Some advocates and experts push back against sheriff’s Mass. and Cass proposal

The Boston Globe
September 27, 2021
By Danny McDonald

Some civil rights advocates and public health experts are calling the Suffolk sheriff’s proposal to use one of his buildings as a treatment center to alleviate the suffering in Boston’s Mass. and Cass area deeply misguided and unjust.

Sheriff SteveTompkins has proposed turning several empty floors in a building in the sheriff’s South Bay campus into a center that would treat people for substance use problems. The building was once used to hold federal immigration detainees. Under his plan, up to 100 people could stay there for as long as 90 days, with the idea being the space would ease the crises of opioid use and homelessness found in and around the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, commonly referred to as Mass. and Cass.

Bonita Tenneriello, an attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services, was among the plan’s critics. She said it was “really shocking that we’re talking about using a jail to do this.”

“A correction agency is not a place to treat a disease,” she said. “Addiction is a disease like any other.”