WASHINGTON — D.C. is offering help to city inmates so they don’t end up back in jail.
Mayor Muriel Bowser announced several new initiatives to reduce the city’s recidivism rate while at the D.C. Central Jail in Southeast on Monday. She says it’s about offering inmates a fresh start, which she says will give them the tools they need to get back on their feet when they transition back into society.
Inmates are being offered job training, and those who are charged with a misdemeanor can be released from jail to go to work while they are awaiting trial.
Stanford Gatlin, a 28-year-old inmate, says synthetic drugs had turned him into someone he didn’t know. He tells NBC Washington that he is hopeful about the program, especially since he has two kids he wants to be able to take care of. But he says, “I have to get myself together; I think this program right here is going to do (that).”
But the work-release program for inmates awaiting trial has critics, especially in light of a recent spike in murders in the city.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) tells The Washington Post that not all misdemeanor suspects are automatically held for trial, and that those who are held at the jail have been deemed by the court to be dangerous and a flight risk.
The Post also spoke to law enforcement officials who say that suspects charged with a misdemeanor are not always nonviolent.
The paper cites the case of Jasper Spires, the man charged in a July 4 stabbing death on a Metro train, saying Spires was on a pretrial release for a misdemeanor charge when Kevin Sutherland was killed.
