Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services


The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services is a government agency of the State of Maryland that performs a number of functions, including the operation of state prisons. It has its headquarters in Towson, Maryland, an unincorporated community that is also the seat of Baltimore County, Maryland, United States, located north of Maryland's largest city of Baltimore. Additional offices for correctional institutions supervision are located on Reisterstown Road in northwest Baltimore.

Organizational units

Some of the agencies contained within the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services include:
The "Death Row" for men was in the North Branch Correctional Institution in Western Maryland's Cumberland area. The execution chamber is in the Metropolitan Transition Center. The five men who were on the State's "death row" were moved in June 2010 from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center. In December 2014, former Governor Martin O'Malley commuted the sentences of all Maryland death row inmates to life sentences.

Black Guerrilla Family

In 2009, a federal indictment under the RICO Act charges that the Black Guerrilla Family gang was active in a number of facilities including, North Branch Correctional Institution, Western Correctional Institution, Eastern Correctional Institution, Roxbury Correctional Institution, Maryland Correctional Institution – Jessup, Maryland Correctional Institution – Hagerstown, Baltimore City Correctional Center, and Metropolitan Transition Center, and the Baltimore City Detention Center.
The gang had a statewide "supreme commander" as well as subordinate commanders in each facility. These leaders were assisted by other gang officials dubbed ministers of intelligence, justice, defense and education. These organizations enforced a code of conduct and smuggled contraband into the facilities.
Another prison gang, this one of mostly white prisoners, known as "D.M.I." Dead Man Incorporated was founded in Maryland prisons in 2001 or 2002 as an offshoot of the Black Guerrilla Family.

Fallen officers

Since the establishment of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, five officers have died while on duty.