District of Columbia Department of Corrections

The District of Columbia Department of Corrections (DCDC) is a correctional agency responsible for the adult jails and other adult correctional institutions for the District of Columbia, in the United States. DCDC runs the D.C. Jail. History The DOC was first established as an agency in 1946, when the District Jail (built 1872) was combined with the Lorton Correctional Complex. The latter began as a workhouse for male prisoners in 1910, but later expanded to include eight prisons on of land in Lorton, Fairfax County, Virginia. In 1999 the DCDC was paying the Virginia Department of Corrections to house 69 prisoners at the Red Onion State Prison. Operations For about ninety years, the Lorton Correctional Complex in rural Fairfax County, Virginia, about 20 miles south of Washington, served as the District of Columbia's prison. The National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997 required the DC Department of Corrections to transfer the sentenced felon population formerly housed at Lorton to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and the Lorton facility shut down in 2001. The Lorton complex was handed over to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages property for the federal government, which in turn gave the property to Fairfax County.