At the Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, parts of the medium-security prison’s fencing were “completely down,” according to a local union president.

“The state has said it could take five years to fix the fence, and the temporary solution is just to pull another officer out of our understaffed ranks to watch the fence,” John Feeley, a correctional sergeant and regional vice president for AFSCME Maryland Council 3, said at a press conference down the street from the prison on Wednesday morning.

The fence at Roxbury was just one detail from a laundry list of security concerns read aloud by Feeley on Wednesday, such as faulty radios at a different prison and aggravating working conditions at neglected facilities across the state. But it represents the larger challenge of a prison system that is in many ways buckling under its own weight, struggling to perform its most basic functions.

Hiring and retaining correctional officers has become increasingly difficult, and expensive, leading to low staffing levels that then cause a ripple effect for prison staff and prisoners alike. Officers routinely work double shifts, burning out the ranks, the union said.

The shortages erode movement in the facilities, in some cases spurring lockdowns, depleting programming, shuttering recreation areas. Union officials have attributed spiking assaults on both staff and prisoners to the shortages as well. The union says that there are close to nine assaults at state prisons every day.

In a statement, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said “an emergency project and funds have been made available to replace and repair fence posts for sections of the fence” and that “the fence is being inspected to ensure its integrity.”

“A capital project is underway and is currently in the design phase,” the department said. “The project will replace the entire fence structure and fencing electronics system with completion scheduled in early FY26 [fiscal year 2026].”

Will Maryland consider prison closures?

The press conference was not earth-shattering. The union has been sounding the alarm on prison conditions for many years.

Maryland Sen. Mike McKay, a Republican representing Allegany, Garrett and Washington counties, said the staffing challenges facing state prisons date back at least a decade, spanning three governors’ administrations, but have grown increasingly dangerous, given the mandatory double shifts officers are asked to work.

“At some point, we have to be able to cross it off our list,” McKay said. “We are incarcerating less, we have aging facilities, and we have the staffing issue. We probably need to be looking at, what does corrections look like in the future? Is that a smaller footprint?”

At least for McKay, he said, potential prison closures are on the table.

“We’ve just got to figure out the answer, and I tend to believe the answer is consolidation,” McKay said. “It’s not happy, it’s not pretty. I’m not going to be the most popular guy, but that’s reality.”

The union’s demands

The staffing struggles at state-run facilities expand well beyond Maryland’s prison system.

AFSCME on Wednesday gathered union members who work for the Department of Juvenile Services and the Maryland Department of Health as well as union members at the public defender’s office. They said that state data showed there was an 11% vacancy rate “amongst front line state employees represented by AFSCME in the State Personnel Management System.” That included over 600 budgeted vacancies in the corrections department, the union added.

The corrections department said it has made “significant strides in mitigating vacancy rates across the agency,” bringing the rate down from 14.41% to 10.65% between February 2023 and May 2024.

The union on Wednesday called for a “comprehensive staffing plan with a timeline and commitments to recruit, hire, and retain qualified staff for each agency.” It also called attention to the neglected state of state-run facilities to include prisons, juvenile detention centers and state-run hospitals. It’s calling for an “assessment of the maintenance backlog” and a plan “that includes firm time commitments for execution as well as the proper allocation of funding.”

Air conditioning is almost nonexistent in the areas of Maryland prisons where people are housed and often nonfunctioning in other areas, the union said. To that end, it is calling on the state to implement a “comprehensive and adequate heat standard for all state facilities as well as a capital funding campaign to provide adequate and functioning air conditioning in all facilities.”

The cavalry isn’t coming

Maryland’s correctional officers enjoy good benefits, but Feeley, the union president, said wages for Western Maryland prisons are not competitive with nearby local law enforcement agencies.

Union members on Wednesday were relieved to see that a large billboard advertising benefits for the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office right outside the correctional campus was no longer there.

McKay, the state senator and one of the only public officials to show up at the union rally, said he would potentially support additional sentencing reforms in Maryland to further reduce the incarcerated population. Earlier this year, a bill that would have allowed prisoners who have been incarcerated for more than 20 years to ask a court to modify or reduce their sentences based on demonstrated rehabilitation, fell apart on the last day of session.

“If somebody has served over 35 years and have shown that they have been a ‘model,’ inmate, I don’t know why we’re not letting them out,’” McKay said, adding that research shows those people are unlikely to re-offend.

But McKay said the “biggest issue” facing state lawmakers was the looming budget.

“Unfortunately, this topic is not sexy. It’s not going to take front and center. I wish it would,” McKay said. “The reality is, the maintenance backlog and all of that type of stuff, I just don’t know how that gets addressed in this upcoming session. But it’s important. We have to keep on talking about it.”