Massachusetts Prison Closure Reflects Success of Criminal Justice Reforms
On January 24, 2024, the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) announced it was closing the Massachusetts Correctional Institution (MCI) in Concord, and a report released the same month by a pair of local nonprofits celebrated the decision for reflecting the success of 2018’s Criminal Justice Reform Act (CJRA).
The closure announcement prompted a warning to Gov. Maura Healy (D) from the Massachusetts Correctional Officers Federated Union that it “will burden our already violent and dangerous prisons.” But the space is simply no longer needed because the state’s incarceration rate has dropped to 172 per 100,000 residents—“not only the lowest in the country, but another order of magnitude below the U.S. average,” noted the report by Boston Indicators, a project of the nonprofit Boston Foundation, and think tank MassINC.
Key elements of CJRA included reforms to pretrial detention; decriminalizing low-level drug offenses; lower sentences for certain drug crimes (and increased prison terms for opioid-related offenses); expanded diversion programs for offenders with mental health issues; increased good time for prisoners who complete rehabilitative programs; implementing medical parole; and limitations on the use of solitary confinement. Even as these have cut the incarceration rate, Massachusetts cities have “mostly avoided the [recent] sharp spikes in both property and violent crime,” the report noted.
Other reforms since 2018 include increased access to treatment and recidivism-reduction programs, including medication assisted treatment for prisoners with addiction problems. Plus the state has invested $33 million in reentry services and made phone calls from state prisons and local jails free. Massachusetts has also spent $50 million on “crime prevention and community economic development in high incarceration rate communities” since 2018, the report noted, and eliminated parole and probation fees.
With the state’s prison population down 30% since 2018 to its lowest level in 35 years, DOC decided to shutter MCI-Concord, a medium security prison that had been operating at half capacity. The decline in DOC’s population has not shifted prisoners to jails, either; county Houses of Correction report a 45% drop in their population.
However, the report cautioned that the incarceration rate for white state residents dropped far more than for nonwhites between 2017 and 2021. Similar disparities were reported in criminal charges, with a 26% decrease for whites between 2019 and 2023 compared with a decline of 13% for Blacks and only 1% for Latinos. The number of white pretrial detainees fell 41% versus just 3% for Blacks, while the number of Latino pretrial detainees actually rose 37%.
The report concluded with five recommendations for continued improvements in the state’s criminal justice system: increasing community-based treatment and continuing care capacity; expanding community reinvestment and restorative justice efforts; maintaining investments in reentry and post-release housing for released prisoners; fully implementing CJRA data reporting and transparency requirements; and preparing a master plan for the state’s correctional facilities. See: Criminal Justice Reform in Massachusetts: A Five-Year Progress Assessment, MassINC and Boston Indicators (Jan. 2024).
Additional sources: Boston Globe, WGBH
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