Announcement: I am now the Facility Manager of the Baltimore In-Between Incarcerations Facility (BIBIF) featuring: 1st floor front combination reception, classification and "rec" center. 1st floor rear feed up and feed up prep. 2nd floor front computer command center and overflow non- conventional housing area. 2nd floor rear lavatory/shower area where certain ex-offenders have been known to float in the whirlpool bath for hours at a time. 3rd floor dormitory area large enough for 8 by MCIH standards but single- and (conditionally) double-celled, by mine. Basement archive with enough space for 200 basefiles and the only known (approaching, complete) set of DCDs if ever found. Yard "out of bounds" but not spraypainted with stencil to say so. One slim and trim 36 lb. guard dog and one pleasingly plump 46 lb. guard dog.

I moved to the 550 Saint Mary address after a hellish week at the Time Group's 611 Park Avenue building in 100+ heat where the air conditioning doesn't work even on a good day.

If you want to, write to me at BIBIF Headquarters, 550 Saint Mary Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201. Disregard any other address in your files.

Universal Jailbaby questions: When you want it to cool down, where do you put the thermostat: 1) 65 2) 55 3) 45? On the other hand, where do you put the thermostat when you want it to heat up? 1) 75 2) 85 3) 95? Who is paying the electric and gas bills at your place of residence (i.e., where you sleep): 1) you, 2) someone else?

Beware of Dogs. Now that I moved to BIBIF, I went to City Pound and picked out two dogs. They were numbered #249-853 and #250-046, respectively. If you breach the perimeter of BIBIF, these are the dogs that will attack you. If I let you in the front door invited, they will climb all over you and slobber you with (dog) kisses. So take your pick.

Wham, Bam, Pass the Gravy Boat, Ma'am. We all know that on May 7 what they are calling a "mel e" happened at the Annex in Jessup. In the olden days they used to say "riot" except only a tiny fraction of people were involved and all seven of them were identified before the week was out.

To make a long story short, MHC Annex unwarranted, unauthorized property violations by COs got so bad that Headquarters has two full-time people figuring out reparations for property that was destroyed or stolen. No matter where are you housed now, MCAC, Jessup, ECI, Hagerstown or Cumberland, Headquarters knows they owe you. They only hope you have the patience while they straighten things out.

Caspar Taylor, influential politician, Speaker of the Maryland House and representative from Allegany County, seeks to take overtime and benefits of Jessup COs to Cumberland in Allegany County. Basically, the State's experience with COs in general shows that COs from Hagerstown and to the West (i.e., Cumberland) are far less likely to participate in job actions, are two-to-one bets in terms of following orders and respecting directives, and value more highly the $23,000 a year base rate presented them.

No matter where, no matter when, the politicians of Maryland have the Division of Correction at heart and mind and have committed themselves to making sure the Annex and all other joints in the system are a safe and profitable place to live and work for everybody.

Adventures in Philosophy [Plato's Myth of the Caves Revisited] -- Jobs Program Syndrome (JPS) explained: Imagine a place where all you know about the world is paper going in and paper going out. The fundamental imperative is that the only way you supposedly accomplish anything is fix it so paper stops coming in. The fundamental problem is that the only tools at your disposal are the paper you send out. Unfortunately, you find that, contrary to your fundamental mandate, the only way to confirm and perpetuate your own existence is by paper continuing to come in. What would you do faced with such a moral dilemma? Take this multiple choice test from real life to find the answers that "fit the real bill": 1) Public Defender; 2) Anyone or anything having to do with any federal, state or municipal court; 3) Department of Assessments and Taxation; 4) Classification Departments beginning at Hagerstown and the Eastern Shore; 5) ARP Coordinator (pick one); 6) City Animal Shelter; 7) Anyone having to do with Joseph Curran et al; 8) All of the above; 9) All of the above only scratches the surface. If you picked "9", you win. If you picked 1) through 7) and more, you win. If you picked 8), you are limiting yourself unnecessarily.

Historical Perspective: Many, many years ago, before Richard A. Lanham, Sr. became Commissioner of Corrections, I was young and beautiful. And then Richard A. Lanham, Sr. came on the scene as Commissioner. One thing led to another (MPen, MCAC, lifers, MHC Annex, etc., etc.) and now after all that has happened, I find myself with grey hair, wrinkles and bifocal glasses not to mention bags and sags where I used to be lean and mean. I blame it all on Richard A. Lanham, Sr. (P.S. I tend to think he feels the same about me.)

Here starts the original, authentic Mayflowers newsletter:

Based on actual conversation with DOC alumni: Who best characterizes white men in general: 1) Mike V. Miller 2) Parris Glendening 3) Hulk Hogan 4) The Three Stooges.

You saw it first in this newsletter: Bishop Robinson's Big Birthday has come and gone. There was some concern that people would find out he's now eligible for Social Security - Medicare even. This newsletter was the first to report the truth and spill the real beans.

The 1997 Legislature Online: The best and easiest way to get information on the legislature is to go to its Internet website at http://mlis.state.md.us. For those on the outside of a Maryland prison, you need a computer, a modem and a phone line. There you can find what you need asking by bill number, sponsor, topic, etc. - no paper, no postage, no file cabinet space. In fact, compared to last year, I tripled the size of my traditional database, vastly broadening its scope to cover all the metes and bounds not just of "Public Safety", not just of "Criminal Justice", but of the whole panorama of what goes into the genesis of crimes, administrative processing, and punishment - literally from Norplant to autopsy. The Internet has been a wonderful experience, not just for me (and us) by the way, it is my rough "guesstimate" that the State saved just by me in the 90 day session on the order of 180 phone calls to Legislative Reference, two reams of paper (1000 sheets, conservatively), and upwards of $75 in postage. Putting the legislature on the Internet is probably the most cost-effective thing the State has done this fiscal year.

Having said that, if you really want to find out what really happened in the legislative session, check out my website, custom-designed for you:

Now for all of you with family members on the outside: To order paper copies from the Department of Legislative Reference: Phone: 1-800-492-7122 or 410-841-3810 (Baltimore area), 301-858-3810 (D.C. area). There is no charge for this service. For the rest of this newsletter, for example, "House Bill 926" looks like "[hb926]" and "Senate Bill 410" looks like "[sb410]".

The 1997 Maryland General Assembly can best be remembered not for what passed, but what died and/or never had a chance to live:

The Senate Finance Committee earns an A+ for its excellent handling of "Collective Bargaining - Authority of Governor" [sb36], "Right to Work" [sb586], and "Collective Bargaining for Law Enforcement Officers" [sb606]. This entire slate was never scheduled for hearing and never became an issue.

A similar A+ phenomenon happened with the guns and gun control bills, [hb385, hb412, sb184, sb660, to name but a few]. To a one, they died or were killed in committee. Not a single one got to the floor for a vote.

Though Appropriations waited until relatively late in the session, they killed a bill which would have prohibited privatization of the custody function of the prison system [hb339]. They also tabled "Line Item Veto" [hb221] and killed the "Workforce Reduction Act" [hb655]. Senate Budget & Taxation Committee also tactfully and without further ado tabled, "Balanced Budget Amendment - Ratification" [sj8].

Earning an A or an A- were this year's batch of death penalty bills [too numerous to mention]. With the exception of a minor amount of obligatory Senate activity, the entire slate was wiped out and we were all able to go home early with our sanity intact. In this particular session on this issue, the legislature exercised good taste, good sense and excellent judgment.

No muss and fuss, no filibusters, the legislature either tabled or killed all of the above (and more!) and were thus able to turn its attention to more important things. To name only a few examples, progress was seen in housing [sb737], education [hb1361], court administration [hb305/sb219, hj6], healthcare governance and management [hb428, hb1323, sb332, sb333], jobs creation [sb229, hb499], (arguably) the Baltimore City School System [sb795] and youth matters [sb520, hb1249]. Strides were also taken in general management of state government [sb410, sb899, hb164], including reorganization of legislative staff and services [sb903, hb1450].

Why did God make the House? To keep the Senate from doing anything really stupid. Why did God make the Senate? You guessed right!

If the "Prisoner Litigation Act" [hb926/sb516] didn't go "woof, woof" at the start of the House hearing, it certainly went "arf, arf" and "bow-wow" by the time Richard Rosenblatt (who has a face only a mother could love in the first place and who is Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Public Safety and the author of the bill) finished his presentation in House Judiciary Committee. Bishop Robinson sat to Rosenblatt's side wearing his famous benign poker-face he tends to adopt in such circumstances, particularly in capital budget hearings. Only moments before, I had given the two of them a package titled, "Maryland Prisoners Who Would, Have and/or Will Litigate" and, although they hadn't had a chance to review it in depth, Mr. Robinson knew throughout the hearing that each and every member of Judiciary also had a copy. The "Litigate" package was compiled by me out of my own mailbag and consisted of 14 actual facsimiles of spontaneous and unrehearsed inmates discussing and seeking help on a whole spectrum of legal problems. Some of the problems portrayed were obviously administrators, bureaucrats, judges, court clerks, public defenders, and the Attorney General himself.

The "Prisoner Litigation Act" would have effectively barred inmate access to the courts by requiring full payment of the filing fee (usually about $80), automatically wiping out your account to welfare level, and barring any court activity on a case until and unless all monies were collected. The "Act" also had provision for you to lose all your good time and limited any potential damages, and so forth and so on beyond the scope of this newsletter.

The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, ignoring the "Litigate" package, amended the bill such that you would get your money back but only if you won the case. The House Judiciary Committee, "Litigate" package in hand, eviscerated ("ripped the guts out of") the bill, got the profoundly amended version through the full House, and sent it back over to the Senate.

To make a long story short, the House and the Senate in the waning hours of the session came to a consensus by throwing in this year's popular clauses mandating restitution payoff, child support contribution and notifying the victim of any award.

The tale of these two bills also raises another reality: With the Legal Aid Bureau now defunct leaving a virtual vacuum of legal representation, is constitutionality now measured by a different, lesser standard or is constitutionality no longer an issue these days at all?

Meanwhile, despite passage of the PLA, you still have access to courts on civil matters but there will be changes in how the courts approach your suitcases upon receipt. For one, you may have to pay some sort of filing fee, but it can be waived if you make a five-point showing under oath, much like the prevalent forma pauperis does now. The PLA goes into effect October 1, 1997 and is not retroactive if you file before then. As before, you still have to exhaust administrative remedies before you can go to court. It is not known whether or which clerks of courts will be issuing new forms to assist with compliance with these bills and it is not known how the judges will approach the seven (7) criteria for establishing filing fees and/or payment schedules.

The entire premise of the "Act" was to stem the tide of what "the pros" refer to as "frivolous" litigation. Unfortunately, a number of "the pros" have the attitude that prisoners themselves are "frivolous" and thus anything prisoners file, is by their definition, "frivolous". Heeding AG Rosenblatt's expressed opinion on how ridiculous prisoner lawsuits are, the resulting legislation specifies that any prisoner who has had a court of law (federal or state) deem three separate filings "frivolous", will have any more suits placed on the court's "inactive" list and the prisoner will be able to pursue only one case at a time in the future. Left undecided were (constitutionally-protected) lawsuits filed by prisoners helping prisoners in the other prisoner's name. Not addressed were the constitutional predicaments generated if prison administrators, particularly in racially-contrasting rural regions, use coercion and strong-arm tactics to repress free flow of information and thereby attenuate access to the courts.

[Update: Richard Rosenblatt reared his ugly head again at a lifer hearing before Judge Rombro in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on June 24, 1997. Faced with the excellent advocacy of Joseph Tetrault of PRISM and David Walsh-Little of the Sowebo Center for Justice, Rosenblatt came through again as the mouthpiece of the ineffectual, politically motivated Governor Parris Glendening. A decision from Judge Rombro is pending.]

Economy and Efficiency, DPSCS can now regroup without retreat [sb410]. The Secretary has been given the power to "transfer, assign, or reassign any function, activity, or staff of any unit in the Department to any other unit in the Department", basically, within a 50 mile radius if involuntary. "Care, control, or supervision of certain offenders may be assigned to any employee of the Department who has the proper certification." The Parole Commission is excluded, but the existing DOC, Patuxent and Parole & Probation and the few remaining DPSCS entities (see below) are included. SB410 was assigned to Judicial Proceedings in the Senate and Commerce and Government Matters (CGM) in the House.

Also in the name of reorganization, DPSCS was able to jettison certain non-offender related subunits, chiefly, the Fire Marshal [sb390] and the Vehicle Theft Prevention Council [hb363]. DPSCS tried also to get rid of the 911 Systems Board [hb188] but Judiciary Committee killed the bill early in the session. (CGM and Judiciary tend to operate independently.)

The "C" in DPSCS now stands for "Collections". In an initial foray into privatization of court collections [sb459, hb19], court costs, including Criminal Injury Compensation costs, are to be delegated to a private contractor supervised by DPSCS but so far only in a pilot program in Harford and Montgomery Counties. This was not a first but marks DPSCS as collection agent as a decided trend. Also passing the 1997 legislature were SB173 and HB768 ("Victims Rights Act of 1997") and SB516 and HB926 ("Prisoner Litigation Act"), containing provisions where DPSCS has a collection role. These charges are in addition to the fees specified for Parole & Probation, including urine testing, passed in prior years. What all this proves is that, even if legislators don't understand correctional options, they do understand debt, debt service and collection agents.

The Victims Rights Act of 1997 consists of a series of relatively small changes in a wide host of statutes. The bill was the product of the "Task Force to Examine Maryland's Crime Victims' Rights Laws" which met in the interim prior to the session. Further butchering the parole law such that no one (you or the Parole Commission included) has an idea what parole is supposed to do or is all about, they added the language, "and the commission before entering into a predetermined parole release agreement" into the motley mix of criteria arrived at two years ago during the nearest previous phase of organized victim activity. The VRA is 51 pages long and had veritable scads of sponsors not to mention the endorsement of the Lieutenant Governor.

Child sex offenders and sexual predators were singled out this session in about eight separate bills. SB605, HB342 and HB343 were heavily debated and finally passed with many amendments. In essence, persons having been convicted of certain sex crimes will have to register with a central registry maintained by DPSCS and/or a local law enforcement agency. Check with each bill for more details if you think you qualify.

The Independent Prisoner bills were simple and straightforward this session. One would merely have added a "fiscal note" to the motley mix of parole criteria [hb1436/sb878]. A "fiscal note" is simply a statement of "how much does it cost?" For example, if you are costing the State $20,000 a year now, if the Parole Commission gives you a five-year setoff, you will cost $100,000 by your next parole hearing. The other bill would merely have named 15 people knowledgeable about crime to sit on a committee which would use existing sources in DPSCS (e.g., YOU) to find out WHY we have crime [hb1435/sb876]. We already know THAT we have crime and we are already pretty much sure WHAT the crimes are and HOW MANY crimes there are but to date, with a great many of the "crime-doers" in custody and a great many "basefiles" to choose from, the WHY and HOW of crime yet mystifies major policy-makers. My "fiscal note" and "WHY" bills were filed in both House and Senate by Delegate Clarence Davis and Senator Nathaniel McFadden, respectively. In presenting these bills to Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, knowing their immediate track record, I drew inspiration from such public speakers as Joan Rivers, George Carlin and Bishop Robinson.

Now there's another reason to use a condom. Child support enforcement was about the hottest issue debated and decided in the 1997 session. Whatever for? There was a $229 million federal grant riding on the outcome. Out of 18 bills, your 2 was contributed by SB877 and HB1434 (both Independent Prisoner bills). There were a myriad of proposals, some of which would have crippled about one in four of you into a permanent state of economic servitude the moment you stepped outside of DOC. Better heads prevailed - SB636 contains the entire consensus. For one, you will be told if you are alleged to have fathered a child covered by this legislation. For two, if you can't pay, you won't do jail time waiting for them to figure that out.

The Sentencing Commission will just keep rolling along. Governor Glendening's brainchild of 1996 was supposed to report its results at the end of 1997 with a batch of bills for 1998 (i.e., next year). Upon their Chairman's request, the legislature extended the Commission's reporting period by one year or to the end of 1998 for the 1999 session. The significance of the extension is that the Commission's findings and proposed legislation will be reported after the next election. Win or lose, who or why, the (new) 1999 legislature will have as its first assignment a complete overhaul of Maryland criminal sentencing.

Message to M25 Burglars: To those people with mandatory 25 sentences for crimes that are no longer under the definition of violent crime, I carefully monitored every piece of legislation as it was posted on the Internet. Unlike last year, when there was a 30+ or 40+ parolable substitute debated, nothing turned up this year. Although I could have asked to file something, it was my learnd conclusion that it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Authority of the Governor was challenged by five bills, not just lifers, during 1997. The lifer bill was heard in Judiciary and would have lifted the requirement of a Governor's signature in order to parole a lifer after 20 years time in [hb1293]. The other four bills ([hb59, hb129, hb943 and sb206]), had to do with publication and scheduling of executive orders. HB59, which passed the House, contained language that executive orders had to be submitted to a joint senate/house committee for review before an order could take effect. All bills of this nature were killed in one or more committees by the end of the session.

And you thought DOC was screwy! After eight attempts to break through the automated touch tone answering system at the Department of Assessments and Taxation, it was beyond a reasonable doubt established where to file Articles of Incorporation for the new lifer/prisoner group Offenders & Advocates Coalition for Change. By serendipity and perseverance, OACC is now well on its way to being put officially on the Maryland not-ready-for-non-profit map.

Public-Public Partnership: Through a grant from the National Criminal Resource Center (NCRC) located in Nashville, Tennessee, DPSCS will be conducting pre-orientation seminars in the Baltimore City School System beginning September 1, 1997. City school students will be assigned a provisional commitment number. DPSCS folks on hand will explain how to fill out an Administrative Remedy form and sick call slip. Each participant will receive a copy of the latest medium security package list and inmate handbook for future reference and will "spin the wheel" to determine which rural region they will be assigned to. An innovation of the program is that each person will receive not a copy of the current parole statute, but a complete copy of the COMARs (Code of Maryland Regulations) governing parole just like the ones the Parole Commission is actually supposed to know about. Just like real DOC, no lawyers will be present at any stage of the proceedings or will not be paying attention if they find themselves assigned. All participants will be required to fill out a mock commissary slip within the means of their $25 reserve account and will be able to tell officers apart by the insignia on their collars. ARP submissions will be graded for spelling, grammar, punctuation and the ability to complete sentences and link sentences into complete paragraphs, and they can be later used to earn credits with the English Departments in the respective schools. Successful candidates will be given the yellow copy of a "Notice of Certificate" after they have signed it to confirm receipt. Those completing the program will receive expedited treatment if and when they turn up at any DPSCS facility beginning with Central Booking Facility and especially if they are later routed through BCDC, DOC, P&P, or even the Parole Commission.

Geographically Speaking: Have you ever wondered where you've been living all these years? Perhaps you find yourself in Hagerstown in either MCIH, MCTC or RCI (a total population at last count of 6625, employing officially about 1750, and having a combined FY1998 allocated budget of $96,344,112 [that's a lot of Stuckey's and 7-11s!]). Without DOC and you, Hagerstown would still be somewhere between "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Peyton Place". The Hagerstown non-joint population projection by the Year 2000 is said to be around 38,000 people, almost all of them not officially residing on Roxbury Road. Hagerstown was once the site of famous battles during the Civil War, and to date, no one I've ever met is quite sure which side won. Hagerstown's most famous citizen is State Senator Donald F. Munson, who helped spearhead the effort on "Enhanced Vehicle Emissions Inspection Program - Regional Contingency" [sb193] in the 1996 legislature not to mention "Child Support Enforcement - Fees" [sb14] and "Family Law - Child Support - Incarceration of Obligor" [sb37] in 1997. News in Briefs

MCAC - Where do DCD's come from? All on account to MCAC, Kate Shatzkin, Baltimore Sunpaper yours truly, Independent Prisoner Advocate, Judy Preston, Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and Melanie Pereira, Deputy Commissioner of the Division of Correction are all rapidly approaching - you guessed it - menopause! This does not bode well for the Acting Assistant Warden of MCAC (Jack Kavanaugh), the warden of the Maryland Penitentiary (Eugene Nuth), the Commissioner of DOC (Richard Lanham) or the Secretary of Public Safety (Bishop Robinson).

MCPRJ: In the first test of their new satellite TV/video system, after a food fight in the dining hall, the warden pulled "Guiding Light", "One Life to Live" and "The Young and the Restless", substituting instead a Donna Reed/Loretta Young film festival. Strategies for the Street

Make those correctional pennies add up. When you die, don't do it at University of Maryland Hospital in downtown Baltimore. Die in your own bunk, dining area or yard in Cumberland, Hagerstown or the Eastern Shore. DOC will have to pay the shipping and handling costs associated with returning your carcass back to Baltimore City for medical research or other disposal if you have no family or your family doesn't want to pay to take possession of your body.

Higher Education At Our Own Back Door: DPSCS has finally figured out a way to replace the recreation officers lost in the budget cuts of 1991 and at no cost to the Department! Working with local colleges, masters degree candidates in Occupational Therapy in a special scholarship program will work full-time a semester at a time at Department facilities while at the same time earning credits toward their masters degrees. The local colleges are working with grant and loan sources to provide the fledgling O.T.s favorable financial aid packages covering the tuition, fees and other costs incurred while they work full-time in the Department. Indirect costs will be borne at the college level. For the students, this will mean that partial stipends and generous grace periods will offset some of the educational loans taken out during the period they will be working in Maryland prisons without a paycheck. While on their semester's duty, the students will report administratively to the Volunteer Coordinator, but functionally, to the Chief of Security at the respective institution. The colleges have said they are glad they are able to provide this opportunity to fulfill their twin missions of providing public service along with education to the State of Maryland. Official and unofficial sources in the Department acclaim the innovative "Rec Officer" program citing the fact that no academic from any college or university has been seen on site in the Department since the Pell Grant program ended three years ago and never a whole lot before that time either.

July 1, 2001 - DPSCS enters Cyberspace when its first Intranet site ("PubSafe" or "PS") goes online. To gear up for the new system, each warden will be outfitted with his or her own Pentium 133 "I-Server" and 386h drones will be located strategically throughout the institution. The wiring will be installed over a weekend by volunteers from the Maryland National Guard. The pilot for the new Cyberspace system has met with considerable acclaim: Case Manager: "Same mandatory release date - first time, every time!" Classification: "Now we will know about escape charges even 15 or 20 years old! Cuts down on who we send to work release!" Commissary Manager: "I never knew the price of a Little Debbie could swing so much over one prison system! Why are we sitting on 200 cases of them anyway?" Maintenance supervisor: "Why are we ordering more [fill in the blank] when [fill in the blank] has had thousands of them in inventory since [fill in the blank] years ago?" FinanceManager: "Gee, all those $2 and $5 inmate check requests can be uploaded once a day and printed automatically by a central computer once a week! No more double-signatures and double-bookkeeping on $3 transactions!" Security: "Wow, we can print or download the forms we need and not have to make them up as we go along! And as we go from prison to prison or different parts of the same prison, the forms we fill out will stay the same and they will always be DCD-proof and Headquarters approved!"

The greatest advance of PubSafe will be that inmates will "earn" good time and other credits as they go along instead of DOC giving them up front because they can't handle the math otherwise with the manual system currently in place. Not to mention, the people actually programming the diminution system will actually have a working knowledge of same. Differences of opinion can be resolved quickly, accurately and unambiguously. It will have less meaning that Legal Aid went out of existence leaving no one on hand in the system familiar with the intricate diminution law legal subspecialty.

Help! DPSCS is running out of commitment numbers! If you have been assigned to DOC, you have a six digit commitment number looking like 000-xxx. If you are female, you start with 800-xxx. In recent years, however, stuck with the same computer left over from the George McGovern administration, if you come through BCDC or Central Booking, you are designated 500-xxx. Since DOC itself is already up to 250-xxx, never the twain is going to meet if the commitment number system is going to make any sense at all. DPSCS has been charged with the responsibility to come up with a better way. Right now they're experimenting with two-digit area codes or shifting to hexadecimal notation. You might identify yourself as "1B3-4E6" some time soon.

Suggested Reading to Cap Off the Millennium

Washington Irving, Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.

Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden.

Grace Metalious, Return to Peyton Place.

Nancy Moran Independent Prisoner Advocate

550 Saint Mary Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21201