Middle River Regional Jail staff working through door access control system failure

A problem with door access controls at Middle River Regional Jail has been the subject of several days of work that is still ongoing.

The issue first came to the attention of IT staff at the jail on Feb. 17, per a release from MRRJ. Staff identified a critical failure in the access control system that necessitated the replacement of equipment and reloading of critical systems software.

IT staff in coordination with the technology vendor used for the access control systems collaborated to restore access control to the master control center of MRRJ by late the evening of Feb. 17.

Due to inclement weather, efforts to restore the remaining access control systems were suspended until Feb. 19. Access control systems were restored to master control and other critical systems were brought online.

Fast forward to this week, on Monday a second and unrelated power unit failed, and was replaced, and this failure contributed to slowing the progress of restoration.

Work continues at this time to restore full operational capability, which jail officials express guarded optimism will be achieved by end of day Wednesday.

During the outage, manual door access and emergency access were carried out by MRRJ staff utilizing existing emergency access procedures.

There is no known threat to safety and security at this time.

Due to the single point of door control during restoration, inmates have remained in a modified security status to provide staff easier access to repair the necessary equipment to restore normal operations.