BALTIMORE — Maryland corrections officials will use portable fingerprint scanners and make other changes in how they release prisoners after an inmate serving three life terms conned his way out of a Baltimore prison last week.
Raymond T. Taylor, 26, walked out of the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center on Thursday after swapping identification cards with his cellmate. Four correctional officers checked the photo ID card, and Taylor recited the other inmate’s ID number when asked.
Taylor, who was sentenced for the attempted execution-style slayings of a woman and two teenage girls, was recaptured the next day at a friend’s home in West Virginia.
Baltimore inmates no longer will be released from MCAC, a former “supermax” prison that’s now used to house inmates in transit and awaiting court appearances, corrections officials announced Wednesday.
Instead, they’ll be released from another facility across the street where staffers are familiar with fingerprint-scanning technology. The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has purchased four hand-held fingerprint scanners at a cost of $1,500 each, and the first is already in use at the Baltimore prison, said Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the department.
The scanners link inmates’ fingerprints to a database maintained by the department. Inmates are fingerprinted when they begin serving their sentences.
A second fingerprint scanner will be put into use this week at a women’s prison in Jessup. The scanners also likely will be used at release “hubs” in Western Maryland and on the Eastern Shore, Mr. Binetti said.
Not all inmates are released from those four hubs, and Mr. Binetti stressed that the portable fingerprint scanners would be a stopgap measure until the department determines the best way to improve its release procedures. More elaborate body-scanning technology ultimately may be put in place, he said.
The investigation into Taylor’s escape continues. Corrections officials have said they don’t believe correctional officers were in on his ruse, attributing his release instead to a series of human errors.
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