Maryland. Dept. of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services was created in 1970 (Chapter 401, Acts of 1970), thereby consolidating several agencies concerned with public safety and correctional matters. The department is responsible for controlling and reducing crime, maintaining public order, and supervising and rehabilitating adjudicated individuals who pose a threat to the public. The secretary of the department directs state law enforcement and correctional programs overseeing the Maryland State Police, State Fire Marshal, Division of Parole and Probation, and several advisory boards.

The state assumed responsibility for corrections in the early nineteenth century with the establishment of the Maryland Penitentiary in 1811 (Resolution 32, Acts of 1804) and the Maryland House of Correction in 1879 (Chapter 233, Acts of 1874). In the twentieth century, additional correctional facilities were established including the Maryland State Penal Farm, later the Maryland Correctional Institution, in 1931; Women's Prison of the State of Maryland in 1941; Patuxent Institution in 1951; Maryland Correctional Training Center at Hagerstown in 1966; Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup in 1981; Roxbury Correctional Institution at Hagerstown in 1983; and Eastern Correctional Institution at Westover in 1987.

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