Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts

In May, Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts (PLS) and co-counsel Hogan Lovells reached a proposed approximately $7 million settlement in Diggs v. Mici, a federal class action lawsuit challenging systematic violence and racial discrimination at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center (SBCC). It is likely that the Court will grant final approval to the settlement in the near future.

Diggs v. Mici, filed in January 2022 and certified as a class action by U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman in September 2024, addresses events that occurred between January 10 and February 6, 2020. During this period, which followed an assault on a few corrections officers by a small number of prisoners, corrections officers engaged in a weeks-long campaign of retaliatory violence against approximately 160 incarcerated individuals at SBCC.

The complaint documented extensive use of force including physical beatings, deployment of Tasers and pepper ball guns, use of chemical agents, and K-9 attacks. Many were forced to kneel in stress positions with hands and ankles shackled, in some cases for several hours.

The lawsuit also addressed racial discrimination at the facility. Black and Latino individuals were targeted for particularly harsh treatment because of their race, including having dreadlocks cut or yanked from their heads, being subjected to racial slurs, and experiencing disproportionate use of force based on their race.

Since opening in 1998, SBCC has generated a disproportionate number of excessive force complaints to PLS. The facility consistently shows patterns of violence involving chemical agents, head injuries, and racial discrimination by staff. The 2020 events represented an intensification of ongoing problems with the facility’s approach to managing incarcerated populations.

Settlement Terms

The proposed settlement allocates close to $6 million in direct compensation to class members who suffered physical and psychological injuries during the January-February 2020 period. Class members who filed claims are expected to receive an average of close to $40,000 each. The settlement also mandates significant operational changes at SBCC and within the Department of Correction more broadly:

Personnel and Accountability

• Officers found to have used excessive force must be removed from Special Operations Response Units (SORU) for three years
• DOC must review any civil verdict or finding against staff members to determine appropriate internal disciplinary action
• Special Operations officers must wear name tags
• An anonymous staff-misconduct hotline will be established for DOC employees

Use of Force Restrictions

• Patrol K-9 dogs may only be used to regain control after a major disorder, and must remain muzzled as default policy
• Kneeling as a stress position is prohibited
• Video teams must be automatically activated whenever special operations units are deployed
• Additional documentation procedures are required for injuries to incarcerated people following use of force incidents

Training and Policy Development

• Diversity and implicit bias training must be incorporated into the training academy curriculum and annual staff training
• Additional training on disorder management, forced moves, and tactical responses is required
• Incarcerated people must be allowed to self-identify their racial/ethnic identify at booking rather than have this identify assigned by staff; DOC has consistently misidentified people of color as white, which not only denies the individuals their right to self-identify, but also skews demographic data related to use of force and other incidents involving people of color
• Use of racial slurs by DOC employees is explicitly prohibited with disciplinary consequences for violations

This case is part of PLS’s ongoing work challenging conditions in Massachusetts correctional facilities. The organization prioritizes litigation involving health and mental health care, staff assaults, extreme confinement conditions, misuse of segregation and isolation, and racial equity. Diggs v. Mici encompasses several of these focus areas and represents the kind of systematic litigation necessary to address entrenched patterns of rights violations.

The events at issue in this case highlight that brutality in corrections is not perpetrated by a few “bad apples” but by a broken system that not only fails to rehabilitate incarcerated people but actively harms them physically and psychologically. The settlement recognizes that systemic abuse requires systemic solutions.