Death Without Dignity in D.C. Jail

Confront city hall with these abuses, however, and the first thing you're likely to hear are the strains of "Mo' Money Blues." Tune it out. The District's fiscal woes didn't cause Richard Johnson's suffering, or make those jail suicides possible, or consign the elderly and disabled to live in squalor. Credit those horrors to callousness, cruelty and indifference.

And those are problems that money won't solve.

Moore cites her staff's lack of training as a major agency deficiency. She's undoubtedly right. The American Corrections Association recommends 40 hours of training annually for staff having direct contact with inmates. D.C. Corrections staff get only eight hours a year.

But the government also has an attitude problem. Senior U.S. District Judge William Bryant has been presiding over civil lawsuits involving the jail for more than 20 years -- and with the patience of Job. But this week he'd had enough. At Monday's hearing on a special master's report about the horrific conditions at the jail, Judge Bryant seized control of the jail's medical and mental health services. Some corrections officials, he concluded just "don't give a damn." "They have jobs, titles, they get paid, and they do nothing," he said.

That judgment could apply elsewhere in the government. Make no mistake, most D.C. government employees do their jobs as best they can. They're honest and take pride in their work. But they can't make up for that other band of workers who have been hired on the basis of "dumbed down" standards that ignore skills and personal qualities the government really needs.

We're talking here about certain basic values that employees ought to bring with them from home when they first report to work. Notions of respect and concern for others, of accepting responsibility for one's actions, of using authority to do what is right and expected -- these are values that government shouldn't have to teach adults.

But the employees bereft of those values are the very ones who have become part of the D.C. government's "getting over" work culture. That is a culture where the thought of getting to the job on time, of regarding work as a legal and moral obligation, and treating the public with respect is held up for private ridicule. I hope these will be the workers who will fill the ranks of the 2,000 employees the financial control board wants gone.

They represent a culture that is bringing down this city. It was that culture that left Richard Johnson to die without dignity.