Jails Without Walls

Tuesday, July 15, 1997; Page A18
The Washington Post

IF YOU thought that going behind bars meant saying goodbye to cocaine,
marijuana or PCP, you may not be familiar with the District of
Columbia's prison system. According to information just released to
The Post under the Freedom of Information Act, 9 percent of D.C.
Corrections inmates have tested positive for illegal drugs during
random checks in the past six months. That result places the District
nearly four times above the most recent national average for state
prison systems. It also puts the spotlight on a penal system that has
become a disgrace to the nation's capital.

For years The Post has reported extensively on drug use in the D.C.
Jail and at the Lorton Correctional Complex. Despite numerous arrests
of inmates, visitors and correctional officers for drug smuggling,
contraband continues to flow into the institutions as if they were
jails without walls. In fact, for some inmates and corrections staff,
trafficking in illegal drugs is as common as the air they breathe.
During the recent random tests, for example, 72 inmates tested
positive for drugs at Lorton's Youth Center; 32 at Occoquan, which
houses inmates jailed for more than five years; 79 at the D.C. Jail
and 220 at the Corrections Department's halfway houses.

An appalled U.S. Attorney Eric Holder called the numbers "shocking."
"You expect that once people are convicted of crimes and sent to
prison their access to drugs is stopped," he said. That view, however,
is hardly shared by all prison officials. D.C. Corrections Director
Margaret Moore, noting her department's difficulty in preventing drug
smuggling, said she doubted the public would stand for prison
officials' taking the intrusive steps necessary to keep drugs out of
jails. "Are we prepared to do body searches on everybody coming in
now?" she asked yesterday. But is that the right or even only question
to ask?

It may be the case that no correctional institution is drugfree. But
Bureau of Justice Statistics data for 1990, the most recent year for
which national statistics were compiled, put the District in a class
by itself. Part of the problem stems from a city government that
lowered hiring standards, then allowed staff members who grew up with
or were related to inmates to be assigned to the same institutions.
Add to that a city council that looked the other way as drug scandal
after scandal erupted and the system deteriorated. A federal takeover
of Lorton prisoners is on the drawing board. It can't come too soon.

(c)Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company