Washington, D.C. (Map, News) - D.C. Jail inmates have attacked guards with bodily fluids nearly three dozen times in two years, and the U.S. attorney’s failure to demand stout punishment has provided little deterrent to end the assaults, a District official said Thursday.

Inmates “commonly” use body waste to strike staff in the face, causing injury, emotional trauma and potentially serious illness, Corrections Director Devon Brown told the D.C. Council’s public safety committee. The panel is considering legislation, requested by Mayor Adrian Fenty, that would create a separate assault category for such acts, requiring an additional prison sentence of 180 days.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuted 24 of 33 incidents of alleged assault with bodily fluids between 2006 and 2007, Brown said. The sanctions have been weak, he added, though he refused to provide details.

“While the rate of conviction has been high, the penalties for these cases have frequently been nullified by plea bargains or guilty findings with no sanctions whatsoever, thus providing no deterrence or negative impact toward future assaultive displays by inmates,” Brown said.

Channing Phillips, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said each case of attack by bodily fluid is investigated. But if there’s no resulting bodily injury, he said, the crime cannot be prosecuted as anything more than misdemeanor simple assault, already punishable by a 180-day jail term.

“You can’t plead down a misdemeanor,” Phillips said.

Councilman Phil Mendelson, chair of the committee, said he was “sympathetic” to the plight of guards and agreed the acts are “heinous,” but he questioned why the bill was necessary. D.C. law already covers simple and felony assault, he said.

“If it’s already illegal, we don’t accomplish anything by making it illegal again,” Mendelson said.

But John Rosser, vice chairman of the D.C. jail guard union, argued that protection “in the form of severe deterring penalties” is needed to send a message “that it is not open season on corrections officers.”

Brown said that most states, including Maryland, have had the “wisdom” to create “separate and distinct laws that govern the uniqueness of the correctional environment.”

The bill also would shift responsibility for prosecuting such cases to the D.C. attorney general, a provision that may not be legal, as the city’s Home Rule charter prohibits the District from changing the scope of the U.S. attorney’s responsibilities.

mneibauer@dcexaminer.com