Organizations such as Families for Justice as Healing and the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls (the National Council) have been leaders of this campaign since its inception and argue that this proposal only takes away from legitimate efforts that prevent incarceration. In their statement addressing the governor’s proposal, the organizations implored the Gov. Maura Healey to “truly invest in building up people, not prisons, and improve safety and well-being for all of us.”
Talks of designing a new women’s prison at the MCI-Framingham site have been going on since 2019, with the original price tag being around $50 million dollars. However, with a new cost that is nearly eight times more expensive than before, communities and organizations around the state are rallying together to fight against this proposal.
As opponents of warfare and violence, we must understand how the very institutions that perpetuate war abroad on behalf of the United States also wage war against her citizens at home.
Although there has been significant pushback against new prisons in the state, the Healey-Driscoll administration has spun the construction of a renovated MCI-Framingham site as innovative given that it will be “trauma-informed” and able to provide mental health resources to its inhabitants. Opponents of prison expansion including currently and formerly incarcerated individuals argue that there is no such thing as “trauma-informed” prisons, and they only further the cycle of trauma and abuse that led a majority of the women in MCI-Framingham to incarceration in the first place. They argue that what many of the women need is clemency, and to be brought home to gain access to the medical and mental health resources that they need to survive.
The architect of the proposal is HDR—an architecture and engineering consultancy firm that has helped build over 275 prisons and jails in the U.S. and was the architect in designing previous Massachusetts projects such as the Middleton House of Correction.
HDR is a large military defense contractor for the U.S., and has received over $2.02 billion to date for its special services in military infrastructure design. In exchange for a Department of Defense contract worth over $360,000, HDR helped design a shooting range under the project name “NEGBA FIRING RANGE.” Given the title, this shooting range was either in or near Israel’s Negba settlement. Located in the Naqab desert, the Negba settlement is only one piece in Israel’s greater effort to expand military infrastructure in the very desert which many Palestinian Bedouins call home. These communities suffer the environmental and material consequences for Israel’s militarization of the region.
As opponents of warfare and violence, we must understand how the very institutions that perpetuate war abroad on behalf of the United States also wage war against her citizens at home. Although seemingly separate, U.S. foreign policy and the internal carceral system are inherently tied together by consulting firms such as HDR, which carry out the will of the state at the expense of U.S. citizens in both civil and economic terms.
With this understanding, women affected by the proliferation of these policies continue to push back. On May 13, incarcerated women from MCI-Framingham delivered powerful testimony in favor of The Jail and Prison Construction Moratorium, an act that imposes a five-year pause on any new prison or jail construction in the Commonwealth. This is just one of four bills currently in the state legislature supported by Massachusetts Peace Action and the Free Her Campaign alike.
In the upcoming weeks and months, the National Council and Families for Justice As Healing will be holding several events such as phone banking sessions and canvassing events to further inform Massachusetts residents of this proposal, and demonstrate public support against it.
To get involved in the campaign and learn more about the supported bills, visit the National Council’s website for more information around actions you can take to stop Healey’s plan.
This piece was originally published on the Massachusetts Peace Action website.
