Massachusetts Statutes

Section 48B. (a) The commissioner or a superintendent of a house of correction may establish young adult correctional units or designate individual corrections officers to exclusively supervise young adults, who are ages 18 to 24, inclusive, and have been placed in the care of th…

Section 49. The commissioner of correction, or the administrator of a county correctional facility, subject to rules and regulations established in accordance with the provisions of this section, may permit an inmate who has served such a portion of his sentence or sentences that…

Section 49A. Before any inmate may be considered for participation in education, training, or employment programs established under section forty-eight outside a correctional facility, or in any other program outside a correctional facility exclusive of parole, he shall first dem…

Section 49B. Prisoners in state correctional institutions, except prisoners who are housed in the maximum security section at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction, may, in the custody of an officer, be eligible to provide services for patients in residenti…

Section 49C. Prisoners in county correctional institutions may, in the custody of an officer, be eligible to provide services for municipalities within the county, including the care of public lands or buildings and grounds. No prisoner may participate in a program under this sec…

Section 5. The jailer, keeper or superintendent of each jail and house of correction shall keep in a bound book or an electronic computer database an exact calendar of all prisoners committed thereto, in which shall be recorded the names of all prisoners, their places of abode an…

Section 51. The commissioner, and the superintendents of the correctional institutions of the commonwealth, keepers or superintendents of jails and houses of correction, shall determine the industries to be established and maintained in the respective institutions under the super…

Section 52. Supervisors and instructors to instruct the prisoners in industries determined upon in accordance with section fifty-one of chapter one hundred and twenty-seven in the correctional institutions of the commonwealth shall be appointed by the commissioner, and in jails a…

Section 53. The commissioner shall, so far as possible, cause such articles and materials as are used in the offices, departments or institutions of the commonwealth and of the several counties, cities and towns to be produced by the labor of prisoners in the institutions named i…

Section 54. For the purpose of determining the styles, designs and qualities of articles and materials to be made by the labor of prisoners for use in the offices, departments or institutions in accordance with section fifty-three, the officers in charge of said offices, departme…

Section 55. Annually in September the commissioner shall issue to the officers in charge of the offices, departments and institutions named in section fifty-three a descriptive list of the styles, designs and qualities of said articles and materials. Any difference between the pr…

Section 56. Annually in November the officers in charge of all offices, departments and institutions named in section fifty-three shall send to the commissioner an estimate of the quantities of the articles and materials needed for their respective offices, departments or institu…

Section 57. Annually in January the commissioner shall send to the comptroller, to the auditing and disbursing officers of the several counties, and to the auditor and treasurer of each city and town a list of the articles and materials that can be produced by the labor of prison…

Section 58. The price of all articles and materials supplied by the prisons to the commonwealth, counties, cities and towns shall conform as nearly as may be to the wholesale market rates for similar goods manufactured outside of the prisons. Any difference of opinion in regard t…

Section 6. All process to be served within the precincts of any penal or reformatory institution shall be directed to and served by the superintendent, superintendent or keeper of each jail or house of correction thereof or his deputy.

Section 60. Any officer who wilfully refuses or neglects to comply with the provisions of this chapter relative to the purchase of articles and materials from the prisons shall be punished by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars.

Section 61. The commissioner shall endeavor to establish in all institutions under his jurisdiction such industries as will enable prisoners employed therein to learn valuable trades.

Section 66. Subject to appropriation from the General Fund, the tools, implements and materials required for use in manufacturing in any of the correctional institutions of the commonwealth, and such necessary machinery to replace any which becomes unfit for use or is destroyed b…

Section 66A. The tools, implements and material required for use in manufacturing in any jails or houses of correction, and such necessary machinery to replace any which becomes unfit for use or is destroyed by fire or by malicious acts of prisoners or to establish new trades or …

Section 67. Goods manufactured in any of the institutions named in section fifty-one shall, with the approval of the commissioner, be sold by the superintendent of the correctional institution of the commonwealth, the superintendent or keeper of the jails or houses of correction …

Section 68. In the correctional institutions of the commonwealth the commissioner, and in jails and houses of correction the superintendent or keeper, with the approval of the commissioner, may appoint agents who under such regulations as the commissioner shall establish shall se…

Section 69. The superintendent or keeper of each institution named in section fifty-one shall make a full report to the commissioner relative to the labor of the prisoners whenever he requires it.

Section 7. All warrants, mittimuses, processes and other official papers by which a prisoner is committed or released, or attested copies thereof, shall contain a detailed statement of the fees of the officer for making the commitment, shall be regularly filed in chronological or…

Section 71. At least once each month all money received from the sale of products, by-products, or services of committed offenders shall be credited on the books of the commonwealth to a fund to be known as the Correctional Employment Fund. Subject to appropriation the commission…

Section 72. Subject to appropriation, the bills for tools, implements, machinery and materials purchased for, and the salaries of persons employed in, the correctional institutions of the commonwealth, under sections fifty-one to fifty-eight, inclusive, sections sixty, sixty-one,…

Section 73. The superintendent or keeper of any institution named in section fifty-one may sue or be sued upon any contract of purchase or sale made by him under sections fifty-one to seventy, inclusive. No suit shall abate by reason of a vacancy in any such office, but the succe…

Section 8. Each jailer and superintendent of a house of correction shall have a prison book, in which he shall keep an account of the value of the labor of the prisoners, of the salaries of officers and of articles furnished for the support of the prisoners, the quantity of such …

Section 83. During all times when outdoor labor is practicable, inmates of penal institutions required to labor shall be employed, so far as is possible, in the reclamation of waste places and in cultivating lands for raising produce to be used in public institutions, and in the …

Section 83A. The commissioner is hereby authorized to establish, on land under the control of the department of environmental management or of the metropolitan district commission and upon sites approved by the commissioner of conservation and recreation, camps to which male pris…

Section 83B. The commissioner may remove to any camp so established any prisoner held in a correctional institution of the commonwealth except the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, Framingham, and sentenced prisoners in jails and houses of correction, including male prisone…

Section 83C. A prisoner who escapes or attempts to escape from any prison camp or from land adjacent thereto or from the custody of the officer thereof or while being conveyed to and from any such camp may be pursued and recaptured and shall be punished by imprisonment in the sta…

Section 83D. The commissioner shall appoint a director of prison camps and such other prison camp officers as he shall deem necessary. All offices and positions in the prison camps shall be filled in accordance with the provisions of chapter thirty-one, except that offices and po…

Section 83E. The commissioner is hereby authorized to establish, on land under the control of the department of environmental management and upon sites approved by the commissioner of environmental management, or wherever authorized by the governor and council, camps to which mal…

Section 84. The county commissioners of any county may purchase or lease land, with funds specifically appropriated therefor by the general court, for the purpose of improving and cultivating the land by the labor of prisoners from a jail or house of correction; and the said comm…

Section 86F. The sheriff of any county, except the sheriff of Suffolk county, may establish a work release program under which persons sentenced to the house of correction, except sex offenders, may be granted the privilege of leaving actual confinement during necessary and reaso…

Section 86G. In Suffolk county the penal institutions commissioner of Boston shall have the same powers and duties with respect to the house of correction at Deer Island, and the sheriff of Suffolk county shall have the same powers and duties with respect to the Suffolk County Ja…

Section 86H. The commissioner of correction may permit an inmate to leave a state correctional facility to address a public gathering, provided that the commissioner receives a request in writing from the sponsor of the public gathering desiring such an address, the inmate select…

Section 86I. The administrator of a county correctional facility may permit an inmate to leave such facility in order to address a public gathering, provided that the administrator receives a request in writing from the sponsor of the public gathering desiring such an address, th…

Section 87. (a) Every inmate of a correctional institution or any other penal institution in the commonwealth shall be allowed to send mail to the President or Vice President of the United States, a member of the Congress of the United States, the Attorney General of the United S…

Section 87A. (a) For the purposes of this section, the terms ''state correctional facility'', ''state prison'' and ''county correctional facility'' shall have the same meanings as those terms are defined in section 1 of chapter 125. (b) The department of correction and sheriffs s…

Section 88. An inmate of any prison or other place of confinement shall not be denied the free exercise of his religious belief and the liberty of worshipping God according to the dictates of his conscience in the place where he is confined; and he shall not be required to attend…

Section 89. The superintendent of any correctional institution of the commonwealth, with the consent of the commissioner, may cause a sabbath school to be maintained in the institution for the instruction of the inmates in their religious duties, and may permit such persons as he…

Section 9. The keeper, superintendent or other officer having charge of a jail, house of correction, county training school or other county public institution shall keep an invoice book, in which shall be entered, on the day of receipt, all bills for supplies for the maintenance …

Section 90. The department or officers having charge of any prison or other place of confinement shall include as a separate item in their annual requests for appropriations such sums of money as they deem proper to carry out the two preceding sections and section forty of chapte…

Section 90A. The commissioner may extend the limits of the place of confinement of a committed offender at any state correctional facility by authorizing such committed offender under prescribed conditions to be away from such correctional facility but within the commonwealth for…

Section 92. The county commissioners may include, among the items requested to be appropriated for their respective counties, an amount to cover the expenses of furnishing instruction for one hour each evening except Sunday, in reading and writing to prisoners in jails and houses…