D.C. Inmates Get Little Respect!

Don't get into any trouble in the nations capitol cause
if you do you'll do time in North Carolina. You would
think that inmates in D.C. would have it rather nice
since the federal government is running things but no,
it's just the opposite they get no recpect. Check out the
article below and see how Uncle Sam is no uncle at all.


WINTON, N.C. On the surface, Rivers Correctional Institution is much as District leaders imagined a decade ago, when they asked the federal government to take control of its prisoners: a safe, well-maintained facility that doesn't cost the city a penny.

The deal sent inmates, once sequestered at the Lorton complex in Northern Virginia, anywhere the Federal Bureau of Prisons could find space. Today, the District's nearly 7,000 inmates are spread across 75 institutions in 33 states.

Rivers, however, was built specifically to house inmates from the District. They typically fill at least two-thirds of its 1,400 beds. Many are in on drug and parole violations. The average stay is two years.
Busloads of wives, mothers and children trek here on a four-hour drive passing fields laden with watermelons, pumpkins and rows of cotton.

The rural North Carolina prison, run by the private GEO Group, has become a symbol for what inmates, their families and city leaders say is harsher treatment of D.C. inmates in federal prisons compared with other inmates. Drug treatment and job training options are inadequate, critics say. As a result, too many inmates return home unprepared to do anything but get sent back.

The 200 miles separating the District and Winton creates its own set of problems. Families can have difficulty getting information about relatives' health -- or even their whereabouts -- in a system that imprisons 193,000 nationwide. And the distance drains family resources and isolates inmates from city services that could aid rehabilitation.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has scheduled a hearing tomorrow to ask the Bureau of Prisons about what she considers second-class treatment of District inmates. Rivers is high on her list.





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