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JAILBREAK
Big-house alternatives
BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

Across the nation, ballooning state budget deficits have opened a window of opportunity for reformers of the criminal-justice system. More and more states are loosening mandatory-minimum sentences for drug offenders, shutting down facilities, and even releasing prisoners to save costs. Massachusetts officials have shuttered three state prisons since the fiscal crisis began in 2001, and measures to ease tough drug sentences are under consideration (see " Cheap Trick, " News and Features, June 6).

Despite such moves to curtail corrections spending, the law-and-order brigade still holds sway in this state. Indeed, the Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM) is close to signing off on a proposal to construct a new jail for female offenders in Western Massachusetts. Slated to begin this year, the plan calls for taxpayers to shell out $26 million to build a separate, 240-bed facility for women in Chicopee, which would serve Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire Counties. Though the project has already been put out to bid, DCAM has not yet assigned its start date.

And, if the Springfield Harm Reduction Coalition has anything to say about it, it never will. The coalition, consisting of a half-dozen social-justice and community groups in and around Springfield, has just banded together to stop the proposed jail, which its members call " a gross misuse " of precious state funds. Asks the coalition’s Holly Richardson, by way of explanation: " How can the state take out a loan that we, as taxpayers, will have to pay back in a time of dire fiscal conditions? How, when we don’t need this facility, and we don’t want it? "

As it stands, most female county prisoners in Western Massachusetts end up at the Ludlow County Jail, which houses approximately 1800 inmates. Of them, 160 or so are women. Yet state statistics, Richardson and her colleagues note, show that 70 percent to 85 percent of women prisoners are low-level, nonviolent drug offenders — who, they argue, could benefit from alternative sentencing instead. In 1996, the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission highlighted the Ludlow female population in a report documenting the lack of alternative sentencing for women prisoners. The commission found that many women at Ludlow could, in fact, benefit from " intermediate sanctions " like drug-treatment and job-training programs, as opposed to jail time.

Not surprisingly, county jail officials disagree. They paint the Ludlow facility as ill-equipped to serve women prisoners. Because the jail houses both male and female offenders, the women don’t enjoy the kind of access to the library, dining facilities, and rehabilitative programs that the men do. Larry LaJoie, the assistant deputy superintendent at the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department, which operates Ludlow, says the women’s access is " limited " because of what he terms " movement issues. " Jail officials don’t like to move men prisoners to programs at the same time that they move women prisoners, due to security and harassment concerns. As a result, the women can only avail themselves of the jail’s programs on certain days. Adds LaJoie, " We see this [new facility] as a fairness issue for the women. "

Prison-reform advocates would rather see alternative sentencing for nonviolent, minimum-security prisoners — like the women now incarcerated at Ludlow. Next Tuesday, Richardson and others will travel to Beacon Hill to reach out to politicians who have shown interest in criminal-justice reform, such as State Representatives Kay Khan, Pat Jehlen, and Ruth Balser. They’re calling on legislators to stop the DCAM construction bid, and to redirect the $26 million to alternative-sentencing programs.

After the lobbying blitz, advocates will host a public forum at the Community Church in Boston, 565 Boylston Street, at 4:30 p.m., to enlist local social-justice and community advocates in their campaign.

Issue Date: July 11 - 17, 2003
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