Dimensions - January/February 2010/Annual Review 2009 - 13

 he Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (MDPSCS) is developing two new detention centers in downtown Baltimore to accommodate nearly 1,000 women and youth offenders. The centers, currently in design, represent the initial steps in a seven-phase master plan that will ultimately reconstruct MDPSCSâ€™s entire downtown correctional campus and enhance the stateâ€™s services in education, medical care, and community programs for detainees. Set side by side, the five-story, 200,000-square-foot Baltimore Youth Detention Center and the six-story, 375,000-square-foot Womenâ€™s Detention Center will be linked to enable medical and administrative staff to flow between the buildings and share resources and equipment. The complex will also include a level of shared subsurface parking for employees. Design of the youth facility takes its cue from Baltimoreâ€™s urban neighborhood context, with housing grouped as neighborhoods organized around a â€œstreetâ€ and education offered within a connected but distinctly separate full-service school. The youth detention center will include six housing units accommodating 180 beds in single-occupancy rooms. Each unit will feature activity space, a multipurpose room, a counseling room, and an officerâ€™s station. A gymnasium and community space will also be located in the center, along with the spaces for education and training, medical care, and administrative support. The womenâ€™s center will provide bed space for 800 female offenders, including special areas for expectant mothers and women with infants. Like the youth facility, the womenâ€™s center will enable the state to expand services in education, training, counseling, and medical care. Both facilities will also T Dimensions Â® The new Youth Detention Center has been designed within an urban setting and provides secure detention with an emphasis on educational programs that focus on behavioral change. provide separate booking and intake for offenders in order to alleviate lengthy processing activities at the stateâ€™s current Central Booking and Intake Center. Setting the two-building complex within a dense urban block has proven to be the most critical challenge to the design teams for both projects. The teams devised strategies to stack services and program functions vertically and link appropriate program areas such as medical care and food service, yet maintain careful segregation among women and youth detainees. Maryland to Build New Detention Centers for Women and Youth Facilities to Expand Services in Education and Medical Care MDPSCS Assistant Secretary for Capital Programs David Benzanson recently noted, â€œOur agency was very pleased with not only the functionality of the Youth Detention Center design, as it met our requirements for a secure facility to house youthful offenders awaiting trial in the city of Baltimore, but with the creative way in which PSADewberry incorporated our vision of providing hope for change to these detainees through a wellbalanced aesthetic that emphasizes education, programming, and community integration. The fresh, crisp design of the Youth Detention Center gives the neighborhood and the offender a great new outlook on tomorrow.â€ PSA-Dewberry and joint venture partner Penza Bailey Architects are designing the Youth Detention Center. PSA-Dewberry is serving as design architect for the Womenâ€™s Detention Center, working with architect-of-record AECOM. Carter Goble Lee is serving as programming consultant for both projects. Right: Marylandâ€™s new Youth Detention Center in Baltimore will enable the state to enhance its educational program for detainees, with a school and extensive learning resources housed within the facility.
http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/22dpscs/html/dpscs.html
Dimensions - January/February 2010/Annual Review 2009

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