Opinion: Federal actions are pushing D.C. Jail to the breaking point
The need for a new, humane facility has been clear for at least fifteen years. And yet D.C. now has no solid plans to replace the D.C. Jail.
Shelley Broderick is Chair of the D.C. Task Force on Jails and Justice, and Dean Emerita and Professor of Law at the University of the District of Columbia Law School.
On August 22, the D.C. Jail’s population stood at 2,119, up by over 100 people compared to two weeks earlier. The Central Detention Facility (CDF) – the District’s primary jail for men – hit 1,491 on August 20, its highest point since at least 2017, per available DOC data.
As military and law enforcement continue to pour into D.C. in the coming days as a result of the President Donald Trump’s Executive Order, even more people are likely to be incarcerated in CDF – an almost 50-year-old building whose poor conditions, high rates of death, overdoses and violence, and chronic understaffing were recently called out in a report by the Office of the D.C. Auditor (ODCA). While few could have predicted this recent surge in jail population, the need for a new, humane facility has been clear for at least 15 years. And yet D.C. now has no solid plans to replace CDF, even as the need has grown more urgent.
Back in 2010, the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) requested $420 million for a new jail facility. Since that time, funding for the jail has been like the rabbit in the magician’s hat: appearing and disappearing from budgets and financial plans as District leaders prioritized funding for other public projects.
Most recently, the $463 million budgeted for a facility to partially replace CDF last year was removed from the FY2026 budget – the same budget that includes over a billion dollars for a new football stadium. Instead, the mayor’s office announced plans to seek private financing for a new, publicly run jail facility; no details of this new plan have emerged since their May budget press conference.
The District Taskforce on Jails and Justice, which I chair, has been a strong proponent of a modern, state-of-the-art facility to replace CDF, and has pushed for public involvement in its planning. Task Force members have raised multiple questions about this private financing scheme, including: is the District seeking funding to build a facility large enough for CDF to be closed and demolished? Who is involved in designing the new facility? Where would the new jail be? And, perhaps most importantly, would DOC operate the new facility, or would it in effect be a private, for-profit jail?
The D.C. jail should reflect the values of the people here in the District. Therefore, the Task Force has requested District leaders to establish a Community Advisory Board so that those most impacted can be meaningfully involved in new jail planning.
The past two weeks' arrests due to the federal expansion of law enforcement in the District have only added to an already swollen jail population, which had been ticking up thanks to local policies favoring incarceration. And judicial vacancies have lengthened case processing times, increasing the jail population by pushing the average length of stay for men in the jail to 271 days, with more than 1 in 4 men in DOC custody having been in the jail more than a year.
All these issues are leading to more people – most of whom have not been convicted - living in a facility that is rife with longstanding problems. While there are many unknowns at this point, unquestionably the current situation should galvanize D.C. leaders to move forward quickly to build a new jail that is humane, safe, and publicly operated. The alternative – continuing to cycle people through the current facility for countless more years– is not an acceptable option.
