TO: House Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Safety
RE: MHC Annex and Pending Prison Expansion
May I begin by offering my condolences on the death of Delegate Joan Parker. She had always greeted me warmly and thanked me for the newsletters and other handouts I would leave at her office.
I was present at the hearing of your Subcommittee of September 9, 1997 with union members and officials of the prison system. I was not an invited participant -- I am a member of the general public and an interested party.
My purpose here is to furnish additional background to the Appropriations Committee as it deliberates on funding one or more prisons in Cumberland and embarks on retroactive engineering of the existing MHC Annex in the wake of serious disturbances.
My purpose is not, as Delegate Hecht posited at one point in the hearing, to address the question, "Have we gone too far?" citing the long litany of legislation establishing new and longer sentences since the 1985 Session (citing Appendix 2, "Maryland's Correctional Trends and Housing Capacity Requirements", page 13)
My background in these matters is extensive:
That is also to say that I have been in the presence of as many as 250 maximum security inmates with only 3 officers present while I was able to participate in complete comfort and safety. I have also been in the presence of up to 80 "lifers" at a time (albeit 20-30 years after the fact) with no officer at all present. I have also sat in "tte--ttes" side by side and nose to nose with persons convicted of multiple murder or even sentenced to death.
It is well known to me and to many other persons in the system that lifers and other long term inmates can live successfully even in minimum security, even in work release, even in dormitories, even in hospital wards, and in particular even for long periods in traditional middle-of-the-road medium security.
The Instant Situation. It must be realized that the changes implemented at MHCA since May were more prompted at the urging of one or more labor unions to resolve a working relationship that had become clearly adversarial. Those changes implemented only tenuously related to any legitimate correctional or managerial objective. The Task Force created in response to the disturbances was a "Labor-Management Task Force" and not a "Management Task Force" or a "Security Operations Task Force" or any other semblance or variety of "Correctional Task Force". To wit, the person co-signing the final report with DOC Headquarters was not a correctional officer or a corrections professional, but an official from union management.
The changes were arrived at under the glare of publicity and threat of strike. Press conferences at union headquarters conferred an aura of panic and fear. One George T. Johnson of AFSCME was apparently in the lead of events, even authoring at one point a significant letter to the Sunpaper and taking the microphone before the television cameras nightly. Where was Mr. Johnson at the hearing on September 9th?
I am reminded of a situation of similar magnitude that occurred in 1984 when an officer by the name of Herman Toulson was stabbed to death at the old Southwing of the Penitentiary. Within days officers all over the State began to look to union headquarters for support and guidance. There was fear and second-guessing about their career choice even while shifts inexorably changed over the hours and days in the aftermath. Five days later, a strike vote failed by a narrow margin. By the 12th day, the Secretary of Public Safety (then Frank Hall) went before the legislature to ask a new prison. The result was the "Supermax" (288 supermaximum beds) and "ECI" (3000 beds). ECI presented extraordinary start-up problems due to design defects. Supermax even now is the most troublesome of DOC facilities when it comes to design and operation.
Of particular and immediate impact on this Subcommittee is that the effect of decreasing the population of MHC Annex from 1800 to 1200 is to instantaneously demand another substantial prison in a very short time span. Not only was the Secretary's office unprepared, but Headquarters DOC was unprepared, and, as you well know, the legislature was unprepared. The State is now scotching a 384 medium facility in a far reach of the State with a 512 maximum facility in a far reach of the State. Mr. Robinson, on September 9, once again of many times since his correctional career began in 1987, testified before you, "We have no choice."
"We have no choice." The failure of the Annex is due in part to the haste with which it was planned and built. Mr. Robinson testified before you on the 9th we had to build the housing areas first - "We had no choice." The multipurpose buildings, the visiting area, the reception center were all afterthoughts and completed later. State Use Industries, a fixture at the Penitentiary and House of Correction, is absent from MHC Annex. The Annex was yet another prison (and $100+ million expenditure) that had to be rushed "on-line" to cope with the rapidly increasing incoming flow of inmates. In fact, you might remember that there was some worry for a number of years that DOC would not be able to feed the populations of Jessup and Cumberland and it took virtual emergency measures in the capital budget to guarantee same.
MHCA was and is also characterized by almost total absence of programming, not just jobs or education, but the self-help groups that were so important to the population when housed at the Penitentiary. The inmate support systems of the old leading the young, the educated helping the illiterate, the fraternal fraternizing with the frat-brothers were all destroyed by mass transfers from the Penitentiary to the Annex and remain to this day only as shards or remnants. It was by failing to address this prison's "social order" needs that consent of those attempted to be governed became tenuous at best.
It was evident even during FY96 that staffing problems at MHCA were largely due not to numbers, but to inexperience (see attachment). Unlike all other DOC facilities, MHC Annex was staffed by an overwhelming majority of "rookies". There was little in the power of management to "cure" the situation having to rely instead on the Department of Human Resources for recruitment and dumb luck and serendipity for attrition. It was not helpful that MHC Annex was termed around all the prisons in Jessup as the "Killing Fields". The "rookie" reality lends uncertainty and unreliability to the concept of delegation of authority much less participation in management decisions.
Perhaps indicative of the lack of experience, maturity and judgment, and perhaps indicative of a lack of regard for the facility and the inmates was that immediately following the stabbings on May 7, after inmates had been gassed for two hours and removed to the Supermax, staff members proceeded to engage in wholesale vandalism of all inmate property in the building - including property of inmates who were locked in, asleep, watching television, etc. when the assaults occurred. To this day, dozens of property claims have been filed with DOC Headquarters and I am beginning to receive copies of settlement letters from the State Treasurer citing the Maryland Tort Claims Act (sample attached). The inmates, now in MCAC and facilities all over the system, are not receiving replacement value of goods lost but a highly depreciated remainder. Those inmates without jobs may never be able to replace the possessions that were lost by wanton vandalism that night. The phrase "introducing professionalism" is a sorry platitude at this stage of the game.
Also occurring during the month of May were an elevated incidence of brutality claims while at the same time, videotapes turned up missing and cameras not previously reported were found to be dysfunctional. Similarly, on information and belief, a good many written reports were either not filed, were incomplete or contained inconsistencies.
Mail arriving at my house was delayed up to two weeks whether from MHCA or MCAC and on information and belief ARPs (Administrative Remedy forms) were delayed or thwarted for the simple reason blanks were not made available or the inmates (especially at MCAC) had no paper to write on, pencils or pens, envelopes or postage even assuming the mail was to be picked up on a timely basis.
Overclassification, especially punitive, in times of trouble. Another sequelae of the May 7 incident was that an entire maximum security building -- about 115 persons -- was suddenly and without warning placed in supermaximum confinement. This was not and is not only a breach of extant classification principles (reasonable or not) but an affront to common decency and fundamental fairness in the management of prison inmates, specifically in Maryland, and specifically those in State custody. That brings in another reality: The classification system in use throughout the Division fails to differentiate among any kind of inmate much less long-term inmates thus artificially maintaining higher and more expensive security levels over the course of anyone's confinement.
Effect of the Executive Branch. Governor Glendening's speech on the grounds of the Annex in Jessup some months ago to the effect that he committed himself to a policy of never authorizing the parole of "lifers" was not lost on the 1100+ lifers (out of 1800 persons) assigned to live at the Annex. In fact, the "lifer" population throughout the Division suffered mightily by the reversal in their progress, the denial of privileges they had worked for or could have worked for, and blockage of any expectation for the future. A "lifer" beginning his sentence at the Annex became acutely aware of the "lifers" having served twenty years or more forcibly removed to medium security around the State despite many years' successful work release experience.
Also not lost on the population was the Governor's proposed "Sentencing Commission" during 1995. Although the legislature completely restructured and restated the Commission's purpose and intent prior to enactment, the sentiments that went into the Commission's origin as well as the Governor's intentional design yet lingers around the system and for obvious reasons with persons assigned to the Annex. The messages "read" by news of the debate of the Commission color attitudes toward custody and the relationship to any correctional mission.
Finally, the victims' rights movement is perceived as a wholesale juggernaut by anyone with a criminal conviction. At least in maximum security, the word "Roper" is associated with the concept of "hangman" or "noose". There is an implicit notion of personal victimization whether valid or not. The Parole Commission is now often viewed as an implement of this victimization, the members' hands said to be "tied" by the "lifer" policy and their judgment tainted by the apparent "mandate from above" to promote, first and foremost, consolation if not vengeance to the victim.
The combination of these speeches, policies, legislation and internal Executive Branch strictures, in the minds of the inmate population(s), point to an absence of good faith, an inability to trust or rely on policy or persons and an endless labyrinth of "Catch 22" situations throughout what is likely to be an interminable period of confinement.
In conclusion. At this point, the only thing that has been proved is that MHCA is an expensive admission of failure. Regardless of the quibbles centering around design capacity versus operating capacity tossed into the present rhetoric, the bottom line is that the investment in designing and building MHCA's storage capacity depreciated by a quantity of one-third in only so many days in May. Will that happen again with the next prison or the prison after that?
While Mr. Robinson, Warden Corcoran and other members of the DPSCS entourage addressed the subcommittee in the presence of many and several union members and officials, having spent 90 days arriving at a difficult consensus, I am under no such constraints.
The lessons of history are clear: We find ourselves once again trying to cope with the present by repeating the past. MHCA for one has been an expensive lesson.
I am reluctant to be in agreement with Mr. Patrick Frank of Legislative Services regarding the need for a new prison. However, my caveat is at this time, let's do it right.
Sincerely,
Nancy Moran
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