When Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) finishes her final term in 2027, she would have carved out a legacy as a champion of D.C. statehood and advocate of D.C. residents scattered across the federal prison system.
However, as one grieving mother explains, there’s still much work to be done to ensure that incarcerated D.C. residents are placed in federal facilities in close proximity to the District. For her, it’s a matter of life or death.
“My son didn’t even make it back home,” Ginetta Bynum told The Informer. “They sent him up there, but didn’t check on him. That’s what they’re supposed to do.”
Bynum’s son, David Blakeney, died on May 23, 2023 while serving time at U.S. Penitentiary Canaan in Wayne County, Pennsylvania. According to a lawsuit that Bynum filed last spring, the county coroner ruled that Blakeney succumbed to a “gastrointestinal hemorrhage due to duodenal ulcer.”
The lawsuit alleges that Blakeney’s death happened after prison officials kept Blakeney, a federal prison resident with a history of mental health issues, in a four-point restraint for several days. It also came long after, according to the lawsuit, FBOP ignored a judge’s order to place Blakeney in a North Carolina federal facility.
In the six years that Blakeney had been incarcerated, Bynum made only one weekend visit to her son. She said the more-than-five-hour drive followed text messages between the mother and son, as well as efforts to get permission to take Blakeney’s daughter along.
As Bynum recounted, she and Blakeney continued to engage in text messages until the month of his death when communication ceased around the time of his daughter’s birthday.
“I called the people to check on my son because I knew something was wrong,” Bynum told The Informer. “I couldn’t get to him, because it’s so far. And they wouldn’t let me in anyway. They kept saying it was okay, but he wasn’t.”
Bynum said that Blakeney, before his death, requested that his mother reach out to Norton’s office. She’s since attempted to make contact to no avail, she told The Informer.
“That’s my child, and I was just trying to get some help,” Bynum told The Informer. “I wrote Del. Norton but I didn’t get any response. I got pushed aside.”
With the “Warrior on the Hill” nearing the end of her storied career, and a slew of candidates aiming to become her successor, Bynum said that she would like to see the next District congressional representative build upon Norton’s attempts to keep incarcerated D.C. residents close to home.
Nearly a decade after Norton secured the passage of the First Step Act with a provision mandating the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (FBOP) assignment of D.C. residents to facilities within 500 miles, Bynum said that she wants the District and federal government to collaborate around the construction of a D.C. metropolitan area prison.
“We need to get more D.C. residents to understand that when your loved one is locked up, they shouldn’t be going that far away,” Bynum said. “[The government] finds money for everything else. You’re building around D.C. Jail. How about you just fix it or make it bigger or find some land?”
Three Democratic Congressional Candidates Speak About Their Vision for D.C.’s Scattered Residents
On Sunday, Norton’s reelection campaign team filed a termination report, which, to many, more than hinted at the end of an era. A couple days later, Norton released a statement officially announcing her retirement.
“Although I’ve decided not to seek reelection, I will never falter in my commitment to the residents I have long championed,” Norton said. “I will continue to serve as D.C.’s Warrior on the Hill until the end of my current term. Thank you to my constituents for choosing and trusting me to fight for you in Congress 18 times. I will leave this institution knowing that I have given you everything I have.”
Tributes continue to pour in from District residents, officials, and would-be opponents about the District’s longest-serving congresswoman.
“She has been such a steadfast champion for the District of Columbia itself and our autonomy and fighting for statehood.” D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), a 2026 D.C. Democratic congressional candidate, told The Informer. “Advancing a vote for statehood through the House twice, just unprecedented, but also fighting for improvements to District residents’ lives that we saw with her incredible progress she made with education through the DC TAG program and land deals that have brought thousands of new residents to the city and jobs and creating new neighborhoods.”
Pinto currently stands among an assortment of Democratic D.C. congressional candidates that also includes: Gordon Chaffin; Trent Holbrook; Robert L. Matthews; Sandi Stevens; D.C. Councilmember Robert White (D-At large); Kelly Mikel Williams; and Kinney Zelesne.
In her role as the chair of the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, Pinto has fought for local control of the District’s parole board. She told The Informer that, as a congresswoman, she will continue that endeavor while building upon Norton’s efforts to bring incarcerated D.C. residents closer to home.
“I would love to have a requirement that anybody serving in the Bureau of Prisons system do so within 100 miles of D.C.,” Pinto said. “It’s really important that we not just sign these MOUs or pass a law around it, but that we follow up with implementation and oversight to ensure that that’s really true.”
Pinto also told The Informer that she ensivions a scenario where federal prison residents spend the last six months of their sentence at the D.C. Department of Corrections, where they can better access resources, including the READY Center, a one-stop shop of reentry resources that relocated to Congress Heights in 2023.
“So that’s all these programs that we’re working on with the D.C. Jail,” Pinto said, “that’s our hospitality training program or work with the READY Center or the construction training that we’re working on with the Washington Commanders to have people be part of the building of the new RFK site, …in addition to housing and transportation benefits would be better off if folks could serve the end of their sentence here at home and in the DC jail.”
White said he wants to pursue more of a permanent solution.
“The most important thing we could do in this space is to build a facility for D.C. residents that is close to D.C.,” said White, the brother of a returning citizen who served time in federal prison. “Right now, D.C. co-defendants are shipped all across the country, and while I could drive my niece and nephew two hours or three hours every week to Petersburg to visit their dad, if he was further, we wouldn’t be able to visit them very much.”
White, who wants to look at federal land either in the District or Maryland, said he would garner congressional support and convince the FBOP about the benefits of the District residents serving time near their families.
“In many ways, it would be easier for them to handle this part of their portfolio if they had all of the D.C. co-defendants in one place,” White told The Informer. “Right now, they’re having to reach D.C. co-defendants differently and track them differently because the BOP acts as our state prison system. It would just be logistically easier for them to manage the D.C. co-defendants if they were in one place.”
As a one-time Norton staffer, White accompanied the elder legislator on trips to federal facilities, where he saw her speak with incarcerated D.C. residents about prison conditions, their needs, and resources needed for the transition home.
White also helped Norton plan congressional hearings that featured representatives of Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) as government witnesses. In his current role as chair of the council’s Committee on Housing, White has the task of determining how and where to temporarily house returning upon their return from federal prison.
As that process unfolds, White said he looks to Norton as a source of inspiration.
“It happened that my brother was released from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, came back to our halfway house here in D.C. which is governed federally while I was Norton’s staffer working on those issues,” White said. “And it’s one of the experiences that gave me such a bad distaste for our former halfway house HOPE Village.”
Williams, an advisory neighborhood commissioner and congressional candidate who’s thrown his hat in the ring for the second time, also told The Informer that he will push for the construction of a nearby federal prison.
“It will provide opportunities for a number of our residents right here,” Williams told The Informer. “It allows families to visit daily, regularly. It gives them a connection back to their families, keeps them in tune, keeps them in constant contact with their children and being able to maybe even send a message to their children of not following in mom or dad’s footsteps in terms of the sacrifices or moving into those areas of unlawful activity.”
Even more important for Williams, a former member of the Clinton administration and a one-time chief of staff for then-D.C. Councilmember Vincent Orange, is reclaiming the federal dollars that get lost when D.C. residents are shipped out to federal prisons across the country.
“That’s another way for us to not only be able to create federal jobs, long-term jobs, but we also are able to get additional federal funding because of the number of people we have in there,” Williams said. “And if we have folks from Kentucky, Missouri and everywhere else, as opposed to our own, although we have our own there as well, we’re increasing our intake and revenue and opportunity.”
For Williams however, there’s no solution greater than prevention.
“I think we have to not just look at how do we reconnect them to their families or how do we change laws and policies to get them closer to home, but let’s address why they’re there in the first place,” he told The Informer. “Let’s address what created that draw for them to look at a quick and easy unlawful act, as opposed to a long and steady lawful act, by just providing them with visions at an early age of why education and empowering yourself benefits you in the long run.”
A Returning Citizen Advocates for Those Behind the Prison Walls
By virtue of their distance away from family, and a reputation they’ve garnered since the 2001 closure of Lorton Penitentiary, D.C. residents in the federal prison system often fall victim to the discrimination of FBOP employees.
Those who, before the passage of the Second Look Act, serve long sentences are also at the mercy of a point system that the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia called discriminatory in a 2022 class action complaint.
Last year, Norton introduced legislation aimed at increasing communication between FBOP and CSOSA on parole matters, and requiring D.C. residency for the director of CSOSA and the Pretrial Services Agency of the District of Columbia. She also introduced the Improving Reentry for District of Columbia Residents in the Bureau of Prisons Act, which directs FBOP to place D.C. residents at a federal facility within 250 miles of the District.
In speaking about the latter bill, Herbert Robinson commended Norton’s efforts. He however said that the legislation currently before the House’s Committee on the Judiciary maintains the status quo by allowing FBOP discretion in deviating from the rules under “extreme circumstances.”
“They got stipulations about custody level, population, separation, [and] staffing,” Robinson, an advocate, business owner, and returning citizen, told The Informer. “All these things BOP can use as their reason for transferring the person wherever they want to transfer them to.”
Robinson said that getting incarcerated D.C. residents within close proximity to the nation’s capital requires the mass organizing of returning citizens. He also noted that it’s incumbent upon Norton’s successor to seek the insight of those closest to the issue.
“There has to be a bridge where we trust whoever’s in that position so we can come tell our stories and be willing to talk because we know that person genuinely has our back and is pushing for our cause” Robinson said. “There’s a lot of organizations that do reentry here in D.C…. and it would be good to be able to figure out how to bridge that gap where they can do them in a federal institution and get the support to get to these federal institutions and start some of these workshops and programs as well.”
Robinson, a native of the Brookland community in Northeast, is in his fourth year as a free man. In 2022, he came home from a two-year prison stint stemming from a parole violation. That violation, he said, landed him back in Federal Correctional Institution, Berlin in New Hampshire.
Though Robinson, who lost his mother during his previous prison stint, was getting closer to his father and sister, he said that his most recent prison stay completely severed family ties.
“My aunt and her daughter live here, but that’s my father’s sister, and it’s like a real distant relationship,” Robinson said. “And then I have a younger sister that lives here with her children. We have been building a better bond with her, like, that’s my only sister in here. That’s the only real support that I got.”
Upon his release from prison, Robinson couch surfed before landing in transitional housing. He’s since, as he explained to The Informer, clawed his way back up in the world, paying off debt and turning his independent venture into a certified business enterprise, which opens him up to contracting opportunities with the D.C. government.
“I started off in general freight and I’ve been taking my focus into passenger transportation,” Robinson said. “I just acquired a 12-passenger bus with a handicapped lift on it.”
However, as Robinson explained, reaching this milestone didn’t come without struggle, and several moves throughout the federal prison system. During his two federal prison stints, Robison served time at: United States Penitentiary Lee in Virginia; United States Penitentiary Ray Brook in Essex County, New York, and finally Federal Correctional Institution Berlin.
While incarcerated, Robinson acquired skills in HVAC and appliance repair, which would ultimately prepare him for his first release. But not before he struggled to find opportunity and support while still behind those walls.
“Being so far away from home, not having the community connections, not having the resources and the reentry programs really accessed because we’re so far away,” Robinson told The Informer. “We don’t get to really engage. Then if too many of us put a certain organization on an email, the federal government blocks it.”