Brief History on Intake/Outtake Facility
The written public history of the jails seems to be mostly highlighting the architecture of the building. The initial warden’s house of the jail, which is now a historical sight, was built in 1855, later reconstructed in the 1960’s and marketed as an historical sight in 1989.
The history of the jail runs back to the Civil War.
“This public jail and several private slave jails that proliferated in early 19th century Baltimore all made money by boarding the enslaved for a fee. For instance, travelling families or slave traders would all want someplace to keep their enslaved workers while they stopped for the night. As the Civil War began, and especially after slavery was ended in Washington, DC in 1862, these jails were also used by local enslavers to house their enslaved workers in order to prevent them from running away.” Pousson & Messick/BaltimoreHeritage.org
It has gone through minimal renovations over the years. Including none around internal structures reform. People are often stuck in intake for longer than expected due to the lack of follow through in the carceral system. We’ve had reports of unusable bathrooms, lack of comfortable, and warm items to sleep on, and inedible food.
The facility itself has been reportedly ordered to be demolished, and plans are said to be underway, however this is as of 2016. The jail still stands today as of 2024.
History of BJS:
Baltimore Jail Support is an abolitionist place of community care drawing from the history and lessons of the struggle for Black liberation. When organizing a direct action with risk of arrest, it is part of the organizing process for folks to make sure that they know where everyone involved is, and that they are met with love upon release.
Baltimore Jail Support (BJS) began through various actions, and worked closely with Baltimore Action Legal Team (BALT) in 2015 in response to the murder of Freddie Gray and subsequent uprising as well as other local groups organizing against police and prisons. At this time, BALT had a system for tracking who was released and supporting people throughout the system, which was done by a small group of people working constantly on case search research and paperwork. This focused on the hundreds of people every day who were arrested and charged relating to protests.
There were loose formations of people practicing jail support for some time, and then in 2016, three things happened: in July, there was an action at Artscape called AFROMATION, where one of the demands was the creation of a Civilian Review Board of Baltimore City law enforcement. In August, organizers participated in another action called StopFOP, which disrupted a police convention and demanded, among other things, justice for Korryn Gaines. BJS shared space with protesters coming out of Central Booking after both of these actions and more. In September, BJS stood in solidarity with people incarcerated in Baltimore jails who participated in the National Prison Strike – the largest prison strike in the US, spread over 24 states.
While jail sitting during and after these protests, volunteers saw large amounts of people getting released for non-protest related charges, and started showing up every Sunday to catch weekenders coming out, making the switch to support the general population instead of only protesters. At this time, BALT separated from BJS as there was no capacity to follow people through the system. Despite many changes in volunteers and logistics over the years, the mission and values of BJS have stayed the same: a non-hierarchical collective providing direct services to folks coming out of Central Booking and imagining a world without prisons.