Department of Correction Begins Search for New Commissioner and Should Consider Input from Incarcerated Individuals

While the DOC has a rehabilitative mission on paper, it has a reputation for violating the civil rights of its incarcerated population and discriminating and retaliating against its employees. Ten years ago, Zalkind Law sued the DOC for discrimination because the DOC paid a female deputy superintendent significantly less than her male counterparts in the same role and for retaliation based the DOC’s failure to consider her for promotion after she complained of the DOC’s unlawful practices. In 2020, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the DOC’s treatment of incarcerated people who are facing mental health crises and found the DOC fails to accommodate prisoners suffering from serious mental health issues and instead exposes them to conditions that harm them or place them at serious risk of harm. In 2021, Robert Silva-Prentice and Dionisio Paulino, two men of color, incarcerated at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center sued the DOC for violating their civil rights under state and federal laws when a group of armed officers retaliated against Black and Latino men at the prison after an altercation between incarcerated men and officers broke out at the prison on January 10, 2020. According to the complaint filed in Massachusetts District Court, these officers—at the direction of then-Deputy Commissioner, Paul Henderson—stormed into Mr. Silva-Prentice’s and Mr. Paulino’s cell and beat, tasered, and kicked them, pulled out their hair, slammed them into concrete walls and a metal doorway while directing racial, ethnic, and sexual slurs at them. There is a jury trial set for August 5, 2024. Additionally, just last year, former corrections officer, Eric Smith, a Black man, prevailed in his discrimination and retaliation case against the DOC in state court and won a jury verdict of $2.8 million. The DOC’s history of violating civil rights makes the selection for a new Commissioner particularly important.  

To guide the process of finding a new leader of the DOC, the Healey administration has created a six-person search committee:  

• Deirdre Calvert, Director of the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Addiction Services  

• Reverend Rahsaan D. Hall, President and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts  

• David C. Henderson, MD, Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Boston Medical Center and Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine  

• Sakieth Sako Long, Director of Operations for the Northeast Region at the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services  

• Scott Semple, Retired Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Correction  

• Yolanda Smith, Executive Director of Public Safety at Tufts University and former Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department Superintendent and Chief of Staff  

Prior to conducting its search, the committee had an open period of accepting comments from stakeholders, including an option to submit comments anonymously through an online survey, regarding the most valued qualities and criteria for the next Commissioner. The committee stopped accepting comments on June 7. Historically, the DOC has not offered such an open comment period, so it was a unique opportunity for stakeholders to share feedback with the search committee.   

Prisoners’ Legal Services (PLS) created proposed qualifications and criteria recommendations for the new DOC Commissioner. PLS recommended that the search committee prioritize the input of incarcerated people in their search for a new Commissioner and consider candidates from outside the DOC. Traditionally, the DOC selects a candidate who already works at the institution and subsequently prioritizes maintaining the status quo; looking outside the DOC presents an opportunity to select a candidate who is more likely to implement significant structural and policy changes. Included in PLS’s recommendations were multiple letters drafted by people who are incarcerated at MCI Norfolk, MCI Shirley, and MCI Framingham. These letters outlined incarcerated individuals’ requests for the new Commissioner including but not limited to addressing the severe mistreatment of incarcerated individuals by correctional staff, the lack of access to quality programming, nutritious food, and adequate physical and mental health care that often results in preventable deaths, violations by prison staff in mailrooms that delay and interfere with individuals’ access to mail (including legal mail), a lack of access to the law library, and barriers to photocopying critical legal documents.  

In addition, these letters from incarcerated people emphasized the importance of expanding visitation for incarcerated individuals’ family and loved ones, both in person and virtually, effective programming for rehabilitation, the minimization or abolishment of solitary confinement, and the implementation and enforcement of fair disciplinary procedures for incarcerated people. PLS also included a briefing on the DOC created by people at MCI Norfolk, MCI Concord, Old Colony Correctional Center, and Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center as a resource for the DOC when making its selection decision: the briefing outlines key issues and recommendations including requiring the DOC and parole board to work together and use the same assessment tools when evaluating an individual’s risk of violence and recidivism, increased skilled training, jobs, and educational opportunities at for people incarcerated at DOC facilities, the elimination of the privatization of health care, mental health services, and substance use treatment services, and the restoration of the furlough program in Massachusetts, which previously allowed incarcerated people to attend family funerals, participate in outside rehabilitation programs and seek care at outside clinics. While the briefing overlaps with the recommendations in the letters, it highlights data to support the recommendations. For example, to emphasize the DOC’s over investment in punishment rather than rehabilitation, the brief points to the DOC’s annual report on spending, which shows the department allocates more than 70% of its budget to staff – mostly security staff – and less than 2% to programming opportunities for those who are incarcerated.     

The new Commissioner is a critical role at the DOC because as outlined in the letters from people who are currently incarcerated, the Commissioner creates the culture at the DOC that directly impacts the behavior superintendents, administrators, medical staff, and correctional officers, which historically has relied on a culture of punishment and deliberate indifference to incarcerated people’s wellbeing. Governor Healey has emphasized that Massachusetts leads the nation with historically low rates of incarceration and recidivism and the next DOC Commissioner has an opportunity to focus on rehabilitation. If the Healey-Driscoll administration is serious in its commitment to criminal justice reform, the administration should take recommendations from the people most impacted by the selection of the new Commissioner and select an individual from outside the DOC who has the potential to prioritize rehabilitation.