The Department of Corrections has decided to once again allow Protestant religious groups to worship in the room historically set aside as the D.C. Jail’s chapel, reversing a policy set in place after an escape last summer.

Since Protestant groups draw by far the most worshippers, jail officials allowed only smaller groups, specifically, Muslims, Catholics, and Hispanics, to use the room. Members of the clergy complained loudly.

According to department spokesperson Beverly Young, the department has drawn up a schedule that will allow all groups to use the room on a rotating basis.

Potential D.C. Jail inmates may want to consider some scheduling pointers: First and foremost, don’t get cuffed on a weekend if you want to see your family before Monday at noon.

Saturday visiting hours have been canceled since August, and Department of Corrections Director Devon Brown confirmed to the D.C. Council last week that the policy is permanent. There’ve long been no Sunday visits—leaving friends and family to follow the alphabet rule: Inmates with last names starting with A through H on Tuesday and Thursday, J through P on Wednesday and Friday, Q through Z on Monday.

Plenty of folks are still complaining, though. Inmate advocate Pauline Sullivan, of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, brought her concerns about visitation rules to the oversight hearing for the Department of Corrections last Thursday. “I was very disappointed,” she told public-safety committee chair Phil Mendelson. “I really do not know the reason why it’s been discontinued.”

The cutback, Brown said, was necessary to maintain “safety, security, and order,” and he added that the jail was harder to staff on weekends.

Mendelson was not pleased. “Long-term, it does not sound agreeable,” he said.

Brown replied, “It’s gonna get worse.” An upcoming construction project at the jail, he said, will further curtail visitation rights.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson will be touring the D.C. Jail facility today at 1 p.m. According to a department press release, the civil-rights leader’s main mission is to check out the facility’s “automatic HIV testing program for inmates.”

We can only hope that Jackson veer slightly from his tour and inspect whether the jail is still overcrowded, whether the records office is still a mess, and whether there are still security gaps by which inmates can escape in release jumpsuits.

These days, when an inmate violates his parole, he is taken to the D.C. Jail until a hearing examiner makes the trip from the Chevy Chase offices of the U.S. Parole Commission (USPC) to decide whether the charges are enough to hold the parolee and, if so, for how long. But the USPC now proposes to do away with the trip into the District and conduct the hearings by camera—and the city gets no say in the matter.

According to a USPC memo, the move is expected to allow examiners to move cases quicker, free up support staff, and save time and money by lessening downtime for employees. “It makes for a more efficient operation,” says Tom Hutchison, chief of staff for the federal agency, which has handled D.C. parole matters since the District-run Lorton Prison closed in 1999. He emphasizes that these hearings are “not a finding of whether someone is guilty or innocent.”

But prisoner advocates say that the decisions can be momentous all the same and that inmates deserve a face-to-face meeting. “The commission is making the final decision of whether so-and-so from Southeast D.C. is going to spend another 18 months in prison,” says Philip Fornaci, head of the D.C. Prisoners’ Project at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.

“When you’re trying someone,” he says, “you generally want to watch their demeanor, hear what they say, watch their body language, see if they’re telling the truth. And digital feed is not exactly lifelike.”

Fornaci disputes the USPC’s assertion that cameras are a time- and money-saving tool. The agency isn’t exactly swamped with federal criminals, he argues; D.C. parolees comprise the bulk of its cases, so the USPC should be obliged to provide live hearings. But Fornaci realizes there’s not much that anyone outside of Congress can do about it. “They’re an independent federal agency,” he says of the USPC. “They’re answerable to almost no one. So they’re doing this because they can.”

Emphasis ours.

Hello:

Our Office has been advised of the following:

The DC Department of Corrections (DOC) will be testing its siren system at the D. C. Jail, Saturday, June [24] at 12 noon for 15 seconds only and continue every Saturday until they are sure it works. The purpose of the test is to ensure that the Department’s emergency notification is functioning properly so citizens living in the areas surrounding the jail are notified of any emergencies at the facility. The test will consist of one short blast.

Tawanna Shuford, Director of Constituent Services
Office of Councilmember Sharon Ambrose, Ward 6…