Prison News | Massachusetts

• Education & Rehabilitation
• Executions, Death Row, & the Death Penalty
• Gangs in Prison
• Health & Medical Treatment
• Prison Classification, Placement, and Release
• Prison Conditions & Corruption
• Prison Life & Prison Culture
• Riots, Lockdowns & Escapes
• Suicides in Prison
• Workplace & Industry News and Science & Tech

Education & Rehabilitation

• Numbers Crunchers: Data shows programs designed to keep inmates on right path are working
  
  ...According to the report, 466 or 1,244 inmates released (38.1 percent) during the first six months of 2006 recidivated ....... [ more ]
  Amesbury News , Thursday, May 10, 2007
  
  

Executions, Death Row & the Death Penalty

Gangs in Prison

• Jailed ex-NFL star Aaron Hernandez briefly hospitalized: Report
  
  Former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, who is in a Massachusetts jail awaiting trial on murder charges, was removed from his cell for a brief hospital visit over the weekend, a local TV station reported on Sunday.... [ more ]
  Reuters, Monday, June 23, 2014
  
  
• Dorchester men kept in jail on sex trafficking charges
  
  Pledger and Kizzie are allegedly members of a Boston street gang named the Thetford Avenue Buffaloes, according to an affidavit written by Lina Awad, a special agent with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations.... [ more ]
  Boston Globe, Saturday, March 22, 2014
  
  
• Officers allegedly assaulted by seven prisoners
  
  Inmates responsible for a vicious attack at a Massachusetts prison faced a judge on Thursday. ... [ more ]
  WHDH, Friday, June 8, 2007
  
  
• Numbers Crunchers: Data shows programs designed to keep inmates on right path are working
  
  ...According to the report, 466 or 1,244 inmates released (38.1 percent) during the first six months of 2006 recidivated ....... [ more ]
  Amesbury News , Thursday, May 10, 2007
  
  
• Prison suicide questions institutional conditions
  
  27 year-old inmate Michael Keohane used a torn sheet to hang himself in his cell at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center on Sunday, April 9.... [ more ]
  Insideprison.com, Saturday, April 1, 2006
  
  

Health & Medical Treatment

• Methadone Helped Her Quit Heroin. Now She�s Suing U.S. Prisons to Allow the Treatment.
  
  About to enter a federal prison, a Massachusetts woman is not permitted to continue taking the opioid as a treatment to block cravings and withdrawal from heroin addiction.... [ more ]
  The New York Times, Friday, March 15, 2019
  
  
• Mom seeks charges for Bridgewater State Hospital guards in son�s death - �09 case sparked reforms
  
  The mother of Joshua Messier, the 23-year-old mental health patient whose 2009 death at Bridgewater State Hospital has sparked outrage and reforms, is demanding that prosecutors hold guards at the facility criminally responsible for her son’s death.... [ more ]
  Boston Globe, Sunday, May 11, 2014
  
  
• Health after prison matters
  
  Wen we talk about economic development, homelessness, recidivism, education and other such issues in our region, few people would guess that the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts would be an influential player in these arenas. ... [ more ]
  Worcester Telegram and Gazette, Monday, April 7, 2014
  
  
• Tally climbs in lab scandal ; State report says drug mishandling may have tainted 40,000 cases
  
  The criminal cases of more than 40,000 people in Massachusetts may have been tainted by chemist Annie Dookhan and management failures at the now-closed state Department of Public Health lab where she worked, according to a long-awaited report released Tuesday by a special counsel hired by the Patrick administration.... [ more ]
  Boston Globe, Wednesday, August 21, 2013
  
  

Prison Classification, Placement, & Release

• A Massachusetts police department asked would-be criminals to 'hold off' during heat wave. They listened
  
  As a brutal heat wave smothered parts of the Northeast in 100-plus degree heat, a police department in Massachusetts asked potential criminals to chill out. ... [ more ]
  USA Today, Monday, July 22, 2019
  
  
• Staying of jail terms upheld ; SJC rules in cases tied to lab abuses
  
  The state's highest court has ruled that judges have the authority to stay the sentences of so-called Dookhan defendants who are seeking new trials, upholding the legal framework created to review hundreds of cases tied to the state drug ...... [ more ]
  Boston Globe, Monday, July 22, 2013
  
  

Prison Conditions & Corruption

• NY attorney sentenced to 1 month in prison for paying $75K to have daughter's ACT answers fixed
  
  BOSTON — Gordon Caplan, a prominent New York attorney, was sentenced Thursday in Boston federal court to one month in prison for paying $75,000 to have someone correct answers on his daughter's ACT test to inflate her score.... [ more ]
  USA Today, Thursday, October 3, 2019
  
  
• Curtailing solitary confinement
  
  IN THE AREA of prison reform, perhaps no method of incarceration has been more controversial than solitary confinement. Prisoner rights advocates have long argued that solitary confinement — the segregation of individual prisoners in small cells for up to 23 hours a day — is inhumane. Correctional officers, meanwhile, have seen solitary confinement as an important tool for disciplining unruly or dangerous inmates.... [ more ]
  Boston Globe, Friday, October 9, 2015
  
  
• Students Hold Vigil To Protest Solitary Confinement
  
  Past midnight on Wednesday morning, Rachel P. Thompson ’16 sat outside the Science Center with nothing but an empty square of blue tape pasted on the ground behind her.... [ more ]
  U-Wire, Thursday, October 16, 2014
  
  
• Restraints cited in three deaths at Bridgewater -- State hospital�s harsh patient care raises questions about health care provider
  
  BRIDGEWATER — Bradley Burns let out a gut-wrenching howl as he lay strapped hand and foot to a small bed, his torso bound by a tightly wound sheet, his head and eyes covered with a helmet and goggles.

  Burns had spent 23 hours a day like that — almost completely immobilized — for 16 months because medical staff at Bridgewater State Hospital felt it was the best way to prevent the sometimes-violent patient with paranoid schizophrenia from hurting himself, or others, as he had in the past. Even for visitors, he was placed in a tiny cell with barely enough room to stand or sit.... [ more ]

  Boston Globe, Saturday, October 11, 2014
  
  
• State psychiatric prison under federal scrutiny
  
  BOSTON (AP) - A federally funded watchdog group has launched an investigation into the treatment of inmates at Bridgewater State Hospital psychiatric prison.... [ more ]
  Associated Press, Thursday, April 17, 2014
  
  
• Mass. prisons rely too much on solitary confinement
  
  Massachusetts prisons still rely heavily -- too heavily -- on the use of solitary confinement to discipline and control prisoners. Other than Arkansas, only Massachusetts allows prisoners to be sentenced for up to 10 years in isolation for ...... [ more ]
  Boston Globe, Wednesday, June 5, 2013
  
  
• Prison suicide questions institutional conditions
  
  27 year-old inmate Michael Keohane used a torn sheet to hang himself in his cell at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center on Sunday, April 9.... [ more ]
  Insideprison.com, Saturday, April 1, 2006
  
  

Prison Life & Culture

• It's hard to study black men because so many of them are in prison
  
  The high incarceration rates of black men generate a lot of attention, and are known to have all sorts of negative downstream effects on the inmates and the communities they leave behind. A new study out of Yale medical school and published in the journal Health Affairs hits on a less recognized one: all that prison time makes it hard to study health conditions in black men.... [ more ]
  Boston Globe, Sunday, May 11, 2014
  
  
• No jailhouse nuptials for Hernandez
  
  If Aaron Hernandez wants to marry his high school sweetheart and mother of his 7-month-old daughter, it's not going to happen while he's in the Bristol County jail, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday...... [ more ]
  USA Today, Saturday, July 6, 2013
  
  

Riots, Lockdowns & Escapes

• Search continues for escaped inmate in Berkshire County
  
  The search continues for a violent inmate, missing in the Berkshires. Police say Harry Chandler Junior escaped from sheriff's deputies while at Berkshire Medical Center, where he was receiving some treatment. ... [ more ]
  wnyt.com, Tuesday, July 9, 2019
  
  

Suicides in Prison

• Leslie Schuler, Worcester man who killed son, kills self in prison
  
  WORCESTER — Leslie G. Schuler, the Worcester man convicted of beating his 7-year-old son to death on Father's Day 2009, committed suicide in prison this morning, according a spokesman for the state Department of Correction. ... [ more ]
  Worcester Telegram and Gazette, Saturday, May 24, 2014
  
  

Workplace & Industry News, and Science & Tech News

• Davis to join tech startup fighting crime ; Mark43 analyzes data and streamlines records
  
  In an unlikely next move for career law officer Edward F. Davis, the former Boston police commissioner is joining a tech startup.

  Davis will take a board seat with Mark43, a company founded by three Harvard University graduates that has been making big waves in the law enforcement community.... [ more ]

  Boston Globe, Thursday, February 27, 2014
  
  
• Officers allegedly assaulted by seven prisoners
  
  Inmates responsible for a vicious attack at a Massachusetts prison faced a judge on Thursday. ... [ more ]
  WHDH, Friday, June 8, 2007