Individuals incarcerated at the Maryland Reception, Diagnostics, and Classification Center in Baltimore City are being transferred to other facilities in the state after the jail was deemed unsafe for occupancy.
“Today, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services is executing an urgent, comprehensive strategy for the immediate and orderly depopulation of [MRDCC],” said Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Carolyn J. Scruggs.
Per a statement released Thursday afternoon, a third-party engineering consultant “identified concerns regarding the facility’s physical structure,” leading to a determination by the correctional services department and Department of General Services that the facility is unsafe for staff and inmates. The departments then began transferring the facility’s 260 staff and roughly 400 incarcerated individuals.
Most of the facility’s pre-trial population will be transferred to the Metropolitan Transition Center, while incarcerated women will be taken to the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup. Incarcerated men with emerging needs have already been transferred to Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore City.
The center’s remaining incarcerated population is slated to be transported to Jessup Correctional Institution in Jessup, and the facility’s staff will be relocated to facilities in the nearby area in accordance with union contracts.
The correctional services department said that the move signifies an emergency transfer, but not a final closure of the facility, calling the transfer “the first step in determining the long-term viability of MRDCC.” This process will involve further collaboration with the engineering consultant to determine next steps for the facility.
Earlier this year, Gov. Wes Moore announced the closure of the Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup, as the aging facility faced “prolonged underinvestment.” That facility was opened in 1981, the same year as MRDCC, and the decision to close it is projected to save the state about $21 million in operation costs annually.
This week, The Maryland Office of the Public Defender found that the heating system at the Youth Detention Center, also in Baltimore City, is broken — leaving over 60 incarcerated juveniles without heat during an active winter shelter declaration.
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