May 1, 2005 - The Baltimore Sun (MD) Inside City's Booking Center, There's Far Too Much Company Conditions Are Deplorable, and Worse By Ryan Davis, Sun Staff

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Crammed for hours inside a concrete room at Baltimore's booking center, the men awaiting court hearings jockey for space on the floor.

The air is thick and foul, so they covet the patch of floor by the sliding steel door. There, inmates put their cheeks to the floor to suck fresh air through the crack beneath the door.

"When I couldn't have that spot," said Henry Thiess, who was arrested last Sunday on assault charges, "I laid under the toilet so I didn't have to worry about being stepped on."

For hours, Thiess moved from one overcrowded cell to the next. He was held for more than 24 hours before seeing a court commissioner, one of hundreds in recent weeks who have lingered as long as four days in cells that Thiess described as filled with "piles of people."

On Monday, a judge ordered the state officials who run the Central Booking and Intake Center to comply with state law and release all suspects who don't receive a court hearing within a day of being arrested. But the judge said his temporary order is not a long-term solution.

Though the official who oversees the state facility insists it is safe, even he won't defend its environment.

"You get into a gray area when you say, 'Is it humane?'" said Commissioner William J. Smith of the state Division of Pretrial Detention and Services. "Certainly it's not the best."

More Suspects, Longer

The problem, Smith said, is that Central Booking - a hulking gray structure downtown - is being used to detain more suspects for longer than was ever expected. It has become a holding facility rather than a processing center.

Opened in 1995, the building cost $56 million.

"I don't think [the public] got what they were promised," said Natalie Finegar, the chief attorney at Central Booking for the Office of the Public Defender. "The place opened up overcrowded, and it only got worse."

Smith denied three recent requests by The Sun to tour the facility. Defense attorneys, suspects, visitors and advocates described the building and the conditions in which people are housed.

Thiess, like all the others there, has not been found guilty of a crime. Central Booking is where people go after they are arrested in Baltimore, no matter how minor the charge. Many will never be found guilty of anything.

About 30 percent of the people whom city police arrest, not including those picked up on warrants, never even face charges. Prosecutors determine that there's not enough evidence to support a charge or that the alleged wrongdoing, such as loitering, was abated by the arrest.

Inside Central Booking, suspects are photographed, fingerprinted and jammed into cells while they wait for others to decide whether they should go free or see a court commissioner.

Minor Cases Slowest

Those accused of the most serious crimes are whisked through the system. The process goes slowest, prosecutors and others said, for first-time offenders arrested on minor charges.

The facility was supposed to be a state-of-the-art processing center. Receiving a court hearing within 24 hours was never supposed to be an issue. Suspects whom prosecutors decided not to charge and those released without having to post bail were to move through the facility in about five hours.

If a bail was set, and a suspect couldn't make it, he was to be moved immediately to the detention center next door - not be detained for weeks.

Problems developed almost as soon as Central Booking opened. A 2002 Department of Justice report found that officers there weren't properly trained for medical and mental health screenings.

In February, Maryland Occupational Safety and Health opened its own investigation of alleged crowding and hazardous conditions.

Built for a population of 895, Central Booking regularly holds about 1,200, officials said.

It has two distinct areas - the booking floor and the upstairs towers. Because of the recent furor over quickly processing suspects, the booking floor has drawn most of the attention.

People arrested come in on the booking floor. They go through a cursory search and medical examination before being interviewed. They are placed in holding cells to await being fingerprinted and photographed. After that, they are placed in another cell while they wait for police to perform warrant checks, corrections officials to perform another warrant check and prosecutors to decide whether to charge them with crimes.

Each cell has concrete walls, a concrete bench and a metal toilet with connected sink. The sliding steel door has a window to the inside. Stripped of their watches and without a window to the outside, suspects lose track of time, many said.

Smith, of the state pretrial division, said cells designed for one or two people waiting for a court hearing hold as many as five. Cells designed for eight to 10 hold as many as 16, he said.

In court documents, public defenders allege that 20 people cram into eight-person cells.

40 People in a Cell

A union official for the corrections officers said the officers sometimes pack in even more - as many as 40 people in a cell built for eight or 10.

"They put in as many as they can cram in there," said Archer Blackwell, a senior staff representative for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

According to lawyers and suspects, some of the cells don't have adequate privacy partitions around the toilets because they were built to hold one person. With as many as four or five in such a cell, bathroom privacy evaporates.

Charles William Sinnott Jr., 50, who spent about 18 hours inside the facility in February, recalled the smell of the cells as overwhelming. To use a cell toilet, he had to request toilet paper - and a corrections officer handed him only eight inches, he said. He said he stood for three hours until a small patch of concrete came free. He fell asleep there, sitting Indian-style with his head in his hands.

Douglas L. Colbert, a University of Maryland law professor who regularly visits the facility, said suspects assert power over space. "The stronger get the seats; the weaker will stand and stay awake as best they can," he said. "Those in between will take their chance on cement floor."

The suspects call it "switching up," Thiess said. Those standing rotate with those who are on the floor, he said.

On the floor, some make their shirts into pillows. Thiess, a 35-year-old from Bel Air, said he used a discarded lunch bag. It was soft because it had bread inside.

Necessary Intimacy

Monet Jones, 24, who was arrested in June for pouring water on another woman's head, spent more than 24 hours waiting to see a commissioner. She said, "People would ask, 'Can I lay my head on your leg.'"

She said one woman in her cell sneaked in drugs and tried to light a pipe.

A legal brief filed recently by the Public Justice Center in Baltimore alleges that suspects - some of whom are drunk - often vomit on each other. Thiess said one of his cellmates vomited. Initially, others stayed away, but once some of the material dried, they slept on it.

Women seem to be more comfortable lying against each other, said Finegar, the public defender.

No Water to Drink

Lakesha Alston, a 22-year-old who was arrested last Sunday on a charge of driving on a suspended license and waited about 24 hours for a court hearing, said she lay atop other women on the floor. The sink connected to the toilet in her cell didn't work, she said, so she went 10 hours without water while trying to take medicine for a urinary tract infection.

The Public Justice Center's court filing raised concerns about medical care, stating that "detainees with serious medical needs - including HIV, hepatitis, mental illness, diabetes, or [tuberculosis] - often receive no medical care for several days."

The filing includes an affidavit from a doctor who wrote that during a three-day jail stay, one of her patients - a woman in her 60s with HIV and no criminal record - was allowed to take only one dose of her twice-a-day HIV medication, and her medicine was not returned upon release. This could result in a major setback for the woman, the doctor wrote.

Said Alston, "They act like because we got in trouble we're not people."

From these cells on the booking floor, suspects are released if prosecutors decide not to charge them. Those who are charged see a court commissioner. If the commissioner sets a bail, the suspect moves upstairs to the facility's towers.

Suspects stay there until they post bail or are transferred to the state-run Baltimore City Detention Center next door - also overcrowded, Smith said.

Thiess said conditions in the towers are also deplorable.

Not Enough Beds

There are more people than beds in the towers, so suspects sleep on devices that Finegar describes as "plastic sleds;" Smith calls one a "fiberglass apparatus." Rooms designed as open-air community rooms are filled with suspects milling around, Finegar and others said.

It's common for suspects to spend 60 days, Finegar said, in this part of the facility, which was designed to hold them for two to three days.

There are no attorney meeting areas, Finegar said. Because the building wasn't designed to house long-term detainees, attorneys meet their clients in medical rooms or in the hallways, she said.

They look for their clients among the masses.

"You see a whole lot of vulnerable people," Finegar said. "They're just desperate."

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