By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
You don’t need to repeal a law to kill it. You just need to make sure no one can enforce it.
In Maryland, that project is well underway — and the evidence is hiding in plain sight across three separate policy tracks that, taken together, point in one direction.
Close the jails. Shrink who gets held. And when the system can’t absorb serious enforcement, call it a capacity problem.
The Facilities
In September 2025, the Moore administration announced the closure of the Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup, a 44-year-old facility housing more than 700 inmates. The official rationale: the building was falling apart. Estimates put the necessary capital repairs at roughly $200 million — foundation work, drainage, plumbing, electrical, roofing. The closure was framed as fiscal prudence.
Months later, the Maryland Reception, Diagnostics, and Classification Center in Baltimore suffered an emergency transfer of its entire inmate population. The facility’s conditions had deteriorated to the point that human waste was dripping from ceilings due to failing plumbing infrastructure, alongside malfunctioning heating and cooling systems and inoperable fire alarms. That one wasn’t announced — it was an emergency. The result was the same: more beds gone.
The failures are real. The question is who allowed the conditions to deteriorate to the point of closure.
The state is now planning a billion-dollar replacement facility in Baltimore — a hybrid jail, hospital, and mental health and substance use treatment center it calls the Baltimore Therapeutic Treatment Center. Estimated completion: 2029. Estimated annual operating cost: more than $100 million. In the meantime, the gap between what has closed and what doesn’t yet exist is where policy quietly lives.
The infrastructure rationale is unchallengeable on its face. Nobody votes against fixing crumbling plumbing. But the maintenance backlog that produced these failures didn’t arrive overnight — it accumulated under an administration that chose what to defer and what to fund. The failures are real. The question is who allowed the conditions to deteriorate to the point of closure.
The Population
While bed count shrinks from one end, the Moore administration has simultaneously worked to reduce who gets held in the first place — through three distinct policy moves in the 2026 legislative session alone.
Juvenile charging reform. Senate Bill 323, the Youth Charging Reform Act, raises the age at which a juvenile can be automatically tried as an adult for most crimes from 14 to 16. It also eliminates five of the 33 offenses previously eligible for automatic adult charging for 16-year-olds. The House passed it 92-39 in April; Moore was expected to sign it. Effective October 1, 2026.
What is not in dispute: the bill moves cases that previously entered adult court into a system that, by design, does not produce adult incarceration.
Supporters argue — with some supporting data — that most cases automatically charged in adult court were eventually dismissed or sent back to juvenile court anyway. Critics, including Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, argued the system needed better juvenile programming before expanding its reach. What is not in dispute: the bill moves cases that previously entered adult court into a system that, by design, does not produce adult incarceration.
Advocates who championed the bill openly called it a first step and said they intend to push further in future sessions.
ICE detainers — two bites. In February, Moore signed emergency legislation banning 287(g) agreements — formal cooperation arrangements between local law enforcement and ICE — across the nine Maryland counties that had them. Eight counties immediately terminated their agreements. The ninth, Washington County, said it would not enforce its agreement even while it remained on the books.
He also declined to veto it, allowing it to become law without his signature — a maneuver that let him distance himself from the political liability while accepting the policy outcome.
Then, in the final days of the session, the General Assembly passed the Community Trust Act (SB 791), which went further: it bars state and local correctional facilities from honoring ICE detainer requests unless accompanied by a federal judicial warrant. It also prohibits jails from providing advance notice of an individual’s release date or transferring people to ICE custody without a court order.
Moore declined to sign it. He also declined to veto it, allowing it to become law without his signature — a maneuver that let him distance himself from the political liability while accepting the policy outcome.
Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler, one of 17 Maryland sheriffs who filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law, was direct about the practical consequence: the legislation “forbids us from sharing information with federal authorities and prohibits us from honoring immigration detainers, forcing us to release criminal illegal offenders right back into the streets of our Maryland communities.”
Gahler said he checked how many individuals were being held under detainers — which had previously allowed authorities to notify ICE and hold someone for 48 hours after completing a local sentence so ICE could take custody. That process is now functionally over.
The Human Cost
If the policy argument requires connecting abstractions — capacity, intake, enforcement gaps — the human cost does not.
Colin Wolf, 32, was found dead in his cell at the Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown on May 20. He may have been dead for days. Decomposition had already begun. A boot print was found on his head.
Officers are required to conduct prisoner counts three times daily and perform rounds every 30 minutes. An internal prison report reviewed by The Baltimore Banner indicates that an officer performing rounds on the day Wolf’s body was discovered was told by his cellmate that Wolf was sleeping and was not awakened. The officer entered the cell, found him unresponsive, and called for medics. The cellmate told a corrections officer that Wolf had been dead “for hours” — a statement that contradicted a logbook entry claiming rounds had been completed an hour earlier without incident.
Wolf was the ninth prisoner killed in Maryland this year. Thirty-three inmates have been killed across the state’s 13 facilities since 2023. Roxbury alone saw two killings within two weeks in May, followed by a gang stabbing that injured eight more.
In the wake of Wolf’s death, Roxbury’s warden and chief of security were both removed. Nineteen officers were administratively charged. Eight medical staffers were banned from state facilities statewide.
What is not in dispute: the same administration closing facilities for reasons of human decency is presiding over a system where people are dying in their cells for days while officers sign off on rounds they didn’t complete.
State Sen. Paul Corderman, a Republican representing Frederick and Washington counties, made an unannounced visit to Roxbury and found air conditioning in one wing that hadn’t worked for months. He sent a letter to Corrections Secretary Carolyn Scruggs — appointed by Moore in 2023 — that did not mince words: “The current situation and climate in the correctional facilities in this region is worse now than before your appointment.”
Scruggs, in a statement, said she was “outraged” and pledged accountability. She declined an interview.
The union representing correctional officers points to chronic understaffing as the root cause. The department disputes it.
What is not in dispute: the same administration closing facilities for reasons of human decency is presiding over a system where people are dying in their cells for days while officers sign off on rounds they didn’t complete.
The Pattern
The cumulative result of these decisions — made by the same administration, in the same period, pointing in the same direction — is a correctional system with fewer beds, fewer people being held, and a documented inability to meet basic oversight obligations for those who remain inside.
Each of these developments has a standalone explanation.
Jessup was crumbling. The juvenile charging system was an outlier nationally, with Maryland sending more 14-to-17-year-olds to adult court than almost any other state except Alabama. Immigration detainers raise legitimate constitutional questions about the use of administrative warrants. Prison violence is a national problem tied to staffing shortages that no state has fully solved.
None of that is fabricated.
That is not a capacity problem that happened to Maryland. It is a capacity problem that was built.
But the cumulative result of these decisions — made by the same administration, in the same period, pointing in the same direction — is a correctional system with fewer beds, fewer people being held, and a documented inability to meet basic oversight obligations for those who remain inside.
That is not a capacity problem that happened to Maryland. It is a capacity problem that was built.
When the jails are full of fewer people and the system is stretched too thin to function, the argument that there is no room to enforce the law writes itself. No one has to say it out loud.
Sources: Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services; Baltimore Banner reporting by Justin Fenton, Ben Conarck, and Dylan Segelbaum; Maryland Matters; WTOP; The Baltimore Sun; Fox Baltimore; WYPR; Maryland General Assembly legislative records (SB 323, SB 791/HB 1575); Harford County Sheriff’s Office; letter from Sen. Paul Corderman to Secretary Carolyn Scruggs, July 2026.
Keep MDBayNews Reporting Free
MDBayNews exists to help Marylanders understand decisions made by state and local leaders — especially when those decisions affect daily life, rights, and public services.
If this article helped clarify what’s happening or why it matters, reader support makes it possible to keep publishing clear, independent reporting like this.
Have a tip or documents to share?
We review submissions carefully and confidentially. Anonymous tips are welcome when appropriate.
Discover more from Maryland Bay News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.