Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley is facing criticism after massive prison scandals have rocked the state despite his running on a platform of cleaning up the prison system, according to the Washington Post:
O’Malley (D) ran for governor on the promise that he would improve conditions in the Maryland prison system. Over more than six years as Maryland’s top elected official — a post he won in part with a crime-fighting reputation — he amassed a flurry of statistics, such as falling rates of violence behind bars.
But according to a federal indictment unsealed this spring, O’Malley’s statistics of progress masked a broken state disciplinary system that allowed more than a dozen female corrections officers to go to work for a violent prison gang with little or no fear of reprisal.
The corrections officers smuggled drugs, cellphones and money into the jail, according to prosecutors, and four of them even had children with a single incarcerated gang member. The largest state-run jail served not as a place of punishment, prosecutors said, but as a haven for members of the Black Guerrilla Family. And from inside the decrepit, 200-year-old jail, the gang amassed cash and cachet that allowed it to spread onto the streets of Baltimore.
Fixing the state’s prisons will be expensive. According the Post, O’Malley has directed money toward increased education spending before his reelection campaign.