Inmates on hunger strike at maximum security prison, call on AG Campbell to investigate alleged assault by correctional officers
The Boston Globe
By Ivy Scott
October 20, 2023
A group of 19 inmates stopped eating at the beginning of October in response to conditions in one of the units at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, the state’s only maximum security prison.
Inmates at the state’s maximum-security prison in Lancaster submitted letters to Attorney General Andrea Campbell this week announcing a hunger strike and requesting an “immediate investigation” into one of the prison units where they allege repeated assaults by correctional officers and conditions that amount to solitary confinement, which the state promised to eliminate two years ago.
“Can you imagine being secluded in a tight space that’s the size of some of your bathrooms, being doused with teargas with no possibility to open your window,” a group of nine inmates asked in one letter Wednesday, referring to conditions at Souza-Baranowski’s Secure Adjustment Unit, which was created with the stated goal of providing mental health services, education, and structured recreation.
The letter said the hunger strike was a sign that the men were “out of options” in addressing chronic abuse. Last year, nine Black and Latino men who were incarcerated at Souza filed a federal lawsuit accusing prison officials of orchestrating “weeks of unprovoked, retaliatory violence” in early 2020. The lawsuit is still pending.
Separately, several state legislators are sponsoring a bill, spearheaded by Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, that would create an independent oversight commission run by the Inspector General’s office to oversee the Department of Correction, including issuing sanctions when staff fail to comply with requested reforms — such as the abandonment of solitary confinement.
“This commission would give incarcerated individuals the opportunity to submit their grievances to the office and our investigators would conduct an independent investigation and hopefully, in a case like this, resolve the circumstances leading up to the hunger strike,” said LaToya Whiteside, a senior staff attorney with Prisoners’ Legal Services.