Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services
www.dpscs.state.md.us
Although not typically associated with the environment or economical growth in Maryland, the State’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) is playing a key role in the state’s Smart, Green and Growing initiative. Through our available resources such as inmate work crews, we have engaged with many Maryland communities and other state agencies to foster projects like planting trees, harvesting oysters, cleaning dump sites and much more. Our building practices for offices and correctional facilities under our jurisdiction have also been mindful of the sustainability of Maryland’s precious resources and impact on the environment.
GOAL: One Million Trees
Under Secretary Gary D. Maynard, DPSCS has set a goal of planting one million trees throughout Maryland using inmate labor. We began this effort on Arbor Day in April of 2008 and through the end of the year have 36,000 trees in the ground. Many local communities and parks have benefited from the trees. Many more trees have been planted as saplings on institution farms to be cared for by resident inmates until they are large enough to be re-planted on public property. Not only will this effort beautify Maryland and provide invaluable environmental benefits for generations to come, it also positively impacts our offender work crews by allowing them the opportunity to learn transferable job skills while reintegrating into society.
Bay Efforts
DPSCS worked with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to create 1,000 cages that are given to citizens living along the Tred Avon River to use their own piers to help rejuvenate oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay. Inmates at the Eastern Correctional Institution crafted the cages out of materials supplied by DNR.
Maryland Correctional Enterprises, the industry arm of the Division of Correction, will also collect seeds to harvest and grow native bay grasses in conjunction with DNR.
Clean-Up Efforts
Over the years many of our parks, road ways and neighborhoods have become dumping grounds for unwanted trash and debris. Across Maryland, DPSCS has taken inmate work crews to places such as Dan’s Rock Overlook, the Alleghany Highlands Trail and various local towns to clean graffiti, pick up trash, rebuild crumbling structures and perform other environmentally beneficial tasks. The Western Correctional Institution also grows plants in a green-house on location that are then donated to “Let’s Beautify Cumberland” each year. In Baltimore, two notorious dumping sites in the neighborhoods of Barclay and Curtis Bay we cleared specifically by inmates who were from those areas of the city to give them the opportunity to give back to the communities they victimized.
