Md.'s prison industry operating on overload

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Sep 12, 2001 by Daily Record Staff Legal Affairs Writer

Fourth in a six-part series

The inmate in a county detention center, who said he has made a career of getting drunk and landing in jail, puffed up his chest and bragged.

"Man, this is the largest industry running in America," he said. "A billion-dollar industry."

He wasn't exaggerating.

Baltimore County taxpayers are about to spend $70 million to add 784 beds to the existing 729-bed jail. This comes after adding 216 beds as recently as 1994.

The proposed jail enlargement should handle the county's requirements at least until 2020, Baltimore County Bureau of Corrections Deputy Administrator James P. O'Neill said — and the Towson site can be expanded by another 224 beds if needed.

Like Baltimore County, Montgomery County aims to expand its jail, and this winter will open a new state- of-the-art, $84 million facility that can house 1,054 inmates.

Statewide, about 35,000 inmates are behind bars in state and local jails and roughly 70,000 are on parole or probation — a total that's larger than the population of 13 of the state's 23 counties.

Leonard A. Sipes Jr., public information director of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said the state prison system has plans to add at least another 4,000 beds in the near future.

According to Office of Budget and Analysis publications, those plans include replacing the 1879 Maryland House of Correction in Jessup with a $100 million facility within the next five years, and adding 512 maximum security beds and 420 minimum security beds to the Western Correctional Institution in Allegany County, at a cost of $74.1 million.

The cost of incarcerating an inmate varies by type of state and county institution, according to Baltimore County's O'Neill, who is immediate past president of the Maryland Correctional Administrators Association. Typically, he said, it takes between $20,000 and $30,000 to incarcerate an inmate for a year.

Running a jail or prison at more than 90 percent rated occupancy poses problems, said corrections officials. They explained that some flexibility is required so that inmates may be segregated according to security levels, special protective needs and medical conditions.

But adding beds isn't the answer, said Arthur M. Wallenstein, director of the Montgomery County Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"Legislators often only hear that more bed space is needed, as opposed to what programs would diminish the need for bed spaces," Wallenstein said. "If we funded substance abuse [programs] as opposed to corrections and police, we would have a better picture of the problem."

And Wallenstein is no bleeding heart. He oversaw jail construction projects in two states before being recruited to head the Montgomery County expansion.

"The average person who is laid off doesn't commit crimes, and the vast majority of poor people break no laws," Wallenstein said. "The people in here are predatory; they hurt people by stealing and selling drugs. That's criminal."

Build it...

It's a tired — indeed, exhausted — cliche, but when it comes to jails it's absolutely true: Build it and they will come.

With no increase in crime rates or arrest rates, Anne Arundel County in the last two and half years doubled the number of inmates held behind bars.

Why?

The county roughly doubled its bed space in February 1998 by adding a $22 million, 530-bed facility at Ordnance Road in Glen Burnie. Now, inmates awaiting sentencing or serving less than six months are held at the Annapolis facility, which is undergoing a $21 million rehabilitation, while those sentenced to serve more than six months are sent to Ordnance Road.

"The number of people sentenced to serve time doubled within a year of opening Ordnance Road," said Robin R. Harting, administrator of the Annapolis facility. "The jailed population is not related to crimes and arrests: It's related to commitment practices."

Even though the paint is barely dry on the Ordnance Road facility, its administrator, William H. Martin Jr., said at times he already must resort to expediencies.

"We are already having to think of where to stick cots, where to put ‘boats,'" Martin said, referring to the toboggan-like plastic slabs that separate sleeping inmates from the floor. "Where do you want to put the next facility?"

And, while the incarceration rate was increasing in Anne Arundel County, the average sentence length also was increasing.

In January 1998 Anne Arundel County had 103 inmates serving sentences of 366 days to 18 months; by this July, the number was 210.

By contrast, Prince George's County had 139 serving the year-plus sentences in July, and Baltimore County had 115.

Martin said judges are sentencing inmates to his facility in unprecedented numbers so they can participate in education, employment and substance abuse programs, such as the highly touted Substance Abuse Treatment and Recovery Program (STAR) offered in the jail by the Anne Arundel County Department of Health.