Tired of paying out tens of millions of dollars in civil rights litigation, D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles is demanding the D.C. Council rework a law that keeps the jail from releasing its prisoners in the middle of the night.
D.C. passed a law in 2003 forbidding the jail from releasing inmates after 10 p.m. and before 7 a.m. after neighbors in the gentrifying Hill East community voiced anxieties about having ex-prisoners roaming their streets in the middle of the night.
Nickles told The Examiner that the law has cost the city millions in civil rights lawsuits. When a judge orders an inmate freed, the paperwork takes a while to catch up. Under current law, inmates spend another night in jail if the paperwork isn’t finished by 10 p.m., he said.
“The fact that [a neighbor] may be inconvenienced is not a reason to have a free man or woman go back to jail, be strip-searched and spend another night locked up,” the attorney general said. “The Constitution isn’t convenient.”
In a letter to council Chairman Vince Gray, Nickles said that if the council doesn’t repeal the law by March 4, he will declare it unconstitutional and order jail officials to ignore it.
His letter, dated Tuesday, escalates the two-year battle over the jail’s 10 p.m. release deadline. Some public safety advocates say that the law keeps inmates out of trouble — and out of danger.
“It’s not in the inmates’ interest to be released out of the back door at two in the morning in a jail jumpsuit,” said Phil Mendelson, D-at large, chairman of the council’s Judiciary Committee.
Others have more immediate concerns.
“Sorry, I don’t want people wandering the neighborhood here,” said Neil Glick, an advisory neighborhood commissioner who lives near the jail.
Glick also lashed out at Nickles, whom he accused of exceeding his authority.
“Unconstitutional? Am I the last to know that he was appointed to the Supreme Court in the last few weeks? Have I been that busy?” Glick said of Nickles. “The attorney general is here to enforce the laws of our city and put the best interest of the public and the taxpayers first.”
Nickles says that’s exactly what he’s doing.
In 2005, the city agreed to pay $11 million to settle a class-action suit brought by prisoners who alleged that the cutoff violated their civil rights. Another class-action suit is pending, and Nickles said the city is exposed to even more damages.
“We’ve been in meetings for two years … to try to get relief on this issue,” he said. “And now we’re at a point where I’m facing demands for tens of millions of dollars when the treasury is scant.”
