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Regional Treatment Program For Jail Inmates Faces Uncertain Future

WAMC

A substance abuse treatment center for jail inmates from throughout western Massachusetts is being forced from its longtime location for construction of the MGM Springfield casino.  The search is on for a new home for the program, but time and money are obstacles.

       The Western Massachusetts Correctional Alcohol Center, which has been housed for 30 years in a building on Howard Street in Springfield’s South End, is facing an uncertain future.  The Hampden County Sheriff’s Department leases the minimum security facility. The building is in the footprint of the $800 million MGM casino, and is slated for demolition this spring.

    Hampden County Sheriff Mike Ashe said he is facing a March 1st eviction without enough money in his department’s budget to relocate and, for the moment, no place to go.  Ashe made an official appeal for help from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission last week.

     " Whatever we have to deal with, I can only tell you we've got the helmet on trying to make it happen," Ashe told the gaming industry regulators at a meeting in Boston.

    Ashe said plans to move the program to a former nursing home in Springfield abruptly fell through last week when the owner of that property pulled out of a proposed lease.  Ashe said he must now go through a public bidding process to find a new location for the program.

     He asked the gaming industry regulators for either $4 million in a lump sum, or paid out as a 10-year loan in $500,000 installments.

    " Any help you could provide would be very very helpful," said Ashe

     The gaming commission controls a $15-$20 million community mitigation fund.  Two dozen applications for payments from the fund have been filed with the commission.  Acting commission chairman James McHugh assured Ashe his request would receive an expedited review.

     " You have our full support in the effort to keep this very valuable and very important program alive," said McHugh.

     The minimum security facility opened on Howard Street in 1985 as an alternative to a jail sentence for people convicted of multiple drunken-driving offenses.  It began treating overall substance abuse about 15 years ago.   The center houses about 200 inmates at a time from all four western Massachusetts counties and Worcester County.

     Ashe said more than 17,200 people have gone through the program in its history with just five percent reoffending.

      " It has been the crown jewel of a very very successful program in corrections," said Ashe during an interview.  " The recidivism rate speaks for itself in terms of being outstanding in fighting crime. Isn't that what our mission is all about?"

      A delegation of Massachusetts State Senators, led by Senate President Stan Rosenberg, toured the program last week, and pledged their support.

     " We will work with the sheriff and the community to identify a way to keep this going," pledged Rosenberg.

      Ashe is he wants to keep the program community-based rather than place it in the Hampden County House of Corrections in Ludlow.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.
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