Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts
Governor Maura Healey’s administration recently announced a $360 million plan to renovate MCI-Framingham, framing it as an investment in rehabilitation and correctional innovation. While the stated intentions may sound progressive, this proposal represents a dangerous step backward for criminal justice reform in Massachusetts—and advocates are sounding the alarm.
What Incarcerated Women Actually Face
PLS represents incarcerated people throughout the Commonwealth and engages regularly with women at MCI-Framingham. The issues they report stem from a lack of institutional will, not inadequate infrastructure. Women describe frequent officer misconduct including misogynistic slurs, degradation during strip searches, and a culture of retaliation that prevents them from using the grievance process.
Consider one stark example: MCI-Framingham recently installed shower curtains with large clear sections that leave women’s breasts, buttocks, and genital areas visible to male correctional officers. Despite advocacy from PLS and state legislators, the facility refuses to return to the opaque curtains that previously protected women’s privacy. This decision reveals the institution’s true priorities—and no amount of new construction will change that fundamental disregard for dignity.
Visitation policies have become increasingly draconian. Incarcerated people can no longer have physical contact with loved ones during visits or sit side-by-side with them. This is particularly harmful to incarcerated women, who are disproportionately primary caregivers to their children.
In PLS’s 2022 report, “A Different Way Forward,” incarcerated women detailed experiences of sexual harm, violence, degradation, medical and mental health neglect, and discrimination. They shared accounts of being raped, watched while naked, sexually harassed, retaliated against, and subjected to abusive strip searches. Nothing has prevented the DOC from addressing these harms. Instead, the agency has cultivated a culture of impunity, neglect, and abuse.
Throughout the Commonwealth’s prisons, we are confronting the oldest prison population in the country, with incarcerated elders experiencing medical neglect, cognitive decline, unmanaged pain, and denial of essential medical equipment. Only 2% of the DOC’s budget goes to programming, and many incarcerated people are released with no re-entry support.
The Problem with Prison Construction as Reform
The history of American corrections is littered with failed attempts to build our way to rehabilitation. The Correctional Institution for Women on Rikers Island opened in 1971 with colorful walls meant to improve conditions but was investigated for overcrowding and abysmal medical care within months. York Correctional Facility in Connecticut was once praised as “one of the most progressively designed prisons in the country” but later plagued by rampant sexual assault by staff.
Massachusetts has its own examples. The Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center claims a “trauma-informed, gender responsive” approach, yet has faced accusations of sexual abuse and wrongful deaths. Even MCI-Framingham itself was originally constructed as a reform measure. MCI Norfolk was founded as the nation’s first “community corrections center.” Souza Baranowski was touted as one of the most advanced prisons of its time. Today, these facilities are sites of violence, neglect, and deprivation.
As one PLS client testified while advocating for the prison construction moratorium previously passed by the legislature and vetoed by then-Governor Baker: “if you move us, you’ll just be transferring our problems, not solving them.”
A Misallocation of Critical Resources
With only 218 women currently incarcerated at MCI-Framingham, the proposed investment amounts to approximately $1.6 million per woman. This is unconscionable when Massachusetts communities desperately need resources for violence prevention, substance use disorder treatment, housing, healthcare, and jobs programs.
Massachusetts has made remarkable progress since the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2018, reducing its incarcerated population by close to 40% over five years without corresponding increases in violence. However, as a 2024 MassInc report notes, racial disparities have only increased. As of 2014, Massachusetts imprisoned Black people at 7.9 times the rate of white people and Latinx people at 4.9 times the rate of white people.
Approximately 84% of incarcerated women have experienced sexual or domestic violence prior to incarceration. Rather than receiving timely support and resources to heal, these survivors are punished for actions stemming from their trauma. The vast majority pose no danger to the public and need community support and robust services, not continued re-traumatization in a carceral setting.
What True Investment Looks Like
In PLS’s report, “The Way Home: The Urgency of Decarcerating Women in Massachusetts,” advocates highlight existing pathways to decarceration that are currently underutilized and detail new pathways that should be implemented before any construction project is contemplated. Incarcerated women have been clear: they need pathways home and investment in communities, not a new prison.
Real investment in people means fully implementing parole, medical parole, and clemency. It means expanding access to programming, education, job training, and healthcare. It means investing in community-based safety initiatives and re-entry support. Well-resourced communities rarely end up behind prison walls, and any investment in those communities will carry far more potential to improve public safety than a new prison complex.
PLS is aware that MCI-Framingham has fallen into disrepair through decades of institutional neglect, and targeted repairs for safe housing are necessary. But this $360 million project goes far beyond that scope. It represents a concession that 150 years from now, we will again be debating whether new construction is needed for yet another “modern” prison.
The administration must pause all planning for this project and explore genuine alternatives that prioritize decarceration and community investment. Massachusetts has an opportunity to be a national leader in criminal justice reform—but only if we have the courage to invest in people and communities rather than in buildings designed to cage them.
