{"id":1779,"date":"2014-04-25T08:51:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T12:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=1779"},"modified":"2017-12-09T20:40:50","modified_gmt":"2017-12-10T01:40:50","slug":"ma-jail-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/25\/ma-jail-expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts women need more services, not more jail cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday we submitted <a href=\"\/scans\/Prison_Policy_Initiative_H.1434_testimony_April_22_2014.pdf\">testimony<\/a> in opposition of Massachusetts bill <a href=\"https:\/\/malegislature.gov\/Bills\/189\/House\/H1434\">H.1434<\/a>, which would build a new jail in Middlesex County <i>specifically<\/i> for women who are awaiting trial and thus haven&#8217;t been convicted.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s true that we&#8217;re facing some pretty serious overcrowding problems here in Massachusetts, and that continuing to cram more women into MCI Framingham is by no means a solution. But throwing taxpayer money into building new jail cells for women who are just waiting for their trial dates isn&#8217;t a smart or sustainable solution either. As we explained to the Joint Committee on The Judiciary:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Many people who are in pretrial detention are incarcerated only because they lack sufficient funds to pay their own bail fees, which are sometimes as little as $500. It would irresponsible and misguided for the Legislature to invest millions of Massachusetts taxpayers\u2019 dollars in constructing a facility that is designed to confine women who simply cannot afford to buy their freedom while they await trial.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We know that reforming our bail and sentencing policies, relying on already-existing methods of reducing the number of people in jail, and investing in community services would all be a far more healthy, humane, and efficient ways to solve the overcrowding problem.<\/p>\n<p>If you are a Massachusetts resident and want to weigh in on jail expansion in our state, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/malegislature.gov\/Search\/FindMyLegislator\">contact your legislator<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill H.1434 proposes to build a whole new &#8220;Women&#8217;s Pretrial Facility.&#8221; More jail cells should never be the first response to overcrowding problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6698,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions\/6698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}