Boston area jails are old, extremely overcrowed and often unsafe. State jails intended to hold a total of 7,802 are now holding 11,126 inmates. Some individual facilities are operating at as much as 350 percent of their capacity. The Middlesex County Jail still houses inmates with nowhere else to go despite the fact that a judge ordered it closed in 2005 because of the risk of asbestos exposure to inmates and employees at the jail. The Bristol County Ash Street Jail does not have automatic door locks, which means that in a fire, each door must be manually opened by a correctional officer. At least $30 million is needed to fix immediate and serious hazards in these older jails, and hundreds of millions of dollars will be needed over the long term. Funding is running low. The governor has pledged $143 million to the corrections department from a proposed bond package, but there are many demands on the funds.
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