Officials address problems at troubled county jail

Two of the suspended officers are women suspected of having sexual relations with male inmates, said a county government official familiar with the investigation, who declined to be identified because the investigation is ongoing.

In addition, a county correctional officer, 19-year-old Renardo A. Humphrey, was charged in January with armed robbery and assault in Charles County, and Rose C. Merchant, 38, a deputy director of the county Department of Corrections, was charged in February in Fairfax County, Va., with impersonating a law enforcement officer. Humphrey was suspended from the department; Merchant was fired.

The facility faces growth obstacles, as well. The 21-year-old center is facing problems with overcrowding and understaffing, which officials have begun to address by bringing on more correctional officers and making plans to increase the building size later this year.

‘‘I am confident that [the department of] corrections is not in a crisis,” said Vernon Herron, Prince George’s County’s deputy chief administrator for public safety.

With 448 officers, the facility has enough staff to handle the current inmate population of between 1,450 and 1,500, but many officers have to work overtime to ensure adequate numbers are on duty at all times, said Vicki D. Duncan, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman. The jail’s capacity is for 1,332 inmates.

The correctional center holds inmates serving sentences of no more than 18 months and people awaiting sentencing or a trial in the county court system.

To address capacity problems, beds have been put in common areas, and the county is scheduled to begin construction in November on two new units that will hold 192 additional inmates, Duncan said.

The department brought on 28 new officers who graduated from training March 7 and hopes to start training another class of 40 officers in the next couple of months, Duncan said.

County correctional officials declined to comment on motives for the alleged violations, but Michael Brown, an associate professor of criminal justice at Ball State University in Indiana, who has done consulting on overcrowding issues for correctional systems around the country, said overcrowded systems that need more officers run the risk of hiring new people in a rush without doing the proper screening or waiting to find the best candidates.

‘‘When you’ve got overcrowding, you run the risk of so many potential problems that the codes of conduct may break down, which may lead to inappropriate relationships between correctional officers and inmates, and may lead to people who are perhaps willing to take a chance knowing they can make some extra money,” Brown said.

The officer arrested in the cell phone investigation, Pierre Lamont Sailsman-Currie, 22, of Upper Marlboro and the four suspended officers —Patricia Wilson, 31; Jasmine Fowler, 22; Frank Yeboah, 26; and Humphrey — each were with the Department of Corrections for two years or less.

Salisman-Currie is suspected of being a member of the Bloods gang and is accused of giving cell phones to other Bloods members at the facility between November and February, according to charging documents. His charges include three counts of delivering telecommunication devices to inmates, and each comes with a penalty of three years in prison, a $1,000 fine, or both.

The county checks the criminal history of officer applicants and contacts their friends, family, and past and current employers, Herron said. Applicants must be at least 18 years old and have a high school diploma.

‘‘Just like any corporation or agency, we do our best to screen people,” said Herron, who refutes any claims of rushed hires. ‘‘We didn’t find anything in the background with these people.”

The county facility is not alone when it comes to the problem of inmates getting cell phones.

The number of cell phones confiscated in Maryland state prisons more than doubled from the first half of last year to the second half, from an average of 22 per month to an average of 49 per month, said Mark A. Vernarelli, a spokesman with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, which runs state prisons.

Vernarelli said in an e-mail that the agency was ‘‘aggressively stepping up its efforts” to find cell phones and other contraband.

‘‘Cell phones are becoming a big problem in overcrowded institutions,” said Mark S. Hamm, a criminology professor at Indiana State University.

Because of their small size, cell phones are easy to smuggle into prisons, experts said. Oftentimes, correctional officers with low salaries are willing to take the risk of helping because inmates are willing to pay up to $500 for a phone, said Hamm, who was a prison administrator for 12 years.

The starting salary for a county correctional officer with no experience or special skills is $34,712, which Duncan said was ‘‘higher than some, lower than others.” Montgomery County’s base starting salary is $37,300.

On Feb. 28 and March 5, two inmates were also discovered with handcuff keys. One of them, Keith A. Washington, a former county homeland security official, recently was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and other charges for shooting two furniture deliveryman in his house last year.

In each incident, the inmates claimed they found the keys, but jail officials said they are still investigating.

The proposed operating budget recently released by County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) calls for increasing the county Department of Corrections’ budget in fiscal 2009 by 6.3 percent, to $73,195,700, and includes a proposal to increase staffing.

Details of possible policy and personnel changes were unavailable because the investigation is still under way, but ‘‘things aren’t going to stay the same,” county spokesman John Erzen said.

County Council members said they have not received details about the security breaches, but council Chairman Samuel H. Dean said the council would weigh in on the problems soon.

‘‘The council anticipates an opportunity to address these concerns directly during an upcoming council review of the corrections department budget,” Dean (D-Dist. 6) of Mitchellville said in a statement.

The review is scheduled to take place at a May 5 council session.

Staff writer Daniel Valentine contributed to this report.

E-mail Andy Zieminski at azieminski@gazette.net.