PROVINCETOWN — When Barnstable County Sheriff Donna Buckley announced her campaign for that office in March 2022, she told the Independent that “the sheriff’s responsibility is not to do law enforcement, it’s to treat the people in jail regardless of how they got there.”
If elected, she said, her priority would be “making sure that the people released had the best treatment, education programs, and mental health and addiction counseling we could give them.”
Two and a half years into her six-year term, the Independent spoke with Buckley to discuss changes she has made to medical care, mental health, and re-entry programs at the jail, formally known as the Barnstable County Correctional Facility.
One of the most important changes, she said, has been ending the jail’s relationship with the prison health-care company Wellpath.
Buckley ended that contract in August 2023, saying that Wellpath had actually staffed only 20 percent of the providers it had promised. In the nearly two years since then, the jail has shifted to providing medical care with in-house staff.
That has included hiring four licensed mental health counselors, three treatment specialists focused on substance use disorders, and four case managers who help arrange for housing, health care, and other services for inmates about to be released, Buckley said this month.
Since ending the Wellpath contract, Buckley said, there have been significant improvements in the jail’s response to medical and mental health needs.
Three people committed suicide while in custody in the two years before the end of Wellpath’s contract, she said; since then, there have been no suicides at the jail.
While the number of documented medical grievances has actually increased since shifting to in-house care, Buckley’s communications director, K.C. Myers, said that is partly due to a transfer of more than 70 female inmates from the Essex County jail to Barnstable County, which increased the total prisoner population in the Bourne facility to 262.
The jail held 174 people in October 2022; the facility was built to hold 588 people.
A total of 159 medical grievances have been filed since August 2023, Myers told the Independent this month.
Re-entry to Society
In April, Buckley announced an initiative called “Public Safety 2.0 at the Bridge Center,” which is aimed at reducing recidivism by helping prepare people for their reentry into society.
Services at the Bridge Center include job training, counseling, drop-in support groups, and office hours in which family members can speak with program staff.
Buckley said it’s still too early to provide outcome data, but she has received two letters of appreciation from people who benefited from the program.
She said the jail also aims to be “playing our part in supporting people post-release, so that there is a reduction in recidivism.
“The more interaction that we have with our community, the better we will be at reducing stigma and helping the community do its part to reintegrate people with justice involvement back into the community,” Buckley said.
The sheriff’s office also works with Cape Cod Healthcare to put on the “BSCO Youth Academy,” which helps children who have been recommended by schools, counselors, and courts to develop “pro-social skills and good decision-making,” she said. “It’s a three-week academy that begins to establish a relationship with all of those partners and continues contact with these kids after they leave the camp.”
The academy is one way to “robustly work to keep people out of the justice system,” she said.
