A 29 June 2024 article in the Boston Globe entitled ‘A Massachusetts town is divided after a closed state prison reopened as an emergency shelter for migrant families’ by Madison Hahamy and Shannon Larson describes “the reopening Wednesday of a former state prison, which will now serve as an emergency shelter for migrant families.” How might we begin to read and analyze this item with the tools of SRV and PASSING?
“The Norfolk shelter will have room for 140 families, or a total of 450 people. A state spokesperson said that 21 families, or 71 people, had moved in since Wednesday. Jim Lehan, chair of Norfolk’s Select Board, said that 14 were school-aged children. The shelter is open to any homeless family, but the vast majority are expected to be migrants.”
“Before the migrants arrived, the prison was renovated to make it more family-friendly. Officials removed razor wire, opened gates, and added playrooms for children and classrooms for adults to learn English, search for housing, and learn vocational skills. Some say that those upgrades aren’t enough. ‘We’ve thrown them in a prison,’ Norfolk resident Benjamin Sprague told WBZ-TV News. ‘It’s like we’ve created a concentration camp. It’s horrible’.”
Among many questions which this not uncommon human service practice raises, we might consider PASSING rating R1152 Image Projection of Setting–History. From the General Statement of the Issue for R1152:
“One problematic scenario is a service setting for devalued people that was previously used by another group of devalued people. In such a case, the negative images and stereotypes associated with the previous devalued occupants are apt to be ‘inherited’ by, and become associated with, the new group of devalued users. This is especially harmful if the former devalued users of the setting were stigmatized by a different or even more devalued condition than the current users.”
The article is somewhat imprecise about the details. Norfolk State Prison is still open and is the largest medium security level facility in Massachusetts. It is for male prisoners. The buildings now being used as a shelter were part of the Bay State Correctional Center located on the grounds of Norfolk, approximately a half mile away. Bay State was decommissioned in 2015. In other words, the current shelter was a prison complex until 2015 and is roughly a half mile from the largest medium security prison in Massachusetts.
Norfolk was founded in 1927 as a ‘prison colony,’ under the direction of Howard Gill. “Under Gill’s supervision, Norfolk embodied the idea of a shared community as a ‘prison without bars’.” (https://statesofincarceration.org/story/howard-b-gill-architect-fallen-community-prison-model) Malcolm X was one of the more well-known prisoners housed in Norfolk.
This PASSING rating and the article topic raise several related questions, such as the following: what negative stereotypes are held about prisoners; and about homeless people, and about migrants. The article is not clear about where these families were from and what brought them to the Boston area. The term ‘migrant’ is used 11 times in the title and article; including once in the phrase ‘migrant crisis’ and once in conjunction with the phrase ‘putting more strain on already crowded public schools.’ The term ‘immigrant’ is used once.
Note also a possible connection to R2112 Setting Access–Public and R212 Availability of Relevant Community Resources. From the Globe article: “ ‘Our town center is two miles away from the prison, and there are no sidewalks except in the center of town, no streetlights, one traffic light, and a very small downtown area’.”
References to PASSING taken from: Wolfensberger, W., & Thomas, S. (2007). PASSING. A tool for analyzing service quality according to Social Role Valorization criteria. Ratings manual (3rd rev. ed.). Syracuse, NY: Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership & Change Agentry (Syracuse University).