State officials say they brought portable toilets, bottled water to people at jail without water last week
BALTIMORE — A Baltimore jail was without water for nearly 36 hours between May 12 and 13, after the facility’s main sanitation pipe had been clogged with paper waste and sewage, state officials acknowledged Tuesday.
The water supply was disrupted again last Thursday.
State officials said they were informed about the initial blockage at 11 a.m. that Sunday and the water supply was restored around 10:30 p.m. the next day.
In the interim, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said in a statement, officials provided 13,720 bottles and multi-gallon containers of water to people at the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center.
Officials say they also brought in portable toilets and handwashing stations, along with a health inspector.
Tuesday’s statement from the state agency that runs prisons and Baltimore detention facilities marks its first public remarks since the Office of the Public Defender accused it in a Friday press release of violating the constitutional rights of detainees by keeping them in “deplorable conditions.” Public defenders also filed 11 petitions seeking the release of people incarcerated at the facility while awaiting trial.
The office alleged that people were unable to clean themselves and were given “minimal” bottles of water while the facility’s water was out. In some instances, people were forced to “remain in cells with unflushed excrement for days,” the Public Defender’s release added.
The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said in its statement that it shares “a commitment to ensuring the health and safety of all individuals within DPSCS facilities.”
“The department takes seriously any concerns raised by OPD and is in communication with OPD regarding the corrective action taken to address the sewer line disruption,” it said, referring to the Office of the Public Defender.
Melissa Rothstein, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Public Defender, said Tuesday that Public Defender Natasha Dartigue had been communicating with the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services’ Deputy Secretary Joseph Sedtal since Sunday afternoon.
“DPSCS is in agreement with OPD that the dignity and respect of all detained persons is paramount, regardless of the circumstances which brought them into the system,” Rothstein said in an email.
The state corrections agency added in its statement that after the original blockage was discovered and remedied, a separate leak occurred May 16. It led to a “short interruption in the water supply” before water was restored later in the day.
According to the agency’s statement, incarcerated individuals were able to use the restroom with the portable toilets and handwashing stations brought into the facility. It also brought in a decontamination company to “clean areas affected by sewage line disruption.”
Dartigue said Friday that the state must “comply with basic human rights standards” when it holds someone in custody.
“Functional plumbing,” she added, “is among the most basic of those obligations.”
“Depriving people of rudimentary health and hygiene measures is inhumane, unsafe, and well beyond what our society should tolerate,” Dartigue said.
The public defenders’ news release said that some people were brought to portable toilets while still handcuffed, which prevented them from wiping and washing themselves. In other instances, it added, people were provided garbage bags to use as toilets in their cells.
The Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center is an intake facility that dates back to 1981 on East Madison Street near the Jones Falls Expressway. An Office of Public Defender official said Friday more than 420 people are incarcerated there awaiting their trials.
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