INCARCERATION

In a county jail in western Massachusetts, like in others around the U.S., officials are encouraging music lessons. Incarcerated men and women are finding the payoff is evident while locked up, and — research shows — also when they're out.

The deal calls for several changes, including the creation of a new unit for prisoners experiencing mental health crises and the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee compliance with the agreement.

Transitions Clinic Network is expanding its primary care services beyond New Haven, Hartford and Bridgeport to serve more people recently released from a correctional facility.

Baker signed a new bond bill last week, but excluded a five-year prohibition on building prisons and jails, which the Legislature had signed off on.

Tiyo Attallah Salah-El was also an author, scholar and activist who died in a Pennsylvania prison in June 2018, at age 85. He’d served nearly 50 years of a life sentence for a murder he always insisted he did not commit.

While many states use civil commitment, Massachusetts is believed to be the only state that, under the law known as Section 35, court-orders some men to treatment inside jails and prisons even if they haven't committed any crimes.

Massachusetts lawmakers are debating whether to continue supporting programs that lock people inside jails and prisons for addiction treatment.

Correction officers at the beleaguered Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center will soon wear body cameras. How many officers would wear them, and how many cameras would be used has not been finalized. Existing stationary cameras at Souza will remain in place.

The Board of Pardons and Paroles granted its first commutation in two years on Friday morning, creating a path to freedom for a man who has spent three decades in prison for murder and assault.

Addiction specialists and lawmakers testified Monday on a Massachusetts bill that would end many cases of involuntary drug treatment in jail.Massachusetts…