Pen and Stink
Marshals at D.C. Superior Court aren’t likely to be portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones—at least as long as they share the toilet-sink with the inmates.
Cover Story
At 7 a.m. on a January day, a dozen deputies with the U.S. Marshals Service are watching as the last of 150 or so inmates from D.C. Jail and St. Elizabeths mental institution get off of a white school bus. The inmates noiselessly file into a “mantrap,” a chain-link holding pen in the garage of the D.C. Superior Court. The mantrap gate isn’t working—it’s making a buzzing sound instead of closing—so an extra Marshals deputy stands close by. The roll-up door to the garage also is not working, so, conceivably, somebody could make a run for it. He’d have to get past the grim-looking Marshal with the shotgun, though.
The mantrap and its environs are the only spot in America where federal Marshals baby-sit two-bit street criminals. It’s a quirk of the city’s long-standing disenfranchisement: D.C. courts are run by the federal government. And the Marshals don’t like working at such a local level. “We have an issue where we have to rely on the Superior Court” to get things fixed, a deputy says, referring to the mantrap gate and garage door malfunctions.
So instead of tracking down high-profile federal fugitives and the like, every day the Marshals at Superior Court choreograph the most depressing of criminal-justice shuffles. First the inmates, clad in orange jumpsuits, enter the mantrap. They are crammed 20 at a time into a tiny cage inside an elevator going up to the cellblock.
... Continued 
Issue of Feb. 2, 2007
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Arts & Events - The Washington Ballet's “¡Noche Latina!,”
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