Virginians Fight Prison Expansion : Capital’s Criminals Unwelcome in the Suburbs

Eighty years ago, federal officials told the District of Columbia to build its new prison 20 miles outside the capital, in the rolling hills near Lorton, Va.

Today that prison is an unwanted neighbor in the suburbs that have grown up around it. The overcrowded and antiquated complex is a source of anxiety to residents of the area.

District officials say their efforts to ease problems at the Lorton corrections complex have been blocked at every turn, and there’s little they can do.

“We’ve lost control,” said Charlie Peelie, one of the guards charged with keeping order among the 8,600 inmates at Lorton. “It’s just that there are too many people here.”

“We live on a powder keg,” said Helen Thacker, who lives nearby. She said she hopes her household alarm system and the heavy locks on her back yard gates will protect her the next time a prisoner escapes.

D.C. Mayor’s Lament

“Everybody wants everybody locked up, but not in their neighborhood,” Marion Barry Jr., the district mayor, said. “We have to do something.”

But what?

Barry has proposed building a new prison inside the district and also expanding Lorton. Preservationists are trying to block the proposed facility in the district and Virginia officials, led by a congressman, are opposing expansion of the prison.

All the while, conditions inside the 200-acre prison complex grow ever worse.

The facility is 1,400 prisoners over capacity and expects at least 4,000 more inmates to be added by the turn of the century.

Men stand in line for hours at mealtime. Showers and toilets are too few and recreational facilities are so scarce that some men sit around for lack of anything better to do. Two men sleep in cells built for one.

“The inmates are very uncomfortable and tempers are short,” a chaplain, the Rev. Manning Moore, said. “There are men who are cursing for attention and can’t get it.”

Inauguration Day Riot

One such eruption of tempers drew the nation’s attention just hours after President Bush was sworn in on Jan. 20. An inmate was stabbed to death, and fires set by prisoners running amok destroyed two buildings.

No one escaped then, but 12 men got out last year and three of them are still at large. One was convicted of manslaughter; the others were serving time for first-degree murder.

Residents of Fairfax County, some of whom live within a block or two of the prison, say they have seen escapees walking around their neighborhoods at night.

Lisa Walker frets when her 5-year-old son goes outside to play. She hopes the family Doberman pinscher will stand off any intruder.

“I have guns,” she added, “and if I need to protect myself or my son, I’ll do it.”

District officials say that such fears are unfounded, however.

Escapees Go Home

“People in Fairfax County are so scared, but we have never had an incident in Fairfax.” Pat Wheeler of the Corrections Department said. Lorton escapees, she said, “almost always go back to Southeast (quadrant of the district). If you watch the homes of their family and friends long enough, you’ll usually find them.”

The people of Fairfax, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, wonder about the prison’s future, and so does the Barry administration. Barry has proposed a $350-million, 10-year modernization of Lorton, along with expansion of the district’s halfway house program and building a second prison near the jail in Southeast Washington.

The projects would add 3,525 beds to the 7,200 now considered the maximum at Lorton.

Much of the district’s program focuses on Lorton, where only 200 acres of the 2,000-acre site are in use. “The most appropriate place” for a new prison, Wheeler said, “would be to build it in Virginia.”

Wrong, says Rep. Stan Parris (R-Va.), whose constituency includes the Lorton area.

“The situation at Lorton reached crisis proportions a decade ago, and it has continued to deteriorate,” Parris said after the uprising in January.

Prison Funds Denied

Last October, he succeeded in having Congress turn down the district’s request for $45 million to build an 800-bed addition at Lorton. Although the city operates the prison, it is federal property and the government would have to pay for any improvements.

“It’s the only penal institution in the nation that’s located outside the political boundaries it’s supposed to serve,” Parris said.

“I think the penal requirements of the District of Columbia are best served by the construction of a new and modern facility within the district . . . but, like a sewage plant or a dump or anything else, nobody wants it in their neighborhoods.”

At least not those who live near the district jailhouse. They stalled the plan by seeking historic designation for the chosen site.

Late last year, however, the capital’s Historic Preservation Board rejected the community group’s arguments, and officials now hope to begin construction this spring.