A man was fatally stabbed at the D.C. jail Sunday, according to police and the city’s Department of Corrections. It marks at least the third stabbing in the facility this month, according to data reviewed by The Washington Post.
An assault took place between two detainees at the jail shortly after 11:05 a.m. Sunday, according to a DOC spokesperson. A few minutes later, homicide detectives were requested to respond to a stabbing at the facility, D.C. police said.
The man who was stabbed was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The man was not identified.
The most recent incident involved a “makeshift weapon,” the DOC spokesperson said, without specifying what the weapon was made of.
“The DOC maintains a zero-tolerance policy for violence,” the spokesperson said.
The incident is being investigated by D.C. police and the DOC, the spokesperson said. As of Monday afternoon, authorities had not named any suspects in the stabbing.
The Justice Department last week announced a federal investigation into whether conditions in the D.C. jail violate the Constitution.
The department said it had received numerous allegations about conditions in D.C. DOC facilities. Among them, it said, were failures to protect inmates from use of excessive force, provide adequate medical care, provide safe and sanitary physical conditions of confinement, and provide adequate nutrition.
The Post wrote earlier this month about inmates who filed a class-action lawsuit against the city in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The suit alleges that the jail repeatedly fed inmates food containing mice and insects.
Sunday’s incident was at least the third stabbing to occur at the jail this month, according to arrest records.
On Oct. 6, a detainee at the jail was stabbed eight times with a handcrafted metal object in the science classroom by another detainee, both of whom were being held in the C4B housing unit, a police report said. The victim in that attack was stabbed in the neck, face, upper torso and back, the report said. He had trouble breathing and was admitted to a hospital but refused to cooperate with investigators, according to the report.
The police report described a “jail shank” used in the attack that was about 5½ inches in length, wrapped with a cloth material on one side to form a handle.
Less than a week later, on Oct. 12, another stabbing occurred, this one in the shower area of a different housing unit: NW-3. According to an arrest report, two detainees assaulted the victim, one of them holding him from behind as he attempted to escape, while the other stabbed him with a shank.
The report noted the victim, who suffered a stab wound to his upper back, was handed a paper and wrote something down on it before the assault. Three people were charged in that attack.
D.C. Auditor Kathleen Patterson said a lot of questions need to be answered about the circumstances of Sunday’s stabbing, including what the weapon was made of, what staffing was like at the time of the incident and whether the assault took place in transit or in a cell.
“The first concern, obviously, is that someone lost their life — someone who was in the custody of the District of Columbia government,” Patterson said in an interview. “That is a horrible thing to have happen, and something that should never happen.”
In a 2025 report, Patterson wrote that conditions in the jail were endangering the lives of inmates and staff members and that there was an “urgent” need for a new facility. The jail’s death rate was more than three times the national average during the one-year audit period, the report said.
Between 2023 and 2024, DOC reported that 363 incidents of violence involved homemade weapons, the report said. A list of contraband confiscated during a three-month period in 2023 includes more than 100 instances of weapons made from sharpened pieces of metal “likely created from the disintegrating physical conditions and old equipment” at the jail, the report said.
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