At today’s press conference, Commonwealth Magazine asked Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker about how he is doing with prisons. Here’s how he answered (It starts at 45.12).
Q. “I was just curious, almost every day I get something, a lawsuit, or advocates asking for the release of prisoners, or more testing of prisoners. How do you think it’s going? I see that there are 7 deaths and several hundred cases, but [INAUDIBLE] it doesn’t seem as severe as the nursing home situation. How do you think the state prison system is doing in dealing with COVID-19?”
A. “Well the state prison system spent a tremendous amount of time with the public health folks in developing their strategies, both for, uh, what went on inside the prisons and what went on outside the prisons as well, before people showed up for work and all the rest. Um, I think the long story short is that they are in constant contact with the Department of Public Health around the policies and protocols that they’re using, whether it’s related to hand sanitizer or uh, testing protocols or almost everything they’re doing with respect to disinfectant and visitation and everything else. And I think that’s going to continue to be the way they go about doing their work. Um, but this was obviously something that from the very beginning we took really seriously. The conversations between the Public Health and the Department of Corrections literally started, those might have started in early March, right? (to Secretary Sudders)”
Q: “Do you think they’re handling it pretty well?”
A: “Um, I think generally speaking they are following the guidance that they are getting and have benefitted from that. But I think there’s always going to be room for improvement on all this stuff, and I think we constantly try to make adjustments based on the data and information that we gather as we go.”
___________________
And no, we’re not doing fine. Prisoners’ Legal Services, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, The American Civil Liberties Union of Mass., and Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys have all sued the Governor, the Sherriffs the Department of Correction, Parole, and/or the Executive Office of Public Safety. Read my article about it all here.