STEVE ON THE issues
Care, Custody, & Control
As the Sheriff of Suffolk County, my primary responsibility is the care, custody and control of inmates (those already sentenced) and detainees (those awaiting trial) who are held within our facilities – the Suffolk County House of Correction and the Suffolk County Jail. The Sheriff's Office is mandated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to maintain custody – or guardianship – of inmates and detainees while providing a set standard of care, which encompasses the overall health and well-being, personal safety, tranquility and calm within our institutions for our population and our officer cadre.
In recent years, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office has become the primary health care practitioner, mental health provider, and addiction recovery service for the people remanded to our care. We work with many external partners to help our population, as people transition out of our custody, to ensure that when they leave, there will be established relationships through which they can transition into care, reducing the anxiety of having to start from scratch at such a critical juncture in their reentry. The sheriff's office also works with partners to secure housing, health care, education, and employment for returning citizens so that they have a fighting chance when they leave us.
EDUCATION
Some quick facts: In our facilities, the average reading and mathematics comprehension for inmates and detainees hovers between the 5th and 6th grade levels; In Massachusetts, it costs more than $70,000 to incarcerate an individual per-year; It costs just over $17,000 to educate a child annually. Clearly, our priorities should be reevaluated when we as a society are spending more to lock people up than to provide the tools necessary for a good education and a positive, successful future.
As shown by numerous studies, the correlation between low education and high incarceration is as clear as the ties that bind success and achievement to a strong educational foundation. It is both my personal and professional objective to use all available resources to strengthen our educational programs not only for those who are receptive in our population, but also for our outreach to the young people within our neighborhoods to prevent them from ever entering our facilities and instead help propel them to success.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Nationally, 1 out of every 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Eighty–five percent of domestic violence victims are women. Having served within the Department for nearly two decades, I have witnessed firsthand the rise in the number of female offenders coming into the system, many of whom carry with them the physical and emotional scars of trauma as the underlying root of the illegal activity that has led them to incarceration. In an effort to address both the victims as well as the perpetrators of domestic violence, we are bolstering our existing programming around violence prevention and recovery, and reaching out to community organizations to form partnerships aimed at extending services to these citizens upon return to their communities on and a positive, successful future.
MENTAL HEALTH & ADDICTION
Eighty–five percent of the inmates in our custody are committed for drug and alcohol related offenses. Nearly half of Suffolk County’s incarcerated population present with some form of mental illness that ranges from mild personality disorder to major mental illness. Of that number, more than 30% suffer from a major mental illness. The percentage of mental illness diagnosed in the female population is approximately 36% higher than in male inmates. Over 67% of our population suffers from a co-morbidity of mental illness and addiction. To meet the considerable challenges presented by these troubling numbers, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department has significantly increased inmate access to mental health services, but more resources are needed on the outside. I continue to advocate for more mental health and addiction recovery beds in our communities as both a means to actively support returning citizens in their successful reentry to the community, and also as a preemptive measure to prevent people from entering our facilities unnecessarily in the first place.
RECIDIVISM
All of the efforts mentioned previously are part of a greater plan to reduce the number of people who complete their sentences and return to the community, re-offend and find themselves back in our custody. The sheriff’s office facilities average a yearly population of 1,150, and more than 95% of the population returns to neighborhoods within a five–mile radius of the House of Correction. Some of them have children to support, many of them have families that depend on them in some capacity and all of them have the need to reach some form of financial sustainability for survival. To this end, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department provides comprehensive programming and services designed to prepare these returning citizens to take advantage of the opportunity to begin leading positive, productive lives.