In Surprise Move, Md. Closes Jessup Prison, Transfers Inmates

The closure required a complicated dance of prisoner transfers. Some House of Correction inmates were sent to other campuses in Jessup, which houses several prisons. Ninety-seven of the facility's most hardened criminals were transferred out of state: 60 to federal facilities and 37 to prisons in Kentucky and Virginia. In exchange, Maryland agreed to house 60 women from out of state.

Several hundred inmates were sent to the North Branch Correctional Institution in Cumberland, the state's new prison, which opened its first wing in the past several months.

Workers also quickly refurbished 150 cells across the state that had been empty because they needed repairs, filling them with former House of Correction inmates.

A prison reform advocate said yesterday that she worries about the impact of the mass transfers on inmates' families.

"We know it has to be quiet, but the fallout is family members will wake up and read the news and they will say, 'Where is my son, my brother, my uncle?' " said Kimberly Haven, executive director of Justice Maryland. "We have family members who will be very anxious and very concerned about where their loved ones are."

Prison employees will be transferred to other state prisons, mostly in the Jessup area.

"There's going to be adjustment that staff will have to make," said Bernard Ralph Jr., a prison lieutenant and president of AFSCME Local 1678, representing Jessup officers. "We've been assured these adjustments will be done in a fair and equitable manner."

But union leaders said the shifts are a small price to pay for the closure of the dangerous prison. Esty said other Jessup area prisons have had trouble recruiting officers, and officers from the shuttered facility will help fill vacant positions elsewhere. "That's a huge secondary benefit," she said.

A Republican state senator said yesterday that he agreed with O'Malley's assessment that the prison required drastic action, but he warned that the solution the governor devised could only work for the short term.

"You can't be continually shipping people out of state and renting rooms in other prisons," said Minority Leader David R. Brinkley (R-Frederick).

Originally nicknamed "the Cut" because of a railroad cut into the countryside nearby, the Maryland House of Correction came to earn the name because of a reputation for violence like no other prison in the state.

Massive riots hit the prison in 1945 and again in 1964. In 1979, 30 inmates fled after they used a saw to cut through a window. In 1988, three inmates escaped from the prison and ran from authorities for 13 days, fatally shooting a police officer in Tallahassee.

"Have you ever seen 'The Shawshank Redemption'?" asked Ralph, referring to the 1994 prison movie. "That's what it reminded me of. The darkness, the grays, the no color. . . . It's what a person would dream a prison would look like."

At a legislative hearing in August, Maryland's top prison officials described a corrections system with too few experienced officers and inadequate training. They told lawmakers that inmates with smuggled cellphones coordinated riots, planned assaults on correctional officers and orchestrated drug trades beyond prison walls.

"You'd be hard-pressed to find a prison that recently has been so plagued with violence across the entire country," said George Camp of the Criminal Justice Institute, a national prison consulting firm based in Middletown, Conn.

Prison officials have not decided what will became of the buildings and land, although they said it is important to preserve the site's history.

Staff writers John Wagner and Eric Rich and staff researcher Rena Kirsch contributed to this report.