Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced plans on Monday to shut down one of the state’s aging prisons in Jessup, moving inmates and staffers to other facilities rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on repairs.

The Maryland Correctional Institution-Jessup, a medium-security facility built in 1981, needs $200 million worth of upgrades and renovations to bring it up to standards, according to the Moore administration.

By closing the prison over the coming months, the state will forgo those repair expenses and also save roughly $21 million a year in operational costs.

About 700 men who are incarcerated at the Maryland Correctional Institution-Jessup will be moved — some could move to other Jessup facilities while others could be transferred across the state.

And about 300 correctional officers and other employees will be transferred to the Maryland Correctional Institution-Women, the Dorsey Run Correctional Institution or the Jessup Correctional Institution, all located at the state’s Jessup correctional campus.

The moves will be completed by June, according to the Moore administration.

“MCI-J has long outrun its facility lifespan and we refuse to kick the can further down the road,” Moore, a Democrat, said in a statement Monday.

The union that represents thousands of correctional workers criticized the state for shutting down one prison without looking at the system as a whole.

“We are alarmed that the State is moving towards closing MCI-J without a larger and more comprehensive plan regarding the State’s correctional facilities, the needs of incarcerated individuals, and departmental staffing as a whole,” Patrick Moran, president of AFSCME Maryland, said in a statement.

Moran said AFSCME has been asking the Moore administration for reports about correctional facilities for months, without receiving anything.

Before MCI-J can be closed, the state is required by law to hold a public hearing, where Moran said “AFSCME is ready to question the lack of a comprehensive plan and failure to address department-wide staffing issues.”

The state has struggled for years to maintain its prison buildings across the state. At a prison in Hagerstown, for example, correctional officers have to be dispatched to keep watch over a flimsy fence that is scheduled for tens of millions of dollars worth of repairs.

Nonpartisan analysts have estimated there’s a $75 million backlog of maintenance projects at state prisons.

At MCI-J, foundation problems and drainage issues have led to the closure of some housing units, according to the Moore administration. The needed repairs include drainage work as well as regrading and asphalt, plumbing, electrical and roofing repairs.

The state already is in the midst of a $32 million electrical upgrade across the entire Jessup complex, which includes multiple men’s facilities and the state’s only prison for women and houses a combined 4,500 incarcerated people.

“By closing MCI-J, we’re saving Maryland taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in avoidable costs over the long term and refocusing our resources on more sustainable correctional solutions,” Atif Chaudhry, the state’s secretary of general services, said in a statement.

State correctional officials said that by moving the MCI-J correctional officers to other prisons, that will help fill staffing gaps and drive down the need to force officers to work overtime.

Once MCI-J is emptied out, the state expects to spend about $1.5 million to “winterize” it, while figuring out what to do with the property.

Advocates concerned

Olinda Moyd, director of the Decarceration and Re-Entry Clinic at the American University Washington College of Law, frequently visits the facility as part of her work with people serving life sentences. She described the building as old and run-down.

But the closure of MCI-J raised concerns for Moyd, who wants to know more about where inmates are going to be transferred. Most of Maryland’s prisoners come from the Baltimore region or Prince Georges’ County, and those who are sent to the Eastern Shore or Western Maryland will face challenges staying connected to loved ones, she said.

“If we are really prioritizing rehabilitation, we know that maintaining those family connections is an essential part of that,” Moyd said. “So what are we doing to make sure that those bonds can remain?”

Strong connections with the “outside world” motivates prisoners to take advantage of the few programming choices available behind the walls, Moyd said. It also sets them up for success upon their release.

“If you have some family, you have some structure, you have some kind of support network, you’re not going to want to let those people down,” she said.

Stephen Meehan of the Prisoner Rights Information System of Maryland, said his organization has advocated for consolidating facilities and improving staffing, so the plan could be positive.

But if individuals are transferred to facilities that have chronic staff shortages, such as prisons in Hagerstown, that could “exacerbate the prolonged and indefinite lockdowns taking place there.”

Prior closures

Prior governors also shut down correctional facilities, and they’ve done it with more drama than Monday’s announcement about the planned closure of the Maryland Correctional Institution-Jessup.

In 2015, then-Gov. Larry Hogan abruptly closed the main portion of the state-run Baltimore City Detention Center. The fortress-like building was constructed before the Civil War, and was the site of scandal when the Black Guerilla Family gang operated within its walls, aided by compromised correctional officers.

Hogan, a Republican, called it an “embarrassment to our state” and moved people detained at the jail to other nearby buildings. Eventually, it was torn down.

The plans to replace it with a “therapeutic” correctional facility have dragged, with the projected cost ballooning to about $1 billion, making it the most expensive construction project in state history.

The AFSCME union noted it would be more cost-effective to scrap the new Baltimore facility and spend the $200 million to renovate MCI-J instead.

And in 2007, then-Gov. Martin O’Malley secretly moved nearly 850 inmates out of the old House of Correction in Jessup. Opened in 1879, it had narrow catwalks, blind spots and old locks that made it dangerous, officials said.

Correctional officer David McGuinn was stabbed to death, allegedly by two inmates, in 2006.

Officials had previously tried to lessen the risk of violence by moving out maximum-security inmates and turning it into a minimum-security facility. But O’Malley’s team, after taking office in January 2007, decided closure was the only option.