Norton to Establish First City Contact with D.C. Prisoners (9/12/07)
Norton to Establish First City Contact with D.C. Prisoners Using
Unprecedented Video Conference at Community Hearing Thursday
September 12, 2007
Washington, DC--The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced the first contact between the city and inmates scattered throughout the country in federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities, beginning with testimony from two recently released D.C. ex-offenders in the District, followed by an unprecedented video conference between residents and inmates at the Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, North Carolina, tomorrow, Thursday, September 13, 2007, at One Judiciary Square, 441 4th Street NW, from 6:30-8:30 PM. More than half of the two-hour session will be devoted to inmate and resident comments. The dialogue sponsored with the D.C. Commission on Black Men and Boys will be led by its Co-chair, former D.C. Police Chief Ike Fulwood. Co-chair Russ Parr led a standing room only Men's HIV/AIDS Town Hall Meeting in May.
The session will focus on substance abuse services and will begin with testimony before the Commission from a returned inmate from Rivers, Andrew Smith-El, and Darryl Farley, who served time at a BOP facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Substance abuse treatment for D.C. inmates is Norton's first priority because 50 to 80 percent of Rivers inmates have substance abuse problems, but only 60 of the 1,355 inmates get treatment through a non-certified program. Norton said, "The 65 percent recidivism rate here today, when there are clear factors in signs of rising crime here, could be decreased if more men returning from Rivers and other Bureau of Prisons facilities did not come home with a drug abuse problem."
There has been no oversight of D.C. inmates in federal prisons, where most have been housed since the Revitalization Act transferred responsibility for D.C. prisoners to the federal government 10 years ago. "Inadequate congressional oversight and funding has led to unequal treatment of D.C. prisoners at Rivers, who receive fewer services than inmates of BOP-run prisons," Norton said. D.C. inmates and foreign-born residents are the only federal prisoners housed in private, federally-contracted facilities with few services, the result of congressional appropriations beginning with the transfer. Now that there is a new majority in Congress, the Congresswoman is asserting the necessary jurisdiction to find the needed assistance, not only for the inmates and their families, but also for the District, which is receiving men and women from prison who have not always had access to appropriate services.
Norton made the first visit by a D.C. elected official to Rivers Correctional Institution last month and assured D.C. inmates that with the change in control of Congress, oversight has begun, and that she is working to ensure that Rivers inmates have access to the same programs as other prisoners housed at BOP facilities around the country. The Norton visit began a much longer effort and oversight of D.C. inmates and facilities which are 100 percent federally funded.
The Congresswoman will hold an official House hearing on Rivers on October 16th. Her goal is to obtain equal treatment of District inmates as she looks into how the 7,000 D.C. residents in several states throughout the country are housed and how to bring them closer to home. She also will visit a BOP prison in the coming months. She is concerned that the lack of family contacts and substance abuse treatment, particularly at Rivers, exacerbates the difficulties the District and the inmates experience in effectively integrating these residents back into the community.