A US grand jury has indicted 80 people for drug trafficking at Maryland's largest state prison. Guards, inmates and civilian prison workers are swept up in one of the biggest corruption cases in the state's history.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/L. Emmons
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A pair of indictments unsealed Wednesday by US prosecutors alleges that a tip from a prison guard has yielded the single largest federal criminal case in Maryland's history.
The indictments allege that 80 people including corrections officers, inmates and "outside facilitators" orchestrated a vast contraband smuggling enterprise that traded drugs, tobacco and mobile phones to prisoners for money and sex.
"Prison corruption is a longstanding, deeply rooted systemic problem that can only be solved by a combination of criminal prosecutions and policy changes," US Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, the lead federal prosecutor, said in a statement.
Rosenstein said the investigation began in 2013 after a concerned prison guard learned of a system in which other guards would warn inmates of impending searches. The guard brought it to the attention of state authorities who in turn passed it to federal prosecutors. Those caught up in the dragnet are mostly low-level officers and not senior managers.
Twice in July, prison guards encouraged inmates to stab other prisoners for acting as informants for authorities, Rosenstein said. Two inmates and two guards were charged with civil rights violations stemming from the attacks, he added.
According to the charging documents, prison guards profited handsomely from smuggling contraband into the jail. A single strip of Suboxone, a prescription opioid that sells for $3 (2.70 euros) on the street, could fetch up to $50 inside the prison. A $20-can of chewing tobacco could sell for $250. Other drugs such as heroin, cocaine and other narcotics were also brought in by prison staff and handed over to inmates.
The federal indictments center on the Eastern Correctional Institution in Westover, Maryland's largest state prison. The scheme involved 18 prison guards, 35 inmates and 27 civilians who helped coordinate the flow of drugs and other contraband.
Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Stephen Moyer said he assigned eight investigators to work with the FBI and other federal agencies to crack the case, relying heavily on wiretaps.
jar/kl (AP, Reuters)
Spectacular prison breaks
Mexican drug baron "Shorty" Guzman is not the first prisoner to want to escape the thick walls, bars, guards and search lights of jail. Here are some of the most spectacular, if not always successful, prison breaks.
Image: Getty Images/New York State Governor's Office/D. McGee
Maximum security in Mexico
In July 2015, Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped the Altiplano prison through a tunnel under his cell's shower - the second time in 14 years that he managed to flee a maximum-security prison. Guards discovered a deep hole with a ladder that led to a tunnel that in turn led to a building on a hill surrounded by pastures.
Image: Reuters/PGR/Attorney General's Office
Nice try
Not as clever as Guzman: In 2011, the wife of inmate Juan Ramirez Tijerina visited her husband in a Mexican prison, where he was serving a sentence for illegal weapons possession. She brought along a large suitcase she planned to lug him out with again. Prison guards, however, found the young man inside - curled up inside in the fetal position.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sspqr
H-Block 7
In 1983, 38 Irish Republican Army (IRA) inmates broke out of The Maze, considered to be one of Europe's most escape-proof prisons. The Maze was the main prison in Northern Ireland for sentenced republican and loyalist paramilitaries. The inmates used smuggled guns and knives to overpower staff, and hijacked a kitchen van to drive to the main gate, and out of the compound.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. Mcerlane
The Alcatraz escape
With the help of sharpened spoons and an improvised drill, three bank robbers managed to burrow their way out of their cells in Alcatraz high security prison in the San Francisco Bay in 1962. To fool the prison guards at bay, the trio placed dummy heads in their beds. Once they were out, they used an inflatable raft made out of raincoats - and vanished.
Image: imago/Kai Koehler
Daring flight
It sounds like a script for Hollywood blockbuster: Pascal Payet twice used helicopters for his dramatic prison breaks. In 2001, the convicted murderer fled from a prison in a French village using a hijacked helicopter. In 2007, he again used a helicopter for a get-away. Previously, he had helped organize the escape of three captives who had been in jail with him - again using a helicopter.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/B. Horvat
Most wanted fugitive
Awaiting trial, serial killer Theodore Robert Bundy escaped from a county law library by jumping from a window. Re-arrested and sent to jail in Colorado, Bundy lost 30 pounds so he could escape again through a small light fixture hole in the cell ceiling. Bundy spread terror across the US, killing numerous women between January 1974 and 1978, when he was finally recaptured and sentenced to death.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
An Easter escape
Inmate Walter Stürm, imprisoned for stealing offenses, left a smug note in his cell after his get-away from a Swiss prison in 1981. "Off hunting Easter eggs," the note read. Stürm had sawed through the bars on his window, let himself down to the ground to the prison yard and fled to freedom by using a ladder. It was his third prison break.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Busting out
In June 2015, two convicted murderers, David Sweat and Richard Matt, broke out of a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, cutting holes in the walls of their adjoining cells, and working their way through a maze of catwalks and pipes to emerge from a manhole. The duo did a practice run the night before the escape. Matt was later killed by police, while Sweat was recaptured, badly injured.
Image: Getty Images/New York State Governor's Office/D. McGee
