County Executive Wayne Curry, Rep. Albert Wynn, Sen. Paul Sarbanes and Sen. Barbara Mikulski last week promised hundreds of residents gathered at a church in Oxon Hill that they would do everything in their power to stop a potential contract between the D.C. Department of Corrections and Corrections Corporation of America to build a 2,000-bed maximum-security prison less than a mile from the Prince George’s County line.

Less than 48 hours after Maryland officials announced their positions on Sept. 10, several D.C. City Council members joined the chorus of voices shouting down the prison, even though the council unanimously passed legislation in March authorizing a private prison in the District.

"I would prefer us not to build a prison in Ward 8," said Councilman David Catania, R-At large. "Personally, I don’t like the message it sends about the ward."

Councilman Harold Brazil, D-At-large, also voiced new-found opposition to the project.

Ward 8’s own councilwoman, Democrat Sandra Allen, insists she has no position on the issue.

"I neither support it nor oppose it," she said of the project publicly endorsed by Mayor Marion Barry Jr.

But Ward 8 activist Eugene Dewitt Kinlow argued that there is no middle-of-the-road position.

"Sandra Allen’s lack of involvement against it shows that she is for it," Kinlow said. "If our own councilmember, by her own action or inaction, supports the prison, then why would other councilmembers even think to oppose it?"

District officials, including Allen and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, were invited but did not attend the Oxon Hill meeting, Kinlow said.

Political candidates have now also taken an interest in the issue, with Democratic mayoral hopeful Anthony Williams, Statehood mayoral candidate John Gloster and Democratic at-large council candidate Phil Mendelson voicing opposition to the project.

Ward 8 activist Robin Ijames said most residents in her neighborhood oppose the prison, fearing for their safety, their property and even their lives if inmates escape. Most of all, residents fear a prison will reinforce negative perceptions of the ward and stigmatize a community already struggling to overcome poverty and stimulate development.

But Ward 8 residents have been slow to mobilize and reluctant to put pressure on their councilwoman and other leaders, she said.

"A lot of people in the ward feel there is nothing they can do," Ijames said. "They feel powerless, like it’s just inevitable."

Those attitudes stand in sharp contrast to the mood at the Oxon Hill meeting, where organizer Joyce Beck chided D.C. residents for not holding their elected officials’ feet to the fire.

"Your elected officials work for you," she told the D.C. contingent. "You don’t work for them. You don’t have to sit by and be subject to their decisions."

Opposition organizers stressed that the CCA prison is far from a done deal. The contract has not officially been announced by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, CCA has not taken full possession of the property and the land is still unzoned.

Corrections Corporation of America, which operates a private prison in Youngstown, Ohio, that currently houses about 1,500 D.C. inmates, is one of the top contenders for a contract soon to be awarded by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to build the proposed Ward 8 facility. The Youngstown prison has been plagued with murders, stabbings and the recent escape of six prisoners as well as charges of inadequate health care and training.

Maryland officials said they would try to delay the project by adding a requirement in upcoming federal legislation that an environmental impact study be done and eventually "delay the plan to death." More than two dozen civic and homeowners associations in Prince George’s County signed on against the prison last week, as did the D.C. Statehood Party, the Socialist Workers Party and the Sierra Club. Members and residents plan a barrage of letters and phone calls to officials.

Meanwhile, District and Prince George’s County residents plan a demonstration at One Judiciary Square Sept. 14, the day the D.C. Zoning Commission is expected to receive a report from the D.C. Office of Planning on the future of the planned prison site. The site is about 50 undeveloped acres in far Southwest Washington bordered by I-295 and the District line.

Although zoning commissioners will not hear public testimony at the meeting, they are expected to decide whether to go forward with CCA’s request to have the site zoned for a prison.

If zoning commissioners decide to schedule public hearings, testimony from residents of Ward 8 and nearby Prince George’s could be given extra weight if they apply for "party status," a designation given to those with a vested interest in a site or who would be more aggrieved or affected than members of the general public, said Sherri Pruitt-Williams, interim director of zoning.

Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8D Chairman O.V. Johnson said ANC commissioners oppose the prison and will hold public meetings before submitting a written report to the zoning commission. According to District law, the ANC’s recommendation must be given "great weight" by the zoning commission.

D.C. City Council Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Evans, D-Ward 2, said the council would hold public hearings on the issue "at some point in time" if CCA were awarded the contract. He said the council would "make note" of testimony from Maryland residents "but I doubt it would be a decisive factor."

A task force assembled by Allen spent seven months studying the effects of private prisons on communities across the nation. The group held three public hearings on the issue in Ward 8, and of the hundreds of people turned out, about 90 percent opposed the prison, said Ward 8 businessman James Bunn, vice chairman of the task force.

But when the group turned in its 100-page report, it included no recommendations on a course of action. Nothing has since been done with the report, Bunn said.

Barry, who lives in Ward 8, said in a recent radio interview that he supports the idea of a prison in the ward to promote economic development and make it easier for families of inmates to maintain relationships with their loved ones.

"These young men and women have to be incarcerated somewhere," Barry said. "If they committed a crime in the District of Columbia, then they should be incarcerated in the District of Columbia. That’s our responsibility.

"Now they are sent up to Youngstown, Ohio — a six or seven-hour drive. We ought to have an opportunity to house them here closer to their loved ones and it ought to be in the far southwest corner of D.C. Village."

But Kinlow disagrees.

"Ward 8 is going to hell in a handbasket," said Kinlow, who has spent 30 years in the ward. "It’s on the way to becoming a permanent low-income part of town. Once it’s entrenched, there is no reversal. That’s what scares me."

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator