For as far back as the Department of Public Health’s Community Sanitation Program inspections go, Gardner has been one of the worst maintained prisons in Massachusetts. Prisoners have reported black mold, filthy showers, dirty rust-colored water and animal feces routinely found throughout the facility. DPH records corroborate every claim, often showing that the same issues documented by state inspectors remain for years.
Overcrowding has also been one of Gardner’s largest problems: indeed, while the prison’s maximum capacity is rated around 630 people, state records show that over 970 people are currently held in the aging facility. The phrase “inadequate floor space in cells” is used to refer to almost every single living space in every inspection for the past decade. While inspections like DPH’s are done annually, the State’s own records show that little to no progress is made on critical issues for a decade at a time.
Please take a moment to sign our public letter asking CAC to reject the accreditation process: https://forms.gle/x6FFK1KLiVEyPGG7A
Reasons to deny the accreditation of NCCI-Gardner:
By: Wayland “X” Coleman
Essentially, this is a very old prison (over 100 years old). Many of the structures are in bad shape. We have support beams that are severely cracked and twisted, floors that are soft (the lightest person walking on the second floor shakes the entire floor), and our bathrooms are inadequate for the number of people living in the units. The dorms are overcrowded, and does not provide us sufficient floor space, and rust is also a major issue throughout the prison. I’m not sure of the age of the cleaning machines in the kitchen, but our feeding trays and cups are often dirty. Phone access is insufficient for the number of people housed in the unit(s) (5 phones for approximately 80 people), and the showers are too small for the number of people it’s designed for (8×10 space for 9 people to shower at a time, which is about 30 inches of shower space per person, in unit H). There is also a concern that having multi-person showers is contrary to PREA, where it creates an environment where people are forced to be naked together. Multi-person showers are outdated, and should be removed if the institution wishes to prevent rape or other forms of sexual assault. Several units also expose people to mold (especially in the summer, when you can smell it coming through the walls), and there are no places to access drinking water other than the bathroom sinks, which are often nasty. We have 3 bathroom sinks for 40 people, who wash their faces, hands, brush their teeth, spit in, and—often—blow their noses. These are our sources of DRINKING WATER! In addition, there are only 4 toilets for 40 people. The accreditation of NCCI-Gardner would prove to be a very low bar, especially when they have failed their own local Department of Public Health inspection(s).
