My newest article on DigBoston tackles why we must have COVID19 decarceration legislation and brings out the voices of those behind bars and their families. It begins:
The day before, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins called for review and releaseof those who pose no risk to the public, and several sheriffs and prosecutorsjoined her call for action. While there have been few reported coronavirus cases in Massachusetts prisons or jails,activistsacross the state have written a number ofnotices, letters andop-eds, and joined with nationwide coalitions, calling for the governor to use his powers to upend the crisis that could unfold in our prisons and jails.
If we do not act soon, the pandemic will lead to untold deaths.” MORE
MONDAY, Feb 10 at 2:00, courtroom 1015 Suffolk Superior Court, please come to a hearing on the preliminary injunction filed by MACDL and CPCS. The lawsuit asks for declaratory relief and a preliminary injunction to increase attorney access for men on the north side–Souza’s new “supermax”.
PLAINTIFFS’ MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION Plaintiffs seek a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Department of Correction (DOC) and Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center (SBCC) from 1) denying SBCC inmates access to their legal materials in their assigned living quarters; 2) refusing to permit SBCC inmates sufficient time out of their cells during business hours to make attorney phone calls; and 3) denying attorney contact visits. These actions violate article 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights and the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, as well as existing DOC regulation 103 CMR 403.10 regarding inmate possessions, 103 CMR 486.09 regarding legal paperwork,103 CMR 486.06 and .08 regarding attorney visits, G. L. c. 127, § 36A, prohibiting 2 DOC from abridging or interfering with attorney visitation access, and the Administrative Procedure Act, G. L. c. 30A (“APA”)
WORDS FROM KARTER REED ABOUT SOUZA
“Just wanted to chime in that inmates are attacked and beaten in the very same fashion as the guards in the video the MCOFU “leaked” to Facebook, but the public will never see that footage. While it does not in any way mitigate or justify the actions of a few inmates (in a unit full of dozens who DID NOT attack), it does speak to the atmosphere and environment that is created inside, where constant isolation and injustice fuels the belief that the only recourse to address grievances is through violence. I witnessed and felt it (palpably) for more than twenty years, so while I never acted on it, I UNDERSTAND where those feelings are rooted and how they become/became systemic.
It is awful that a C.O. was attacked, and awful that two others who came to his aid were also attacked—but it is equally awful that theirs is the only story that is told when it is a DAILY occurrence for inmates to be attacked just as viciously (often while handcuffed and/or shackled). Where is the sympathy and empathy for them? Where is the outrage and uproar when they are beaten and brutalized? Where are those videos, and why have they never been made public?
The percentage of inmates who participate in assaults on staff is minuscule to the point of being statistically irrelevant, yet on the contrary, the number of guards who participate in assaults on inmates is staggering. It is both horrific and horrifying that politicians and the public are being manipulated to worsen conditions and increase deprivation in a place already fraught with hopelessness and despair. Bravo to all those who questioned whether the answer might be more programming and more freedoms, but sadly naïveté and reactionary emotion too often win the day here. I am of course hoping that the collective voice of all those in the know will be able to shout the truth loud enough that it cannot be ignored—”
Advocacy Groups Detail Abuse Campaign Against Souza-Baranowski Prisoners Call for Thorough Investigation
(Boston, MA) Advocacy groups today detailed the abuses inflicted on prisoners at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center by correctional officers allegedly in retaliation for a January 10 incident in which three officers were hurt.
The National Association of Social Workers, Prisoners’ Legal Services, the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Families for Justice as Healing have received over 100 reports from prisoners and their family members seeking help. They are calling for an immediate alleviation of conditions at the prison, including access to contact visits with families, an independent investigation of the assaults that have transpired since January 10, 2020, and scrutiny regarding any increase in funding that could be allocated to additional staffing versus rehabilitative programming.
A lawsuit was filed Friday by the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Committee for Public Counsel Services regarding the unprecedented almost two-week period of time that people incarcerated at SBCC were not allowed to make any phone calls, even to attorneys, and attorneys were not allowed to visit their clients at the prison.
Victoria Kelleher, President of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (MACDL) explained, “In the aftermath of an alleged assault on corrections officers on January 10, 2020, prisoners were denied attorney visits and phone calls for more nearly two weeks. Many prisoners have described lawless and inhumane conditions during this time, including unprovoked attacks involving tasers, dogs and physical beatings. While some prisoners have seen their right to counsel restored, others continue to have only restricted contact and are without access to their legal paperwork. To date, neither the Commissioner nor the Superintendent have provided any policy that outlines their actions, and nor could they justify the gross violations of the constitutionally based right to counsel. MACDL demands that our clients’ rights be restored and that attorneys be permitted contact visits absent specific and articulable facts supporting the need for a restricted visit as to any particular person incarcerated at the prison.”
Other organizations have also expressed concern over the many reports of violence on prisoners emerging from the facility.
Rahsaan Hall, Director of the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLUM) said, “The ACLU of Massachusetts stands with our advocacy allies and the families and loved ones of those who have been locked down at Souza Baranowski. The accounts we’ve heard about the deplorable conditions and unprovoked assaults on the people incarcerated there are disturbing and require a full investigation into every officer and official responsible for participating in the assaults or allowing them to happen. The justifications we’ve heard that tie these conditions to recent criminal system reforms is a perverse attempt to undo the hard fought progress that was achieved. Therefore, we have just submitted a public records request to obtain information that will give us more insight into the details of what has been happening inside.”
Family members of those incarcerated at the prison have contacted a number of these organizations in addition to their legislators and media to plea for help in alleviating the conditions there. Jurrell Laronal, an impacted family member with Families for Justice as Healing stated, “DOC cannot justify the mistreatment of people incarcerated at Souza, nor can they back up reckless claims that reform increases violence. Enough is enough. How much longer is abuse of power going to continue? It’s time to hold correctional officers and the DOC accountable.”
“What’s happening inside this prison represents a blatant violation of human rights. Denying prisoners access to legal representation, to mental health professionals like social workers, and physically assaulting prisoners without provocation is unacceptable and criminal and we demand a full investigation” said Rebekah Gewirtz, Executive Director of the National Association of Social Workers, MA Chapter.
The types of abuse that have been consistently reported include:
Violence
The day of the incident, all individuals in that unit had their clothes taken away and were made to kneel outside the inner control room for 3-5hours.
Some prisoners who tried to move or get up reported being beaten, having their heads smashed against the wall, attacked and bitten by dogs, and/or tased.
Other prisoners who were assaulted have been denied the ability to file grievances.
Confinement
Between January 10 and January 24 most, if not all, prisoners at SBCC have been locked in their cells for 24 hours.
Sometime during the weekend of 1/25/20, prisoners started being allowed out of their cells for only 15 minutes at a time.
People with serious mental health conditions are also subject to these conditions
Deprivation
Prisoners were unable to shower from 5 days to 2 weeks
On January 10, all property – pens, pencils, paper, books, clothing, shoes, personal photos, letters, legal papers, televisions, radios, and food – was removed from people’s cells. Accounts are that this was institution-wide.
No family visits have been allowed since 1/10/20.
Only cold food (bologna sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches) has been served since January 10.
There are multiple reports of juice and milk being served in chemical containers.
Elizabeth Matos is the Executive Director of Prisoners’ Legal Services. The organization has heard dozens of accounts consistently reporting the above conditions. She stated that,“This kind of crackdown is not run of the mill, nor should it ever be acceptable to any of us. The Commonwealth cannot implement reform and create meaningful pathways to reentry without also appropriately responding to these serious allegations of retaliation. We hope we can continue to find ways to move forward together.”
From The Steering Committee of the Coalition for Effective Public Safety NOTE DATE CHANGE BELOW!
The State House, Massachusetts
GOV. BAKER HAS NOMINATED YET ANOTHER CAREER PROSECUTOR TO SIT ON THE PAROLE BOARD. CALL YOUR GOVERNOR’S COUNCILLOR NOW TO OPPOSE THIS NOMINATION.
The governor has nominated Karen McCarthy, a prosecutor for the past 27 years at the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office, to fill a vacancy on the Parole Board. The Parole Board has seven members and McCarthy would be the fifth one from law enforcement. She is being nominated to fill the spot left by another career prosecutor, Paul Treseler, now a judge.
TELL YOUR GOVERNOR’S COUNCILLOR: NO MORE LAW ENFORCEMENT.
Massachusetts legislators envisioned a diversified parole board when they required that persons appointed to the Board have an undergraduate degree and at least five years of experience and training in one or more of the following fields: “parole, probation, corrections, law, law enforcement, psychology, psychiatry, sociology [or] social work.” Our present Parole Board already has four members who have spent their careers in law enforcement– (Chair Gloriann Moroney, former Suffolk ADA), corrections (Sheila Dupre and Colette Santa), parole (Tina Hurley)– and one in law (Tonomey Coleman).
At present, there is only one person from human services on the Board, psychologist Charlene Bonner, who has been sitting in holdover status for a year because the governor has not re-appointed her.
When parole boards are dominated by law enforcement, hearings are often an attempt to re-try the crime. Board members lack the expertise to ask more meaningful questions about recovery from mental illness and participation in sex offender and substance use treatment programs. However, given that 80% of the incarcerated population suffers from these ailments, we desperately need people on the Parole Board who have dedicated their careers to substance use and mental health treatment, trauma informed practices and adolescent brain development.
CALL YOUR COUNCILLOR NOW: Nominations to the Parole Board must be approved by a majority vote of the eight-member Governor’s Council. We can make a difference. Act now!
● Urge your councillor to vote “no” on Karen McCarthy’s nomination.
● Tell your councillor that we need an experienced social worker, another forensic or clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist on the Board who has experience working with persons with substance use disorders, mental illness, and trauma; and understands adolescent brain development.
● Ask your councillor to confirm only those who have demonstrated a belief in redemption and value rehabilitation and transformation.
● Tell your councillor that a diverse Board combats a purely punitive approach to parole and is a necessity for fairness.
THE PAROLE BOARD’S JOB: Parole is an important public safety tool that, when properly administered, eases re-entry problems, lowers recidivism, and results in significant cost-savings. As 70 community groups noted in a 2017 letter to Governor Baker and Chief Justice Gants, it has been understood for decades that formerly incarcerated people reoffend at significantly lower rates when they receive appropriate support and supervision on parole. In Massachusetts, however, due to our very low parole rates, most parole-eligible people complete or “wrap up” their sentences in prison and transition home with no help and no oversight.
It is the job of the Parole Board to understand and predict behavior. Our system of parole only works when the Parole Board is made up of a well-rounded group of people who have the expertise necessary to properly evaluate candidates for parole. As the Parole Board gains more and more members with backgrounds in law enforcement, the parole rates drop correspondingly and precipitously. When parole rates drop, the rates of recidivism rise. A lack of diversification on the Parole Board not only leads to lower parole rates, but it also leads to less informed parole hearings and decisions. The vacancy on the Board must be filled by someone who believes in parole and second chances and who has education, training and expertise in mental illness, substance use, trauma and adolescent brain development.
● People on parole are being returned to prison for very low-level technical violations, instead of receiving appropriate treatment in the community, again leading to unnecessary incarceration.
● The Parole Board is not ruling on Commutation Petitions and Requests to Terminate Parole. Some have been pending for over three years, again leading to unnecessary incarceration.
● The Board takes up to a year to rule on parole-eligible lifers’ requests for parole. This contributes to unnecessary incarceration and is evidence of a poorly run Board.
● The Board’s failure to maximize parole supervision is extremely costly for taxpayers. According to DOC, the average annual cost of housing a state prisoner is $70,892, while the estimated cost of a year of parole supervision is less than $10,000. (The Board reported an annual cost of $5,000 in 2013.)
Hope you’ll read and share my newest article on Truthout--“Fighting to End the Other Death Sentence: Life Without Parole” about the inhumanity of this harsh sentence and how activists are fighting to end it. More
Lois Ahrens of Real Cost of Prisons Projectpassed along the new incredibly awful procedures for mail in Pennsylvania prisons. As she says, a bad idea does get passed along from prison to prison, and apparently other states have already initiated some of these horrendous policies.
Here is what is on the Pennsylvania DOC websitewhich they are calling ways to eliminate drugs. Bold is mine.Imagine how long it will take people inside to get mail or any books.
“Non-legal mail will now go to a privatized processing company in FL where it will be scanned and emailed back to the prison. Books will need to be ordered through the PA DOC. Details below.
MAIL Effective immediately, all regular/non-legal inmate mail should now be shipped to the following address utilizing existing DOC mail rules:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Inmate Name/Inmate Number
Institution
PO Box 33028
St Petersburg FL 33733
EXAMPLE:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Joe Jones/AB1234
SCI Camp Hill
PO Box 33028
St Petersburg FL 33733
Envelopes must include a return address. Photos will be limited to 25 per mailing. Any mailing received with more than 25 photos will be returned to sender.
All legal inmate should be addressed to/sent to the facility at which the inmate is housed.
From the PA DOC Immediate elimination of mail processing at facilities
Effective immediately, all inmate mail will be sent to a central processing facility where it will be opened, scanned and emailed back to the facilities. Initially, this process will take a few days however, after the initial 90 day transition period, mail will be delivered the day after it has been received. Mail delivery will be expanded to 6 days per week.
Each facility will print the mail and deliver it to the inmates effectively eliminating any possibility of drug introduction through the mail system. Effective immediately, all mail that was collected during the lockdown will be returned to sender – no exceptions.
Books & Publications Effective immediately, the DOC will begin to transition to ebooks coupled with bolstered DOC library system featuring centralized purchasing and ordering process. No books or publications will be shipped directly to an inmate.
Inmates will have access to a “publication request icon” on existing kiosks and all requests will be forwarded to central office for processing once the publication/book has been paid for by a cash slip. Central office will purchase in bulk from various sellers to prohibit the introduction of contraband.
Friends and family may make requests to purchase books for inmates and may pay for those items via an account specifically for this purpose. Once payment has been received, the DOC will order the publication and ship it to the institution where the inmate resides.
____________________________________________________________________________
The Abolitionist Law Center sent an email saying it was monitoring the newly unveiled policies which “represent a threat to the rights, dignity, and health of our incarcerated clients, friends, and family. The problems occurring during the last week [a lockdown in Pennsylvania prisons] will be compounded and added to by these measures that will further restrict and chill communication between incarcerated people and those outside the walls.”
“It is becoming clear that there will need to be an organized challenge, or series of challenges, using a variety of advocacy strategies, including potential litigation. Please feel free to share this widely.
Toward that end we are asking for any reports of the following to be emailed to ckeys@alcenter.org at the Abolitionist Law Center:
• Obstruction or interference in attorney-client communications, including:
o restrictions or prohibitions on visits
o restrictions or prohibitions on regular legal call opportunities
o failure to send outgoing legal mail, or significant delay in sending it out.
o failure to process incoming legal mail, or significant delay in getting mail.
o opening legal mail outside the presence of the recipient
o any copying of legal mail whatsoever
• Any negative legal consequences faced by incarcerated people due to their inability to communicate with legal counsel or the courts – missed deadlines, inadequate preparation for court proceedings, etc.
• Instances where the DOC refused to process non-legal mail, including where it was returned for no reason other than the DOC’s arbitrary statewide “lockdown”.
• Any serious problems caused by not receiving non-legal mail sent from family, friends, or other contacts, including and especially problems caused by not receiving time-sensitive information.
• Denial of publications such as magazines, newspapers, or books due to the “lockdown” or new policies.
• Imposition of disciplinary measures such as the issuance of a misconduct or having privileges restricted based on mere suspicion of drug use, or an allegation that mail intended for but not received by an incarcerated person contained a prohibited substance. Please include whether any evidence was obtained, tested (by the DOC or third party vendor), and whether there was any due process afforded through a hearing.
• False positives by ion scanners resulting in visitation restrictions or prohibitions.
• Instances of incarcerated people being deprived medical care during the lockdown, including regular appointments for chronic conditions, medications, mental health care, outside hospital appointments, emergency care, or specialist care.
• Instances of incarcerated people with physical or mental disabilities being deprived accommodations for those disabilities during the lockdown.
With solidarity and in it for the long haul,
The Abolitionist Law Center”
Souza Baranowski Correctional Center 
