The prison indictments announced Wednesday bring to mind what may be the biggest sex scandal in the history of the correctional system in the United States.
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It happened at the Baltimore City Detention Center, which has since been closed.
The FBI uncovered a widespread system of female correctional officers having sex with inmates, then smuggling drugs and money for them.
The author of a new book on the scandal hoped correctional officers might read it -- and it would help prevent more drugs and smuggling at jails and prisons in the future.
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He says sex between detainees and female correctional officers inside BCDC happened almost every day.
“It was organized. People just weren't coming into jail, having sex. You were having the gang members, the enforcers, they would lock all the other inmates in, and they would reserve cells and they would have another officer on the lookout. So it was all structured,” said Ralph Johnson, the correctional officer turned author.
The FBI says in about 2004, the Black Guerilla Family, or BGF, became the dominant gang at the Baltimore City Detention Center, after a years-long war with the Bloods gang.
Johnson saw it all happen – he’d been working at BCDC since the early 1990s.
“There's so many shocking stories. So many sexual encounters, so much betrayal. So much corruption,” he said.
Johnson decided to write down what he remembers.
“You had good officers who were trying to stop that type of behavior, then some of the supervision would actually transfer those officers so they would be out of the way,” he said.
Johnson knew many of the correctional officers personally. His new book is called The Indictments.
“This book is off the chain! When you read this, it's like 'is this a jail?' it was like a brothel up in there. And I wrote it as raw as possible,” Johnson said.
In 2009, Tavon White arrived at BCDC on a charge of attempted murder. White established himself as BGF’s leader at the facility.
“The streets basically dictated everything,” Johnson said. “And if you read my book, every time that he got in trouble or some of the leadership started to lean on him, he would call the streets for help and the streets would settle everything.”
The FBI recorded conversations from the smuggled cell phones, including one in which White claimed to run the entire jail.
Eventually he got four correctional officers pregnant -- one of them, Jennifer Owens, twice.
“He was able to operate freely because of what he was bringing to the table,” Johnson said. “He was bringing non-violence to the correctional facility. He was bringing a lot of money to the correctional facility. You even had correctional officers saying they enjoyed coming to work because they knew they were going to have a peaceful day.”
That peace came with a heavy price. Eventually, 44 people were charged with crimes -- 24 correctional officers and 20 detainees from BCDC, and 35 of them plead guilty, including White. Then, he took the stand -- and testified against five of the suspects who chose to go to trial, and were convicted.
“They didn't understand at the end of the day you have to pay for all of that. You're going to be separated from your children, you're going to prison. And life is going to be very hard for you. That's what they have to understand,” Johnson said.
Three of the defendants were acquitted at their trials, and another one died before the case was finished being adjudicated.
The investigation lasted nearly three years -- federal authorities said they hoped it would do more than just send people to prison.
“We think this case has made an impact. It's made an impact in terms of serving as a wakeup call about the scope of corruption within the prison system,” said U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, in a news conference announcing the arrests.
And last year, Gov. Larry Hogan closed* the Baltimore City Detention Center – confirming what Johnson says he knew all along:
“Frankly the Baltimore City Detention Center is a disgrace,” Hogan said in a news conference at the facility. “Inmates were literally running this prison.”
But Johnson says even without the actual building, the elements of human nature that led to the scandal -- most notably greed -- are much more difficult to stamp out.
“Your guard has to be up, at all times,” Johnson said. “You have to be sharp, you have to be focused.”
And that's why, Johnson said, he wrote "The Indictments.”
“You did have that element that created the worst sex and corruption scandal in the history of corrections, and you need books like this to deter decent people from doing indecent things,” he said.
Officials from the Maryland Department of Public Safety and correctional services say training for correctional officers has been improved since the BCDC scandal, along with the procedures used in the state's jails and prison.
Ralph Johnson's book "The Indictments" is being sold at Dabney's Full Service Salon in Northwest Baltimore.
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