In last year’s budget, the legislature set up a “special commission to study and examine opportunities for collaboration and consolidation among the department of correction, the county sheriffs, the parole board and the office of community corrections.”
I am co-chairing the commission, along with with Representative Dan Hunt. Both Representative Hunt and I have taken a long-term interest in improving corrections — lifting people up instead of locking them up and making sure that those we do incarcerate have the best possible chances for success as returning citizens.
After we passed two major legislative packages, criminal justice reform in 2018 and police reform in 2020, we turned to a focus on management issues. The legislature created a commission on correctional spending that was charged with developing a mathematical approach to setting budgets for correctional institutions. The main early conclusion of that commission was that no such mathematical approach is possible — the factors driving costs vary across institutions, depending in complex ways on the physical layout of the institution and the population that it serves.
We did reach one clear conclusion in that commission: we needed better reporting on capacity in correctional facilities. Existing capacity reports used varying definitions over time. We replaced existing reports with a new report that defined capacity in a very physical way, requiring an inventory of beds and occupancy. That report allowed a comparison of population to available beds, confirming significant excess capacity across the state and county system.
The new commission starts from the recognition that populations have declined substantially and that this creates some possibilities for institutional reconfiguration, both for custodial facilities and for re-entry support. However, there is no presumption whatsoever as to what that reconfiguration should look like or even if reconfiguration is required. The charge for the commission identifies a number of issues that the commission should consider, but does not constrain the commission’s conclusions or define a particular work product.
The commission includes 9 voting members who bring general experience and skills but do not have a direct stake in the outcome of the commission. It also includes 11 non-voting members who represent stakeholders in the conversation. The Governor and the legislative leaders have made all of their voting appointments and the commission has had its first organizational meeting. Hopefully, all non-voting members will be at the table by the next meeting.
I am excited about the experience and commitment that all the commissioners bring to the table. I am looking forward to a productive conversation and I am hopeful that we can reach some constructive consensus.
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Full text of the commission charge
SECTION 214. (a) There shall be a special commission to study and examine opportunities for collaboration and consolidation among the department of correction, the county sheriffs, the parole board and the office of community corrections. For the purposes of this section, “facility” shall include a correctional facility, a house of correction and a jail.
Final FY2025 Budget, Chapter 140 of the Acts of 2024, Section 214
(b) The commission shall develop a list of alternatives to the distribution of responsibilities and oversight of facilities and shall consider any positive and negative impacts of each alternative. In developing alternatives, the commission shall: (i) consider the long-term fiscal sustainability of the facilities and recognize the need to reduce the cost to taxpayers of maintaining and operating facilities below capacity; (ii) recognize the need to provide safe and humane facilities for incarcerated persons; (iii) preserve flexibility to respond in a cost-effective manner to changes in incarceration levels; (iv) recognize the importance of evidence-based rehabilitative programming for incarcerated persons; (v) recognize the value of community-integrated reentry support services; (vi) recognize the advantages of local facilities for pretrial confinement and short incarcerations; (vii) recognize the advantages of local facilities in supporting family and community connections; (viii) recognize the value of existing facilities and other investments; (ix) recognize the need for increasing regional collaboration; (x) recognize the unique roles of sheriffs in varying urban and rural regions; (xi) recognize the unique issues posed by incarcerating female and LGTBQ+ populations; (xii) recognize the importance of addressing the social determinants of health in reentry services; (xiii) recognize the role that community organizations play in reentry services; and (xiv) recognize the alternative needs that county sheriffs may address.
(c)(1) The commission shall consist of the 9 voting members and 11 nonvoting members.
(2) The 9 voting members shall include: 2 members appointed by the senate president, 1 of whom shall serve as co-chair; 1 member appointed by the minority leader of the senate; 1 member appointed by the minority leader of the house of representatives; 2 members appointed by the speaker of the house of representatives, 1 of whom shall serve as co-chair; 3 members appointed by the governor who shall have experience in management, public finance, correctional policies and procedures or reentry and rehabilitative programming; provided, however, that no voting member shall be a present employee of a facility. The voting members on the commission shall reflect the geographic diversity of the commonwealth.
(3) The 11 nonvoting members shall include: the commissioner of probation, or a designee; 3 members appointed by the Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association, Inc.; 3 members appointed by the governor, of whom 1 shall be a retired correction officer, 1 shall be a social worker or other licensed mental health professional and 1 shall be a retired judge of the commonwealth; and 4 members to be appointed by the attorney general, of whom 1 shall be an advocate for prisoners’ rights, 1 shall be a formerly incarcerated person whose sentence was served in a state correctional facility, 1 shall be a formerly incarcerated person whose sentence was served in a county correctional facility and 1 shall have expertise or experience in healthcare for incarcerated persons.
(4) Five voting members shall constitute a quorum. The first meeting of the commission shall be convened not more than 30 days after 5 voting members have been appointed.
(d) The commission shall submit a written report of its findings with the clerks of the senate and house of representatives, the senate and house committees on ways and means and the joint committee on public safety and homeland security not later than September 30, 2026.
This is a very worthwhile endeavor. Hopefully the outcome will improve the systems for everyone.
Will, Is someone from Transformational Prison Project a part of the non-voting member bloc? If not, then I’d love to discuss getting them woven in in some way.
The Attorney General has 4 appointments: “4 members to be appointed by the attorney general, of whom 1 shall be an advocate for prisoners’ rights, 1 shall be a formerly incarcerated person whose sentence was served in a state correctional facility, 1 shall be a formerly incarcerated person whose sentence was served in a county correctional facility and 1 shall have expertise or experience in healthcare for incarcerated persons.” I don’t believe she has made these appointments yet. Perhaps the project could fit in there.
Will, I am very pleased–and grateful–that you are lending your wisdom and experience to this important work.
Last night we watched the current movie, Sing Sing. It’s set in the prison of that infamous name and is the story of a theater group of prisoners as they work through the process of producing a play. These are prisoners who are doing ‘hard time’ and who, themselves are hardened by life experiences and certainly by the experience of prison. Nothing is easy, but with guidance and increasing mutual support they ‘get there’ and produce their play for an audience. In the process they learn a lot about their own self worth–and the self worth of their peers. The components of the theater program are perfect for this process, but they are also transferable to other types of prison based activities: finding meaningful experiences for incarcerated people; leading with empathy, patience, encouragement, kindness, and the expectation of success for everyone. It’s the kind of work that some of our prisons are doing, but we should have such programs broadly available; otherwise prison is just a colossal waste of everyone’s time.
I highly recommend the movie, and wonder if it might be a starting point for the new Commission. It certainly humanizes the prisoners and that may help some the members of the Commission who have unhelpful stereotypical views of incarcerated people. Cultivating empathy is often a good place to start.
Thanks, again, for taking on this latest challenge. I never thought you needed MORE to do, but here you go!! Again, much appreciated.
Best,
Michael
Good imput from your comment. Brian Eno’s book What Art Does (Faber books) is set to be released on March 25th. Thought I’d pass that on (I’m looking forward to this). Farber has posted an interesting interview with him discussing his thoughts on art and upcoming book on Utube. Check it out if you’d like.
Thank you!
As your former constituent who is now a constituent of Rep. Hunt, I am relieved to hear that you are both working on this important issue. Thank you for the update!!
Lets make sure that guards get to take courses as well as incarcerated people so that they can leave these crummy jobs…
Glad to see this worthwhile project. The prison system needs more educational programs for those inside and vocational training to prepare the nearly ninety percent of those inside who will return to society. I watched the first meeting and was concerned about the Sheriffs who were overly defensive about their budgets and funding. They nearly took over the meeting lamenting any loss of funding. Though jails receive varying amounts of funding the Dept, of Corrections prisons actually get more than all jails combined. Both jails and prisons need reform and open minded people will be needed to make that happen. Taxpayers fund the entire system at the rate of hundreds of millions of dollars. Better outcomes should be expected and hopefully if this group listens to the data perhaps a better system will be created. I certainly hope so, but do not let self-serving individuals ruin this opportunity for those inside who are waiting for someone to step up and actually help them.
Congratulations, Will. This is timely in many ways. I will follow this story with interest.
Thank you Senator for your long-term dedication to improving the continuum for people experiencing incarceration. I am an NP and work with patients with opioid use disorder, HIV, and HCV in the peri-release and post-release period. Not sure how much of this committee’s attention will be devoted to healthcare, but I’d like to share that my experience is that many things could be done to improve the state of health care for these folks. Access to medication for opioid use disorder is inconsistently available across the county HOCs, putting people at elevated risk for overdose death in jail and after release. This should be made uniformly available throughout someone’s sentence and without segregation in the jail population. Additionally, the quality of care provided by the for-profit contracted health care agencies in the jail system is low. Maintaining someone’s MassHealth during their stay and providing consistent medical and psychiatric care held to those external standards would be much better and help people return to the community with better chance of success and stability.
I also watched the first meeting and Cocchi dominated the entire meeting, lamenting money lost due to no kickbacks for commissary and phone calls. He said this would negatively impact programming despite the fact that his budget to incarcerate about 1000 people (most held pretrial) is more than $100 million a year. If sheriffs dominate the commission they will resist any consolidation. I would like to see the data on operational capacity not only capacity but how many people are incarcerated in overbuilt jails for each of the periods. It would be very useful to include in upcoming reports what the budgets for each jail and how more than half a billion dollars each year is spent to incarcerate about 5,000 people.
Thank you for working on this!