A long and violent page of Maryland history ended Monday as Gov. Martin O?Malley and his prison team officially closed down the 129-year-old House of Correction in Jessup after the last of its 842 inmates were transferred to other facilities, including some who were sent out of state.
“For about 50 years, we?ve been talking about” shutting down the “functionally obsolete” maximum security facility, O?Malley said at a news conference in the bowels of the old building, next to an 86-bed open dormitory that was in use until Saturday.
O?Malley and others likened the prison to a scene from a 1930s Jimmy Cagney movie, with blocks of cramped cells four stories high and the aging cell bars encrusted with decades of paint.
When new Public Safety Secretary Gary Maynard, the former top prison official in three states, came on the job less than two months ago, he said Maryland had some of the best facilities and some of the worst ? and the worstwas in Jessup.
After yet another corrections officer at the House of Correction was stabbed earlier this month, following the murder of another there last year, the decision was made to quicken plans already in the works to shut down the facility.
“We were always urging this kind of action,” said Sen. James Ed DeGrange, D-Anne Arundel, whose district includes most of the prisons in Jessup and who chairs the subcommittee on public safety, transportation and environment.
Once there was another stabbing, “it had to happen,” DeGrange said.
“I always said we were in a race against time” before another stabbing or murder occurred, O?Malley said.
The movement of the prisoners, some of the most violent offenders in the system, was undertaken in great secrecy out of concern for security.
Some of the inmates had lived there for 15 or 20 years.
The most important priority was public safety, O?Malley said, and the safety of the guards and inmates. He emphasized that no inmate or guard was hurt in the transfer.
The move actually will save the state money because it cost the state $89 a day to keep a prisoner there, some of the highest costs in the state.
Some prisoners shipped to Virginia will cost $78 a day, and some of the offenders sent to the federal Bureau of Prisons will cost $48 a day.
“We may start bringing some back in July,” Maynard said.
