At decrepit, overcrowded jail, hard time for inmates and staff

By Victoria Cheng
Globe Correspondent / June 8, 2008

The bottom 12 floors of the granite-and-stone tower in East Cambridge have been empty - save for the growing rat population and an occasional homeless
resident - since the Middlesex Superior Court left in March for more spacious, modern digs in Woburn.

But the Cambridge District Court and the Middlesex County Jail remain - along with tons of asbestos - and their employees and officials say that change can't come fast enough.

For Sheriff James DiPaola, who oversees the jail in Cambridge as well as the Billerica House of Correction, the problem is urgent and twofold.

"One is the pressing asbestos problem," he said during a tour of the jail last month. "The other is the overcrowding that's been a consistent issue since I took over as sheriff" in 1996.'

The jail, which occupies the top four floors of the building and was built in the early 1970s to house 160 pre-trial inmates, housed 427 people the night before the tour.

To accommodate the extra bodies, the jail's visiting room, red-brick chapel, indoor gym, and even an occasional hallway, have been converted into sleeping areas. Piles of plastic blue "stack-a-bunks" - sled-like contraptions fitted with flimsy mattresses - are spread out every night to serve as beds.

Meals take two hours as the inmates are grouped into lines of 100 and ushered into the dining hall for 20 minutes each. Lunch begins at 10:30, breakfast at 5 a.m.

"With the Superior Court leaving the building, you still have to get the inmates to court on time, and we have to transport them to Woburn," said jail superintendent Scott Brazis.

DiPaola added, "It used to be right in the building so you could feed them breakfast and then all you do is bring them downstairs to the courtroom. Now you have to feed them breakfast, get them dressed in civilian clothes, get them in the van, and get them up to the court while fighting traffic."

The costs and manpower required for these extra procedures are one reason DiPaola is worried by the lack of "a unified plan for how it will all come back together someday."

"Jails and courts where trials are held should be contiguous with each other for the speed and efficiency of the justice system," he added, "but the whole idea of what this building is going to be is all up in the air right now."

One possibility is that the entire building will be vacated. And at the moment, the system is set to spread out farther, rather than consolidate.

The Cambridge District Court is expected to move to Medford in November.

"The goal is to have the court relocated by the end of the calendar year," said Kevin Flanigan, a deputy director at the state Division of Capital Asset Management.

Chris Milne, lawyer for the court employees, said the health risks of working in an asbestos-plagued building have long been a concern and employees were supposed to have been moved out by December of last year.

"There are 90,000 pounds of asbestos in the building, and people who work there are at a higher risk of cancer. The longer they work there, the higher the risk," he said.

Plans for the jail, however, are stalled because of a lack of funding and the challenges of finding a suitable location, DiPaola said.

A bill filed by Governor Deval Patrick in early 2007 to provide $450 million over 10 years for "improvements to state and county correctional facilities" still awaits a master plan that is scheduled to be completed at the end of this year.

DiPaola estimates that a new jail for Middlesex County would cost $150 million.

Meanwhile, the Cambridge City Council issued a policy order in March expressing its opposition to the sale of the 40 Thorndike St. building and its "desire for the Middlesex Court House and its daily operation to return to Cambridge as soon as possible."

The businesses around the courthouse, however, appear to have adjusted well to the court's move.

"I was terrified" at the prospect of lost business, said 2nd Street Café owner Anthony Miller, who even briefly considered moving his restaurant to Woburn.

Within a few days of the move, however, Miller realized that his business flow had scarcely changed: "It hasn't been the kind of major disaster that I thought it might be, that I was losing sleep over."

Cambridge-based attorney Edward McCarthy, whose office window looks out onto the courthouse, said Cambridge residents have learned to live with the jail, but he wondered about plans for the facility and for the building itself.

"It's a dump of a building," he said. "The sheriff's still living with the problem and the jail's going to have to go someplace. But nobody wants a jail in their backyard."

The jail housed a record 428 inmates on April 29, and the population dipped below 400 briefly during the Memorial Day weekend, DiPaola said. Since then, the number has hovered around 415.

"It's the stress and overcrowdedness that creates the problem," said inmate Deck Brewer, speaking in a recreation area converted into a dormitory for 74 people, where two inmates mulled over a game of chess as, five feet away, three others napped in stack-a-bunks with their blankets pulled over their heads.

"Invasion of our personal space irritates people and they don't know why. It's just 'You're in my space or you're looking at me.' " Brewer demonstrated by glancing at Vernard Shepard, a baby-faced 19-year-old standing next to him. Shepard stepped back, visibly alarmed.

Brewer continued, "Then a fight breaks out."

DiPaola warned that the situation is nearing a crisis. Tensions in the jail are always high as his staff struggles to manage the crowds in the face of added responsibilities arising from the Superior Court move, and staff and inmates alike suffer from the building's deteriorating conditions.

"We're at that critical mass stage," he said, "right before the atom splits and the bomb explodes."

####