District of Columbia Department of Corrections (DOC)

The DC Department of Corrections (DOC) provides public safety by ensuring the safe, secure, and human confinement of pretrial detainees and sentenced misdemeanant prisoners. The management and operation of the District's correctional system fosters community and business confidence and security. The DOC is guided by the principles of responsiveness and compassion for inmates and their families and promotes community involvement.

Established as an agency in 1946, the DOC combined the first-built District Jail (1872) with the Lorton Correctional Complex, which began as a workhouse for male prisons in 1910 but later expanded to include eight prisons on 3000 acres of land in Lorton, Virginia. The Department of Corrections is a major component of the District's public safety cluster. The Mayor of the District of Columbia appoints the Director to oversee the agency's responsibility in administering institutional and community-based services to misdemeanant and pretrial detainees.

The DOC operates the Central Detention Facility (DC Jail) with an inmate capacity of 2,164. District inmates are also housed at the Correctional Treatment Facility administered by the Corrections Corporation of America in Southeast, Washington. This facility is operated under an exclusive contract to the DC Department of Corrections. The department has contracts with four private and independently operated halfway houses: Efforts from Ex-Convicts, Extended House, Inc., Fairview, and Hope Village. The US District Court for DC and the Superior Court of DC place pretrial offenders and sentenced misdemeanants in halfway houses as an alternative to incarceration. The halfway houses offer a variety of educational opportunities and other programming services.

With the passage of the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997, the Department of Corrections transferred the sentenced felon population formerly housed at the Lorton Correctional Complex to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and discontinued operations there on December 31, 2001.

Contact Information
1923 Vermont Avenue, NW. Room 203 Washington DC 20001 Phone: (202) 673-7316