Sarah Betancourt is a long-time Latina reporter in Massachusetts. The firm pointed to its previous work at Western Massachusetts Women’s Correctional Center in Chicopee as an example of that effort, saying it had designed “dayroom spaces” with natural light, and “soft colors” were used wherever possible. The Kleinfelder proposal, for example, said the firm’s “gender-responsive programming provides mental health treatment programs opportunities to reconnect with children and family and recognizes history and trauma of physical and sexual abuse as well as increased substance abuse issues.”
The design firm proposals all recognized the need to build a facility sensitive to the needs of the inmates. Mallory Hanora, executive director for Families for Justice and Healing, said before the meeting that she hoped the firms would withdraw from the process after hearing “directly from the community that designing a new women’s prison will cause generations of irreparable harm.” The three firms selected on Wednesday - Kleinfelder Northeast, Feingold Alexander, and HDR Architecture – did not return requests for comment on how they will address the concerns of advocates. “Or should I just ignore the chats and focus on choosing the architect? I’m concerned about what happens when you open this up for public comment?”Įlise Woodward, the board’s chair, said the group “is not an advocacy board” and has the “responsibility to identify architectural and engineering firms that have experience to assist the DOC if and when they decide to design the facility.” “Wasn’t this why DCAMM withdrew this awhile ago?” he asked in reference to the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, which indeed publicly withdrew multiple requests for proposals because of advocates. Ken Wexler, a construction manager and member of the board, read through dozens of chat messages that he said were “pouring in” from prison advocates. She heads her own nonprofit, the New Beginnings Reentry Services, which works with women who are formerly incarcerated or dealing with upcoming parole. “The ultimate goal was to give them a home, a residential reentry facility to give them the support services, provide them the support services that they need and deserve,” she said.īorden was incarcerated until 2010 for white collar crimes, and has since received a master’s degree in trauma and addictions counseling. The alternative, said former inmate Stacey Borden, is to infuse cash into reentry programs that can help women dealing with past traumas such as rape, domestic violence, and poverty that often lead many to commit crimes. The DOC and administration have taken the punitive approach to incarceration.” “There is no such thing as a trauma informed care prison. “We can get to the root causes of incarceration instead of building a new women’s prison,” said Leslie Credle, who was released from MCI-Framingham two years ago. Two earlier attempts faltered on procedural grounds – one in February 2020 after the contracting process wasn’t advertised properly in local papers by the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, which acts as a realtor for the Department of Correction, and the other time in August when a workaround process using so-called “House doctors” stirred controversy as an attempt to build a facility out of the public eye.Įach time, advocacy groups have tried to block the construction of a new prison, saying it’s not needed. The current search for a design firm is the third time the state has attempted to move forward with the project. The prison currently houses 162 women, according to the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. Despite the planning for a new prison and past comments by top state officials, the Department of Correction continues to insist no final decision has been made at this time on whether MCI-Framingham will close.īuilt in 1877, the Framingham prison has had to close several sections of the facility in recent years due to aging infrastructure that isn’t up to state standards, according to a June 2019 report filed by a Department of Public Health inspector.