a few days later. The officer, like the food stamp worker, left a spouse and child.
In the case of the food stamp worker, all three of the gargantuan state agencies with which the perpetrator had contact were plainly unable to cope with this one schizophrenic with a long and frequent history of minor crime, who lived in poverty, sleeping in an overstuffed lounge chair, and had at best a fifth grade level of education.
The Circuit Court judge who sentenced the man to a combination of prison time and suspended sentence took the unusual step of expressly stating the man might be dangerous without psychiatric medication. The Division of Correction received a copy of this statement when the man was admitted; the Division of Parole and Probation used it as one of two criteria to monitor him by after release; the Department of Social Services never knew about it until after its employee was killed in the line of duty.
The Division of Correction, where it costs about $22,800 to incarcerate an inmate for 15 months (derived using the Division's "daily per diem" rate), does nothing to see to it that persons like the man have a place to sleep and food to eat upon release. As a matter of fact, a bill that would have required DOC to give released inmates a ride back to their county of origin died in the General Assembly in the last session.
The Division of Parole and Probation evidently had a difficult time assuring he was fulfilling one of two conditions of his release - that he receive mental health treatment. It is well known that Parole and Probation only verifies that specific instructions from the courts or Parole Commission are met. Outside this narrow purview, it is simply not the mission of the Division of Parole and Probation to attend to the needs of parolees and probationers, especially those of supervisees with multiple and complex problems. It is not equipped - nor is it required - to recognize, service or refer problems to other agencies.
The Department of Social Services, which deals with a population known to be deficient in education and known to have a high incidence of mental and physical infirmities, repeatedly refused food stamps to the man on the grounds he could not document his poverty in accordance with their regulations. As of the day the food stamp worker was killed, the man, who had been under the continuous "supervision" of P&P since release from prison, and a scant few months out of DOC custody, could not properly "document" his joblessness and living conditions.
Now we hear that the Secretary of Public Safety is to submit a report to the governor about the "public safety" aspects of the killing of the social worker. Presumably, the report shall contain an analysis of the number of security officers, the placement of offices and doors, and the number of clients permitted on the inside of the office at any given time.
Far more would be gained if an analysis were done of the breakdown that occurs when persons such as this man are shuttled incessantly from agency to agency. For example, the Division of Correction could do a lot more for the inmates it releases than give them a bus ride into Baltimore City. Statistics are maintained and follow up performed only if the ex-inmate reappears as a recidivist in Maryland. At present, there is no such thing as an "exit interview" where questions such as, "Where are you going?", or "How are you going to pay for food when your prison 'reserve account' (usually about $50) runs out?"
The most rational as well as cost effective idea would be to simply invite a Social Services worker into the prisons once a month to pre-screen inmates whose release is imminent. Since about 500 people are released in any given month, certainly there are those among them who need food, perhaps shelter and other DSS-type assistance like medical and dental care.
Proof of this can be seen in downtown Baltimore strewn on steam grates or heaped in alleys at night, and standing in line at soup kitchens by day. How many released inmates have tried to kill the pain of a toothache with a bottle of liquor - financed with a mugging or purse snatching - because they waited too long to get a Medical Assistance number?
By identifying "high risk" inmates before release to the streets, it would then be possible to communicate such status to the Division of Parole and Probation. At present, the soon-to-be ex-inmate is merely given an appointment at Parole and Probation several days after DOC is scheduled to let him go. The man who killed the food stamp worker was inarguably in a high-risk category: subliterate, requiring close psychiatric monitoring, having few family resources, and barely capable of acquiring food and shelter by conventional means.
Parole and Probation, for their part, would then be in a position to establish a "high risk" unit where persons identified before and after release could receive referral if not assistance in accessing services normally offered by the Department of Social Services. Perhaps it would be possible to invite a DSS representative to P&P offices once a week or so to furnish a semblance of "holistic" care to a group of persons so identified.
This cost-effective concept of "serving those who need service" would yield public safety benefits as well. DSS clients with a greater than average likelihood of being disruptive, assaultive or homicidal would be serviced at a center more suited to dealing with security concerns. DSS employees on DSS premises would be safer if these people were served elsewhere, and DSS employees working on P&P premises could receive a higher degree of protection. P&P and DOC would have a better grasp of the nature of their respective clienteles. Persons who need but are least able to find food, medical and dental care would be able to get it by going through one instead of two or more layers of bureaucracy.
If the report of the Secretary of Public Safety has even one paragraph alluding
to these common, day-to-day delivery problems, the food stamp worker shall not have
died in vain.