It wasn’t exactly an episode of “Oz,” but D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty yesterday still got a firsthand account of what an incarcerated life in the District is like.
The mayor held a town hall meeting with inmates of the D.C. Jail, a follow-up to his previous tour of the Southeast facility and a chance for him to hear concerns from a pool of about 60 offenders currently held there.
“What we envision is, hopefully we’re going to, as a group, come up with some recommendations for things that just simply need to be done better, some things that need to be introduced and some things that we haven’t even discussed at all,” said Mr. Fenty, a Democrat.
The inmates, clad in orange jumpsuits and seated at round tables, responded to several survey questions about conditions at the jail, their chances of re-entering society and their hopes for the future.
Their concerns ranged from finding jobs upon release to their treatment by jail guards and the quality of food at the facility.
“It seems like every meal, all we have is white bread, potatoes and white rice,” said inmate Dwayne Boger. “I mean, there’s no reason why we can’t have wheat bread, why we can’t have brown rice, more vegetables. That’s a big issue.”
The D.C. Jail opened at 1901 D Street in Southeast in 1976, and its population consists largely of inmates waiting for their cases to be heard in court or detainees sentenced for misdemeanor offenses.
In 2005, the administration of former Mayor Anthony A. Williams was criticized for being slow to comply with a city law that ordered the mayor to improve conditions at the jail and adopt a population cap based on a consultant’s recommended ceiling of 2,164.
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Beverly Young said the jail’s current population is 1,972 and the facility has a capacity of 2,498 inmates.
The Washington Times reported last month that the District in recent years paid out millions to settle lawsuits against the corrections department stemming from incidents involving inmates.
The payments included $18,500 to an inmate whose finger was severed when a corrections officer shut a gate on his hand and $12 million divided among thousands of inmates subjected to illegal strip-searches and who were detained for too long.
At the town hall, the ties between life in jail and their chances of success upon release drew pleas to the mayor from the inmates.
One inmate said the jail’s General Educational Development, or GED, program only admits participants 22 and under, depriving the adult population a chance of bettering themselves through education while they are incarcerated.
Another — Juan Carlos Barba — spoke to the mayor in Spanish about the need for programs in the jail to help Hispanic inmates learn English.
The mayoral forum wasn’t all complaints, however. Inmate Jon Miles addressed Mr. Fenty and the rest of his peers with a more positive and self-empowering message.
“It’s about changing me — being the message that you bring,” he said. “I’m not going to dump it just on the government, but I applaud the government for taking the opportunity for such a format, a meeting like this to get things done.”
Mr. Fenty said all of the jail’s inmates would receive the survey questions, and he will return to the facility to report back on progress made with the inmates’ recommendations.
The town hall drew rave reviews from the inmates, who praised the mayor for taking the time to hear their concerns.
“Nobody speaks out for us,” inmate Tinesha Adams told Mr. Fenty. “This jail is, excuse me, a hellhole.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.