Violence between prisoners and against staff in state-run correctional facilities has spiked in recent years, according to a legislative analysis of the Maryland corrections department’s budget.

A recent report by the Department of Legislative Services, prepared in advance of annual budget hearings, quantified the trend — showing violent assaults jumped by more than 50% last fiscal year compared to fiscal 2023.

Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services and union officials testified about possible reasons behind the rise at a budget hearing Wednesday in Annapolis.

The rate of individual-on-individual assaults in state-run facilities jumped to nearly 10 per 100 average daily population, according to the legislative services report. In other words, roughly 1 in 10 Maryland prisoners is involved in an assault over the course of a year.

The rate at which prison staff are assaulted also rose sharply, up to about five assaults on staff per 100 average daily population, the report said.

There are more than 16,000 incarcerated people and about 4,300 correctional officers in state-run facilities, according to the report.

For years, the correctional officers union, AFSCME Maryland Council 3, has sounded alarms about rising violence in Maryland prisons, a problem they say has been made worse by low staffing levels that create security gaps and reduce programming for prisoners. Prisoners who spend much of their time languishing in their cells as opposed to participating in job training, educational programs or recreation opportunities are more likely to become agitated and violent, the union has emphasized.

At the budget hearing, union members brought forward those same concerns in more detail —testifying before the House’s Public Safety and Administration Subcommittee about correctional officers being stabbed and slashed in the throat.

Union leaders said surges in violence also can be attributed to facility issues, such as extreme temperatures from faulty air conditioning and heating systems, and broken cell doors that can be propped open.

Much of the violence in state prisons is never disclosed, but in recent months, the incidents have become more noticeable.

In Western Maryland prisons this fall, a stabbing left two correctional officers severely injured, and a fire set by a prisoner sent multiple correctional officers to a hospital.

Public Safety Secretary Carolyn Scruggs offered a different take on the violence during Wednesday’s hearing, attributing the increase to a more violent prison population and a flow of “undetectable contraband” that could range from synthetic cannabis to sheets of paper sprayed with insecticide.

Scruggs said the contraband was particularly common in “legal mail,” a confidential way for attorneys to communicate with their clients.

Contraband sent through mail “contributes to illegal activities, undermines the security of our facilities, and often leads to violent incidents,” Scruggs said.

As for the changes to the prison population, Scruggs said state facilities are seeing more prisoners who’ve been sentenced for murder, manslaughter and firearm-related cases.

Scruggs brought with her a body-worn camera that she held in her hand at times during the hearing, revealing that the corrections department has developed a pilot program that it is launching next week.

Equipping correctional officers with body cameras, Scruggs said, would have a “positive impact on improving safety in our facilities.”

Scruggs theorized that the body cameras could be a “deterrent” in preventing assaults and alluded to the hefty payouts the state has made to settle civil lawsuits that allege abuses by staff members.

“It’s also going to show how professional our staff are,” Scruggs said, “and will mitigate the risk of all these settlements because it will show that our staff did what they were supposed to do and that it was the incarcerated individual who was problematic.”

Cary Hansel, a civil rights attorney who frequently handles prison abuse cases, attributed the “abhorrent” spike in violence to the ”complete lack of care toward incarcerated persons by those in the highest levels of DPSCS, from the wardens upward."

Hansel referred to a case from last year in which a prison nurse testified that she had to quit her job because she could “no longer face the five stabbings per week she estimated occurred in her facility on her shift alone.”

“DPSCS witnesses, including the warden, testified that they knew where the metal to make the weapons was coming from — storage lockers in the cell — and that cloth bags were an alternative, but that they had done nothing to make the change,” Hansel said. “We have had repeated cases where guards turned the other way and ignored assaults in exasperation.”