Maryland Penitentiary

The Maryland Penitentiary was the first prison established by the state and the second of its kind within the United States. The maximum security facility was authorized by the Laws of 1804, res. 15, and opened in 1811. An 1881 penitentiary publication reports that prior to its establishment, criminals were housed in county jails or workhouses and "made to labor upon the public roads." Significantly, when the legislature rewrote the Maryland Criminal Code in 1809, the new law designated a maximum time of "confinement in the penitentiary" for the conviction of most criminal offenses (Laws of 1809, ch. 138).

The prison was designed to house both male and female convicts. However, following the transfer of all female inmates to the Maryland House of Correction in 1921, the penitentiary held only one or two female prisoners in subsequent years until 1947. After that, it held only male convicts. Prisoners convicted in federal courts were also incarcerated in the Maryland Penitentiary (Laws of 1819, ch. 55). The practice of holding federal prisoners continued until 1922.

From its earliest years, the penitentiary benefitted from prison labor. Beginning with the manufacture of cotton and woolen goods, prison labor expanded to include boot and shoe making, carpet weaving, and stone cutting, among others. An 1834 law called for the construction of workshops within the prison to eliminate the problems associated with convicts working in "scattered location[s]" (Laws of 1834, ch. 308). Moreover, the same law advocated using the "Auburn System," named for the labor system developed by the state prison in Auburn, New York. Under the system, rigid discipline (including striped uniforms, lock step, and whippings) assured that the prisoners labored in penitent silence. Prison workshop labor was often purchased by commercial manufacturers. The use of contractual convict labor continued unabated until the creation of the State Board of Prison Control which was mandated to eliminate the contract labor system (Laws of 1916, ch. 556). Thereafter, an increasing amount of convict labor directly benefited the state under Maryland's State Use System. Prisoners began to work on road crews, as printers of state documents, or making license plates. Although an overwhelming majority of prisoners were still employed by commercial contractors throughout the 1920s, the contracts diminshed during the Depression and disappeared entirely by 1935.

Since its inception, the Maryland Penitentiary has been administered by several boards and/or agencies. Until 1916 it functioned as an independent agency, governed at first by a Board of Inspectors and after 1817 by a Board of Directors (Laws of 1817, ch. 72). As a result of progressive reform (forcing the resignation of its warden in 1913), the Board of Directors was abolished and the State Board of Prison Control assumed authority over the penitentiary (Laws of 1916, ch. 556). Management changed again six years later when, under the State Government Reorganization Act, the Maryland Penitentiary fell under the purview of the Board of Welfare (Laws of 1922, ch. 29, art. vii). In 1939, the Board of Correction, within the newly created Department of Correction, assumed supervision of the state penal system (Laws of 1939, ch. 69). Beginning in 1953, the superintendent of prisons administered the department (Laws of 1953, ch. 578), but was replaced by the commissioner of correction nine years later (Laws of 1962, ch. 123). The Department of Correction was renamed the Department of Correctional Services in 1968 (Laws of 1968, ch. 137). Two years later it was subsumed by the Department of Public Safety and Correction Services.

At that time, the Department of Correctional Services was reorganized as the Division of Correction which maintains its authority over the Maryland Penitentiary (Laws of 1970, ch. 401).