By Josh Davis
Baltimore Sun
PRINCESS ANNE, Md. — As few as one correctional officer is now left on a housing-unit floor to watch 384 inmates at Eastern Correctional Institution, while some night shifts operate without an armed patrol around the prison’s perimeter, current and former workers warned in a packed fire hall Thursday in Princess Anne.
Workers said those same housing units were traditionally staffed with four officers on the floor — one for each 96-inmate wing — plus two officers in control posts.
“Inmates are dying — it’s going to take a staff member to die,” Ronnie Dryden, a retired ECI deputy warden, said.
Dryden and Somerset County Commissioner Darryl Webster, who spent three decades in corrections, said the prison has reached a breaking point after a decade of staffing decline. They said ECI has lost about half the positions it had when it opened in 1987, even as its incarcerated population has remained at roughly 2,800.
ECI recorded 340 serious incidents and 260 uses of force in 2025, compared with 251 serious incidents and 86 uses of force in 2015, Dryden said. The prison is approaching a pace of 400 uses of force this year. He also said 22 incarcerated people died by homicide or overdose in Maryland prisons last year — nine of them at ECI.
The crowd filled every chair and lined the fire hall’s walls. Listening were state Sen. Mary Beth Carozza and Dels. Barry Beauchamp , Wayne Hartman and Sheree Sample-Hughes , along with Somerset County Commissioner Eldon Willing and Somerset State’s Attorney Wess Garner .
Dryden and Webster, members of Somerset County’s Citizens’ Advisory Committee for Correctional Institutions , blamed hiring rules imposed under former Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration in 2016. They said background investigations and polygraph standards became more stringent than those used by some police agencies, while hiring authority shifted from individual prisons to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services headquarters.
Applications can take a year or longer, they said. Positions that remain vacant are eventually removed, they said, making ECI’s official vacancy rate look better even as fewer people are available to staff the prison.
In a letter last Friday to Public Safety Sec. Carolyn Scruggs, Somerset commissioners demanded that hiring duties be returned to local correctional facilities, the hiring process be shortened, and background and polygraph requirements be brought in line with other law-enforcement agencies. They also asked the state to suspend nonemergency inmate activities until staffing is restored.
“Unrest at ECI is unrest in Somerset County and our surrounding neighbors,” the commissioners wrote.
Workers offered vivid accounts of the strain. A woman identified as Michelle said officers, often working without air conditioning or lunch breaks, run from door to door to confirm every inmate is breathing and moving at least once every 30 minutes. They are sweating, losing weight and “ready to pass out themselves,” she said, while being assigned more than one post and facing discipline if their logbooks and camera footage do not match.
An ECI lieutenant who declined to give a name said he has worked holiday weekends with four towers unstaffed, no outside rovers and multiple incarcerated people sent to hospitals — each requiring officers to leave the prison as escorts. Another woman told the room, “I’m probably going to lose my job,” after speaking publicly.
Carozza said the Eastern Shore delegation would take the demands directly to Gov. Wes Moore .
“We are not going to wait for a general session in 2027,” she said.
Hartman urged workers to document staffing ratios and forced overtime, while Sample-Hughes said some changes could be made without emergency legislation.
In an initial statement, DPSCS said its statewide vacancy rate has fallen from 15.36% in 2022 to 8.42%. The department said 1,796 correctional positions were eliminated between January 2015 and January 2023 , but most have been restored under Moore. It said the agency hired 684 correctional officers in 2025 — more than in any other year in the past decade.
DPSCS also pointed to new body-worn and facility cameras and expanded crisis de-escalation training. Its initial response did not address ECI-specific staffing levels, the local hiring demands or the incident figures cited Thursday. The Baltimore Sun has asked DPSCS and Moore’s office for additional comment.
Meanwhile, local officials demanded answers and immediate action, warning that the consequences would not stop at ECI’s fences.
Dryden said that if a large-scale disturbance erupted, Somerset sheriff’s deputies and Maryland State Police would be the first to respond.
“Nobody from across the bay can get here within five hours,” he said, adding that mobilizing the National Guard could take 24 hours. “You need to be ready to roll, because it’s that bad,” Dryden recalled telling Somerset County Sheriff Ronnie Howard .
“We’re going to find out whether it’s Sec. Scruggs holding us up, or whether it’s the governor of the great state of Maryland,” Webster said. “I don’t care who it is — let’s get it done. It’s time to stop waiting.”
—
©2026 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.