The Crisis at the D.C. Jail Began Decades Before Jan. 6 Defendants Started Raising Concerns

When Micheal Cohen thinks back on his time at the Washington, D.C. jail, he recalls seeing so many cockroaches some nights “it looked like the floor was alive.”

The 43-year-old was detained from the summer of 2018 until April 2020, nine months of which he spent in the jail’s Central Detention Facility (CDF). The wall next to his bunk was covered in other peoples’ snot and slime, he says. “It was filthy.” There were always plumbing issues and the smell of sewage was constant, he says. And then there was the violence. He alleges that after he cursed at a corrections officer for refusing to turn on his water to flush his toilet, the officer beat him, handcuffed him and pepper sprayed him twice. He says he reported the incident, but the officer remained on staff.

“I thought I was going to die,” says Cohen, who now advocates for criminal justice reform in D.C. and the surrounding area. “The pepper spray stayed in my hair for months. Every time I took a shower it would trickle down my body and it was like I was being burned by acid.”

For years, advocates have raised concerns to the District of Columbia government over what they say are inhumane conditions inside the CDF, a nearly 50-year-old jail just two miles from the U.S. Capitol. Yet it was only when detainees accused of storming the Capitol building last Jan. 6 began raising complaints about the conditions of a neighboring jail facility that reform efforts gained momentum. After Jan. 6 defendants’ lawyers raised allegations of poor conditions at the Department of Corrections (DOC) facility, including a lack of access to medical care, an unannounced review of the jail by the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) concluded there was “evidence of systemic failure.” USMS announced Nov. 2 that it would move 400 federal detainees out of the CDF to a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Continue Reading

Source: https://time.com/6137882/dc-jail-conditions-january-6/

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