By Van Smith
City Paper
BALTIMORE, Md. — The 2010 creation by the Maryland General Assembly of a much-heralded Correctional Officer Bill of Rights (COBR) has become a hot-button public-policy issue as a corruption scandal erupted April 23, when the inclusion of 13 correctional officers (COs) in a 25-member racketeering indictment against the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang became national news.
The FBI, which spearheaded the investigation, in BGF court documents called COBR “ineffective as a deterrent” to gang-related correctional corruption, prompting outcry that, given these unintended consequences, the law may be ripe for reform.
It turns out COBR’s 2010 passage was propelled by events in 2008 that the FBI is currently investigating—a probe that earlier this year resulted in obstruction of justice conspiracy charges against 15 former and current COs, including supervisors, in connection with the 2008 beatings of inmate Kenneth Davis at Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown. Some of those charged have already pleaded guilty.
Thus, the FBI contends that current CO corruption in the BGF case is due, in part, to new due-process protections that were instituted in reaction to circumstances the FBI attributes to a corrupt correctional “culture” of inmate beatings and cover-ups which COs knew to be illegal.
In other words, from the FBI’s perspective, COBR was corruption-enabling reform that itself was a product of corruption.
Full story: DID THE CORRECTIONAL OFFICER BILL OF RIGHTS ENABLE CORRUPTION?