Norma Wassel, “We need to see decarceration, not incarceration,” Boston Globe, July 10, 2025.

Your July 7 editorial supporting a new women’s prison in Massachusetts lacks important information showing that there is no justification for spending $360 million renovating MCI-Framingham, on top of the annual cost of more than $235,000 per woman (“MCI-Framingham women’s prison needs a modern building”).

The editorial failed to mention that according to the Department of Correction’s own data, the large majority of women there meet DOC criteria for minimum security or prerelease status. Nor did it point out that nearly a quarter of the women incarcerated are awaiting trial or serving short sentences from Middlesex County, which does not have a county jail for women.

While citing a 2022 state-commissioned Ripples Group report, the editorial did not mention that it recommended community residential programs for the majority of women, who present no risk to public safety. No state law requires a prison building, especially for an aging population with complex health needs, and with correctional practices that are often contradictory to treatment.

Even a 2021 Boston Globe editorial stated in its headline, “Elderly prisoners pose little risk, so why won’t the state let some of them free?” It argued for reforms to parole law and a wider use of clemency, but there has been little progress in these areas.

In planning for “an expensive rebuild” of MCI-Framingham, Governor Maura Healey is emulating our current president. The plan needs to be for decarceration, not incarceration.

Norma Wassel

Cambridge

The writer, a licensed independent clinical social worker, works with the Women and Incarceration Project, Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, at Suffolk University.