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| Advocates push for solitary confinement reform in Mass. |
| By bostonglobe.com- Milton J. Valencia |
| Published: 10/14/2015 |
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Prisoners’ rights advocates in Massachusetts are looking to capitalize on a national prison reform movement to reduce the use of solitary confinement, saying the state has some of the strictest and most punitive policies in the country. “Prisoners are being held too long in segregation, and the conditions are too harsh,” said Leslie Walker, a lawyer and executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services Massachusetts. Walker and other reform advocates plan to testify Wednesday at a hearing of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary, which is considering proposed reforms. Similar proposals have died in the Legislature, frustrating advocates who call the change in prisoner segregation policies a priority in the prison reform agenda. The state Department of Correction runs a 124-bed disciplinary unit where inmates can be sentenced to segregation for years in conditions that can exacerbate mental illness, reform advocates say. Inmates in other state prisons can also be held in solitary confinement, without knowing when they will be allowed out. Read More. |
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