Norton Action Keeps Prison for D.C. Inmates from Move to New Farther Location
Norton Action Keeps Prison for D.C. Inmates from Move to New Farther Location (May 18, 2009)
WASHINGTON, DC – The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today said that, at the Congresswoman’s request, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has altered its search for a facility for about 520 of the District’s inmates to require a 300 mile instead of a 500 mile radius. Norton also announced an upcoming town hall meeting that will feature a video conference dialogue between D.C. women incarcerated at the Hazelton Women’s Facility in Hazelton, West Virginia, and a panel of experts who will participate in this first ever town meeting with D.C.’s incarcerated women. The event will be held Thursday, June 4, 5:30-7 p.m., at One Judiciary Square, at 441 4th Street, NW.
In 2000, a contract was awarded to the Rivers Correctional Institute (RCI), which currently houses 520 D.C. inmates, but earlier this year BOP opened the competition to companies as far as 500 miles from the District. The Congresswoman, who has taken the current 12-hour-round trip journey to visit D.C. inmates in a facility located within the 300 mile radius, said that “almost doubling the time and distance District families, friends, and clergy would have to travel would virtually guarantee sparse visits and would harm efforts to facilitate successful re-entry back to into their communities upon release.” Norton added, “Only a BOP prison set aside for D.C. inmates much closer to the District will fully meet our needs. This is not an impossibility, but it can’t happen tomorrow. However, if there is any change from the 300 mile radius, it should certainly lower the radius to, for example, a 100 mile range, not stretch the limit.”
Norton, a member of the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia, which has oversight of District inmates in federal correctional facilities, has visited federal facilities housing male and female D.C. inmates, and has held hearings. When Congress passed the 1997 National Capital Revitalization Act, it closed the Lorton Correctional Complex and authorized the transfer of Washington, D.C. inmates to the federal BOP jurisdiction.