END CENTRAL BOOKING & STOP SUFFOLK REGIONAL LOCK UP
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Central Booking & Suffolk Regional Lock up
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2024 Boston City Council Hearing - Central Booking
Suffolk Regional Lock Up & Related Events Timeline
https://bit.ly/ShutDownSouthBay
CENTRAL BOOKING & SUFFOLK REGIONAL LOCK UP
- A central booking process was created within Nashua Street Jail Nov 2023 where people can be booked there instead of a precinct. It’s been created on the false premise that it would “save lives” when in fact it will cause harm and - potentially death.
- For two and half years, people have been brought to a high security jail for booking pre-arraignment (before first appearance in court).
- Central booking was created under an agreement between the Boston Police Department to arrest and transfer people to Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department custody. It is used to pass liability from the risk of overdose, injury or death of people in custody from one law enforcement department to another. This agreement enables BPD through city of Boston’s funding to pay SCSD $150 per person, per day to detain people. Boston taxpayer money is going towards this!
- Central booking is staffed by BPD within the county jail and claims to be a cost saving initiative by “returning police officers to the street”
- Opaque & happening behind closed doors with no public process
- Prevents people from finding their loved ones
- Creates illusion of progress in addressing “problems” in the Mass and Cass area and beyond by disappearing people into jails and making it harder to find them
- Illegal
- The central booking process could become a springboard for the creation of a regional lock up facility - which requires explicit legal authorization, potentially leading to more investments into Suffolk jail and more power and reach for the Sheriff’s department. There is currently a bill reported favorably out of House and in Ways & Means that would codify and give authority to book and jail people at central booking in what is being called “pre-arraignment care”
- Only 4% of the 900+ people brought to central booking between November 2023 and August 2024 have been released on bail. We are still waiting on updated records for 2025. Bail clerks are not being called to the central booking facility, which is causing due process infringements for those who are charged & detained, longer wait times for arraignment and disruption to care.
- Although a Suffolk county regional lock up has been proposed and repeatedly rejected by the legislature in nearly every legislative session since 2013, in 2021 former Gov Baker slipped $1.8M as retained revenue into the Suffolk Sheriff's budget to allow spending for negotiated detention agreements. This has been included in their budget each year since. However, there is no express legal authorization for a regional lock up beyond the negotiated detention agreements. While G.L. c. 126, (s) 4. Of the MA General Law is inferred to be the legal authorization for this lock up - there is no proof that the lock ups in Boston are “inadequate” therefore requiring a lock up facility.
Harming people who have been detained
- 19 people have died in custody between 2020 and 2025, including multiple people who were medically neglected after drug use arrests or involuntary commitment for a substance use disorder.
- As far as we know, at least two of those deaths have been of people who were held on cash bail that they could not afford to post including Cherail Premdas and most recently Shacoby Kenny.
- Reduced recreation time
- Medical unit full and people are being denied access to medical care, including denial of known medications, as the Medical Director only works Monday-Wednesday
- There is no evidence this process will keep people safe and a central booking process has already been implemented and failed in 2001 due to abuses and mistreatment.
- The risk of fatal overdose is 120 times higher among people recently released from correctional settings, largely due to reduced tolerance to opioids and a failure to initiate effective medication treatment, like people are experiencing at the regional lockup.
- In their MOUs the SCSD notes they gives themselves the authority to offer coerced treatment to people they are detaining who have criminal charges - MA Department of Public Health data show that people who have experienced civil commitment were more likely to die from overdose than those who sought treatment voluntarily
- To City of Boston:
- End the detention agreement between BPD and SCSD, no more city money to detain people in jail!
- Stop the sweeps & criminalization of unhoused people - end the survival ban ordinance!
- Stop arresting people for drug use and for being unhoused!
- No creation of coercive treatment structures within Suffolk jails!
- Shut Down South Bay! Close this house of corrections that has been harmful to our community for decades, has killed people and NO replacing this jail with another.
- To the legislature:
- Do not pass (S.1645 / H.2578 )“Act to Codify Suffolk County Sheriff’s Authority To Provide Pre-Arraignment Care to Arrestees.
- Refuse to approve ANY increases to funding for Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, including programs, personnel and contracts.
- Revert funding to sheriffs departments towards non-carceral evidence-based solutions including: permanent low-threshold housing decoupled from sobriety and shelter, the establishment of overdose prevention centers, increased voluntary treatment on demand, and other community-based support.
- Email and call Boston City Council today and demand they push the Mayor’s office to stop participating in the deadly central lockup and criminalization of unhoused people who use drugs. Demand that they instead fund evidence-based solutions.
- Email and call Boston Police Department & Commissioner to demand they stop participating in arresting people and bringing them to Nashua Street Jail immediately!
Find your Boston city councilor: https://www.boston.gov/departments/city-council/who-my-boston-city-councilor
EMAIL CONTACTS
- Boston City Councilors
- ruthzee.louijeune@boston.gov // 617-635-4376
- henry.santana@boston.gov // 617-635-4205
- Julia.Mejia@Boston.gov // 617-635-4217
- erin.murphy@boston.gov // 617-635-3115
- Gabriela.Coletta@boston.gov // 617-635-3200
- ed.flynn@boston.gov // 617-635-3203
- john.fitzgerald@boston.gov // 617-635-3455
- brian.worrell@boston.gov // 617-635-3131
- enrique.pepen@boston.gov // 617-635-4210
- benjamin.weber@boston.gov // 617-635-42200
- tania.anderson@boston.gov // 617-635-3510
- sharon.durkan@boston.gov // 617-635-4225
- liz.breadon@boston.gov // 617-635-3113
Mayor’s Office- 617-635-4500
Boston Police Department- 617-343-4500
- michael.cox@pd.boston.gov
- gregory.long@pd.boston.gov
EMAIL & CALL SCRIPT FOR CITY COUNCIL & MAYOR’S OFFICE
Hi, My name is __________ and I am a resident of _______ (Boston District). I am extremely concerned about the shady & opaque creation of a central booking process out of Nashua St Jail. Boston Police Department is paying the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department to detain people in their facility through a negotiated detention agreement. Our community members are being disappeared into a jail and their due process rights are being violated because they are not given access to bail clerks. Along with community organizations, I am contacting you to demand:
- End the detention agreement between BPD and SCSD, no more city money to book people into jail!
- Stop the sweeps and end the camping ban ordinance! We want evidence based solutions and dignified housing and care for unhoused people!
Central booking already failed once in 2003 because of rights violations. The camping ban ordinance is not an evidence based solution and is harmful. Will you commit to using your power to advocate for an end to central booking at Nashua Street Jail and reconsider the impact of the camping ban ordinance?
INSERT ANY TALKING POINTS, QUESTIONS, OR SOLUTIONS THAT YOU FEEL MOST RELEVANT
Thank You,
NAME
EMAIL & CALL SCRIPT FOR BPD:
Hi, My name is __________ and I am a resident of _________. I am extremely concerned about your department’s agreement with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department resulting in the creation of a central booking process at Nashua Street Jail. There was no announcement made to affected community members and there continues to be no transparency around this project. Community organizations named below have collected numerous accounts of family members being unable to find people booked into Nashua Street Jail. A records request the Sheriff’s Department responded to confirms that out of 900+ people booked into Nash Street Jail between November of 2023 and August of 2024, only 4% of those people were released on bail. The lack of access to bail clerks poses a threat to people’s due process rights. I am demanding that your department immediately:
- Respond to ALL inquiries by concerned organizing groups, the Massachusetts Bail Fund, Families for Justice as Healing & Material Aid & Advocacy Program
- End the detention agreement you have signed with the Suffolk Sheriff’s Department now!
We do not want our community members being brought to a jail to be booked! The Sheriff's department already tried to create central booking in 2003 and failed. We demand that your department stop participating in bringing vulnerable populations to the jail!
ALL EYES ON SOUTH BAY, PRISON CONSTRUCTION MORATORIUM & STOP THE SWEEPS:
Please consider supporting and taking action on our sister organizing efforts including All Eyes on South Bay, Prison Construction Moratorium (Families for Justice as Healing) and Stop the Sweeps (Material Aid & Advocacy Program). For more information please see their tool kits linked below :
MBF: https://bit.ly/ShutDownSouthBay
FJAH : bit.ly/FreeHerMA
MAAP :Stop The Sweeps Toolkit
Social Media
Twitter: @massbailfund @justiceashealing @maapmass @courtwatchma
Instagram: @massbailfund @justiceashealing @materialaidandadvocacyprogram
On November 1, 2023 the Boston Police Department began enforcing the Wu administration’s ban on encampments. Although Mayor Wu claims no one has been arrested under this ban, the City themselves have shared that Boston Police officers have conducted 283 arrests in the immediate area around Mass. and Cass between November 2023 and February 2024, according to Detective Sergeant John Boyle. A recent records request shows that 487 people have been brought through central booking from Nov 1st 2023 to May 6th 2024 and out of that 487, only 2 people were released on bail and the rest were held for arraignment (with no info on how long they were held for arraignment). Since November 2023, community members have been arrested for trespassing outside their assigned shelter and for open containers - charges that are included in the ordinance, and for public consumption, possession, or hand-to-hand transactions in the Mass and Cass area - which BPD began enforcing at the onset of the ban. Arrests for the use, manufacture, selling or possession or drug paraphernalia increased by 22%, and arrests for drinking in public went up by 19%, according to a March 06 2024 GBH News analysis of police arrest data.
The Material Aid & Advocacy Program, The Mass Bail Fund, CourtWatchMA, and Families for Justice as Healing began hearing from our members arrested people were being booked at Nashua Street instead of BPD precincts. We believe central booking is a concerted effort and part of a larger tactical plan to sweep, arrest and scatter unhoused people in the area for drug related and survival offenses. We quickly learned people are being denied access to bail, and have inadequate access to healthcare - including psych meds due to “staffing issues”. Therefore, this process, the City of Boston’s spending into it and the gross over reach of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in participating in this detention agreement must be stopped.
County jail population numbers in Massachusetts have decreased in the last seven years, but the biggest drops have been among the sentenced population. Looking at annual snapshots on January 1st from official data, the Suffolk County jail population decreased from a total of 1,413 people in January 2017 to 1,097 people in January 2023. However, in that same period, the pretrial population has decreased and then increased–in part because of the move of dozens of women held pretrial and serving county sentences from three other counties from the women’s state prison, MCI-Framingham, in October 2019 to the Suffolk House of Correction.
Still, many thousands more people churn through the jail on short periods of detention every year, and the vast majority of people held in the Suffolk jails are held pretrial–merely accused of criminal allegations and nominally presumed innocent–and are disproportionately Black and Brown. In the history of regional lock ups and related events (check out this timeline here), there have been many attempts by the Suffolk Sheriff's Department to build up the jail population. We know that this is another such attempt.
After collecting concerns over the past month about the harms this process was creating, including surveying people coming out of Nashua Street Jail/central booking and in our urgency to stop preventable deaths from happening, we sent Mayor Wu, Sheriff Tompkins, and Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox questions and demands. We sent copies to Boston City Council members. It’s an utter disappointment and shame that we have received no response or acknowledgement from Mayor Wu’s office..The responses we received from SCSD was on December 8 2023, from the Sheriff’s Department General Counsel, which included a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with an effective date of October 31. Also included in the SCSD email response was an agreement from September 1, 2023 between the MA State Police (MSP) and Suffolk County Sheriffs’ Department for a similar arrangement for people arrested by MSP to be held pre-arraignment. We also received another response to a records request by SCSD providing minimal data of people booked into central booking from November 2023 to August 2024 and from Boston Police Deparment in Nov 2025 providing documents that were not directly responsive to the records we asked for. We undertook filing a public hearing with the Boston City Council, sponsored by then councilor Tania Anderson-Fernandes’ office that was scheduled for August 2024 - click this link to watch the video. Leading upto the inception of central booking, the weekly count sheets of jail populations show that, in anticipation of this change, dozens of people were moved from Nashua Street Jail to the Suffolk House of Correction between October 30 and November 6 2023.