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Baltimore • Maryland's governor announced plans Thursday to immediately shut down Baltimore's state-run jail, where inmates and guards ran a criminal conspiracy inside vermin-infested, 19th-century walls and thwarted decades of attempted reforms.
Republican Gov. Larry Hogan said the state would save $10 million to $15 million a year by closing the Baltimore City Detention Center, which houses hundreds of inmates awaiting trial or serving short sentences. Employees and inmates will be reassigned to other facilities, he said.
"There is plenty of capacity elsewhere in the system to meet this need," Hogan said. "Given the space that we have, it makes no sense whatsoever to keep this deplorable facility open."
While standing by the crumbling building where inmates could be heard shouting, Hogan sharply criticized his predecessor, former Gov. Martin O'Malley, for failing to take stronger action to prevent corruption at the facility and not closing it sooner. O'Malley is now seeking the Democratic nomination for president.
"Maryland taxpayers were unwittingly underwriting a vast criminal enterprise run by gang members and corrupt public servants," Hogan said. "Ignoring it was irresponsible and one of the biggest failures in leadership in the history of the state of Maryland."
A federal indictment in 2013 exposed a drug- and cellphone-smuggling ring involving dozens of gang members and correctional officers at the jail. The investigation also exposed sexual relations between gang leader Tavon White and female guards that left four of them pregnant.
The ACLU and the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center last month called on a federal judge to reopen a lawsuit against Maryland over what the agencies described as substandard conditions.