Residents of the city’s poorest ward were outraged to learn Sept. 24 that a 2,200-bed maximum-security private prison planned for their neighborhood would provide convicted criminals with health care, job training and educational opportunities desperately needed and still unavailable to many residents.

"I go to work every day. I work hard. Never did nothing to nobody. I wish I had some opportunities like that," said Eugene Dewitt Kinlow, after hearing a detailed description of prison services at a community meeting. "It’s going to be better than the public schools!"

About 150 Ward 8 residents leapt to their feet, applauding in agreement.

A 50-minute computer presentation on the prison planned by Corrections Corporation of America included details on starting salaries for prison employees, services for inmates and environmental clean-up of the polluted 76-acre site at the southern tip of the District near the Prince George’s County line. CCA also promised to donate $1 million to a revolving loan fund for local minority-owned businesses.

"CCA is going to be a good neighbor and a good partner with the community," said John Ray, an attorney and former D.C. city councilman representing the company.

Residents laughed out loud.

The emotional and occasionally raucous meeting at Patricia Roberts Harris Learning Center culminated in a unanimous late-night vote by members of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8D to take a stand against the prison.

Commissioners, like many residents, felt the prison was "snuck in" without community input.

"They slighted us big time," said ANC chairman O.V. Johnson. "Not one single 8D commissioner was consulted and we are supposed to have standing on this. It’s in our jurisdiction."

The ANC’s written statement opposing the prison will be sent to the D.C. Zoning Commission, which according to the law must give the ANC’s opinion "great weight" in upcoming deliberations on whether to zone the currently unzoned land for a corrections facility.

Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Paul Sarbanes of Maryland threw another hurdle in the prison’s path, inserting an amendment in the fiscal 1999 Interior Department appropriations bill requiring a full environmental impact statement for the site. The senators expect the amendment to create a lengthy delay in the process.

But D.C. officials have been slow to react to the growing movement against the prison.

Ward 8 Councilwoman Sandra Allen attended only the first 10 minutes of the Sept. 24 meeting, repeating her claim that she has no position either for or against the prison.

"This meeting will give me more insight," she told the crowd in a brief statement that opened the meeting. She then left, saying she had the flu.

Kinlow, leader of the United Communities Opposed to a Prison on the Potomac, later distributed copies of a letter Allen sent to the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in March urging support for a prison in the District.

Prison supporters, including Mayor Marion Barry, say the prison would create jobs and spur development in the economically depressed area. Moreover, District residents who are incarcerated stand a better chance of turning their lives around if they can maintain close ties with their families, they argue.

"We aren’t talking about folk that dropped off the moon," said Rahim Jenkins, a Ward 8 resident and leader of the Righteous Men’s Coalition who supports the prison. "We are talking about grandsons and fathers and cousins. These are our folk. We have to start acting like a family again."

Others said the District had a responsibility to deal with its own felons.

"I don’t think you can argue for statehood on one hand and then not have a prison in your own area. You can’t have it both ways," said Ward 8 ANC commissioner Calvin Lockridge. "If the goal is punishment, send them to Africa, Israel, anywhere, that’s punishment. But if we’re talking about rehabilitation, let’s have them where their families can see them."

But in neighborhoods that often seem to have lost hope for themselves, sympathy for people in prison seemed in short supply.

"We don’t have a CVS, we don’t have a sit-down restaurant, we even lost our last McDonald’s," Kinlow said. "What we do have, almost, is a prison. Well, thank you for giving us something!"

Others said the real issue wasn’t concern for rehabilitating felons, but the location of the prison.

"They are making it appear that if you are not for this prison, you are not for prison reform or that you are not concerned about the people in there," said Ward 8 resident Ab Jordan. "That’s not true. It’s about the location. Put it somewhere else."

Others pointed out that CCA is not a charity, but a for-profit corporation.

"If you own a corporation that gets paid to lock people up, I guess crime does pay," Kinlow said.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator