Norton to Visit D.C. Women Inmates in West Virginia on Friday (10/22/08)

Washington, D.C. - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will visit the Secured Female Facility (SFF) in Hazelton, West Virginia, where 42 women from the District are incarcerated on Friday, Oct. 24. She will leave from the Rayburn horse-shoe at 7 a.m. and return to the same place at about 5 p.m. Since the 1997 Revitalization Act closed the old Lorton, Va., facility where D.C. inmates were sent for decades, Norton has been concerned that placing D.C. inmates in facilities too far for their families to reach erodes a vital support system. "Although the total number of women is relatively low, at 339 (of about 7,000) in federal facilities, I am particularly concerned about women who often have left children they were caring for in the care of others or in foster care," Norton said. "We need to know that these women are being prepared for the everyday pressures of living in a big city, caring for kids, and working at the same time." Hazelton is a low security institution. Norton said that she and the staff who will travel with her will be particularly interested in Hazelton's Service Day Training Program and its Victimization Program, which has a trauma psychologist dedicated to the facility. They also will take interest in the occupational and vocational training programs in a computer-based business class and a culinary arts program. Norton said that Federal Bureau of Prison (BOP) facilities are rated among the best in the world but she wants to assure herself of their quality and access by District residents.

The Congresswoman is gathering information that she hopes will lead to the construction of prisons for District of Columbia male and female inmates near D.C. In her visit to two BOP male facilities since the Democrats took control of the House, Norton found that D.C. inmates were treated as "second class" inmates in some federal correctional facilities. Her visit last year to the Rivers Correctional Institute (RCI), a private contracted BOP facility in North Carolina, and the Federal Correctional Institute (FCI) in Cumberland, Md., led to key changes following a series of hearings, including a total overhaul of services at RCI. Norton's priority, a state-of-the-art 500-hour drug treatment program, with a built-in incentive of a possible one year reduction in the sentences of nonviolent inmates upon successful completion was established at RCI. Currently at RCI, 55 D.C. inmates are in the program and 27 of them are eligible for early release. Of particular importance to D.C., as a result of the hearings, are D.C. inmates who had not been able to participate in the full 500 hour drug program in any BOP facilities. Now they are eligible to participate in the program in all BOP facilities. A job training facility also was constructed at RCI, where one previously did not exist, and on August 28, 2008 the first class of 39 graduated.

This trip Friday marks the Congresswoman's third visit to a BOP facility as a member of the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia and continues her oversight of the 7,000 District inmates in federal correctional facilities in the U.S. Norton began her work for D.C. BOP inmates with a teleconference town meeting held by her Commission on Black Men and Boys to connect the city with BOP facilities. More teleconferences will be held soon.