The voices we haven’t been listening to are those of the unhoused
I was deeply disturbed to read Shirley Leung’s recent commentary “Sheriff sees solution to Mass. and Cass issue: Could former detention center offer space for treatment and housing?” (Page A1, Sept. 26). While the piece relies on many different voices, without speaking to unhoused people living in the area of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, it only has the veneer of nuance. This allows Leung to simultaneously refer to a “humanitarian crisis” while also saying the neighborhood is “under siege,” a dehumanizing characterization of real people without the support they need.
People who have been incarcerated in Suffolk County are also glaringly absent from the piece. Suffolk County jails have a decades-long culture of abuse and neglect. People who have been inside know this best. This summer alone, four people have died in Suffolk County jails, and Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins has yet to adequately acknowledge community demands for transparency and accountability. It seems we can only consider his proposal to house and treat people — against their will — in a building once used to hold ICE detainees as viable if we refuse to consider the context in which it was made.
Yes, I believe Boston could benefit from some bold policy but only when we meaningfully engage the insight of unhoused people and certainly not when we use any solution that perpetuates the violence of institutions like our prisons and jails.
Austin Frizzell
Boston
Bid to use empty detention center is a flawed proposal
Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins’s offer to use space for addiction treatment at the South Bay complex he supervises is flawed for many reasons, some of which were identified in the article “Sheriff’s proposal to ease crisis at Mass. and Cass gets pushback” (Metro, Sept. 28).
Certainly there are serious legal issues and practical problems with his idea. First, holding people with warrants on bail they can’t post is generally prohibited by our laws, with certain well-defined exceptions. The primary reason for imposing any money bail is to secure defendants’ presence in court by encouraging them not to flee. People at Mass. and Cass who have been encamped there for days or weeks are not flight risks. Most of those warrants are likely because of a missed court appearance or failure to report to a probation officer, which is often caused by homelessness, addiction, or mental illness. Applying appropriate standards, judges are unlikely to hold many of these people on unaffordable bail.
Second, research and reality tell us that forced addiction treatment usually doesn’t work. Yes, many people connected to courts, including sheriffs, have uplifting stories from individuals who are finally sober after treatment while jailed, but the bulk of research indicates these accounts are not representative of the experiences of most people who attend treatment programs involuntarily while incarcerated.
Raymond Dougan
Lexington
The writer is a retired Boston Municipal Court judge.
In face of human tragedy, sheriff’s solution should be taken seriously
Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins offers a solution that should be taken seriously by both the City of Boston and the Commonwealth (“Sheriff sees solution to Mass. and Cass issue”). With the exception of the recommendation by several candidates and public officials that ferry service replace the unrealistic rebuilding of the Long Island bridge to transport clients to a new and improved treatment center, we get mostly rhetoric from public officials about the severity of the tragic and growing population of individuals building encampments in the South End. Streets are strewn with needles, litter, and feces, and people have overdosed, often tended to by fellow sufferers of substance use disorder. While there’s always the appropriate concern for the civil rights of these individuals, if it is determined by medical professionals that they are harmful to themselves, does it not give the government license to intervene?
One wonders whether it will take a developer (even one with a profit motive) to convince the city and state that a former detention center turned into a safe and viable treatment facility would be a far better alternative to letting this plague continue to grow and expand throughout the city. After all, when major projects get approved in Boston, it’s always the developers with big bucks and clout who get it done.
At the same time, kudos to John Fish of Suffolk Construction and philanthropist Jack Connors, who have offered to raise $2 million to bring ferry service to Long Island. If nothing else, it’s a start to reestablishing a facility that provided a successful recovery for countless people over the years.
Michel L. Spitzer
Jamaica Plain
"Idea" - Google News
October 01, 2021 at 02:35PM
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Sheriff's idea on Mass. and Cass draws range of reaction - The Boston Globe
"Idea" - Google News
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