Tag Archive for: Prisoners Legal Services

Judge approves $6.75 million settlement over violence against prisoners at Mass. prison

A federal judge has approved a final $6.75 million settlement in a class action lawsuit involving violence against prisoners at Massachusetts maximum security prison.

The approval means that more than 150 prisoners and those who have been released will receive between $10,000 and $40,000 after a crackdown at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in 2020. Dozens of prisoners alleged they were beaten, attacked with dogs, racially targeted and retaliated against after an attack on correction officers.

The lawsuit said correction officers and correctional tactical teams engaged in a “brutal and calculated collective revenge” against individuals who were not involved in the initial attack. The suit said officers used Taser guns, pepper ball guns, chemical agents and dogs against prisoners. According to the suit, dozens of prisoners were also forced to kneel against a wall with their hands and ankles shackled for hours.

No officers were criminally charged.

David Milton, an attorney with Prisoners Legal Services of Massachusetts, which filed the suit with the firm Hogan Lovells, said settlements aren’t common in class-action lawsuits involving prisoners. He said he hopes it will serve as a deterrent against future violence and help promote change at Souza, which he called the state’s most violent prison.

“Ultimately there needs to be a culture shift there,” Milton said. “It’s really a culture of violence and a punitive, restrictive atmosphere. There needs to be more of a focus on rehabilitation and programming and education. That’s ultimately what’s gonna bring about reduced violence and significant change.”

The defendants in the suit included officers who participated in the reported violence, as well as high-ranking Department of Correction officials and former DOC Commissioner Carol Mici.

The settlement also establishes reforms including implementing use-of-force restrictions on officers, requiring the removal of officers who have been found to have used excessive force and implementing diversity and implicit bias training.

Before the settlement was finalized Tuesday, state officials said they’ve taken steps toward reforms such as changes to use-of-force policies and implementing a body-worn camera program.

“This settlement represents a final step in a series of actions the Department of Correction has taken in response to the incident, including a thorough review of existing policies and the implementation of key reforms,” said DOC Commissioner Shawn Jenkins in a press release.

Brutality Paralegal

Prisoners’ Legal Services (PLS) is seeking an outstanding full-time Brutality Paralegal advocate committed to protecting the civil rights of incarcerated individuals. The Brutality Paralegal is responsible for combatting staff-on-prisoner assaults in Massachusetts prisons and jails. The Brutality Paralegal functions as the PLS authority regarding incidents of staff-on-prisoner brutality within the MA prison system, serving as the primary resource for information on brutality trends and policies. This role involves investigating staff-on-prisoner assaults, advocating for affected prisoners, and providing legal assistance.
Responsibilities Include but not are not limited to: Client Intake:
Litigation and Policy support:
Administrative/Other:
Qualifications:
Preferred qualifications but not required
Benefits and Salary
PLS offers a very competitive salary within the legal services field and commensurate with experience with a starting salary of $53,750. PLS provides a comprehensive benefits package, including generous PTO, loan forgiveness program, 100% paid full medical, dental and vision coverage, a 401k retirement plan, disability and life insurance. Flex time or other alternative arrangements considered. PLS is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
How to Apply
Please send a cover letter, resume, writing sample and references attached to a single email to lrydzewski@plsma.org with the subject line “Brutality Paralegal” as soon as possible. Interviews will take place on a rolling basis until the position is filled.
No phone calls or mail inquiries please.
BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ individuals, formerly incarcerated and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

State agrees to pay nearly $7 million, change policy following prisoner lawsuit

Massachusetts will pay nearly $7 million and implement major reforms to settle a lawsuit by Prisoners’ Legal Services (PLS) over alleged guard retaliation at Souza-Baranowski prison after a 2020 inmate attack. About 150 inmates will receive $5.75 million. Reforms include body cameras, limits on K-9 use, racial bias training, and stricter oversight. PLS calls it a landmark step against systemic abuse.

Read the original story here. 

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The state has agreed to pay nearly $7 million and make numerous policy changes to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged guards at its Shirley maximum-security prison engaged in a violent retribution campaign following an inmate attack on staff in 2020. 

The agreement, which will need to be approved by a federal judge in Worcester, was hailed by Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts as a “landmark” agreement that would address long-standing problems at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center.

“This proposed settlement is about holding (the Department of Corrections) accountable for the harm it causes by perpetuating a culture of violence at (Souza) and allowing officers to harm incarcerated people with impunity,” David Milton, a lawyer at Prisoners’ Legal Services, said in a press release.

Both Prisoners’ Legal Services, which sued on behalf of about 150 prisoners, and the DOC framed the agreement in positive terms in respective press releases.

The agreement revolves around an alleged weekslong campaign of retribution against prisoners following a Jan. 10, 2020, inmate attack that left four corrections officers seriously injured.

Sixteen inmates were charged and transferred out of the prison, where, the lawsuit alleges, other inmates experienced weeks of retribution during a period of lockdown.

Lawyers for the prisoners alleged the abuse including beating, kicking, gouging eyes, “grabbing testicles,” smashing faces into the ground or wall, deploying Tasers and pepper ball guns, having K-9 dogs bite prisoners and excessively tightening handcuffs, “among other positional torture acts.”

They further alleged some corrections officers wore “Punisher” decals on their helmets during the alleged brutality, asserting in court documents that the comic book antihero figure is a “white supremacist logo.”

In its press release, the DOC did not address the lawsuit’s specific allegations; it said the “events” the lawsuit covered occurred when the facility “was placed in secure status through February 6, 2020, during which time tactical responses were carried out in an effort to restore order to the facility.”

Corrections Commissioner Shawn Jenkins noted in the release that the state did not wait for settlement discussions to act, saying it “proactively amended use of force regulations, updated policies on K-9 deployment and disciplinary investigations and implemented a Body-Worn Camera policy to enhance transparency, accountability and training across all DOC facilities.

“This settlement represents a final step in a series of actions the Department of Corrections has taken in response to the incident, including a thorough review of existing policies and the implementation of key reforms,” Jenkins said.

Both press releases listed a number of policy changes, which Prisoners’ Legal Services said were long-overdue measures needed to help stem a tide of abuse against prisoners it has argued has fueled a cycle of violence at Souza, the state’s only maximum-security prison.

“The events of 2020 were not isolated incidents but part of a pattern in which decisions made in the running of the prison have too often given officers the green light to commit violence against incarcerated people,” Milton, the Prisoner’s Legal Services Lawyer, asserted.

The reforms that have either already been or are proposed to be implemented include removing corrections officers found to have used excessive force from units that provide special responses (called Special Operations Response Units) and prohibiting them to reapply for three years, prohibiting the use of K-9s except to regain control after major disorders, implementing racial bias training, requiring racial identifications to be self-reported to avoid misidentification by DOC staff that can distort demographic data, requiring name tags for Special Operations officers, implementing a body camera program that requires filming during any interactions that pose security risk (and imposing discipline on officers who do not comply), creating an anonymous tip line for employees to report staff misconduct and tightening use of force and reporting requirements.

“This proposed settlement recognizes that systemic abuse requires systemic solutions,” Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts wrote in its news release.

Terrence Reidy, secretary of the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, which oversees the DOC, said the settlement “reflects the DOC’s steadfast commitment to promoting the safety and security of everyone who lives and works within our state correctional facilities.

“We remain dedicated to partnering with the DOC and its stakeholders to ensure a correctional environment that meets its complex operational demands while advancing rehabilitation in a way that is fair, just and effective for all,” he said.

Under to the proposed settlement, about 150 inmates covered through the lawsuit would collectively receive $5.75 million, while the lawyers who represented them would receive $1 million.

When is solitary confinement not solitary confinement? Mass. lawmaker, state spar over definition (MassLive)

Below is an excerpt from an article published by MassLive on September 26 citing advocate concerns over the DOC’s use of solitary confinement, despite a recently enacted comprehensive criminal justice reform bill. Prisoner’s Legal Services’ Jesse White is quoted.

When Massachusetts lawmakers passed a sweeping criminal justice reform bill in 2018, advocates and state officials hailed it as a significant accomplishment.

But one legislator who helped draft the bill says it has not been implemented in the state’s prisons.

State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Middlesex/Worcester, pointed specifically to reforms surrounding what he dubbed solitary confinement, drawing a link between the supposed failure to follow the letter of the law and violence inside prisons.

To Eldridge, the spirit of the law has been lost in translation.

For example, the law requires incarcerated men at any prison to spend at least three hours outside of their cell each day.

At the Souza-Baranowski prison in Lancaster, a maximum-security facility, Eldrige said men spend most of that time handcuffed to a table or in a “small outdoor cage.

“Is that actually following the law, or is that just continued solitary confinement?” Eldridge posited.

Read more at MassLive. 

Plymouth jail complaints reveal pattern of abuse against ICE detainees, report claims (WBUR)

Below is an excerpt of an article published by WBUR on September 16 addressing a recent report by Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts and Boston University School of Law that claims that staff at Plymouth County Correctional Facility have consistently mistreated immigrant detainees, citing two decades of complaints.

Citing two decades-worth of complaints about overcrowding, inadequate health care and other mistreatment, a new report alleges Plymouth County Correctional Facility staffers engaged in a pattern of abuse against immigrant detainees.

Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts and Boston University School of Law’s Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program based their report, released Monday, on records of complaints and violations dating as far back as 2002.

The documents revealed a range of issues, including insufficient access to legal counsel and the punitive use of solitary confinement. Plymouth is the sole county in Massachusetts that retains an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain and house immigrants in its jail.

Boston University law professor Sarah Sherman-Stokes, who directs the school’s immigrants’ rights program, said the findings illustrate a clear violation of the rights of immigrants detained at Plymouth, as well as a failure of accountability by ICE officials.

“At Plymouth, we’re seeing a jail who has consistently, over the course of 25 years, failed to comply with recommendations made by oversight agencies, has failed to comply, even minimally, with the national detention standards, and yet has continued to be rewarded with a contract with ICE,” she said.

Read more at WBUR.

Some Mass. county jails have millions in profits off inmates sitting in accounts (MassLive)

Below is an excerpt from an article published by MassLive on August 18, drawing attention to Massachusetts county jails’ profiting from incarcerated people through commissary markups and other means. Prisoners’ Legal Services’ James White is quoted.

Earlier this month, when Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux said he would spend $1.6 million in profits made off inmates to fund air conditioning at his jail facilities, the announcement shined a light on a particular pot of money maintained by jails and prisons across the state.

An inmate canteen fund is financed by the often double-digit percentage markups placed on commissary goods, such as snacks, drinks, postage or clothing, that inmates purchase from what are essentially convenience stores inside correctional facilities. In Bristol County, before Heroux’s tenure, the markup was 32%.

The canteen fund is earmarked by state law to be used, in turn, for the “general welfare” and benefit of inmates. So how did Bristol County’s inmate canteen fund amass to an eye-popping $1.6 million?

It turns out Bristol isn’t out of the ordinary.

A review by MassLive of fiscal year 2023 data shows out of the state’s 13 county jails overseen by sheriff’s departments, five counties — Bristol, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Worcester — had canteen accounts over $1 million. Two of them had funds over $2 million.

Read more at MassLive.

‘A slap in the face’: The state slashed funding for free prison and jail calls, raising concerns (Boston Globe)

Below is an excerpt from an article published by the Boston Globe on August 26. The article questions where state funding will come from for no-cost prison calls after the initial funding of $20 million is cut to $10 million. Prisoners’ Legal Services’ Jesse White is quoted in the article.

Months after the state made phone conversations free for incarcerated people, the number of calls has doubled in state prisons, heartening advocates who long pushed to shift a heavy financial burden off families.

Quickly, however, a new concern has surfaced: The state has slashed the money intended to pay for it.

The state budget that lawmakers passed, and Governor Maura Healey signed last month provides $10 million to cover the costs of those now-free phone calls, just half of what the Legislature allocated for the launch of the initiative in December.

That initial $20 million is expected to cover the first eight months of free calls after the law took effect. Should phone usage remain steady or continue growing, the $10 million allocation likely won’t meet demand this fiscal year, prompting one sheriff to warn that correction officials may have to restrict, or eliminate, phone access to rein in the rising tab.

“If that money doesn’t come back to us, then I have to make a decision. The phones may get turned off,” said Hampden Sheriff Nicholas Cocchi, the president of the Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association. Sheriffs oversee the county jails and correctional facilities, while the state runs the prisons.

Read more at the Boston Globe

Prison Reform’s Shell Game (Boston Review)

Below is an excerpt from an article published in the Boston Review on July 10. The article by Bonnie Tenneriello discusses the steps Massachusetts has taken to reduce incarceration. Bonnie discusses efforts implemented as a result of Massachusetts’s 2018 prison reform law. Although the reforms are insufficient, they reflect growing awareness around imprisonment.

I first saw Davongie Stone last year through a small window in a very solid cell door. Representing Prisoners’ Legal Services, where I work as an attorney, I was touring a unit in Massachusetts’s maximum-security prison as a member of an oversight committee created by a 2018 criminal justice reform law. After years of grassroots pressure, the state legislature had passed measures intended to limit the use of solitary confinement, a practice that the United Nations Special Rapporteur has said can amount to torture.

We were there to observe the transformation of what had previously been called the Restrictive Housing Unit (RHU), one of the many euphemisms Massachusetts has employed for solitary confinement. The unit was now known as a Behavioral Assessment Unit (BAU), part of a revamp that officials like to say has ended solitary in the state’s prison system. An even older defunct name for solitary—Special Management Unit—was still stenciled on the doors.

Stone is a tall, young Black man with long dreadlocks and a serious demeanor. He recalls being sent to the unit because he had refused to live with a cellmate. Suffering from severe PTSD, bipolar disorder, and anxiety, he was overwhelmed by the idea of being locked in a cell with someone else nearly all day. He had come into the system six years before we met, at twenty years old, with all the things that funnel people into incarceration—childhood abuse, entry into foster care and then the juvenile justice system, and brown skin. When he was twelve, a psychological evaluator described him as “a young man who has experienced a debilitating degree of trauma and uncertainty in his environment” and noted among his strengths, “he is intelligent, is genuinely interested in others, and strives to remain hopeful about his future.” He landed in prison for a violent offense at twenty-one.

Read more at the Boston Review.

Mass. state prison health care scrutinized (Bay State Banner)

Below is an excerpt from an article in the Bay State Banner published on June 29. The article highlights VitalCore, the new contractor for health care services for the prison population, after years of inadequate services. Prisoners’ Legal Services’ Staff Attorney Ada Lin is quoted.

The Massachusetts Department of Corrections last month announced a new contractor to provide health care services in state prisons, as care and mortality in prisons has received increased scrutiny in recent years.

The contract, with Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, comes as the DOC’s agreement with Wellpath, a Tennessee-based company, is set to expire this summer.

Wellpath, whose agreement goes to the end of this month, has faced concerns that it was failing to provide adequate care to individuals incarcerated in the state, with delayed or denied care, inadequate staffing and failure to following physician treatment plans.

Wellpath and YesCare, another company bidding for the new state contract, were the subject of a letter in February from U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey to the DOC. The politicians raised concerns about the two companies having been subject to congressional oversight and criticism because of record handling health care needs in jails and prisons across the country.

Limited access to care can have a distinct impact, especially on a prison population that trends older, said Ada Lin, a staff attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts.

Read more at the Bay State Banner.

After Reforms to Solitary Confinement, Massachusetts Prisoners Say Officials Just Renamed It (Bolts)

Below is an excerpt from an article published by Bolts Magazine on March 29, drawing attention to the violations of solitary confinement reform conditions set out in Massachusetts. Prisoner’s Legal Services’ Jesse White and Bonnie Tenneriello are quoted. 

Massachusetts prison officials put Elosko Brown in isolated housing in 2020 after accusing him of participating in an altercation with guards that January at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, the state’s maximum-security prison for men. Brown, who disputes the charge, says prison officials had different names for the units they put him in—the Department Disciplinary Unit (DDU) at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Cedar Junction, where he lived until 2021, and the Secure Adjustment Unit (SAU) at Souza, where he’s currently incarcerated and remains in isolation four years later.

But whatever the names, Brown and other people incarcerated in these units say they only replicated the punitive solitary conditions that triggered state reforms several years ago, evading the reforms’ goal to reduce prolonged isolation in the Massachusetts prison system. Over the past year, Brown and others incarcerated in state prisons who say they suffer from long-term isolation have gone to great lengths to protest their conditions and advocate lawmakers for reforms—from launching a hunger strike last October to testifying remotely before a legislative committee in January.

Read more at Bolts Magazine.