Even though the D.C. jail has been heavily scrutinized in recent years due to reports of inhumane conditions, a project to build a new, state-of-the-art jail might need to be delayed or even canceled altogether, according to the D.C. Department of Corrections.
Thomas Faust, the department’s director, sent a letter to the D.C. Council claiming that the budget currently being considered by council members would “severely delay” the project “and may very well derail it entirely.”
While Mayor Muriel Bowser called for spending more than $460 million on the project over the next six years, the budget proposed by D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson would essentially delay the funding, with the bulk of it being released about three years from now.
“My understanding is that the planning is just at the basic concept level,” Mendelson said in a statement to WTOP. “It’s just not ready.”
Mendelson claimed that it “doesn’t make sense” to spread the funding out over six years.
“All we did was consolidate the spending over three years, which is how construction projects typically are phased,” Mendelson said.
According to Faust, however, Mendelson’s plan would make it “impossible to move this project to the architecture phase” next year.
“Reducing that budget presents a huge risk to the project’s construction schedule,” Faust said. “Any further delay in the construction schedule also continues very concerning issues of conditions of confinement for jail residents.”
During a budget meeting Wednesday, D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said she was “very concerned.”
“If we just continue moving it out so far, there’s no assurance that we’re going to get off the ground,” Pinto said.
Mendelson said he would continue discussing the matter with Pinto in the coming days.
According to the Bowser administration, the ultimate goal with the project is to replace the aging jail with a “modern, secure and resilient facility that has the necessary infrastructure to address the critical rehabilitation, treatment and reentry needs of individuals in the custody.”
Despite his issues with the proposed timeline, Mendelson acknowledged that “there’s no question that a replacement jail facility is needed.”
The D.C. jail, which is formally called the “Central Detention Facility,” was first opened in 1976.
In 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service removed hundreds of inmates from the jail after finding “standing human sewage” in the toilets of inmates’ cells, flooding, mold in cells and some cells that had water “shut off for days.”
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