Maryland prison oversight office faces delay despite inmate letters, years of advocacy

At least three handwritten letters to the Maryland General Assembly came earlier this year from inmates at the state’s correctional facilities, each advocating for one thing: legislation to create a correctional ombudsman for prison oversight.

Olinda Moyd, a public defender in Washington, D.C. for three decades and an executive board member of the Maryland Alliance for Justice Reform , a volunteer advocacy organization designed to change the state’s correctional practices, helped collect the inmates’ letters. She says there were more missives than the ones publicly posted on the state Legislature’s website .

“We collected actually about 92 written testimonies from men and women behind bars,” said Moyd, who chaired a “Behind the Walls” work group with the Alliance for Justice Reform and testified herself in favor of the ombudsman legislation that was at least four years in the making.

The Legislature passed the legislation in April, the governor signed it in May and the law went into effect on July 1 . But as of July 22, three weeks after its effective date, the position was not yet filled, and the law is not yet worth the lined paper on which the inmates wrote their letters.

“Application period has closed and candidates are being reviewed at this time,” said a spokesperson in the governor’s office, in a July 26 email. “No selection yet.”

Still, Moyd, who helped organize and push for the new law, remains hopeful. “At this point,” she said in a July 26 phone interview, “I am going to remain optimistic.”

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‘The Correctional Ombudsman will improve safety,’ job description says

A version of the ombudsman legislation was first introduced in 2021 by then-delegate and now-United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Erek Barron along with state Sen. Shelly Hettleman, D-Baltimore County, who originally put the role in the Attorney General’s office.

Hettleman, who sponsored the 2024 version of the bill that established the Office of the Correctional Ombudsman as an independent unit of state government, cited events, including an incident of alleged abuse of an inmate and an attempted cover up by correctional officers at Eastern Correctional Institution on the state’s Eastern Shore, as reasons for the legislation in her legislative testimony delivered earlier this year.

“The Correctional Ombudsman will improve safety and other conditions within Maryland’s prisons,” said a public job posting for the position, which opened May 21 — five days after the law’s approval — and had a filing deadline of 11:59 p.m. on June 30 — one minute before the day that the law was scheduled to go into effect. Another new position, the Correctional Ombudsman Executive Administrator, also is posted .

The less than two-month window between enactment and the effective date of the legislation’s implementation appears not to have been sufficient to get the new office up and running on time, based on the email from the spokesperson in the governor's office.

More: ECI officers charged in inmate beating, destroying evidence to cover it up

Other oversight entities existed. New office could benefit all, advocate says.

For their part, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which oversees the administration of the state’s correctional institutions, did not testify for or against the legislation. That department, DPSCS for short, is set to be an agency under the microscope of the new office.

Earlier this year, the department sent to the legislative committee of jurisdiction a letter of information , including four external entities and four internal entities used to audit and investigate “noncompliance.”

After being asked in an interview if previous audits were insufficient, the advocate for the law, Moyd, said: “I don’t think we need more bureaucracy.”

She emphasized how the new office could benefit all, including those who work in the facilities.

“It’s not just for the men and women who are in the (imprisoned) population, but also for family members, volunteers, even staff members can access this office and share information about what they see is working and what they see is not working,” said Moyd, also a professor at the American University Washington College of Law. She noted the legislative testimony of a onetime employee at Eastern Correctional Institution in favor of the ombudsman office.

In a recent instance, it was the result of a federal investigation that helped uncover and correct an injustice towards correctional officers. In July 2023, the state’s Board of Public Works paid $13 million to more than 3,000 past and present officers at Maryland correctional facilities who had worked unpaid overtime as revealed by a United States Department of Labor investigation.

More: Maryland to pay $13 million settlement for correctional officers' unpaid overtime

Federal prison oversight signed into law. Awaiting state level action.

The new state office, already legislatively scheduled to be in effect, coincides with an effort at the federal level to reform prison oversight.

Last week , President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill, the Federal Prison Oversight Act, into law to create an independent ombudsman to investigate complaints in federal prisons.

Maryland has a federal correctional institution with around 1,000 inmates in the Allegany County seat of Cumberland. The state, according to its website , operates over a dozen correctional facilities. And in total, Maryland had over 15,000 prisoners in 2021, according to a U.S. Department of Justice document .

For Moyd, she says much of the success of the state’s new office depends on who the governor chooses for the role.

“It’s really about who gets selected for that position,” she said. “We received so many letters from men and women on the inside who talk about different issues that have come up and they have no way to address those grievances.”

An inmate of 30-plus years in Maryland facilities put it another way in his letter to Annapolis.

“You cannot rely on any entity or agency to investigate itself,” he said .

State senators, who sponsored the legislation, representing both political parties, did not respond to requests for interviews for this article.

More: Investigation: Where do inmates in Maryland prisons go as they finish their time?

Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Maryland prison oversight office faces delay despite inmate letters, years of advocacy