WBSMBy Kate RobinsonMay 17, 2022 The state’s highest court has affirmed today that Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson is legally authorized to collect revenues for his office through phone service fees. A May 2018 lawsuit taken by four people against Hodgson and county telephone contractor Securus Technologies had claimed that payments from the contractor to the sheriff’s […]
Can sheriffs collect lucrative commissions from inmate phone calls?
Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments in case seeking to limit fees Commonwealth MagazineOctober 27, 2021By Shira Schoenberg FOR YEARS, Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson’s office collected hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in telephone fees paid by family members, attorneys, and others who received calls from county jail inmates. Similar structures are set up across the state’s county […]
Costly Chicopee jail phone calls criticized; Officials say revenue provides educational services
MassLive February 5th, 2019 AP CHICOPEE, Mass. (AP) — Jennifer Thurston’s family spends up to $50 a week on phone calls to stay in touch with her while she is in custody. It’s a lot for a family struggling with poverty and poor health. “My husband’s on disability,” said Thurston, an Adams woman serving time […]
Lawsuit targets high cost of phone calls from jail
South Coast Today May 5, 2018 By Jennette Barnes In the days before her fiance’s suicide in jail, Fall River mental health clinician Kellie Pearson argued with him over the cost of his phone calls home. “For Michael, I think that just put more pressure on him and made him feel worse,” she said. Michael T. […]
Lawsuit challenges the high cost of calling from jail
The Boston Globe May 4, 2018 By Maria Cramer For the 95-year-old mother of one inmate, the high costs of taking phone calls from the Bristol County House of Correction forced her to choose between paying medical bills and talking to her son. Pearson is among four plaintiffs, two of them inmates, who have sued […]
Sheriff Hodgson strikes again
August 5, 2017 The Boston Globe Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson has hit on a new idea to mistreat the inmates he’s been elected to rehabilitate: deprive them of in-person family visits. If that seems too cruel to be true, take note that this is the same sheriff who infamously volunteered his prisoners as free labor […]