The Federal Bureau of Prisons says it has transferred upwards of 180 people out of D.C.’s largest halfway house ahead of the facility’s closure later this week.

The vast majority of the men from Hope Village in southeast D.C. have been sent to home confinement, but 31 were transferred to another halfway house outside of D.C. Now, local officials are hoping to get those 31 back to the District.

The BOP told WAMU that most of the men who were sent to the out-of-town halfway house were not eligible for home confinement because they had been unable to secure housing. Local officials, however, say they have found housing in the city for these 31 individuals and have asked the BOP to partner with them to keep as many men as possible in the District.

In a letter to BOP Assistant Director Hugh Hurwitz sent on Monday, D.C. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Kevin Donahue wrote that the city had “several housing options immediately available, including some that would be at no cost to the Bureau of Prisons.”

“We ask that the Bureau of Prisons work with our agencies to keep these men in their home city, and work with us to return them home quickly if they are relocated to Baltimore,” Donahue wrote.

Local leaders are limited to requests, because they have no say where the individuals go, since the men in question — like thousands of D.C. inmates housed in federal prisons across the country — are in BOP custody. The BOP did not respond to WAMU’s question about whether it would take the District up on its offer to house the residents.

Advocates and residents have criticized the halfway house’s response to the coronavirus pandemic — a class action lawsuit from men inside the facility alleges that the halfway house is not doing enough to protect them — and the BOP has been under pressure to release men from the 300-bed facility to prevent the spread of the virus.

Earlier this month, Hope Village Inc., the company that runs the halfway house, forced the BOP’s hand: It said it had decided not to seek a contract extension for its services, less than a month before its agreement with the Bureau of Prisons was set to expire. The last-minute announcement from Hope Village left men in the facility unsure of where they would go at the end of the month.

Jeffrey Varone, the chief executive of Hope Village, told the Washington Post that the lawsuit forced the facility “to expend unnecessary time and attorney’s fees” — and the closure of the facility would lead up to 90 people to lose their jobs. Advocates in D.C. had complained about subpar reentry services at the facility for years — and an independent city government agency found that the halfway house was actively detracting from residents’ efforts to search for jobs. Hope Village officials repeatedly denied the claims.

The number of men in BOP custody in the facility has been trending downward. As of last Wednesday, a census of incarcerated people reported by D.C.’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council said that 117 men in federal custody were being housed at Hope Village, down from 142 people the previous week. According to telephonic court hearings, the Bureau of Prisons and Hope Village had been steadily releasing several men per day from the facility to home confinement.

That process accelerated on Monday, when the BOP said 151 total people had gone from Hope Village to home confinement, thanks in part to a new home monitoring contract with the nonprofit CORE DC. (CORE DC was also awarded a 5-year contract for a new halfway house in D.C. over Hope Village Inc. in 2018, but its efforts to open the facility were delayed as it struggled to secure a location.) 

As of Monday, the BOP reported to D.C. officials that 104 people were still in Hope Village. It was not immediately clear whether that was before or after the day’s transfers.

The BOP says the 31 inmates who were not transferred to home confinement “are now located in an RRC in the local area, overseen by the BOP’s Baltimore Residential Reentry Management (RRM) office.”

In addition to Hope Village, the Baltimore office oversees halfway houses in Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia. As of Friday, a lawyer from the Bureau of Prisons said the agency had no plans to transfer any men from Hope Village back to federal prisons when the facility’s contract ends on April 30.