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Above, Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux and Norfolk County Sheriff Patrick McDermott testify as part of a panel at a budget hearing in Clinton on Friday, March 28, 2025
Sheriffs want lawmakers to consider reining in unlimited free phone calls at county jails amid bulging costs and heightened demand on correctional officers to monitor those communications.
The 2023 law that gave incarcerated individuals access to no-cost calls at county and state correctional facilities has cost sheriffs' offices $12.5 million so far in fiscal 2025, according to Norfolk County Sheriff Patrick McDermott.
With soaring call volumes and call durations, plus a surge in "electronic communications," McDermott said staff "see a little bit more of an overwhelming commitment to the monitoring responsibilities." Without specifying a dollar amount, McDermott said more money is needed to pay staff for that growing workload.
"While our software technology is pretty sophisticated, we still need that human touch to catch some of the things that we're trying to catch in those communications," McDermott, who's president of the Massachusetts Sheriffs' Association, said at a recent budget hearing. "We have seen a spike in gang coordination attempts, attempts at fake account creations and even family disruptions, sometimes involving children."
Rep. Steven Xiarhos asked sheriffs whether they can impose a time limit on inmate phone calls to alleviate some of the problems.
Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux quickly answered they're not allowed to under the law. Heroux, who said he supports the law overall, called unlimited phone calls "unreasonable."
"It's important that inmates keep in contact with friends and family to facilitate reentry. Nobody disputes that," Heroux said. "But what's happened is that a lot of times, inmates are now talking on the phone when they would have been doing programming. You also have a correlation with an increase in witness intimidation and increase in drug dealing coordination, as well."
Heroux urged lawmakers to update the law and impose a cap, though he didn't propose his own limit. Once inmates hit that cap, Heroux said, families could then pay for the additional communication.
Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins called unlimited phone calls "cost-ineffective."
"I understand the need for families to be in touch with their loved ones. I get that," Tompkins said. "I don't get free phone calls. I just don't, and I don't think that they should either."
Sheriffs have been working with the Executive Office for Administration and Finance to seek a boost from the no-cost calls trust fund, McDermott said. When the law took effect, the state spent $20 million to cover no-cost calls. In fiscal 2025, projected spending was slashed to $10 million and Gov. Maura Healey has recommended $15 million for fiscal 2026.
In another budget gap, McDermott pointed out sheriffs are adjusting to a new limit on how much correctional facilities can charge for commissary items, based on a provision that took effect in July 2024.
"There's a significant loss in our commissary revenue that we typically had available to us that went directly back into programming," McDermott said. "Those commissary reforms, with respect to the legislators' intent, resulted in an additional $4.5 million lost in programming revenue."
Heroux, a former representative, used part of his budget testimony to plead with lawmakers to give the Bristol County Sheriff's Office an extra $3 million to install locks on doors at a Dartmouth jail.
Eleven out of 22 housing units don't have locks due to a decades-old Supreme Judicial Court decision that found inmates cannot be in locked cells without toilets, Heroux said. Instead of installing toilets, correction officials had previously decided to remove door locks, which Heroux said has caused "a lot of problems ever since."
"You might remember about two years ago there was an uprising at my jail in the GB housing unit," Heroux said. "That wasn't the first time there was an uprising there. It happened (during) the Easter riot under my predecessor, Tom Hodgson. Exact same housing unit."
Projected state spending at the Bristol sheriff's office is about $61.9 million in the current fiscal year, according to state budget documents. The office received a $61.4 million appropriation in the fiscal 2025 budget, up from $58.4 million in fiscal 2024 and $57.5 million in fiscal 2023.
Healey has proposed funding the Bristol Sheriff's Department at nearly $63.3 million in fiscal 2026. Heroux said his requested $3 million increase would allow his office to install toilets and locks on just three housing units.
But he argued that "little bit of a nudge" in state funding would create a path to shutter a jail in New Bedford, and transfer incarcerated individuals there to the Dartmouth facility once locks are installed.
"We don't need to bond for this. We can just add it to our budget -- please do," Heroux said. "You do that, I'll put locks on three housing units, and then I can close the Ash Street Jail, the oldest continuously operating jail in the country. I'll close Ash Street, bring all the inmates back from there, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars we're spending every year at Ash Street, I'll reinvest that. And then we'll go and do the other eight housing units that need locks on doors."
