MCI-Framingham women's prison needs a modern building
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According to the state-commissioned report, the number of women in state custody peaked in 2007 at 844. MCI-Framingham today has capacity to hold
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Under former governor Charlie Baker, the state was eying
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Healey's proposal,
According to
Asked about the projected cost of the overhaul, Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance Commissioner Adam Baacke said construction costs have doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic (likely because of inflation, a surge in materials prices, supply chain issues, and potential tariffs). He also asserted working in a prison is inherently expensive because materials need to be durable and because of security and logistical concerns during construction. Baacke said reusing existing buildings, as is the plan, would be cheaper than building all new spaces.
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But many advocates who work with incarcerated women — and some legislators who support their cause — argue that incarcerated women don't need a new prison. Rather, they argue, the state should release many of these women, provide better treatment while they are in prison, and spend the $360 million projected price tag on programs to keep women out of prison in the first place.
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'It's hard to look at this $360 million proposal about a new prison with anything but skepticism when there's so many steps that could be taken now … that could improve the lives of women at Framingham,' said Jesse White, interim deputy director of Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts. White pointed to improved visitation policies, limiting the use of strip searches, and making it easier for people to obtain parole, including medical parole.
There is certainly more the Department of Correction and lawmakers can and should do to make prison a place for rehabilitation. But there will always be some women who need to be incarcerated, and they deserve a modern, safe prison facility, which MCI-Framingham today cannot provide.
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As Department of Correction Commissioner Shawn Jenkins points out, updating the facility will provide a more welcoming environment for visitors and volunteers, while creating more comfortable spaces for living and programming.
The Healey administration should look to control construction costs and listen to prisoners and their advocates as it designs programs for the new facility. But we believe it is on the right track in seeking to build a smaller, more modern prison in Framingham.
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Fedorenko The Justice Department's new memo on denaturalization policies suggests that government lawyers might be able to pick ripe cases and expedite naturalized citizens as part of the Trump administration's aggressive goal of deporting millions of illegal immigrants. But a historic South Florida case that lasted for years suggests otherwise, because of the extraordinary due process afforded the defendant: Feodor Fedorenko, a former guard at the infamous Treblinka death camp in Poland, where the Nazis killed about 900,000 Jews during the Holocaust. When the Ukrainian-born Fedorenko applied for a visa to enter the United States in 1949, he lied about his activities during the war. He was granted a visa and lived in the U.S. under the radar for about 20 years. He then applied for U.S. citizenship and once again lied about his activities during the war and failed to disclose his collaboration with the Nazis in carrying out war crimes. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen and continued with his life working at a factory in Connecticut — until his retirement in Miami Beach. Authorities caught up with him. In 1978, federal prosecutors moved to strip Fedorenko of citizenship at trial before U.S. District Judge Norman Roettger in Fort Lauderdale. Fedorenko's case, which was cited several times in the Jean-Baptiste ruling by the appeals court, featured dramatic testimony by a half-dozen Jewish survivors of Treblinka who were living in Israel, by Fedorenko himself and by character witnesses. When asked about the gas chambers at the camp, Fedorenko testified that he never went near them, though he could see them from the guard tower where he was stationed occasionally, according to 2014 book, 'Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust.' Fedorenko, who considered himself a 'prisoner of war' even though he worked as a private in the German army, acknowledged that the Germans gave him a gun. But he denied that he ever whipped or shot an inmate. The lead Justice Department lawyer, Jon Sale, who had been an assistant special Watergate prosecutor, was tasked with proving by 'clear and convincing' evidence that Fedorenko illegally procured his citizenship by hiding his past as a Nazi guard from U.S. immigration authorities. But in the end, Roettger rejected the testimony of the Treblinka survivors and spared Fedorenko from being denaturalized. Although Roettger was not entirely convinced of Fedorenko's 'do no evil' depiction of himself as a Treblinka guard, the judge never took the next step of finding that his denial of what witnesses said about him was also untrue. Sale's team appealed, and the judge's ruling was overturned in 1979. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that ruling, leading to the former Nazi guard's denaturalization. 'Even then, his due process rights continued to be honored when the Immigration and Naturalization Service afforded him administrative hearings and appeals,' Sale, a prominent defense lawyer in Miami, told the Herald. 'After all this due process, he was finally deported to the Soviet Union.' There, because of his commission of war crimes in Crimea, Fedorenko, 79, was tried, found guilty and executed in 1987, a year after his deportation.
