November 3, 2025
Massachusetts can pay $6.75 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over inmate abuse by corrections officers at Souza Baranowski Correctional Middle.
A federal decide has authorised a $6.75 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit over violence towards inmates at a Massachusetts maximum-security jail.
On Oct. 28, a last settlement was authorised by the Division of Corrections (DOC) for over 150 present and former inmates, every set to obtain between $10,000 and $40,000 for the violence they suffered throughout a 2020 crackdown at Souza Baranowski Correctional Middle, WBUR reviews. Along with the settlement, the lawsuit will result in jail reforms, together with stricter use-of-force insurance policies for officers, obligatory elimination of employees discovered to have used extreme pressure, and the implementation of variety and implicit bias coaching.
“This settlement represents a last step in a sequence of actions the Division of Corrections has taken in response to the incident, together with an intensive evaluate of current insurance policies and the implementation of key reforms,” DOC Commissioner Shawn Jenkins mentioned in a press launch.
The lawsuit, Diggs v. Mici, filed in January 2022, alleged that corrections officers used extreme pressure from Jan. 10 to Feb. 6, 2020. Jail employees and Carol Mici, the previous DOC commissioner who retired in 2024, have been additionally named within the swimsuit.
In keeping with the practically 160 plaintiffs, correction officers and tactical groups carried out a “brutal and calculated collective revenge” towards inmates who weren’t concerned in an preliminary assault on a number of officers by a small variety of prisoners. The lawsuit claims officers used Tasers, pepper ball weapons, chemical brokers, and canines towards inmates, and that dozens have been compelled to kneel towards a wall with their fingers and ankles shackled for hours.
“This brutality included beating and kicking incarcerated folks; gouging eyes; grabbing testicles; smashing faces into the bottom or wall; deploying Taser weapons, pepper ball weapons, and different chemical brokers; ordering [canines] to menace and chew incarcerated folks; and forcing folks to kneel in stress positions with fingers and ankles shackled, in some circumstances for a number of hours,” a press launch from the plaintiffs’ authorized groups state.
The DOC mentioned it carried out a evaluate of current insurance policies, consulted nationwide consultants, studied greatest practices, and drew on enhancements in regulation enforcement, resulting in the primary modifications to the Use of Power Laws since 2009.
Within the lawsuit, plaintiffs alleged unconstitutional therapy of Black and Latino inmates, claiming they have been “focused for significantly harsh therapy due to their race,” together with extreme pressure, pulling or slicing dreadlocks, racial slurs, and different discriminatory actions. As a part of the settlement, reforms embody permitting inmates to self-report their racial identities throughout reserving to forestall misidentification and explicitly prohibiting DOC staff from utilizing racial slurs, with disciplinary measures for violations.
“DOC has constantly misidentified folks of shade as white, which not solely denies people their proper to self-identify, but additionally skews demographic information associated to make use of of pressure and different incidents involving folks of shade,” the attorneys mentioned.
David Milton, an legal professional with Prisoners’ Authorized Providers of Massachusetts, which filed the swimsuit alongside Hogan Lovells, mentioned settlements are unusual in class-action circumstances involving prisoners. Nevertheless, he hopes that this settlement will cease future violence and drive significant reforms at Souza, which he described because the state’s most violent jail.
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