Hagerstown and Washington County officials have asked state Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler to help resolve long-standing concerns about the number of ex-convicts who remain in the Hagerstown area after they are released from three nearby state prisons.
Gansler was empathetic after meeting Wednesday with local officials, spokeswoman Raquel Guillory told the Hagerstown Herald-Mail.
He offered to write a letter to the Maryland Division of Correction, said Hagerstown City Police Chief Arthur Smith.
Smith and others have long maintained that inmates from places other than Washington County should be released in their home counties instead of to family members or at the Greyhound bus station in Hagerstown.
"There's no requirement that they have to leave," Hagerstown City Police Chief Arthur Smith said. "We know that a lot of people who come out of [prison] do re-offend."
Mark Vernarelli, spokesman for the Division of Correction's parent agency, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said yesterday the agency is gathering statistics "to show the community that the impact is not necessarily the way it's been perceived."
Vernarelli said he couldn't provide any statistics immediately, but "we do not believe there are significant numbers of ex-offenders who are moving out to Hagerstown when they have no ties there."
He said the agency's best indicator of where ex-convicts are living is whether they show up for appointments with parole and probation officers.
Division of Correction spokesman George Gregory said in October that inmates on supervised parole must tell the agency where they plan to live, and that the state checks up on them. Those who have finished their sentences are not subject to checkups on their whereabouts, Gregory said.