BOSTON – Inmates at one Massachusetts institution say that the prison administration has retaliated against them for speaking out after an I-Team report aired in March.
The original investigation revealed that in some cases, training and education programs listed in the Department of Corrections brochure never existed or were not available to everyone.
Thousands of inmates on waitlist for programs
Mac Hudson, a former inmate who now advocates for incarcerated people, said, ‘the tension’s so thick that you can cut it with a knife; well, that’s day-to-day prison life.”
Hudson spent more than three decades behind bars and now works for Prison Legal Services. He said that inmates are purposely being set up to fail and that there is not much opportunity for rehabilitation in prison, which means inmates are leaving unprepared.
Earlier this year, an I-Team investigation found that programs like dog training and dozens of others listed in the Department of Correction’s 2023 brochure were not available at most institutions, had long waiting lists, or did not even exist.