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.
