Prison

Please donate to the show!

This week, Incorruptible Mass takes a hard look at incarceration in our state, particularly at women's prisons. We'll have a discussion with Families for Justice as Healing codirector Mallory Hanora about what incarceration does to women and their communities, how the state is proposing to expand the system, and what we can do instead.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

To stay informed:

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@theincorruptibles6939
• Subscribe to the podcast at https://incorruptible-mass.buzzsprout.com/
• Sign up to get updates at http://ww12.incorruptiblemass.org/podcast?usid=18&utid=30927978072
• Donate to the show at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/impodcast

Transcript

ANNA

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics because we know that we could have a state legislature and policies that truly represent the needs of the 7 million of us who live here in Massachusetts. And today we have an incredible discussion about prisons and whether a new prison is going to be built and have money spent on it here in Massachusetts. We have an incredible guest who's an expert on this. We will talk about the proposal that has come out of the governor's office. We will talk about the history of a moratorium that has passed supposedly part of the legislature, passed but not passed. We will talk about why we actually, why would you not want to have a new prison built, right? Maybe it makes sense to have a newer prison instead of an older prison. Like why is it that that is not the right solution? And we will also of course talk about what would be the right solutions to actually solving the real problems that incarcerated women face here in Massachusetts. And before we do any of that, I'm going to go ahead and have my fantabulous co-hosts introduce themselves today. I will start with Jordan.

JORDAN

My name's Jordan Brooke Powers. I use he/him, and I'm excited for this conversation. And I have many years experience in Massachusetts politics, and I live in Worcester.

ANNA

And Jonathan.

JONATHAN

Jonathan Cohen, he/him/his, joining from Boston in the South End. And I've been active for over a decade on various progressive issues and electoral campaigns here in Massachusetts, and always happy to be here and happy to have our guest with us today.

ANNA

I'm Anna Callahan, she/her, coming at you from Medford, where I'm a city councilor. I've done a lot of work sort of across the country in local politics. And I'm especially interested in this conversation because in the year 2000, I was sort of radicalized by being thrown in jail for no reason at all and spending 3 days in jail. And it was an absolute shock to me what happened in there. I was like, couldn't believe it. And so kind of became aware of prison reform concepts. And so this really is a very, very important conversation. And I'm very excited that we have Mallory Hanarum. Please correct me if I said that incorrectly, from Families for Justice as Healing. And if you don't mind introducing yourself and your organization introduction, that would be amazing.

JONATHAN

Sure.

MALLORY

I'm super honored to be here. Thanks for having me. My name is Mallory Hanora. I'm the co-director of Families for Justice as Healing. Our mission is to end the incarceration of women and girls. We do policy and litigation work. We do grassroots organizing. And we have— the heart of our work is called Reimagining Communities, which is all efforts to create what different looks like, all led by directly impacted women. And our office is outside of Nubian Square in Roxbury. We're a statewide organization and I'm Zooming in from Quincy where I live.

ANNA

Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. We had you on because there is a new proposal for a new prison coming out of the governor's office. Can you tell us a little bit about what that proposal covers?

MALLORY

Sure. The plan to build a new women's prison in Massachusetts started, as far as we know, under the Baker administration, and it was projected to cost $50 million at that point. In June of 2025, Governor Healey put out a press release announcing a $360 million women's prison plan.

ANNA

Wait, hang on. From $50 million to what?

MALLORY

It went from $50 million to $360 million. 7 times more expensive.

ANNA

Wow.

MALLORY

Is that right? A 7-fold increase. So of course, we're all noticing an increase of cost, whether it's from tariffs or inflation. But this magnitude can't be explained just for that. This is a much more expansive project than was proposed before, and it's terribly expensive at a time when all of our resources, in particular capital dollars, are very limited. So what this plan would include is massive construction at the current MCI-Framingham property, which would turn the current prison into a construction site for 6 to 8 years. And the project would include demolition of existing buildings, massive renovation of existing buildings far beyond the scope of necessary repairs, and the construction of 2 brand new buildings.

ANNA

Wow. So what I find the most interesting about this is I was under the impression, because we did cover this a year or more ago, that there was a moratorium passing through the legislature on building a new prison. So can you give us some history on that?

MALLORY

I sure can. So we discovered that this plan was happening in 2019. 200 women were moved from MCI-Framingham to the Suffolk County House of Corrections. We said, pause, why is this happening? The move was incredibly chaotic. It imposed a lot of crisis and trauma on the women that it happened to. And we talked to those women when it happened and we said, why didn't we explore other possibilities? The vast majority of those women are pretrial. They should be free to fight their case.

JORDAN

Oh, wow.

MALLORY

Hang on, hang on.

ANNA

They're pretrial. Tell us a little bit about why somebody is in prison when they're pretrial.

MALLORY

Largely on bail that they can't afford or on technical violations of pretrial release. So previously Framingham—

ANNA

I haven't been convicted of anything, is that right?

MALLORY

Nothing, right? So previously Framingham held women, um, who were held pre-trial from 4 different counties, and now there's pre-trial women in Framingham from 1 county, and other women are in jails around the state. So when that move happened, we wanted to say, hey, what's going on? Like, this isn't— we shouldn't be shuffling women from one side of incarceration to another. We should really explore what else is possible. That's how we uncovered this was part of a longer-term plan to rebuild or do massive construction at MCI-Framingham. I'm sorry, is that only a women's prison? MCI-Framingham is our only state prison for women. That's correct, yes. When we uncovered this plan, we were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're going to do whatever we can to stop it, knowing that the women inside the prison don't support massive prison construction, nor do the women who have come home. So we pushed back on the architecture firms. We explored other ways of delaying or derailing the prison construction. And then we filed a jail and prison construction moratorium in 2021.

ANNA

When you say filed, you mean you filed it with the legislature?

MALLORY

Yes, with the legislature. And really one of the most stunning parts about this story is y'all know the Massachusetts legislature better than me. And what's one of the defining characteristics is how slow we tend to move. But jail and prison construction moratorium got passed in its first session being filed. It got sent to Baker's desk and then unfortunately it got vetoed right at the end of the session. We tried to call for a special session to override the veto and unfortunately it was never overridden. So Baker vetoed it.

ANNA

Hang on, hang on. So the legislature passes it and I would love Jonathan, you look like you're hot to trot.

JONATHAN

Yeah. The one thing I was going to note there, which like it was impressive about how you were able to get that passed because I was thinking of like, wait, Don't I remember this before? But know that the prior sessions that there had been the push against the bill around the middlesex, like an expansion bill that was blocked.

MALLORY

Yes.

JONATHAN

But then this was the first time of actually having no, actually, let's like even let's change the discussion. We're not just here to block your bill about expanding it. We're here to block. We're here to just put pause.

MALLORY

Yes.

JONATHAN

All this because we need time to actually think of what a better, what a better system looks like, as well as the realization that I know you often say, well, is how there are so many of the women in MCI Framingham that could be released on, say, medical parole or elder parole, or so many other steps where you can get it down quite a lot rather than expanding the facility and spending so much money on that.

ANNA

Absolutely.

MALLORY

And that huge resistance was built when the price tag was $50 million. And my co-director, Sashi James, incredible, and I love working with her. She coordinated this 90-mile march across the state at that time.

ANNA

Oh my God.

MALLORY

Western part of the state to all the way up to Beacon Hill and talking to people in communities really across political spectrum about what else we could do with $50 million rather than invest that in incarceration. And people had all sorts of important answers that their communities needed. And that was part of the huge push to get it passed in the first session. Unfortunately, it didn't. And then so then we've had to refile.

ANNA

It passed though, and then it got vetoed by Baker.

MALLORY

Exactly.

ANNA

The legislature is on record for supporting a moratorium.

MALLORY

Yes, you got it. That's right.

ANNA

Wow.

MALLORY

So I agree. Is this déjà vu? Why are we still having this conversation? Didn't we agree to pause? Yes, that's what we are saying. We have agreement and consensus that we should be pausing. We should be exploring different approaches. Now, especially under the Trump regime, is not the moment to invest $360 million in prison construction when it's not supported by the women inside that prison.

ANNA

This is amazing background information. I would love to dig in for a minute because I think a lot of people would think, well, wouldn't you rather have a new prison than an old prison? Or what are the reasons why you don't want to spend money to update the prison? Why do the prisoners not want to have a prison that's a newer building and is more— I don't know, aren't they— you said it's more than the necessary updates, but Why would you not want to at least update a prison, or does this go wildly beyond it? Tell us about that.

MALLORY

Yeah, absolutely. Great question. First, I want to be clear that jail and prison construction moratorium would never have prevented necessary repairs. Thank you. There is no one that opposes necessary repairs to the prison. This project is vastly beyond that scope. The second thing I'd say is that if the only question that women are asked is, do you want an old prison or a new prison, the obvious answer is a newer one.

ANNA

And how old is the old prison?

MALLORY

There is— the oldest building on the property is, uh, built in the 1870s. There's one building. The rest of the building is pretty comparable to the rest of DOC properties. So built buildings built in the '60s, '70s, and the '90s. The newest building was built in 1990, and incidentally, that's the building where women want to live the least— the Smith Building. They don't want to live in the newest building. The windows are small, they don't open. They don't want to live in that building. But if the question is, do you want new or old, you're going to say new. But the question is, do you want prison or something better than prison or different than prison? Then the answer is always going to be better and different. And you don't— please don't take my word for it. We were really proud to collaborate with the Boston College law students. They did a listening tour with incarcerated women and they said exactly the same thing. 75% of women who were interviewed oppose this project outright. 84% of women who were interviewed have grave concerns about the project proceeding. And one woman said very specifically, everybody wants things shiny and new, but that's not what we need. And she is saying that the core issues of why women end up in jail and prison are not being addressed inside of the prison. And not only that, they're being worsened because the isolation, the deprivation, the family separation, That's all retraumatizing women. And actually, the answer is that there is no safe prison for women, no matter how new the building is. And incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women have taught us that through the entire campaign with a very clear message that there is no such thing as a trauma-informed prison.

ANNA

In terms of the facilities, right? I mean, if you're talking about the building, the building is not going to make it trauma-informed.

MALLORY

Absolutely.

JONATHAN

Yeah.

ANNA

So there's all these different—

MALLORY

Yeah.

JONATHAN

One quick thing that I feel like underscores this well about like a new— like the new facility is not inherently better. Nobody, I think, was going to say that any of the new, like, say, giant detention facilities that the Trump administration is trying to create around the country would be like, that's being built in 2026. That's going to be amazing for everybody. Or even some of the other existing ones that are fairly new on the scheme of things for immigration detention facilities. Like, I believe that the one that largely holds— like, that's holding a number of children in Texas is built under the Obama administration. So that's like comparatively new. But that doesn't mean that the conditions aren't horrible.

MALLORY

That's right. Because the purpose, right, is isolation. The purpose is— my coworker says it best. My brilliant coworker, Angelia Jefferson, always says, The mission of the Department of Correction is care, custody, and control. And the only thing that they know how to do or can do is control and custody. That's it. You cannot get holistic care in a prison. It is not consensual. You're there by force. You cannot leave. It's not dignified. You are constantly being surveilled and strip searched, and you do not have autonomy over your own body. This is not an environment where you can heal. And women have said that over and over again. Also pointed out that so much of the story about how women end up incarcerated is through experiencing violence and trauma themselves, never having the support and resources to address that. And so not having adequate domestic violence programming and healing from that inside, right? Not having adequate job training to then be able to leave prison and get out of poverty, right? And having a criminal record only making it more difficult to meet your family's needs. All of these things are about the culture of punishment. They're not about the physical structure of the building. And no matter how nice the building is, it's behind layers of razor wire and you're looking out to a community that you're not allowed to be part of. And what does that say in this moment if we're willing to invest so many capital dollars in a prison building rather than what women are asking for in their own community? Are we saying that you have to be arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated in order to get this? Why are we not making more of this available in the community rather than behind the prison wall?

JORDAN

I just want to say, it's at the same time that the Healey administration is cutting back funding for mental health supports. We're losing beds for mental health. We're losing beds for maternity. We're losing beds. We're losing supports for women, but you're spending $360 million. Literally, we could be spending that money on supports for women that are getting rolled back in this very minute. We are spending less money and there are less beds, there's less availability of support for mental health, there's less availability of supports for PTSD, there's less supports for women facing domestic violence or other violences, there's less supports for housing. I worked at a housing unit for families fleeing domestic violence. There was never enough housing for those families. And then they often went back to abusers or often were on the street homeless. And so literally the things that people need to care, to not end up in this system, we're basically saying, no, we're going to invest in you being arrested, incarcerated, your life destroyed, your children taken away. We're going to invest it because also that costs money when we take children. That's also more money that the system's spending on incarceration. We'll invest in that, but not any of the things we know which would help you.

MALLORY

For a visual, it's like if we imagine that the Trump administration is severing, is cutting the social safety net, is the Healey administration going to hold up a prison underneath of that to catch women? Is that what the approach that we want to take in this moment? Women inside, women who've come home, and many of us in the community are saying no, absolutely not.

ANNA

I want to ask, because we've touched on healthcare inside and outside of prison right now, and you had mentioned something about health building being one of the buildings being built. Can you talk a little bit about healthcare when you're incarcerated?

MALLORY

Totally. Over $120 million out of the $360 million is projected in the new buildings, which in a very Orwellian way, one of them they want to name a healing and wellness or education and wellness center, and then a healing and treatment center, which is totally co-opting and stealing the language of organizers, actually asking for what women need in our communities. And these are prison buildings, but they want to have a new healthcare building. And even if the building is newer or modern or nicer in of itself, the prison healthcare provider and mental health provider is called Vitalcore. It is a massive private company that profits off of quote unquote care inside of prisons. And just to give you a sense of who this company is, they're currently being sued by one of their own doctors for forcing that doctor to provide substandard care to patients.. So it's just going to be a new building with the same substandard care. And women in the Hear Our Voices report are very clear about that. An overwhelming number of them brought up concerns about healthcare and called it negligent, woefully inadequate. They're already not getting what they need, and they absolutely don't trust that that's going to change just because there's an expensive new building.

ANNA

And I have to jump in here because, I mean, we often talk about how health insurance companies are taking our money and then not providing care, and they make money by not providing care. When I was in jail for only 3 days, and like the biggest takeaway for me was not about what happened to me. The takeaway for me was watching the people who were in general population and realizing that as like a, you know, pretty well-positioned white woman, that I was never going to, you know, be under the kind of treatment that they lived under every single day. And, you know, I was there with a bunch of bicyclists. We were on a Critical Mass bike ride in Los Angeles during the DNC in 2000, right? Because we were protesting the rightward drift of the Democratic Party. And they picked up like 71 or 73 people, just, you know, it was an escorted bicycle ride. They blocked us off in front of the 10 freeway, shoved us all under the 10 freeway, blocked it off the back and arrested everybody. And while I was there, you know, there was one woman who had epilepsy and she had her medication, like, with her. And they, they like, when we— and there were, so there was a woman who had asthma. There were multiple women who, because there was maybe 23 women who had medical conditions where they needed their medication or they needed to see someone. And, you know, we would bang on the door and the jailers would come to the little window outside the door and we would say, you know, she needs her medicine, like she has to take it. And they would laugh at us and say, you watch too much television, and they would leave. So I know that people sometimes hear stories about like what's happening in ICE detentions or what's happening, you know, in other places, in prisons. And before these things happened to me, I thought they were exaggerated. You know, I was younger, I had a little more trust of the system at that time. I've lost that trust now. But just for our listeners, in case there's anyone out there who is saying to themselves, oh, these stories are exaggerated, you know, you probably— it's a bad apple. Blah, blah, blah. Like, it is— I can tell you what happened to me and how, you know, and I've heard these kinds of stories so many times over and over. It is a systemic problem. And, you know, Mallory, if you can talk about, like, it sounds like it is a systemic problem also at that particular prison, that the corporation that is supposedly providing care, that that is not what they are in fact doing.

MALLORY

Absolutely. And first, thanks for sharing your experience and solidarity. I was in the Tombs in New York, an infamous jail, after being arrested before the RNC in 2004. No way! Absolutely. We're sisters. Definitely. And thus, wild to be 20 years after that and be a big, huge part of that protesting the Iraq War at the time and now being here on the precipice of this war and opposing it again. As an important thing to note, as the work is very local, it's also in international solidarity as well against all of these systems of punishment. But the systemic healthcare issue is massive and it's totally reflected in what women were lifting up in this listening tour report. So I just want to say that that was to the tune of 88% of women interviewed, 88% of women interviewed brought up healthcare on their own about being the problem at framing Bingham. 75% described the care as negligent and coercive. They described exactly what you'd witness— women being given the wrong medication, women not being given medication on time, women needing to be transferred to external providers and waiting years to be going to see a specialist outside of the prison. One woman said, I have never seen so much negligence in my life. And very pointedly, another woman said, This is not a place where women come to get better. This is a place where women come to die. And I think that is a condemnation of the current system. It's also a condemnation of an investment in expanding or continuing the same system that hasn't worked since the 1870s to do anything but punish. And it's not going to change now with massive capital investment in simply a new building.

ANNA

Heavy stuff. Heavy stuff. I am going to go ahead and turn us to what might actually solve these issues. Like, if it's not a new— it's not $300-and-some-odd million being spent on construction of a prison instead of spent on education and housing and healthcare and all the things that people need. What would help?

MALLORY

Uh, great question. Um, so one of the mantras that I want to share is policy change before prison construction, and we mean that at every level, right? There's internal policies at the Department of Corrections that don't have to wait for state law changes. Example: women are currently being strip searched after Zoom visits with their attorneys. Absolutely no reason for that level of humiliation and degradation.

ANNA

Oh my God.

MALLORY

So there's things that are just about women's basic basic dignity.

ANNA

So hang on, and I have to poke at this because I'm assuming that the only reason that is illegally allowed to happen is because it used to be that you would meet your attorney in person and then they were allowed a strip search because you had a meeting with someone. Is this a loophole?

MALLORY

In Framingham, they're arguing it's because of where it happens in the building. They bring women off of the unit to a private room that's attached to the visiting room. And because they bring them off the unit into the visiting room, they're trying to justify that the search needs to happen because of where it's happening.

JONATHAN

I'm going to make a quick interjection about this. I thought this ended up coming up so well at the one hearing earlier this or last year around the visitation bill. It was whenever you have so much fearmongering that exists about people are trying to bring drugs into the facilities, when we know that there are the only people who are leaving and coming back every single day and are thus the most likely ones to be bringing anything in are the guards. But they never face any kind of extra scrutiny on that, and they just use it as opportunities to harass the individuals who are incarcerated and surveil them even more.

ANNA

I will also say, with the 23 women I was with, we were illegally strip searched and body cavity searched twice. While we were there. And we actually won a fair-sized lawsuit because the LA County Jail had already been sued and the courts had told them they were not allowed to do this anymore. And they didn't do it to any of the 50 or so men that we were arrested with. Only the women got strip search and body cavity search. So this is about dehumanization and humiliation.

MALLORY

Yes, absolutely. And that's one example, and it is an important one because I think it is reflective of the culture, right? And if we're proposing a trauma informed project, but this is the daily practice, then these things need to be addressed. They don't require a state law change. They require immense oversight over the DOC to get a handle on this type of invasive surveillance and regular mistreatment on top of just sort of attitudes about women's bodies constantly being looked at, constantly being talked about. And then there is things that women have been asking for for this entire time. Incarcerated women have reached out to Governor Healey multiple times via letter. Now there's this listening tour report. They're asking for modern programming, more programming from the outside, more educational opportunities, more job training, and then healthcare outside of the prison. And then that brings us to what change actually could look like. And what we're saying is that we have to take a look at practical, meaningful decarceration right now. As a whole, the Department of Corrections has the oldest incarcerated population in the United States. At Framingham alone, there are 7 women in their 70s. We should be looking at mechanisms to release elders. So elder parole is pending in the legislature. The medical parole statute has been woefully underutilized, and way too many people have suffered for way too long while they're very, very sick. So there's women who are certainly eligible for medical parole right now, whether or not they've applied, because I think some women have given up that so few women have gotten out they don't even believe it's a viable pathway to come home. So releasing the most vulnerable people, medically vulnerable people and elders who can barely navigate around being in prison—

ANNA

those should we throw in the women who are in jail and they haven't been convicted of anything? How about the pre-trial people?

MALLORY

Can we throw those in? Yeah, so we could reduce the current population of MCA Framingham by 25% by releasing people who are there pre-trial. Jesus. So, and then if you, if you take out county folks from Middlesex County, we're talking about a state sentence population of between 100 150 women and 160 women. And now you do the math of $360 million divided by that. And that's just the capital cost, because I want to remind folks that the operating cost is like $220,000 a year per woman at MCI Framingham. Per woman? Per woman, per year. She could— you could pay her mortgage, pay her tuition to Harvard, pay for daycare, fill her groceries in the fridge.

ANNA

I wish I had $220,000 a year. I wouldn't do her just for a month in my life.

JONATHAN

So it's such a striking thing to see that from like that per person number. When you think of all of the ways the state tries to often tries to pare back the per person investments that exist in other spaces where it comes to, let's say, like a per capita around education or in terms of like housing vouchers or other housing supports, they're always thinking about, well, we have to rein this in because money is tight and yada yada. But at the same time, we're willing to spend that much per person doing something that we know doesn't even work.

MALLORY

Totally. And to Jordan's point, so many of these sisters are women that before they got to this point of incarceration, asked for help and didn't get it, tried to look for help and didn't get it. Like, were in a shelter, had never had an apartment of their own, were trying to find a place to live, never did, ended up in prison. Like, so we're denying women what they need, and then the pipeline is into the prison, and then that's where we're willing to make this investment. We just have to say no, we have to shift the approach and address these underlying causes. And so to pivot back to what we can do, that's what women are asking for too. And the generosity of incarcerated women to be worrying about their families and their children and their community and their tax dollars, not wanting it to be spent on prison construction. But then women are also deeply concerned about where are they going to go when they come home?. So there are almost no residential programs for women in Massachusetts coming home from prison except for those specifically about drug treatment. And more of those are also needed. But women are leaving prison like having nowhere to go. Salaried folks cannot afford first, last, and security. How do we expect women coming home from prison to afford that? So one of the main thrusts of the report is like really preparing women to leave prison and stay home forever, not ever to come in contact with the system again.. And that has to include reentry support. It has to include housing. And that was a huge thing that women were calling out for. So can we shift some of the investments that were planned for the prison into these housing supports in the community to keep women home?

ANNA

Man, this whole conversation is pissing me off.

JORDAN

Sorry. It just reminds me, it reminds me, so when we dealt with the foster care system and the stealing of children's system, and at one point we counted that there were 12 adults being paid for for this one kid who never should have been taken. And it's millions of dollars at that point, or just hundreds of thousands of dollars for this one kid. And one of the people we were at the courthouse for, a mom who had her kids taken away for not having food, not enough food at the house. And the money spent on just all of these adults monitoring this person was was enough money that they could have fed this child for 5 years. It's just similar nonsense that we're just so vested into this system that makes literally no sense when we could just be spending money on the things we know would just help people be in spaces where they didn't end up incarcerated. It's not like— everyone knows. We don't need to do, we don't need to, we don't need a commission. We don't need new studies. We just, we know what programs are working and we, and those are being targeted for being defunded.

ANNA

1,000%. Well, we want to know what our listeners can do about this. And can you give us a timeline? So she, she put this out, like, is the moratorium going to go through? Like, tell us what people can do and like, what's the timeline for that?

MALLORY

Great question. So I definitely want to be clear that unless we stop this collectively, the state is going to do this. The state has already interviewed construction firms to hire for a construction manager position to oversee this project. This is moving forward. And we do have the solutions. So the House and Senate version of the jail and prison construction moratorium are currently in Ways and Means. There are also other important bills that would establish or expand release mechanisms for the most vulnerable incarcerated people, including elders, as I mentioned, also including survivors of sexual and domestic violence who have been punished for surviving. So we want to support the Elder and Medical Parole Bill, and we want to support the Massachusetts Survivors Act, among others. So we have a toolkit which I can share and you can post with it, but there's opportunities to call your legislators and ask them to advance these bills before the end of the session. You can read the report. Don't have to take my word for it. You can listen to the voices, and please do, and read and uplift and amplify the voices of women inside Framingham and women who have come home and share that report. And just stay tuned with the organizing to really demand a shift in how we're using our resources in Massachusetts to actually invest in what really keeps our community safe, what really allows all of us to thrive. So there is a lot to do right now. And also wanted to mention that in addition to her power to stop this prison, Governor Healey has the executive power of clemency as well. And 2 elders recently filed for clemency petitions from MCI-Framingham, and we're supporting a cohort of about 8 more women. So over the course of this year, 10 women, some of the longest-serving women inside MCI-Framingham, are petitioning for clemency. They're excellent candidates according to the governor's guidelines and really need to be seriously considered for release. So there are already existing legal viable pathways home for women who have done decades of time already, who are certainly not a risk to the public and really deserve these second chances to come home. You can get involved in the campaigns to support their clemency as well.

JONATHAN

Anna, in terms of good uses of resources, what should people do if they want to support the show?

ANNA

Thank you, Jonathan. I was so engaged in the conversation, I totally forgot. You don't hear this everywhere, right? You don't hear this kind of important information and timely. This is going to happen if we don't stop it. So we encourage you to support the show. None of us you see here are ever going to get paid for this. And but we do have some wonderful young people who help us make sure that this can get into as many ears as possible. They do graphics, video editing, social media posting, all kinds of stuff that is really crucial. So you can always just write below. There's a link you can donate to the show. Feel free to also— we'll try and have some information below as well in terms of how you can get engaged in this action to stop this prison proposal from moving forward. Well, I'm going to go ahead and— we often have sort of last comments here, so I'll end with you, Mallory, but I'm going to go ahead and have Jonathan, and then we'll have Jordan and me, and then Mallory.

JONATHAN

I'll say one quote that I often think about is the line about how every system is perfectly designed for the results that it produces. And I think that that's so true of the carceral system in the US, and that speaks to the need for that kind of that fundamental root and branch rethink of it, that building out a proposal is just going in the entire— like building out an existing prison is the entire wrong direction of.

JORDAN

Absolutely. Jordan? Yeah, just please get involved. This is something that you can have a real impact on. It's really about the reason these things happen is because there's an inherent belief that these people are invisible, they don't matter, you shouldn't care about them, they aren't really people, they've done something wrong, I don't know, whatever sort of ways the system rationalizes this. Just speaking out and saying, no, no, we see them. They matter. And more importantly, I matter because these systems, when they're spending $360 million on this and they're rolling back beds for mental health, that's people I know's children who can't get beds for mental health. It's all of these systems. When we're funding one thing and we're not funding systems that can help these people, the systems that can help people are actually systems that all of us are accessing that are not getting money. And so just if you please do get involved, please do something. This is money and systems that are not just failing the women involved in this who are getting caught up, but it's a way in which it's siphoning money that could be helping all of us and failing these women.

JONATHAN

Great. Quick thing that your point just made me think of is that one thing that I think you saw just because of a lot of, let's say, criminality discourse in people's minds, is when you look every day about the rampant criminality that exists in the White House, right? And everybody there, that the difference between then and knowing how, like, none of them will probably face any accountability, that the difference is not necessarily anything about, let's say, criminality. It is often about access to resources that separates what happens to people and that our system is just designed to punish those who lack resources.

ANNA

Yep. My takeaway for people is, you know, we are in a moment where almost everyone I know is just under such anxiety. Like, every day in the news, it's a new horror. I mean, it is insane what is happening in our country, like, in our state, in our city, in our state, in our country, and now internationally. It is absolutely awful. And one thing that you can do for yourself is to get involved, is to take action. It really does help. It helps for you to feel a little bit more in control of what's happening. You can make a difference. You can affect some of these policies that are happening right here in Massachusetts. This one has a very good chance, like, jump on this one, right? Because the moratorium was, you know, it passed through before. We can get this to pass through again. So I really encourage people not just to think of others as because we're in that moment where so many people are hurting right now, but also do it for yourself because you're going to feel better. You are. And Mallory, I'm going to have you give us the last, last word.

MALLORY

I was definitely wrapped with all those last words, so I appreciate you all and appreciate being here and definitely encouraging everyone to listen to dream about what you would spend $360 million on in your community, for what you and your family and your neighbors and your neighborhood needs. And I would say, please do take action. Hopefully the toolkit can be shared. We always update this online toolkit. It's bit.ly/freeherma with the F, the H, and the MA capitalized. Always have those asks. It's a time to talk to your legislators. We only have 4 months left in the legislative session and our policies are ripe for passing because The moratorium has passed before, it should pass again and become law. And beyond that, as Anna was saying, we're not just organizing to pass policies though, we're really shifting a culture. And together, I think we can have a cultural mandate of demanding better for our communities, right? Real accountability, real safety, real wellbeing, not just punishment. And if we come together and reject The best idea they had in the 1870s was to build MCI Framingham. 150 years later, we have to have better ideas than that. So let's forward and advance those. Let's invest in each other and our well-being. And thank you very much.

ANNA

Free her.

MALLORY

Incredible.

ANNA

Thanks so much. Thanks to you for all the work that you're doing. Thanks always to my amazing co-hosts. And thank you so much for listening to the show. Please forward it to your friends. And we look forward to chatting with you all next week.

JONATHAN

Awesome.