BALTIMORE — Providing a safe environment in Maryland prisons is the biggest challenge facing corrections officials, the acting commissioner of the Division of Correction said yesterday.
John Rowley, 56, was named to lead the troubled agency Wednesday after the abrupt retirement of Frank C. Sizer Jr., who faced growing criticism for prison violence.
“I can assure you there is a lot of intense review going on on every aspect of providing a safe environment for not only the staff but the inmate population and the public in general,” Mr. Rowley told reporters.
Mr. Rowley pledged that state officials will not allow the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup “to go back to operating the way it was.” He noted that a thorough review was under way in the slaying of Officer David McGuinn at the prison last month.
Mr. Rowley has been working with the Maryland Division of Correction for 14 months. He came to Maryland after a 25-year career with the Pennsylvania corrections department.
Mr. Sizer, Public Safety Secretary Mary Ann Saar and other corrections officials have been criticized for the escalating violence in the state prison system.
Officer McGuinn was the second correctional officer to be killed this year.
In January, a hospitalized state prison inmate reportedly shot Officer Jeffrey Wroten at Washington County Hospital in Hagerstown. Officer Wroten died a day later.
Officer McGuinn and Officer Wroten were the first correctional officers killed in the line of duty in Maryland since the death of Herman L. Toulson in 1984.
The violence also has affected inmates. In July, Julius Pratt, 34, became the third inmate at the maximum-security Maryland House of Correction to be killed there since May.
Ronald E. Smith, a labor relations specialist with the Maryland Classified Employees Association, has criticized corrections leadership, calling for the resignations of Mr. Sizer and Mrs. Saar.
Mr. Smith said that a lack of leadership has led to insufficient staffing, poor training and bad policies inside prisons.
Visitation policies, he said, are too loose, making it easy for inmates to acquire dangerous contraband. Calls for fixing poor locks on cells “have fallen on deaf ears,” Mr. Smith said.
Mr. Rowley said he couldn’t discuss details about improving security but that stopping the flow of contraband into state prisons is a perennially challenging goal.
“It’s a very difficult process to detect some of this contraband that’s being concealed on individuals that are coming in, and that’s a constant battle that we fight in this business,” he said.
State legislators are taking a harder look at security in state prisons in wake of the violence.
Earlier this month, lawmakers interrogated corrections officials in Annapolis and often expressed dissatisfaction with answers to questions about the security.
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