Does Mass. need a new plan for a women’s prison — or a better plan to decarcerate them?

Research has shown that a large proportion of women in prison have experienced trauma. But women who have been incarcerated and researchers say it’s impossible to heal in a prison.

By Marcela García Globe Columnist Before she broke the cycle in 2010, Stacey Borden had been in and out of prison for nearly 30 years, mostly for drug possession. Often when she’d leave the prison, the correction officers would say to her, “We’ll see you back soon.”

Stacey Borden, Founder of New Beginnings Reentry Services, Inc.

“They would tell me I’d be back in prison like it was nothing. And they were right — I would be back,” Borden said. The revolving door was at MCI-Framingham, the dilapidated women’s prison that has decayed beyond the point of repair. At 143 years old, it’s the nation’s oldest operating women’s correctional facility. The prison might close by 2024. And the question before the Department of Correction is: Build a new prison, or embrace alternative forms of rehabilitation for a small population of women inmates in Massachusetts — now just under 200? Read the full Boston Globe article HERE