Attacks on Maryland?s prison guards have significantly dropped this year, a trend one group of legislators, ex-inmates and correctional officers hope a six-month study that began Wednesday will continue.
Inmate-on-inmate violence and assaults on guards have dropped in the past year, Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Gary Maynard said at the first meeting Wednesday of a task force on prison violence. The group was created in 2007 after prisoners killed two correctional officers.
“We have to learn through trial and error who the violent ones are,” Maynard said. “It takes a while to figure out.”
Serious assaults on correctional officers dropped from five to two between August 2007 and May compared with the same period last year, according to department officials. Pretrial attacks on guards decreased from four to one.
The appointment process delayed the task force, scheduled to release its first report last December, said state Sen. Verna Jones, a Baltimore City Democrat and co-chairwoman. A final report is due by the end of the year.
“I am very encouraged,” Jones said. “We are not interested in just writing a report and having it put up on the shelf.”
Task force members circulated a list of 20 potential remedies, including eliminating inmate uniforms, which some said shield problematic inmates during group activities.
Sheila Bedi, a lawyer with the Justice Policy Institute, said solutions rely on changes to the judicial system.
“Institutionalization itself perpetuates violence,” Bedi said. “We need to be sure when people are locked up in the state of Maryland, it?s because there are no other alternatives.”
