Changes Pledged At N.C. Prison
D.C. Concerns Aired at Hearing

By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The private North Carolina prison where about 1,000 D.C. inmates are held, the most in any single place nationwide, has substandard drug treatment and vocational training programs compared with most federal facilities, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said yesterday.

Harley G. Lappin, the bureau's director, said he is revising the federal government's contract with the Rivers Correctional Institution to make the facility "mirror as close as we can the programs offered in other prisons."

The acknowledgment came after years of complaints from inmates, their families and prisoner advocates about Rivers, which is about 200 miles from the District in Winton, N.C. Lappin promised the changes during a hearing convened by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who has been pressing the Bureau of Prisons to make reforms.

Norton has contended in recent months that the 7,000 D.C. inmates in 75 institutions nationwide get "second-class" treatment compared with the rest of the 200,000 inmates under federal control. She recently visited Rivers and a federally run prison in Cumberland, Md., to compare the way inmates are treated. Activities at the two places were as different as night and day, she said.

At Rivers, Norton said, inmates had too much unproductive free time. At Cumberland, programming was more organized, with inmates shuttling from one event to the next.

D.C. inmates at Rivers are held alongside immigrants who have committed crimes and are serving their time before being deported to their home countries. Those inmates often are not offered the same programs in prison as U.S. citizens.

"If you're a District resident, you get tired of not having rights, even when you go to jail," said Norton, who at times grew testy with prison officials.

Nonviolent federal offenders get a year off their sentences if they complete a 500-hour drug treatment program. But prisoners serving time for D.C. offenses get no such consideration, even though the D.C. government passed a law two years ago that said they deserved the time off. Lappin said he expected the disparity to be changed soon.

The congressional hearing was the first in the decade since the District asked the federal government to assume control of its prisoners. Norton said the scrutiny was long overdue because inmates were hundreds or thousands of miles away, out of sight and out of mind of most residents.

But their families never forgot that their loved ones, once sequestered at the Lorton prison complex in Northern Virginia, needed more attention. Hundreds, in fact, showed up at a recent meeting to voice their concerns.

Yesterday, two former inmates appeared on Capitol Hill.

Douglas Robinson, 52, has been incarcerated for 16 years, 11 at Lorton and the rest in Bureau of Prisons facilities. At two of the institutions, he said, he often could not enter programs he wanted because they were full or canceled. But he credited a 500-hour drug treatment program at Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina with helping to save his life.

"For so long, I had ducked and dodged that I had a problem," he said. "I learned that my behavior was causing my problem. When I arrived home, I made a choice to move on with my life." Out for six months, he now works at Goodwill Industries, stocking trucks.

Kevin Barnes, 30, served three years at Rivers. The library was cramped and contained few books, he said. The focus instead was athletics, and the majority of inmates spent their time playing basketball, football and other sports.

"That's not going to help an inmate when they come home," said Barnes, who said he now works as an electrician.

The GEO Group, a company that runs 68 correctional and residential treatment facilities worldwide, owns and operates Rivers. The prison's warden, George Snyder, defended the institution in testimony yesterday, saying that there are plenty of classes, in such areas as anger management and computer skills, available for inmates. As a career prison official, Snyder said, he is committed to providing even better programs.

Lappin agreed that programming is only part of the problem.

"You've got to have a willing participant," he said. "It's not a one-sided formula. We do not force inmates into programs, except all prisoners who are medically cleared will work. We counsel, we push for educational training. . . . Some offenders just don't see the light."

The hearing was held before a subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) said the prisoner problems are an issue all over the nation.

"Many of these ex-offenders are returning to their communities unprepared and without the support they need to sustain their new lives," said Davis, chairman of the subcommittee on the federal workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia. "Without structure and support to help ensure a lasting transition, we are unwittingly creating a revolving door for former inmates."