Governor shuts down Baltimore jail deemed 'deplorable'

A Civil War-era facility at the Baltimore City Detention Center that critics say should have been "condemned decades ago" will finally be shut down, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced Thursday.

The governor considers the Men's Detention Center, which houses 750 pretrial inmates, a "black eye" and "embarrassment" to the state. The inmates will be moved to other detention centers, officials said, but the women's jail, central booking facility, and other pretrial buildings will stay open. By closing the facility, Maryland will save between $10 million and $15 million annually "without compromising detainees' access to legal protections," Stephen T. Moyer, secretary of public safety and correctional services, said.

In 2013, federal prosecutors charged several people, including corrections officers, with letting a gang operate a drug-trafficking and money laundering ring from inside the facility, The Washington Post reports. Hogan said it "makes no sense to keep this deplorable facility open. ... The practice of continuously dumping hard-earned taxpayer money into this disastrous facility will not continue under my watch," and pinned the center's woes on previous administrations, who "ignored" what was going on.

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Democratic state lawmakers and union officials criticized Hogan for not discussing the shutdown with them before it was announced. Advocates like David Fathi, director of the ACLU's National Prison Project, told the Post it's a move in the right direction, but won't solve a host of other problems. "This critical step...will have no impact on the dangerous physical conditions and shockingly deficient medical and mental health care in the jail facilities that will remain open," he said.