Fort George G. Meade: The First 100 Years

Prison Cell Doors Close for Last Time
THE EIGHTIES AND NINETIES
233
An historical event has happened here.
The stockade, confinement facility, Installation Detention
Facility – whatever name the prison has been called since
1954 when it opened – was officially closed Saturday.
All of the paraphernalia of running a military prison has
been turned over to other property books, and the facility
– cement corridors, barred cells, bed frames bolted to the
floor, stainless steel sinks and toilets, guard towers – has been
turned over to the real property officer at the Directorate of
Engineering and Housing, who will eventually find a new
tenant.
Apart from the physical structure, the closing involves
the departure of 33 military police guards, some MP
administrative personnel and other workers. The correctional
MPs who carry the 95C military occupational specialty,
“correctional supervisor,” are all non-commissioned officers
and are scattering to different points of the compass.
The prisoners, most of them serving time for minor
offenses, were moved out of the facility gradually over
the past several months with the last detail leaving Jan. 15,
according to SSgt. Richard Ainslie, assistant chief of IDF
administration.
It received its first female prisoner in November 1976.
Until then, female Army prisoners in this region were
incarcerated in Baltimore County under a civilian contract
said Sgt. Maj. Connell Delaine. The IDF had a capacity for
less than a dozen females when it closed.
Although segregated from the man, and not allowed to
talk to them, female inmates would toss notes up over the
bars dividing the open bay cells, said Ainslie. When assigned
to kitchen duties with the men, they were allowed to talk. In
the “chow line” where each inmate’s position was marked
on the floor by a yellow line, the women and the men would
pass notes back and forth. It was all part of day-to-day
prison life, said the NCO.
One of the inmates’ jobs was to cut up firewood brought
in by the post engineers. Inmates also did painting, signs and
carpentry work in a separate building near Firewood Issue.
The IDF has held famous, or infamous, prisoners, like
John Hinckley, the attempted assassin of President Ronald
Reagan. He was confined in 1982 in one of two individual
cells where officers or senior NCOs were kept apart from
the lower enlisted to provide them some “dignity,” said
By Chris Ivusik, SoundOff!
Ainslie. The IDF also held accused spies and murderers
awaiting trial, although it was usually a short-term facility for
soldiers who committed misdemeanors, from disobeying an
order to being absent without leave.
No one has escaped from the prison. But, one prisoner,
an Air Force staff sergeant, who was being taken to Walter
Reed Army Medical Center for treatment, escaped while at
WRAMC and is still at large, according to Ainslie.
“He’s in Sweden. He calls us on holidays and at Christmas
to wish us all the best of luck,” smiled Ainslie.
***
(Pg. 231) Fort Meade soldier returns home from deployment.
(Left) The Fort Meade detention facility closed June, 1991.
(Lower) Mar. 30, 1981, the assignation attempt on President
Ronald Reagan. John Hinckley, was held at the Fort Meade
detention facility where he attempted to take his own life.
(photos curtesy the Reagan Presidential Library).