Six apparent suicides in Massachusetts state prisons this year, the most recent four in the space of little over two months, is more than just a statistic. It’s a wake-up call — that at a time when the prison population is relatively low, something is very wrong inside the walls.
Prisoners’ rights advocates point to the persistent presence of a potent drug with a history of a serious risk of suicide, a lack of addiction treatment opportunities, and a punitive approach to dealing with substance abuse largely based on isolation.
“This has been coming to a boil for over a year,” Dave Rini, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, told the editorial board.
“Among the more recent challenges has clearly been an influx of K2, and the fact that the Department of Correction’s response has been particularly punitive,” Rini said.
And while Commissioner Shawn Jenkins, just completing his first year on the job, acknowledges that K2 “is a problem not just here but nationally,” he added in an interview with the editorial board, “it’s one we’re addressing through technology, mail screening” as well as enforcement.
K2, often referred to as synthetic marijuana, is in fact a powerful psychoactive substance that has been shown in many studies to have a serious risk of suicide. And since it can be sprayed on a piece of paper, it has proven incredibly difficult to keep out of prisons.
K2 was also the drug of choice of one of the state prison system’s most famous inmates — and its most notorious suicide, former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez, who died in 2017.
The most recent suicide victims are less well known, but collectively they tell a disturbing tale.
Three of the recent deaths were at Souza-Baranowski in Shirley, the same maximum security prison where Hernandez was housed; two were at MCI-Norfolk; one at MCI-Shirley. The victims ranged in age from 36 to 73.
“From what we’ve heard from our clients, if they get caught with K2 or are showing signs of addiction, they get tossed into the Behavioral Assessment Unit and basically left to detox cold turkey,” Rini said.
It’s an allegation Jenkins called “simply false.”
But a report written by a member of the Norfolk Inmate Council and shared with the editorial board detailed the September deaths of Christopher Stiles, 36, and Robert McNickles, 73, at that facility a week apart.
“Chris had been in a steady decline in his substance addiction for years. Having been sent to the [Secure Adjustment Unit] in another facility for ‘programming’ (just another segregation unit). Chris had struggled with his addiction and this led him down many dark paths,” the report noted.
“Rob struggled with health in general, having to use a medical walker and having had multiple medical emergencies due to his … struggles with K2,” it added.
At Souza-Baranowski the situation has been exacerbated, Rini said, by the transfer of a handful of prisoners in need of a more secure setting — something akin to protective custody — into what had been a reasonably well-functioning Residential Treatment Unit where prisoners with serious mental illness were receiving treatment for their conditions.
But the dual use of the unit exacerbated the challenges for those with mental health needs.
The story of Joshua Roush, 36, who died on Oct. 28, reportedly in that unit, was relayed to PLS attorneys by another client in the unit. In the lead up to that suicide, recreation time had been cut in half, the client said, and “people’s mental health began to deteriorate with several people telling the administration and mental health [counselors] that they were suicidal.” He and others began cutting themselves and “some people felt that the only thing that would be heard is if they died.” At least four were at “high risk” of suicide, he said. After Roush’s death, one other Souza inmate was reported to have died by suicide on Nov. 2.
Rini’s organization has insisted that DOC officials have repeatedly violated the state’s 2018 Criminal Justice Reform Act, which sought to limit the use of solitary confinement. Its most recent case against the commissioner, Evelyn v. Jenkins, which has now been certified as a class action in state court, argues that the Behavioral Assessment Unit is simply a fancy term for solitary confinement.
It’s a charge Jenkins denies.
But the commissioner has taken due note of the recent uptick in suicides (none were recorded in 2024 and one each were reported in 2023 and 2022, according to DOC) by announcing an independent review to be led by Sharen Barboza, a clinical psychologist with expertise in corrections, to review the recent deaths and make recommendations to address “clinical care, supervision, and facility operations.” She is due to report by the end of January, if not earlier, and Jenkins pledges it will be shared with lawmakers.
“Any deaths at our facilities is a concern,” Jenkins said, “and the independent review will help us look at all of that, including where individuals were housed at the time.
“This is a challenging time for all of us,” he added.
Meanwhile the department is finalizing plans for an 24-hour “wellness hotline” within the prisons and urging family members via a recorded message at the start of phone calls to alert DOC personnel to reports of self-harm or concerns about the mental well-being of their loved one.
It was only five years ago that DOC found itself the subject of a Justice Department investigation, which concluded that the department failed “to provide adequate mental health treatment to prisoners experiencing a mental health crisis and instead exposes them to conditions that harm them or place them at serious risk of harm.”
The settlement agreement, reached two years later, included enhanced suicide prevention training for staff, something Jenkins has pledged to “reinforce” and revisit.
It’s a fact of life that those in prison are — with rare exception — there because they did something wrong, often something horribly wrong. But this state’s prisons should not and must not become a de facto death sentence for the most vulnerable.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.