Sending women to prison for addiction could end under Mass. governor’s plan
Instead of treatment beds, some women are getting prison beds because there isn’t enough room. After nearly 30 years, Gov. Charlie Baker wants to change that.
A prisoner inside the walls of MCI-Framingham, the women’s state prison.
There are about two dozen women sitting in cells at Framingham state prison. Their only crime? Addiction.
The women desperately need treatment for their drug addictions — so much so that a judge ordered it for them involuntarily after a family member, doctor or police officer petitioned for it.
Under the law — called section 35 — addicts can be sent to detox, then rehab, for up to 90 days. And more than 3,000 people between July 2014 and July 2015 have done that, according to the Department of Public Health.
But some of those women aren’t given a bed in a licensed treatment facility. They’re given a uniform and a jail cell, because there’s not enough room at regular rehabs.
The practice has been in place for nearly 30 years, but could soon end.
Among the proposals in Gov. Charlie Baker’s substance abuse legislation released Thursday is a plan to stop to sending women to prison for addiction. Treatment beds will be expanded in secure facilities similar to what exists now at the Women’s Addiction Treatment Center in New Bedford, where the fortunate women who are civilly committed go if there’s enough room.
“If you are a woman in Massachusetts and you’re an addict and you are involuntarily committed, you will be sent to Framingham and you will not receive treatment,’’ Baker said on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio Thursday.
Already, a lawsuit was filed in June 2014 by the American Civil Liberties Union to stop the placement of women in prison.
Since the class-action suit was filed on behalf of eight women, the prison placement has continued; in September, according to the ACLU, there were between 23 and 29 women who were at Framingham on any given day.
While there, the addicted women can’t go to Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. They’re banned from the library and the chapel like regular prisoners who have been convicted of a crime. (The Baker administration denies those claims in its suit response, though Baker said Thursday that the women in prison aren’t receiving treatment.)
“They’re treated like prisoners, except when they’re treated worse than prisoners,’’ said Jessie Rossman, staff attorney for the ACLU.
Meanwhile, at the Women’s Addiction Treatment Center, which has about 90 beds, women are given group counseling, trauma awareness, coping skills and planning for release.
“To take away an individual’s civil liberties, to treat them like a prisoner when they have not been convicted of any crime, and to not provide them the treatment that is the underlying purpose of the statute itself doesn’t make sense,’’ Rossman said. “It’s unlawful and ineffective. It’s more harmful.’’
Rossman said Thursday that the ACLU believes that Baker is sincere in the hope to stop sending women to prison.
“But at this moment, there are women in MCI Framingham under Section 35 who have not been convicted of any crime and are not receiving any treatment,’’ she said. “And as things stand, civilly committed women will continue to be imprisoned at Framingham without any treatment while the legislature considers these various proposals.’’
Until women are no longer sent to prison for addiction, the suit will continue.
Read the ACLU’s lawsuit:
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