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.
"[9] In 1952, voters approved spending $6 million to build a new jail, but plans to build a new facility near City Hospital (now Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center) in East Baltimore attracted opposition from local residents.
"[9] The jail continued to suffer problems, however; in 1972, the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported a "desperate lack of training among guards, lax security measures, poor sanitation and inadequate inmate rehabilitation programs" and well as poor morale among the then-273 guards.
[9] As a result, city officials announced a five-year jail renovation and expansion project.
[9] In 2002, the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division determined that poor conditions at the facility "had contributed to the deaths of several detainees, some of whom received little or no medical attention for chronic health problems," and had violated inmates' constitutional rights.
[9] In 2003, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Duvall v. Hogan, on behalf of jail inmates, alleging that the facility's poor conditions rose to the level of unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
"[10] In June 2015, the ACLU filed a motion to reopen the suit, arguing that the state had failed to meaningfully improve conditions.
[10] In its motion to reopen, ACLU attorneys wrote that BCDC was "a dank and dangerous place, where detainees are confined in dirty cells infested with vermin"; that the facility's showers "are full of drain flies, black mold and filth"; that at one point an entire section of the BCDC went without working sinks or toilets for several days, creating a "fetid and unhealthy" atmosphere "because the detainees had no way to dispose of their bodily wastes except by using the nonfunctional toilets"; and that temperatures at the jail often climb above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
[11] In 2013, following a multi-agency investigation, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland indicted 44 individuals, including 27 Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services correctional officers and several others, including inmates, on federal various charges of racketeering, conspiracy, distribution of drugs, and money laundering inside BCDC and several connected facilities.
[12] Among other details in the indictments, one inmate, Tavon White, fathered five children with four of the female guards since 2009.