Republicans on the House Oversight Committee want a tour of the D.C. Department of Corrections, where detainees are being held Jan. 6.
In a letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Georgia, and James Comer, R-Kentucky, listed numerous allegations of abuse against those detained Jan. 6 at the D.C. Jail and asked Ms. Bowser to arrange for a congressional delegation to visit and review the objects.
The letter, sent Thursday night, said Oversight Commission lawmakers also want to interview the Jan. 6 detainees and D.C. Department of Corrections officials.
“Eyewitness accounts of conditions at the D.C. Jail — particularly regarding the treatment of inmates on January 6 — paint a picture of despair, hopelessness and a brutal miscarriage of justice. No prisoner in the United States should be treated this way,” the letter said.
Ms Green described her findings about the treatment of detainees on 6 January in a report published in December 2021. The Georgia Republican visited a D.C. prison and, she said, inmates showed her evidence of the “abuse and neglect” they endured under the watch of corrections officers.
One detainee claimed that he was beaten by other detainees and denied medical care. Another detainee said that he had to use the same contact lenses for at least six months. One inmate, Ms. Green’s letter said, showed an untreated broken bone.
Other allegations by the detainees on January 6 included being denied a lawyer, religious materials, communion and access to their families.
According to the letter, there were allegations that food was served with chemicals or other substances and that food allergies were not considered.
Unrelated detainees since Jan. 6, Thursday’s letter said, received better treatment in prison.
“Rep. “Greene witnessed how detainees not on January 6 received instructions from law school students on how to handle their cases in court,” the letter says.
The Georgia Republican said she witnessed a non-Yan. 6 inmates involved in the youth unit of the DC Institute of Justice, where, “unlike a traditional correctional facility, the walls are bright, colorful and decorated” and “the residents [have] modernized the cells in workforce development opportunities, including the barbershop.’
She said she did not see any of those detained on January 6 being admitted to the program, and that its conditions are different from the rest of the prison.
A team of eight U.S. Marshals conducted an unannounced inspection and review of the D.C. Jail from October 18 to 23, 2021, after a U.S. District Court found that DOC Director Quincy Booth and Warden Wanda Patten violated an inmate’s civil rights.
“The team toured the facility and interviewed more than 300 inmates and found ‘outrageous’ conditions at the D.C. jail. However, on October 24, 2021, DC DOC officials ordered marshals to leave DC prisons. One marshal said that “huh[d] never saw the prison marshals come in,” the letter says.
The acting US marshal concluded the preliminary investigation as “evidence of ‘systematic’ mistreatment of detainees” and forwarded the findings to the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
Although the Justice Department announced that 400 detainees would be transferred from the D.C. Jail on January 6, the Oversight Committee said that, to its knowledge, “none of the January 6 detainees were part of the group that was transferred from the D.C. Jail.”
Giving the DOC a two-week deadline, the Oversight Committee requested all documents and communications, which include:
• On January 6, the detainees refused a quick trial
• Complaints by detainees on January 6 about conditions in their cells, sanitary conditions, access to food, access to a lawyer, access to materials relevant to their legal defense, and access to religious materials and/or rituals
• Complaints by detainees on January 6 about conditions in their cells, sanitary conditions, access to food, access to a lawyer, access to materials relevant to their legal defense, and access to religious materials and/or rituals
Ms. Green said that while lawmakers on the Oversight Committee are interested in inspecting D.C. jails, she told reporters that she is opening the tour to lawmakers outside the committee and on both sides of the aisle.
