Every semester my students from Voices Behind Bars, a class I teach at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, go to prison. They used to visit state institutions but now that the Massachusetts state prisons do not offer tours (perhaps because it is a hassle to have outsiders trooping through them and criticizing what they see) the students take a tour of Billerica House of Correction, where they experience confinement to some degree and listen for an hour to an incarcerated man talk about his life and what it is like to be behind bars.

Originally, the Middlesex House of Correction was built in 1929 and housed 300 men. Now it has more than 1100, after a $37 million dollar expansion which prison officials say was to accommodate the closing of the Cambridge Jail —not without objections from activists and community members who opposed more prison building (actually costing $43 million per The Lowell Sun.)

I’ve always thought it’s not ideal to have my students learn about prison by going to a place where people are only kept for 2 1/2 years,  That’s the county sentence at a house of correction. Certainly a far cry from a life sentence. I told myself students couldn’t really learn as much about the strains of prison without seeing the harsher conditions that exist in state institutions. That is, until this last visit.

Most of the tour went as usual. We went through the older part of the facility where cells can get up to 110 degrees in the summer. We saw the visiting room where men talk to their loved ones through glass. The officer who showed the students around Billerica explained that prisoners must walk on the green stripes in the hallways; there were the usual men cleaning with mops and pushing large barrels down walkways; the smell was of too much cleaning fluid. We passed through the health unit where men were waiting to see practitioners and others were isolated in cells. It was prison as usual.

We no longer are allowed to see the Hole or what prison officials call the Segregation Unit, since men are there disciplined to solitary confinement which my students know Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy recently said can drive men mad. Therefore, the highlight of the tour is always taking them into what is called a “pod.” A pod is the relatively new term in prison construction where prisoners can live in a contained unit. These pods are somewhat stale and robot-like but they allow the COs the ability to see what is going on.

We entered the pod where men do drug treatment and have earned some privileges. It has the reputation of being a better place to reside than the old part of the institution which is pretty grim and can house two men in a cell. To the left is one old institutional unit at Blillerica, looking a little prettier than it really is with whitewashed grey walls, all somehow devoid of color in reality:

On the pod we entered, those incarcerated run some of the addiction groups themselves, we were told. On the tier above the day room where prisoners sit, eat, and play cards at the tables, are rows of cells where men live. Also those cells are on the first floor all around the room.  Each cell has a tiny vertical slit—a window—and when we come into their space, the men inevitably stare out the window at us. At times, they’ve pounded on their doors; at other times, they’ve all been at tables eating lunch, trying to ignore the fact that there are outsiders nearby.

This time, when the twenty of us entered, there were only a few men in their brownish beige uniforms sitting at tables. Another two were talking to the guards who policed the room, two perched at a computerized station at one end. The students all took turns entering a cell to see what it is like, a rather disturbing experience on many levels for most of them. One student, we’ll call her Sofia, suddenly turned toward me as Spanish was heard above us. She pointed up at a window where a man smiled widely and pressed his face against the slit.

“That’s my brother,” Sofia said, her eyes filling with tears.

I looked up and he waved at me, his sister’s teacher. Sofia looked away.

I asked the young woman if she had known he would be here, and yes, Sofia said, she knew he was in this  facility but no, she had no idea she might see him. She seemed torn, wanting to look, wanting to hide. She said under her breath as others continued their entrance into cells, as far as she knew, he had no hope of ever not doing drugs. She’d lost touch, she said. She couldn’t imagine he might be doing OK.

But the young man’s face, lit with joy when he saw her, and before we left that unit, it was almost as if a light went off for her too. Prison became about loneliness, about being apart, about the kind of pain that happens when families break up. It was no longer just about this space or this room or that hallway. Sofia’s brother, as close as he was, was nowhere near his sister. And would not be for a long time, perhaps never. She understood that and so did I.

When we exited Billerica that day, Sofia told the other students about her brother behind bars. Now, after walking through Billerica, and after being with Sofia, they understood why prison is not just a physical place, but a deep wound.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

There’s some good news about a bill that’s been filed by Massachusetts House Representative Kay Khan (D-Newton), now known as HD1073. The good news is that the bill aims to prevent employees of the opposite sex from the use of video cameras in jails or prisons during strip searches. At this point, some activists feel that the bill doesn’t go far enough, but hopefully that can be corrected.

A strip search in this context, refers to any search where a prisoner is required to remove all of his or her clothing. Per the language of the proposed bill which according to Khan’s office, is still under construction, a strip search “may include a visual inspection of a nude inmate’s oral, anal or vaginal cavity.”

The need for such a bill came about as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Law Offices of Howard Friedman in 2011 against Sheriff Michael J. Ashe and Assistant Superintendent Patricia Murphy of the Western Massachusetts Regional Correctional Center in Chicopee. I wrote about this case here1 and here2, explaining how taping of searches began in mid-September 2008.  According to the suit, 68 percent of the tapes show “some or all of the women’s genitals, buttocks, or breasts.” Per Friedman’s law office website: “From September 15, 2008 to May 20, 2010, males held the camera for about 70% of the strip searches.” While the jail contended that these videotapes were used for safety reasons and to document a “potentially dangerous move” from general population to the segregation unit, David Milton, an attorney in Friedman’s office, said of the jail, in a telephone interview in 2014,“No one could identify a single place in the country that videotaped strip searches.”

The suit contended that videotaping the searches violated the Fourth Amendment which protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. The case was successful and Judge Michael Ponser’s decision came down on August 26, 2014. The judge ruled for Debra Baggett, the plaintiff in the class-action case, and 178 former and current detainees at the Chicopee jail. The case sent a jolt through anyone who was complacent about such horrors as the public discovered that 274 strip searches had been videotaped, all of women, mostly by men who supposedly didn’t look. An article at Think Progress, reported that Judge Ponser stated in the decision, “The fact that the male officer, while operating the video camera, may be turned to one side or have his back turned will do little, for most female inmates, to diminish the sense of embarrassment, humiliation, and vulnerability that she must inevitably feel.”

A few months after the suit was settled, in November, 2014, Lois Ahrens, director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project, wrote a letter to the editor (LTE) which first appeared on Masslive.com and then in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.  She pointed out the cost of this process to taxpayers. Through a public records request, Ahrens discovered that the Sheriff’s office had spent close to $500,000 on lawyer’s fees to defend itself, saying they had not violated women’s rights when videotaping the searches.

Governor’s Councillor, Michael Albano, who represents the counties of Hampden, Hampshire, Berkshire and Franklin—where the Chicopee jail resides— became concerned about this. Ahrens said in an interview, that his interest was sparked after reading her LTE. Albano approached Rep. Khan about a bill.

Khan’s bill aims to add new language to Chapter 127 of the Massachusetts General Laws, which governs “Officers and Inmates of Penal and Reformatory Institutions, Parole and Pardons.” At this point, the language to be added is in flux and Khan said in a telephone interview that she hopes people will come to the to-be scheduled hearing to discuss their concerns. Concerns can and have changed bill language, said Khan.

The bill states that “Strip searches of inmates, including the videotaping thereof, shall not be conducted by or in the immediate vicinity of a correction officer or other employee of the opposite sex, except under an emergency or otherwise urgent situation.” This indicates that men cannot be videotaping body cavity searches of women except in emergency situations. “But what defines an emergency?” asked Ahrens. She said this needs to be clearly spelled out.

Ahrens also raised the issue that the bill does not call for outside oversight. If videotaping is mishandled, the superintendent or designees of the prison or jail get the news and are required to file a report. But Ahrens pointed out this could be problematic as they are the ones who have ordered it. “It’s a closed loop,” she added, and that doesn’t assure regulation. “The big question,” said Ahrens, is “Why do they have to videotape strip searches at all?”

Khan was receptive to all of these issues when hearing the criticism, and hopes that the bill can be ironed out in committee after public hearings when testimony on the bill will be heard. She said she too wondered why videotaping was necessary, and would ask the Department of Correction (DOC) that same question. “Oversight is a very good point,” she said, but admitted that even when the Department of Mental Health has gone behind bars to review conditions, it has been difficult to monitor some practices in the Department of Corrections (solitary confinement, for example).

In notes from a February 28 meeting of the Massachusetts Justice Network (MJN), a group that works on policy changes for incarcerated women, there was discussion of the bill. Suggestions were made that any searches of women should be based on new recommendations for the Bangkok Rules, the new UN global standards for justice-involved women. The Bangkok Rules put it this way: “Given the risk of abuse during pat-down searches and even more so during strip or invasive body searches, they must be carried out by female staff. Alternative screening methods should be developed.”

In other words, international standards say that we should end invasive searches. Period. Never mind videotaping them. About strip searches, MJN asked: “Why not use scanners and end demeaning (and trauma-inducing) body cavity searches.” Kay Khan said she was also receptive to this idea.

The protection of women prisoners is important. When shackling was ended in Massachusetts, it took many organizations coming together to raise their voices as to why shackling should not occur when pregnant women were giving birth behind bars. Now, Massachusetts has the opportunity to prohibit the videotaping of searches behind bars. In fact, it has the opportunity to raise questions about alternatives to invasive searches. Those organizations that got behind the inhumanity of shackling women need to speak out and help create a bill that has legs, and ultimately a law that protects the incarcerated from potentially abusive treatment.

“Massachusetts is one of the first states to consider parole for juveniles previously sentenced to life. A primer on what actually happens at these hearings, told through the lens of one juvenile lifer who was granted parole.” See my new post and more at

I have a new post on Truthout that I hope you’ll check out. It begins:

It was only for a moment, but on January 20, 2015, this country’s criminal punishment system got a general call for reform in President Obama’s state of the union address. With 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated people, it’s about time we heard this from our president. But what we didn’t hear was an analysis of exactly what we can do to shrink this massive system.

While Attorney General Eric Holder and many others have urged an end to needless mandatory minimums – a good step toward decarceration – this is not going far enough. Research from a variety of nonprofits like the Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch have shown that the majority of long-term prisoners, including many who have committed the most violent acts, are actually the best bet to exit prisons and not return to crime. More here.

Last week Barbara Dougan, Project Director of the Massachusetts office of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, convened a terrific roundtable discussion at the Massachusetts Bar Association in Boston. The host was Lee Constantine of the Mass Bar. The point was to share and discover what criminal justice and drug policy reforms that groups hope to turn into legislation for the upcoming 2015-16 session.

I attended as a member of the Coalition for Effective Public Safety (CEPS), and along with the more than twenty others around the table, we are hoping that next year we will bring change to Massachusetts with legislation.

Massachusetts State House Senate Chamber

Tony Smith of the New Start Project began the meeting. His organization advocates for reentry opportunities for people exiting prison. Their top priorities include repealing what the Prison Policy Institute, in an excellent report, calls a “misguided Massachusetts law”. This Registry of Motor Vehicles law (RMV) automatically suspends driver’s licenses of people convicted of a drug offense for up to five years, regardless of whether or not the original offense had anything to do with driving or road safety. I wrote about this here when I first heard about it last year.

Lois Ahrens, Director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project, was also representing the Pre-Trial Working Group (PTWG) which has as one of its priorities to stop the building of new jails and prisons, certainly as they say on their website: Massachusetts should have a moratorium on new construction “until bail reform and other pretrial diversion programs are implemented.” Reforming the outdated system of money bail is another top priority for the PTWG and was discussed by Norma Wassel, founder of Massachusetts Bail Fund, and a member of the Pre-Trial Working Group along with Ahrens. For more information on why bail jails are a bad idea see this article in Boston Magazine.

Andrea Goode-James, Executive Director of Families for Justice as Healing, and Rene Brimage, one of the members of that organization directly affected by policies affecting formerly incarcerated women, talked about services for women after prison. Their legislative priority is “to  create community-based sentencing alternatives for primary caretakers of dependent children.”

Juan Cofield, president of the New England Area Conference of the NAACP, and Bill Robinson, chair of the political action committee, talked about filing bills to end or limit the school to prison pipeline and police use of military equipment. They are also concerned about the cultural competency of law enforcement, and importantly, they want to file legislation addressing special prosecutors’ “inappropriate charges of murder” that primarily affect black citizens.

Prisoner Legal Services of Massachusetts, represented by Bonnie Tenneriello, will be filing legislation to stop some of the harsh solitary confinement conditions in Massachusetts, and are working on a bill for extraordinary conditions of illness and aging that should result in medical release from prison. They also have been very involved with what Tenneriello called “The Bridgewater Bill,” which aims to stop those with serious mental illnesses from restraints, solitary, and other harsh conditions that exacerbate issues for anyone much less those with mental health issues.

Liza Lunt of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said that they do not file bills but they lobby and support organizations who do file legislation. They are particularly interested, she said, in “the elimination of mandatory minimums,” and they are supporting statutory rape reform, expungement of records, ending harsh solitary confinement conditions, and they are advocating for medical release for prisoners.

The Coalition for Effective Public Safety, a group of many other organizations and individuals advocating for criminal justice reform, is supporting medical release, stopping solitary confinement, and parole reform. There is a group from CEPS currently working to decide what we feel is most important and necessary to improve parole. We do know that we are interested in presumptive parole, limiting setbacks when parolees are refused release by the Parole Board, right to counsel for parole revocation or rescission hearings, limiting the kinds of violations that result in revocation, and improving post incarceration supervision issues.

David Harris of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice said that they are not filing bills but as Harris also said, “we find ourselves in coalition with others.” Likewise, Len Engel of the Crime and Justice Institute at Community Resources for Justice said they do not have a Massachusetts agenda currently but they have seen renewed interest in justice reinvestment from some Massachusetts leaders. They also mentioned bail reform and mandatory minimums as on their agenda. Melissa Threadgill, who is working with Engel, also attended.

Hope Haff representing the National Association of Social Workers of Massachusetts said their agenda includes taking a stand against solitary confinement, backing the removal of mandatory minimums, as well as supporting compassionate release and the RMV bill that others discussed.

Mary Ann Walsh, FAMM’s lobbyist, and Barb Dougan talked about the mandatory minimum bill that they are working on with the Harm Reduction and Drug Reform Caucus in the Legislature. Maryann Frangules from Massachusetts Organization for  Addiction Recovery (MOAR) supports FAMM’s agenda. They also support repealing the RMV law and are working on legislation involving funding for residential treatment services. Additionally, they are considering if they need to strengthen language in an important piece of legislation for addiction and recovery, the Good Samaritan Law. Another recovery specialist, Connie Peters from the Association for Behavioral Healthcare is aiming to improve insurance to cover addiction services, and wants to create specific legislation to ask methadone clinics to be open to other treatments.

Lisa Hewitt and Maryann Calia, representing the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), said that they have “broad scope legislative initiatives” and mentioned several, including expungement of records, for those who have been falsely accused. They said that they could help others draft legislation and give people and organizations analysis on the issues–a real plus for everyone. Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel for CPCS, added that bail reform, mandatory minimums, decriminalizing low level offenses, and the rights of juveniles are also among their agenda items.

John Ward came from Roca (meaning rock in Spanish), a group serving 17-24 year-olds. They are interested in policies that will reduce the amount of incarceration in the Commonwealth. They want criminal record reform, the elimination of money bail, and more community corrections instead of prison and jail for young people. Ward mentioned the “massive chasm” that exists between law enforcement and youth and feels training of police needs to address this.

Mike Avitzur, from the Boston Bar Association, mentioned that they too want an end to mandatory minimums and are concerned about guarding the rights of those serving juvenile life without parole sentences (since the Diatchenko decision). They oppose the death penalty and are pursuing issues of mass incarceration and reentry for prisoners.

Rev. Paul Ford from the Boston Workers Alliance (BWA) said that he supported the omnibus bill being considered by Ex-Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement.  (EPOCA). They both want bail reform, an end to mandatory minimums, a repeal of the RMV bill, and parole reform. Ford said that BWA also was working on a campaign against gentrification that was pushing former prisoners out of housing opportunities.

Criminal Justice Policy Coalition‘s Rachel Corey said they are working with the Bail Fund and Jobs Not Jails, and offered their website for a place to house bills that will be filed. She plans to include details on the bills so that advocates can share information and support each other’s efforts. This is important because it is all too easy to lose touch. We should all send info to Corey at director@cjpc.org.

Until the next meeting!

Note: Senator James Eldridge (Dem-Acton) will be filing a restorative justice bill. Many legislators are already on board for the projects mentioned and others will be contacted. If there are other pieces of CJ legislation in the works, please let me know and I will add to this list.