Part One
As citizens, there is established trust in institutions that have been put in place to punish and correct offenders. There is the established trust that these institutions are operated through transparent means and run by hardworking professionals committed to protecting and upholding American citizens' safety. However, it is not uncommon to hear that a particular section of the criminal justice system continually has issues of ethical concerns such as corruption. The corruption issue in the criminal justice system is prevalent in Maryland and particularly the Baltimore Prisons. This paper will focus on the indictment of female correction officers who worked at the facility in 2013. The thirteen females’ officers were charged with corruption events, including smuggling cellphones, drug prescriptions, and other contrabands into the correctional facility. Mainly, these goods were being smuggled to a notorious gang at the facility, the Black Guerilla Family. The officers involved were compromised and finally indicted based on the gang’s systematic targeting and lack of ethics and morals.
Part Two
Regardless of being key justice sector institutions, correctional facilities are characterized by particular vulnerability to corruption acts. This is due to prisons' enclosed nature and the insufficient public scrutiny both in the form of frequent internal monitoring, inspection, and auditing (Goldsmith, Halsey & Groves, 2016). Furthermore, imprisonment and detention in correctional facilities imply a limitation of freedom and movement and a situation where inmates heavily depend on prion authorities for their everyday needs. Therefore, such imbalance of power requires a heightened degree of intelligence, integrity, and upholding ethics from correctional officers to hinder corruption issues such as the smuggling of mobile phones, drugs or weapons into the correctional facilities for bribes, favours, and funds embezzlement. Furthermore, corruption in these facilities begins with small acts such as accepting small gifts and eventually becoming a habit that leads to serious crimes. The habit of corruption among correctional officers is quite dangerous, and if it goes unchecked, it can become cancerous in the criminal justice system. This is based on the rationale that eventually, it undermines the agency’s goal and ability to achieve its core objectives and goals.
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The Baltimore case is fascinating because all the officers indicted were young females. Their ages played a crucial role in their ability to be corrupted by the prisoners. According to investigations from the federal documents on the case, it was apparent that the Black Guerilla Family gang taught the newly recruited members how they would target female correctional officers. Some of the tactics they used include looking at female correctional officers who have low self-esteem, have certain physical traits, and are insecure (Vallin, 2018). Having a blueprint on manipulating the young female correctional officers made it easy to facilitate corruption at the Baltimore Correctional Facility. Besides, the State of Maryland had provided for these vulnerable young women to serve in these facilities and render their services while they were straight from high school. These factors culminated in a breeding ground for corruption at the facility.
Following the hiring practices at Maryland Corrections, corruption was inevitable at the Baltimore Detention Center. The state system failed to realize that correctional facilities' running requires some level of maturity from officers. Therefore, hiring young females straight from high school and the failure to recognize that some of these officers were from poverty-stricken backgrounds filled with criminals such as the ones they were guarding. After the targeting was successful, the Black Guerilla Family Gang received drugs, cellphones, and other contrabands from the correctional officers. Essentially, these goods were smuggled into the facility through shoes, inside inner wears, and through hair. The officers would then use entrances to be screened heavily and successfully got these goods at the facility. With time the operations became large because even the correctional officers who were not hands-on in the corruption acts failed to report to higher authorities of the ongoing violations for fear of being attacked by their colleagues and even the prisoners.
Notably, the Baltimore Detention Centre dynamics went from being under the U.S. Criminal justice system to being run by the Black Guerilla Family. Particularly, they were led by Tavon White, who claimed that he oversees everything that runs in that correctional facility. According to a phone call he made to a friend, Tavon made it clear that Baltimore Detention Center was his jail as everything has to go first through him (Goldsmith, 2020). Tavon White was able to tame the correctional officers as he did them favours such as buying them luxury cars, gifts, and shared monetary profits from the money laundering activities he did while still in prison. Also, sexual favours were involved in the case as Mr White admitted to impregnating four correctional officers at the facility. The involvements went as far as meeting with drug dealers on behalf of Tavon and warning them of any looming cell phone searches. Some even had the name “Tavon White” tattooed on their body.
Part 3
Based on the Baltimore Detention Centre events, the lack of morals and ethical values among correctional officers makes them prone to the already corrupt system. Corruption has significant negative impacts on both the correctional system and the country's criminal justice system at large. Furthermore, corruption creates unsafe conditions for prisoners and officers alike. Examples of negative impacts include increased violence over contrabands goods such as drugs and phone cells. Besides, there can be mistrust issues in the facilities among the correctional officers. Also, fear becomes instilled in the correctional officers as they are afraid of reporting the crimes and facing their colleagues or prisoners' consequences. Therefore, the correctional system should review its occupational culture, including the hiring practices, to ensure that they hire trained and mature people from the job.
From a historical context, corruption in correctional facilities has been rampant in the U.S prison facilities for a long time. The rationale is based on the unchanged way of running these facilities. For example, the hiring of untrained personnel is what catalyzed corruption at Baltimore Detention Center. Therefore, the facility should subject its staff to annual training to prevent being manipulated by prisoners into corrupt activities. The training should be designed such that it stresses crucial issues at the facility, such as corruption. It should also stress the importance o being morally upright as a correctional officer and upholding ethicality in the profession. Besides, the correctional officers should be trained on the importance of immediately reporting to higher authorities any prisoners' attempts to condition them into meeting their corruption demands. Furthermore, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) supports member states to strengthen compliance in correctional facilities management (Goldsmith, 2020). The event at Baltimore was the perfect example of the apparent lack of training in recruiting and hiring practices that resulted in concerns in the correctional facility's ethics and morals. To end corruption in the systems, anti-corruption measures as such should be put in place.
References
Goldsmith, A., Halsey, M., & Groves, A. (2016). Tackling correctional corruption . Springer.
Goldsmith, A. (2020). Prison corruption: an ecological framework. In Handbook on Corruption, Ethics and Integrity in Public Administration . Edward Elgar Publishing.
Vallin, J. (2018). Organizational Deviance: The Case of the Baltimore City Detention Center. Augsburg Honors Review , 11 (1), 3.
