Woman jail boss tackles tough job: Baltimore corrections commissioner oversees 10th largest penal system in U.S - Barbara Bostick

Ebony, May, 1990 by D. Michael Cheers

Woman Jail Boss Tackles Tough Job

BARBARA Bostick has what her boss, Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, describes as "one of the toughest jobs in local government." As Commissioner of Corrections for Baltimore City Jail, the 10th largest jail system in America, Bostick inherited an overcrowded jail that for 15 years was under a federal court order to reduce the number of inmates. She was besieged with a top-heavy administration and food service, health service and safety problems. On the surface it appeared to be a classic no-win situation. But Bostick proved the naysayers wrong. In less than two years Bostick, currently the only female in this country to head a major jail system, has reduced the jail's population to comply with the court order, streamlined her staff and improved conditions for the more than 2,500 male and female inmates.

Abiding by the court order to keep the jail population under 2,704, Bostick, who has spent most of her professional career working in corrections, implemented a home electronic monitoring system that allows persons awaiting trial to continue to work and live outside the jail. The maximum stay at the city jail is 18 months. "We also work with the state courts that do expedited trials," says the 37-year-old administrator. "And we have a jail bond grant program. Most of our inmates are poor; 85 percent are Black and from the inner city. If their bail is $100, oftentimes they can't afford it."

A native of Munford, Tenn., and one of eight children, Bostick never thought she'd be running a jail. After she won a 4-H Club sewing award in the third grade it was widely believed that she would become a seamstress. But after graduating with a political science degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Bostick taught first grade for a while, then got a job as a youth counselor at the Tennessee Youth Center. After a two-year marriage that ended in divorce, she moved to Maryland to work for the Montgomery County Department of Corrections. She worked as a researcher and consultant for the National Institute of Corrections and earned a master's degree in education from Bowie State College in Bowie, Md..

While studying for her law degree at the University of Baltimore, she found it too demanding to juggle both school and her job as director of the Women's Detention Center. So she postponed her studies for her career. During her tenure, she improved conditions for the female inmates. She had shower curtains installed to give the women privacy, and she assigned male correction officers in what she called until then "an unnatural environment."

Following a promotion to deputy commissioner of corrections, Mayor Schmoke appointed her to the $63,700-a-year job of commissioner of the pre-trial detention system in 1988.

On the job, the commissioner is in constant motion. A hands-on, no-nonsense chief administrator, she divides her 16-hour days between her spacious office and the cavernous three-story jail next door.

"I see my job as trying to make things humane for the people who have to be here," says Bostick, who oversees 817 employes and a $35 million budget. "We are not the judge or jury at this institution. That function is left for the courts. Nor do we rehabilitate people. We provide them with opportunity. It's up to them to make the best of that opportunity." Bostick also is involved in the building of a $56 million, 800-bed jail that is scheduled to be completed in 1993.

An avid swimmer and tennis player, Bostick, who recently married a Baltimore doctor, is determined to finish her last year of law school. But that's going to be difficult, for running the jail is more than a full-time job. "I'm never far from it," she says patting her beeper.