What is COMAR?
COMAR is the Code of Maryland Regulations and is the official compilation of all administrative regulations issued by agencies of the state of Maryland. Title 12 is the section that governs the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. You can go to the source right here: http://www.dsd.state.md.us/COMAR/ComarHome.html
In Title 12, you will find regulations about the inmate grievance process, parole and probation, general operations of the department, sex offender registration, among others. Subtitle 02. Divisions of Correction has a lot of good information. In it there is information on the Case Management Process, Medical Services, Recreational Programs, Work Release, Inmate Privileges, Visits, Mail, Home Detention and more, but those are the highlights.
Often times, the administration such as an FA or high ranking officer will unilaterally make a decision that is in fact not consistent with what the COMAR says. Maybe the person in charge knows the policy but is taking advantage of an uninformed inmate population and making up their own rules or maybe they don’t know the regulations as well as they should. But in either case, the inmate needs to know what is going on for his or her protection and to be able to stand on solid ground when an abuse of power is afoot.
It is difficult for copies of the COMAR to make it into the prisons. Often the copies that do make it are kept private and people leave with them or they get lost. Libraries don’t always have updated versions or they tend to be unorganized, leaving the inmate to sift and sort through a mess of papers.
Issues with the blocking of inmate books from 3rd parties was a fairly recent issue that COMAR is clear on and would have been helpful to have on hand. Other issues involve inconsistent decisions regarding visits to inmates from out of state and not allowing for extra time. It’s not directly in COMAR but you do learn that there is a special relationship with the commissioner and the warden for each institution and those policies are written down and petitions can be made for exceptions.
This is how things are done and how things get done. Inmates need to be informed so they can operate within the system and not against it. There are many rights and privileges inmates have, until they don’t know any better and they lose them.
Time on the inside is rough and sometimes the people in charge get lazy or are not trained properly or are just plain negligent and it’s these cases that make life on the inside much harder to take.
We’ll be posting more information regarding COMAR and Title 12 as issues come up.
