Please read my newest article for The Lowell Sun that is a follow up of the one I wrote last month about Wilfred Dacier also for the Sun: “Why the Massachusetts Parole Board Requires Reform.” It begins:

“This week Gov. Charlie Baker announced plans to enhance services for prisoners with mental health issues at Bridgewater State Hospital, a medium-security prison under scrutiny for mistreating patients. It’s about time we accept that a clinical approach is needed to help troubled prisoners. More than a quarter of the males and more than half the females incarcerated in state prisons have open mental health cases, and that number is even higher in county facilities.

But a clinical approach should also extend to the back end — parole. If you are going into prison with mental health issues, you most likely are coming out with them.” More