The Prison Construction Boondoggle in Massachusetts: Who Suffers and Who Profits from Prison Construction in the Public Sector?
Massachusetts has about 200 women incarcerated at MCI Framingham, the state’s only women’s prison. These women are mothers, daughters, and grandmothers and many are old, or sick, or both, and could be moved to more appropriate housing given their age, health problems, and the fact that they are no threat to society whatsoever. In these times of strained state budgets, it is important to know that the annual cost of incarcerating a woman is estimated to be $235,195 dollars, well above the cost of a semi-private nursing home bed in the state which is estimated to be close to $175,000 per year.
MAPA’s Racial Justice-Indigenous Solidarity working group has been working as an ally of Families for Justice As Healing (FJAH) and the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls in advocating for passage of the Prison Construction Moratorium bill since Charlie Baker was Governor. The purpose of this bill was, and still is, to provide the legislature the time to research the question of whether more investment in housing, health care, mental health care, education, and substance use treatment would be a better use of tax payer monies than investing in a new prison. You may recall that this bill passed both the House and the Senate, only to be vetoed by Gov. Baker in 2022.
There was reason to think Gov. Healey might be more supportive of the bill than Gov. Baker, given that the largely Democratic legislature had voted for it. But, during her time in office Gov. Healey has consistently declined to engage with decarceration advocates on the merits of the Prison Construction Moratorium bill and is, in fact, proceeding with plans for a new prison. And, though Gov. Healey regularly talks about housing as her chief priority, she is now taking action to invest hundreds of millions of tax dollars in a prison to house about 200 women.
In June of 2025 the Healey administration shocked politicians and constituents alike when it announced that it was increasing former Governor Baker’s budget for a new women’s prison from 50 to 360 million dollars. The administration took this action notwithstanding public hearings over three legislative sessions where there has been little to no support for the project. In June of this year we learned that it is now negotiating a contract with Suffolk Construction, New England’s largest general contractor, to build the prison on the site of MCI Framingham, apparently while the 200 currently incarcerated women living there remain housed on the site.
The founder of The Real Cost of Prisons Project, Lois Ahrens, has described the Healey administration’s approach to building the prison as “secretive”. When the announcement was made that the budget had jumped from 50 to 360 million there were no details provided about this huge increase or about who had been involved in the planning. Ahrens noted that the Healey administration has ignored the work of many advocacy organizations throughout the state who support passage of the moratorium bill and has disregarded the moving testimony of women incarcerated at MCI Framingham who spoke via Zoom at public hearings, stating that they don’t want a new prison but do want education and training which is not available to them now, and that they need quality health care, also not available now.
The rationale that the Healey administration has put forward to justify this project is to build a “trauma-informed” prison, and that “The newly renovated space is intended to create a more healing environment…” Susan Sered, a professor of sociology at Suffolk University and Senior Researcher for Women’s Health and Human Rights, notes that a report commissioned by the Dept. of Corrections found that “correctional institutions, however well designed, are not suited for therapeutic and rehabilitative goals.” And remarkably, research cited by HDR, the architectural firm contracted to design the new prison, reports that diverting women from prison is preferable to building a new prison. Supporters of the prison construction moratorium bill, including Families for Justice As Healing, highlight the fact that the majority of incarcerated women are survivors of sexual and domestic violence whose arrest or conviction is related to the abuse they survived. For these women incarceration is a system which serves to repeat abuse and trauma.
If Suffolk Construction proceeds with this contract and builds a new women’s prison in Massachusetts it will be putting its resources and reputation on the side of the prison industrial complex which flourishes in the United States. As we in the peace movement know well, the outcome of the military industrial complex is the militarization of our society and of federal spending, the impoverishment of domestic spending, and horrific wars and genocides, now nearly non-stop around the world. Similarly, the prison industrial complex can be understood as a profit-driven relationship between the government and the private companies that build, manage, supply, and service prisons, plus related groups, including prison industry unions and lobbyists. It is not surprising when the outcome of this system is investment in prisons and the carceral system over investment in what supports people and communities.
Suffolk Construction could walk away from this project. Suffolk Construction (and all of us) should consider the fact that the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) has a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. This ICE connection, with all the racial profiling, violent abuse, medical neglect, and the outright murders that ICE has carried out, should be more than reason enough for Suffolk Construction to think twice about working with the DOC. Just last week we learned that Citizens Bank has walked away from its involvement in funding ICE detention centers. It did this in the wake of widespread opposition from its customers who withdrew many millions of dollars from the bank.
One definition of the word boondoggle is that it is a useless, wasteful, and extravagant project. But in this case, a new women’s prison in Massachusetts would be worse than useless, wasting the lives of incarcerated women who could live in the community if the state had invested in housing, education and training, and health care.
If you would like to take an action to urge Suffolk Construction to pull out of this prison-building boondoggle, you can do so here.
By Rosemary Kean