LUDLOW — As attorneys, including prisoners’ rights advocates, pressure the state Supreme Judicial Court to expand an earlier ruling that allowed for the potential release of some incarcerated people but not others from the state’s prisons and jails, some local public officials are expressing their opposition to a widespread release of inmates due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At a press conference Thursday outside of the Hampden County Correctional Center, Hampden County Sheriff Nicholas Cocchi and Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni argued that a widespread release of incarcerated people would jeopardize the safety of the public as well as inmates. Cocchi said his office has not been given enough time to help connect people released from jail under the ruling with community treatment or places to stay, if needed, adding that some of the people released have reoffended.
“What we’re asking from the activists, quite frankly, is to back off. Enough is enough,” Cocchi said at the press conference. “We are taking exceptional efforts to prevent a COVID-19 outbreak from penetrating these facility walls.”
“It is time for these groups to stop using the men and women in our care as a political prop,” Cocchi added later.
Gulluni said the pair had stood outside last March to argue that releases should be “individual, thoughtful decisions” made before the court.
“So we argue again, and we will argue before the SJC to the extent that we have to, that public safety, victims’ rights and the wellness of inmates need to be considered,” Gulluni said.
The Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) on April 17 motioned the state Supreme Judicial Court to reconsider its April 3 decision that allowed some pretrial detainees charged with nonviolent offenses to petition for release. That decision did not order the wide release of sentenced individuals.
Defense attorneys are now pressuring the court to authorize trial courts to delay the execution of sentences during the pandemic, even in cases when a sentence already has been imposed. The motion asks this “presumption of a stay,” which could be rebutted by the state on a case-by-case basis, to be available to those who are more vulnerable to COVID-19 and who haven’t committed a violent offense, among other criteria.
“The current rate of releases is inadequate to protect incarcerated persons, correctional staff, and the general public,” the motion reads.
Also on April 17, Prisoners’ Legal Services filed a class action complaint to the SJC aimed at releasing vulnerable incarcerated people that also asks the court to stop holding people who are civilly committed for substance abuse disorders under the state’s Section 35 law in correctional facilities. Cocchi said 40 people are held under this statute at his facilities.
“The Commonwealth’s prisons and jails are the perfect incubators for the disease,” the complaint states, “threatening to consume vital health care resources and endangering the general public as well as those incarcerated and correctional staff.”
Defense attorney Rachel Weber, who lives in Northampton and has an office in Easthampton, said Thursday that the CPCS motion asking the court to consider further releases of prisoners during the pandemic shows that the court’s April 3 ruling didn’t get the job done. The legal system, she said, has failed to deliver “the aims of what the court clearly intended to do — which was to clear some barriers for people who are trying to get out from jails and prisons to slow the spread of COVID.”
“There’s a lot that could be done in a more expedited fashion since this is not business as usual, but some of the facilities are still requiring extra steps, which is delaying the time frame,” Weber said.
At the press conference Thursday, Gulluni noted that about 140 people have been released through the court system since the SJC ruling, and that about 22% of those were released by agreement between his office and defense. Cocchi said there were 1,012 inmates at the jail on April 7, and that as of Wednesday the number was down to 884.
Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan said in an email Thursday that there are now 36 pretrial detainees under his jurisdiction at the Hampshire and Franklin county jails, down from 76 people. According to state data, on April 5 there were 167 inmates at the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction, which had gone down to 144 as of April 20, including 11 inmates who were released.
Hampshire County Sheriff Patrick J. Cahillane did not respond to request for comment, though his office emailed a press release Friday afternoon detailing how the jail is addressing COVID-19 among its population, as well as how medication-assisted treatment for incarcerated people with opioid abuse disorders has continued during the pandemic.
“The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made a balanced decision regarding public and victim safety and the health and well-being of inmates and detainees,” Sullivan said. “At this time, we see no reason to expand or modify the SJC order.”
Cocchi said that the pressure to release more incarcerated people comes while his Hampden County facilities have seen zero cases of COVID-19 among those incarcerated, though 11 staff members have tested positive. At the Hampshire County jail, 20 inmates and four employees had tested positive for COVID-19 as of last Tuesday. Across Massachusetts, 238 prisoners and 200 staff members had tested positive for the disease as of Friday, and seven people have died, according to Prisoners’ Legal Services.
Lois Ahrens, the founding director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project, cast doubt on Cocchi’s claims, noting that state data shows his office hasn’t tested any incarcerated people at the jail since April 10. “If you don’t ask the question, you don’t get the answer,” Ahrens said. “And he’s intentionally not asking the question.”
In a phone interview Thursday, Cocchi pushed back on this notion, saying that his jail’s policy is to test anyone who shows symptoms of COVID-19 but that this simply hasn’t happened yet among the inmate population. He said staff and inmates all wear masks and that new inmates are quarantined from the general population just in case they eventually show symptoms.
Cocchi said the jail would test asymptomatic people if there were positive cases among inmates in his jail. He also said staff who are part of his jail’s post-incarceration services were trying to connect released inmates with aid, but that because of the pandemic many support services are closed or running on skeleton crews.
“My head’s not buried in the sand. I don’t claim that we’re going to go this whole pandemic, and we’ll have no cases,” Cocchi said. “I don’t think it’s a matter of if, I think it’s a matter of when. But we have a plan in place.”
At the podium, Cocchi said the public should trust in the district attorney and sheriff’s offices as they have safety of the community “at the forefront of our mind.”
But Weber, for one, warned against that.
“This is not a time just to blindly trust elected officials,” she said. “If anything, this is a time where we need to be scrutinizing what our public officials are doing.”
Michael Connors can be reached at mconnors@gazettenet.com.