The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

State reports show prisons and jails in every Bay State county are filled beyond capacity. Suffolk has been forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to ferry inmates to other counties, while other sheriffs say they must resort to housing inmates in mattress-strewn chapels, libraries, gymnasiums and receiving rooms.
In interviews with the Herald, county sheriffs, state officials and inmate advocates warned that overcrowding can lead to:
Skyrocketing daily operational costs
Increased chance for the spread of highly contagious diseases including tuberculosis and methicillin-resistant staphyloccus aureus (MRSA)

Risks of inmate escapes or violent eruptions
Heftier taxpayer bills to fund necessary and inevitable capital improvement projects. “The state and county correctional facilities are overcrowded and have significant capital investment needs,” said a statement issued by spokesman Charles McDonald on behalf of the Executive Office of Public Safety and the Executive Office for Administration and Finance.
Glodis and other sheriffs are hoping for relief from a pending state bond bill that will come before the Legislature next month. The bill may include funding for jails and prisons - including a possible $50 million for a new 260-cell facility or $100 million for a new 100-cell jail in Worcester County. “We are desperately seeking help,” he said.

The implications are serious, for both prisoners and jail officers.
“An officer at the jail can now expect to oversee a single unit. That is not safe for detainees and officers alike,” Stan Andruszkiewicz, president of the Jail Officers and Employees Association of Suffolk County, told the Herald.
“In some units, there are as many as 65 detainees. Forcing two detainees into a space designed for one is only asking for trouble. There is bound to be a violent release and those violent altercations have a dangerous impact on officer safety.”

A solution is in the works, the Patrick administration insists.
“The administration is consequently considering developing a master plan for correctional facilities,” said McDonald of the Executive Office of Public Safety. “With the benefit of a master plan, the adminstration would be able to better target limited state resources to capital investments that serve the programmatic needs of the Department of Correction and the sheriffs.”

But while jail officials wait for funding, costs are soaring.

Norfolk Sheriff Michael G. Bellotti said that in 1996 lawmakers approved $10 million to build a parking lot, a warehouse and a modular unit for 98 inmates. More than a decade later, Bellotti is still waiting for the cash and now can’t even build the modular unit for under $11 million.
“We can no longer take a Band-Aid approach to this issue,” said Bellotti, who has an average of 702 people in a jail built for 302 inmates.
The overcrowding has been costly for Nashua Street Jail in Boston, said Superintendent Eugene S. Sumpter. He said he has been forced to reassign hundreds of detainees to correctional facilities as far away as Shirley and Dartmouth. Suffolk spends more than $205,000 annually to transport prisoners.
“The job itself of transporting detainees across state is risky enough and the combination of less staff and more detainees only increases the risks,” said Andruszkiewicz of the jail officers association. “It really isn’t very complicated. Overcrowding can only be solved with more funding, more space and more staffing.”

But prisoner advocates are skeptical that the overcrowding crisis can be solved by a state-funded construction spree.
“We don’t need to build our way out of this problem,” said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services. “If you build it, it will get filled.”
Walker believes the problem should be addressed by eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and providing treatment on demand for substance abuse.

Suffolk Sheriff Andrea J. Cabral said the overcapacity figures are in part the result of the jail’s successes, especially in treating substance abuse. However, Cabral notes, “You shouldn’t have to come to jail to go to a suitable detox. This shouldn’t be the place of first resort. We are so much the catch-basin for cracks that are widening in society every day.”
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=1002188&format=text