The empty office left by the Harford County Detention Center warden's retirement will not be filled, according to the Harford County Sheriff's Office.
Warden Elwood Dehaven's retirement was effective last Thursday, Dec. 1, but his last working day at the Detention Center was Nov. 18, Harford County Sheriff's Office Spokeswoman Monica Worrell said. Dehaven retired after 32 years with Harford County, either as a sworn law officer or civilian employee.
Dehaven started with the sheriff's office in 1978 and retired as a major in February 2007, Worrell wrote in an e-mail. He then started in the civilian position of warden of the Harford County Detention Center.
Worrell said the sheriff's office second-in-command, Col. Gregg Carlevaro, is working with the detention center, but because of the economy, Sheriff Jesse Bane decided not to fill the warden's position.
Maj. Michael Capasso, who is in charge of the Corrections Bureau, will be in charge of the detention center, Worrell wrote in an e-mail, as the detention center falls under that division in the sheriff's office. Under the common law, she added, the sheriff of a jurisdiction is the warden.
According to Worrell, the Correctional Services Bureau had been the only one of four bureaus in the sheriff's office to be run by a someone other than a sworn officer at the rank of major. By making this change, the Correctional Services Bureau will be "mirroring the existing three bureaus within the agency," she added.
"Sheriff Bane is attempting to eliminate a layer of bureaucracy," she wrote.
Historically, the sheriff or a member of the sheriff's command staff had run the detention center. Following the death of an inmate in 1992, however, then-county executive Eileen Rehrmann asked the sheriff at the time, Robert Comes, to place supervision of the jail under a civilian warden. There have been five wardens since that arrangement started. The first, John O'Neill, came from Rehrmann's cabinet but had previously worked for the Maryland State Police. Three of the four who followed O'Neill, Howard Walter, Richard Aiello and Dehaven, were retired command level deputies. The fourth, Richard Lanham, was a retired state corrections official.