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| Lawyers Group Criticizes Mass. County Sheriff for Prison Fee |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 07/29/2002 |
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The new ''stay to pay'' fees that Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson is requiring of prisoners is creating an ''untenable'' situation that puts inmates and staff at risk, according to attorneys that represents indigent prisoners. The Bristol County Bar Advocates, a private legal services group, has complained to Hodgson and the state Department of Corrections over the $5-per-day service fee instituted recently at two jails. Units at the Bristol County House of Correction in Dartmouth and the Ash Street Jail in New Bedford were ''locked down'' a week ago when prisoners protested the fee by flooding cells and throwing urine and feces. Hodgson has said the $35 weekly fee teaches inmates responsibility and eases the burden on taxpayers, who otherwise pay for the incarceration that costs about $100 per day. Hodgson, who said he had not seen the letter, has already instituted fees for medical care and haircuts, although most of those are waived for indigent prisoners. Leslie Walker of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services Inc., said she has been told by attorneys for inmates at the two jails that there are prisoners who ''haven't eaten in days.'' She said her group is ''investigating legal action.'' She did not specify what form that might take. ''(Indigent) prisoners are the poorest of the poor,'' Walker said. ''To charge them for the privilege to be in prison is taxing their families, who have done nothing but be related to someone who had bad judgment.'' Hodgson said that criticism leveled at him for declining to feed inmates not taking part in the hunger strike is ironic. ''These are the same attorneys that criticize us for feeding them in the cells,'' he said. ''This is jail.'' |
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