The strangling death of Philip E. Parker Jr. last month as he sat shackled on a prison bus was shocking, but hardly unusual in the violent atmosphere that pervades Maryland’s correctional system.
As a Baltimore County grand jury indicted twice-convicted killer Kevin G. Johns Jr. yesterday on first-degree murder charges in Parker’s death, records show Maryland operates one of the nation’s deadliest prison systems.
Another inmate, Brian Wilson, was in handcuffs and leg irons in a secured area of a prison in Jessup on Jan. 12 when a prisoner who wasn’t supposed to be there ran up and sliced Wilson’s stomach open with a homemade shank, killing him.
The bloody scene was all too familiar at the Maryland House of Correction Annex, a maximum-security prison where some of the state’s most violent criminals are held.
A year earlier, Damon Bowie made the mistake of pausing while crossing through the Annex gym to watch a few minutes of a basketball game. Another inmate walked up behind Bowie, shoved a hunting knife in his back, pulled it out and then stabbed him repeatedly in the head and neck.
In December, Robert George was fatally stabbed in the Maryland House of Correction, the main prison adjacent to the Annex, by four other inmates in a dispute over a broken TV set.
Those three murders, Parker’s killing and another strangling death at a Hagerstown prison in January 2004 are grisly examples of why Maryland’s prisons rank among the nation’s deadliest.
With an inmate population of about 24,000, Maryland has for several years recorded homicide rates in its prisons that regularly match, and often exceed, those of much larger states.
Since January 2004, six inmates have been killed in Maryland. That includes a homicide in both January and February this year. There were no homicides in 2003, but five were reported in 2002.
By comparison, New York, with more than twice Maryland’s inmate population, reported no homicides in its prisons in 2004, two in 2003 and two in 2002. New Jersey, with an inmate population about the same as Maryland’s reported two inmate homicides in 2004, and none in 2003 and 2002.
‘Right sizing’
The latest violence comes at a time when Maryland prison administrators are eliminating staff to cut costs in a process they call “right sizing.”
Some correctional officers say this exercise has left Maryland’s prisons dangerously understaffed. And the problem is compounded, they say, as a growing number of frustrated veteran officers quit or retire early and are replaced by younger and less experienced staff.
Ron Bailey, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 92, a union that represents some correctional officers, said staff cuts contribute to the violence because there are fewer eyes and ears to monitor the prison population and keep inmates under control.
“The magnitude of serious incidents that are occurring is more severe than I can ever recall over the past 28 years,” Bailey said.
But Correction Commissioner Frank C. Sizer Jr., who took over as the state’s prison chief a year ago, said he is satisfied that he has adequate staff to run the prison system safely, as long as everyone does their job.
“People equate more with better, and that’s not always true,” he said in an interview.
A staffing analysis identified certain security posts that could be eliminated without compromising safety, Sizer said. Nonsupervisory staff at his agency, he said, was cut by 172 last year – from 4,730 to 4,558 positions.
Sizer disputes that prisons are less safe than in the past. The agency’s data show that the number of violent assaults in Maryland’s prisons has declined in recent years, from 1,540 inmate-on-inmate assaults in 2001 to 1,295 last year, he said.
And he said that he is trying to put new programs in place that will reduce violence further.
The key to reducing prison violence is improved communications between staff and inmates, better training, and effective programs to educate and rehabilitate inmates, Sizer said. “No homicide is acceptable to me, but if we’re going to make a difference, we have to change the way we have been doing business,” he said.
Sizer – who has worked for 30 years in corrections, mostly in the federal prison system – said changing the way inmates are dealt with in Maryland prisons is critical.
‘Dignity and respect’
“We need to raise our expectations of inmates,” he said. “No matter where you are in life, a certain amount of dignity and respect is expected as a human being. … You treat him like an animal, he’s going to act like an animal.”
He said the majority of inmates want to do their time and eventually go home, just as most staff members want to do their jobs and go home when their shifts are over.
But union officials and some officers who have recently left the system say the changes Sizer is trying to make shouldn’t come at the expense of their security. They contend that the staff cuts are making prisons less safe and have contributed to the recent violence.
“They’ve got political priorities over security concerns, and these kinds of things are going to occur,” said Ed Rothstein of the Maryland Association of Correctional and Security Employees.
The signs of stress within Maryland’s correctional system, where the inmate population has grown from 16,600 in 1990 to nearly 24,000 last year, are evident in a series of recent incidents.
“The prison system’s out of control,” said Fletcher, who was knocked to the ground by two inmates who stomped on his head. “Something drastically has to be done.”
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Prison authorities reported finding 19 homemade weapons last month during a lockdown at the Eastern Correctional Institution. At the Annex, they recovered 17 shanks and five cell phones, which are often used to run criminal enterprises outside of prison.
Sizer said contraband such as cell phones and drugs sometimes enters the system through staff members who develop relationships with inmates. He said they are a small minority but can create big problems.
“In every barrel you’re going to find a bad apple, and that’s something we struggle with,” he said. “You have to have people working for you that have integrity.”
To be sure, prisons across the nation are filled with dangerous criminals, and violent assaults are not an uncommon occurrence.
“It’s hard to envision a prison where you would have no violence,” said Ron Angelone, former director of Virginia’s correctional system and now a private consultant. “These kind of folks are not mainstream Americans. They are violent individuals.”
But, he said, the number of killings and violent incidents in recent months in Maryland does seem out of the ordinary as well as disturbing. “People don’t go to prison to get killed; they go to prison to serve their time,” Angelone said.
Edward Cohn, retired head of Indiana’s correctional system and current director of the National Major Gang Task Force, said keeping prisons safe for staff and inmates is always a tough challenge.
Most state correctional systems find themselves under great pressure to cut costs in the current economic climate, he said, and that can create dangerous conditions in prisons.
“When you’re not properly staffed, cut programs and create idle status for the inmates, then you have the potential for a lot of serious problems,” Cohn said. “It’s not a question of if it’s going to happen, but when it’s going to happen.”
Sizer conceded that gangs such as the Bloods and Black Guerilla Family – which he refers to as “security threat groups” – are responsible for some of the recent violence, such as the string of stabbings at the Annex.
‘Mass exodus’
The sense that things are spiraling out of control as more positions are cut has prompted some correctional staffers to quit their jobs.
Lakeisha Lowery, 32, who had worked for the system since 1995, said she quit in August because she felt the job had become too dangerous.
“One day, these guys were stabbing each other up, I’m on the radio calling for help and no one was coming for like 10 minutes,” she said. “I decided it was time for me to go. I thought what if they were stabbing me and it took 10 minutes for somebody to come? I’d be dead.”
Andrew Johnson, 50, who retired as a lieutenant after 21 years in corrections said he also was frustrated by conditions that seem to worsen every year.
“In the last two or three years, we’ve had a mass exodus of officers leaving, mostly people who are retiring because they got frustrated,” he said. “I’ve seen people who left for lunch and never came back.”
Sizer said some of those who have left the system do not like the changes he is trying to make. But he said the changes are critical to ending the violence.
“I can give them a safe institution, but they have to be open to changes,” Sizer said. “It’s going to take awhile to turn it around. … I know what an effective and efficient system should look like; trying to get there is difficult.”
Sun staff writers Gus G. Sentementes and Andrea F. Siegel contributed to this article.
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<!– ART CREDITCHIAKI KAWAJIRI : SUN STAFF
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTCommissioner of Correction Frank C. Sizer Jr. says he is sat isfied he has adequate staff to run the prison system safely.
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