A correctional officer was stabbed Friday at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup and transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.
Mark Vernarelli, spokesman for the state?s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, confirmed that the officer was stabbed but could not provide any additional information by press time.
He said he did not immediately know the officer?s name or condition.
Janet Anderson, spokeswoman for the Maryland Classified Employees Association, said the officer, whose name she also didn?t know, had been on the job for two months.
The officer was stabbed in the back and chest by an inmate, Richard Crawford, Friday afternoon as Crawford walked unescorted and not handcuffed to the cafeteria, Anderson said.
Anderson called such an unescorted inmate “unsafe.”
“We have a case pending where an officer was disciplined for questioning management because the officer wanted to know why there were inmates without escorts or cuffs,” she said. “We don?t want a repeat of these unsafe practices.”
Twice last year, prisoners were charged with first-degree murder after the slaying of guards.
Correctional Officer Jeffery Allan Wroten was shot to death in Washington County on Jan. 27 and Officer David McGuinn was stabbed to death on July 25 at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, a prison on the same plot of land as the Jessup Correctional Institution.
Also last year, an inmate stabbed three correctional officers at the Jessup Correctional Institution, which is adjacent to the House of Correction in Jessup.
Those officers survived.
