Baltimore City Detention Center
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| Location | 401 E. Eager Street Baltimore, Maryland |
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| Opened | 1801 |
| Managed by | Maryland Department of Corrections |
| Director | Ricky Foxwell |
Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC, formerly known as the Baltimore City Jail) is a Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services state prison for men and women. It is located on 401 East Eager Street in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. It has been a state facility since July 1991.
In July 2015, Maryland governor Larry Hogan announced the men's facility would be permanently closed, and the 750 inmates redistributed among other more modern facilities. The exact date of the closure was not made known.
The Center is one element of a correctional campus that also includes:
The BCDC ranks among the top 20 largest detention facilities in the United States. With a working capacity of 4,000 prisoners, the five buildings of the BCDC also represent one of the oldest prisons in the country. About 90% of detainees are pretrial detainees.
Baltimore's first jail was built in 1801 and was used until a new facility was built in 1859. In 1832, half the prisoners in Baltimore City Jail were imprisoned for debt; Edgar Allan Poe claimed to have been arrested for an unpaid debt shared with his brother Henry, who had died.
Architects Thomas and James M. Dixon won the contract for the 1858 re-construction. An elaborate Gothic design by Gradley J.F. Bryant had been selected by the City Commissioner without authorization, and rescinded after protest. The building was gutted and re-constructed 1959-60. Only a small part of the 1859 building remains.
The jail has a long and "checkered history" with a lengthy series of litigation over jail conditions. The Baltimore Sun was already reporting about poor conditions in the jail in 1885, and by 1938, some Baltimore City residents "were calling for the building to be demolished and replaced with a new facility." The city Criminal Justice Commission president at the time, C. Delano Ames, called the jail a "disgrace to a metropolitan city" as well as "a sanitary menace, and a breeder of degeneracy." City grand juries repeatedly recommended building a new jail; in 1940, a grand jury subcommittee recommended construction of a new jail, but stated: "the committee feels it is useless for them to lay any great stress upon this point as the recommendation has been made by every grand jury for the last 10 or 15 years without results."
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