MD state prisons saw 46 inmate homicides since 2015 — 22 in past two years

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Twenty-two inmate deaths were classified as homicides between 2024 and 2025, accounting for about 48 percent of all inmate homicides since 2015, according to data from the state’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Inmate homicides have increased 75 percent at Maryland state prisons in 2025, and about 166 percent in 2024, according to DPSCS.

The number of inmates whose death was classified as a homicide while in a Maryland state prison reached 14 in 2025, the highest within the last decade, according to DPSCS. Previously, the highest number of inmate homicides in a single year was eight in 2024 and five in 2019.

There have been three inmate homicides in 2026 so far, according to DPSCS social media and media relations manager Keith Martucci.

About 70 percent of inmate homicides since 2015 occurred at one of three correctional facilities: North Branch, Jessup and Western Correctional Institution, according to an analysis of DPSCS inmate homicide data by CNS.

North Branch Correctional Institution, a maximum-security-level prison in Allegany County, reported five homicides in 2025, the most at a single facility in one year, according to the data reviewed by CNS. North Branch has had two inmate homicide cases in 2026 so far, according to Martucci.

Maximum-security-level prison Jessup Correctional Institution in Anne Arundel County had four inmate homicides in 2025, according to DPSCS data.

The death of Larry Horton, a 51-year-old inmate at North Branch, is being investigated by Maryland State Police as a homicide. Horton was appealing a life sentence for a murder in Baltimore County when he was found unresponsive in his cell by correctional staff on Jan. 10, 2026.

“Some people are like, it’s just an inmate, and that’s the wrong attitude,” said Paul Gibson, Chief Operating Officer of the Prison Education and Reform Alliance and former associate warden with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. “It’s someone’s husband and someone’s father. It’s someone’s son that was just killed.”

For six out of the last ten years, both North Branch and maximum-security-level prison Western Correctional, in Allegany County, had at least one inmate homicide reported, according to a CNS analysis of DPSCS data. The Jessup correctional facility saw five years with at least one inmate homicide during the same time.

Nationally, inmate homicides in state prisons have increased by about 27 percent since 2021, to 136 during the 2024 fiscal year, the most recent year data is available from the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Nationwide inmate deaths data are reported to the BJA by state correctional departments and may not be completely up to date, according to the BJA website. For example, the BJA reported that Maryland had six inmate homicides in state prisons between the 2020 and 2024 fiscal year, while DPSCS reported to CNS that there were 13 homicides during the same time period.

“We should see lower homicide and suicide rates in prison if we take people’s freedom away and we put them under perpetual surveillance,” said Keramet Reiter, a professor at the University of California, Irvine Department of Criminology Law and Society. “They should be safer than this.”

Post-COVID-19 correctional officer understaffing may have been a factor that contributed to correctional facilities seeing exacerbated violence from inmates in recent years, Reiter said.

Between fiscal year 2019 and 2024, the most recent years data is available, there has been a loss of more than 38,000 correctional officer positions at state correctional facilities nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since fiscal 2015 there has been about a 20 percent loss of correctional officers working at these correctional facilities.

The number of allocated correctional officer positions across Maryland’s 13 state correctional prisons has decreased by 18 percent between July 2019 and July 2025, according to DPSCS correctional officer data. Across all facilities under DPSCS in Maryland there has been about a 27 percent decrease of correctional officer positions allocated during the same time period.

About 93 percent of correctional officer positions were filled at Maryland state prisons as of July 2025, in July of 2015 about 96 percent of correctional officer positions were filled.

At North Branch Correctional Institution, where five inmates were killed in 2025, the total number of correctional officer positions allocated decreased by more than 100 between July 2019 and July 2025, according to an analysis of DPSCS correctional officer data by CNS. The percent of vacant correctional officer positions also increased from about 11 percent to about 16 percent during the same time period.

Short staffing in DPSCS decreases a facility’s safety and security for both inmates and correctional staff, according to a 2025 report by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union with the help of DPSCS. The report analyzed DPSCS staffing issues between 2022 and 2023.

“In recent years, correctional staff vacancy rates have reached an alarming level,” the report read. “Mandatory overtime, burnout and lack of communication between management and line staff have created dangerous working conditions inside the facilities and institutions within DPSCS.”

The report found that all institutions operated with a ratio of more than 100 inmates to 1 officer that hurt staff’s ability to respond to incidents at the facility.

Since 2021, Maryland prisons have become more violent as assaults against inmates and staff have more than doubled, according to the DPSCS 2027 Fiscal Budget Overview. About 15 out of 100 inmates were assaulted by other inmates in 2025, in 2016 about six were assaulted out of every 100.

Gibson said that there may be other reasons behind the increase in violence. He said that other state prison systems with similar inmate populations and high correctional officer vacancies have not seen high inmate homicide numbers like Maryland.

According to Gibson the increase of inmate homicides may be caused by many factors including overpopulation per prison, staffing issues, conflicts between prison gangs and poor institutional leadership.

“People want to take the easy answer and just blame one thing,” Gibson said, “and there’s probably a deeper issue than what you can scratch the surface on right now.”

Theodore Rose reports for Capital News Service.