Logo for the Mapping Project

The Mapping Project

MCI-Framingham Prison

MCI-Framingham is a prison for women, described by the state of Massachusetts as "a medium security reception and diagnostic center housing females." Families for Justice as Healing (FJAH), a group committed to ending incarceration for women and girls, has reported that the conditions in MCI-Framingham are "undeniably bad," with incarcerated people at this facility facing "rodents, polluted water, mold, and asbestos." FJAH further reports, "conditions at MCI-Framingham have drawn the ire of environmental health inspectors for years. In its most recent public health inspection in January 2020, the Community Sanitation Program (CSP) of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health discovered 116 repeat environmental health violations at MCI-Framingham that DOC [Department of Correction] had failed to resolve since its prior inspection in June 2019."

The state of Massachusetts now aims to build a new (and supposedly "improved") women's prison to replace MCI-Framingham, and groups such as FJAH have been working to stop the construction of this new prison, advocating that the state should instead incarcerate less people. Activists from FJAH identified the design and architecture firms the State of MA chose to work on the construction of the prison (such as Kleinfelder Northeast, Feingold Alexander, and HDR Architecture). These firms support the state of MA's "progressive" carceral ideology, promising to design prisons that will support the physical and mental health of inmates, whitewashing over the inherently violent and harmful nature of caging human beings. The firm Kleinfelder Northeast's proposal to the state, for example, promised that their new prison would provide "gender-responsive programming" to help incarcerated women deal with trauma, while boasting about their past construction of a prison that had "dayroom spaces" and that was designed with "soft colors."

Rather than build such "improved" prisons, FJAH has called instead for "decarceration through prevention" (among other initiatives), which means "investing in housing, mental health care, community-based programs and services, addiction treatment, education, employment, and economic opportunity will address the reasons why women are arrested and further decrease incarceration rates." FJAH and allied groups have also called for a moratorium on the construction of jails and prisons.

Further reading on MCI-Framingham

99 Loring Dr, Framingham, MA 01702

Back to main page.