On September 24, 2009, Suffolk Superior Court Judge John C. Cratsley ruled in a class-action lawsuit that Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson was housing prisoners under cruel and unusual conditions. According to Prison Legal News, “originally filed in 1998, the suit alleged that Hodgson was improperly triple-bunking prisoners at the Ash Street Jail, a pre-Civil War-era facility. The lawsuit also claimed that prisoners were being forced to sleep on the floor in ‘boats’ — portable bunks — and in common areas. The lawsuit was amended in 2004 to add a claim concerning Hodgson’s practice of ‘dry-celling’ prisoners at the Dartmouth House of Correction. ‘Dry-celled’ prisoners did not have access to a toilet.” Nevertheless, the prison capacity in Bristol County has fluctuated between 300% and 384% of the capacity the prisons were designed for.
Over the years, Tom Hodgson has been involved in numerous lawsuits, but conditions rarely seem to improve at facilities under his control. Among the frequent allegations — abuse of prisoners, violations of a State Judicial Court ruling barring unconstitutional ICE detentions, starving and denial of medical treatment, and filthy conditions in both the Dartmouth and New Bedford lockups.
In the last two years, inspections of the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office ICE Facility conducted by Nicholas Gale, a Massachusetts Environmental Health Inspector, have turned up repeat violations of health and safety standards: see reports on April 19, 2016 and November 21, 2016 and April 25, 2017. Likewise, the Women’s Center in North Dartmouth is not in compliance either: see this report on November 16, 2015. Conditions are the worst at the Ash Street Jail: see reports on June 5, 2013 and June 12, 2015 and January 12, 2016. You can download all these reports as a single PDF.
Each includes the following warning:
“This facility does not comply with the Department’s Regulations cited above. In accordance with 105 CMR 451.404, please submit a plan of correction within 10 working days of receipt of this notice, indicating the specific corrective steps to be taken, a timetable for such steps, and the date by which correction will be achieved. The plan should be signed by the Superintendent or Administrator and submitted to my attention, at the address listed above.”
Still, not one federal, state, or municipal agency has ever made the sheriff account for these violations. And it’s not for lack of reporting. Each is dutifully reported to a slew of bureaucrats — Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and New Bedford Departments of Health, both the Commissioner and Director of the Department of Corrections, various policy units within the state government, the governor, the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office itself, and clerks of both the Massachusetts House and Senate.
But nothing.
Countless newspaper articles have been written about the dungeon-like environment at the Ash Street Jail, the epidemic of suicides in Bristol County jails, and the cruelty of the sheriff.
Still nothing.
Human beings are being warehoused in inhuman, unsanitary conditions.
Does anybody care?
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