Clicking on any of the Massachusetts facilities below will direct you to an information page with Inmate Search, Visitation, Mail, Phone, Email, Most Wanted and FAQ for families and friends.
Few states have shrunk their prisons as much as Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC), formed in 1919 and headquartered in Milford, held 6,064 people on September 21, 2026. That is roughly a quarter fewer than the 8,292 it held in January 2020, and the department has been closing whole prisons as the numbers fall. The state’s prison story starts much earlier, with Charlestown State Prison, which held Massachusetts prisoners for about 150 years until the new prison at Walpole replaced it in 1955.
The DOC holds people serving state prison sentences, including more than 1,600 serving life. It also holds a few hundred men who are civilly committed, mainly at the Massachusetts Treatment Center and Bridgewater State Hospital. Shorter sentences, up to two and a half years, are usually served in the county houses of correction run by sheriffs, not the DOC.
MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole, opened in 1955 as the successor to Charlestown, stopped housing prisoners in June 2023 after the DOC said it needed nearly $30 million in repairs. MCI-Concord followed in June 2024. The biggest open question is the women’s prison. MCI-Framingham, which opened in 1877 and is often called the oldest women’s prison in the country, held about 245 women in September 2026. In 2020 officials planned to close it and move women to Norfolk. Then on June 30, 2025, the Healey administration announced it would instead rebuild Framingham on a smaller footprint, at an estimated $360 million. Advocates pushing for a moratorium on new prison construction strongly oppose the project, and no construction timeline has been set.
Men sentenced to state prison enter DOC custody at Souza-Baranowski in Lancaster, where the reception and diagnostic center moved in 2022. They usually stay there 60 to 90 days while staff complete classification. Because about 80% of men are eventually classified to medium or minimum security, most move on to another prison afterward. Women are received at MCI-Framingham.
Massachusetts doesn’t offer its own online inmate locator. The DOC sends families to VINELink, which shows whether someone is in custody and where, and can send free alerts about transfers or release. For details about a person’s housing, call the prison directly. The DOC’s visiting guide explains how to get on an approved visitor list.
No. The state’s highest court struck down the death penalty law in 1984 in Commonwealth v. Colon-Cruz, and every effort to bring it back since has failed, including a 1997 attempt that lost by a single vote. The Death Penalty Information Center counts 345 executions in Massachusetts history, starting in 1630 and including 19 hangings in the Salem witch trials of 1692. The most famous were the electric chair executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti at Charlestown in 1927, which drew protests around the world. The last were Philip Bellino and Edward Gertson, executed on May 9, 1947. Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in 2015, but that was a federal case, and he is held in the federal prison system.
Conditions inside remain a concern. In 2020 the U.S. Department of Justice found reasonable cause to believe the DOC violated the Constitution through inadequate mental health care and prolonged restrictive housing for people in crisis.
Massachusetts opened the nation’s first state reform school in Westborough in 1846. It also became the first state to close its big training schools. The Department of Youth Services (DYS) was created in 1969, and by 1972 Commissioner Jerome Miller had shut the Lyman, Shirley and Oakdale schools in favor of small, regional programs. DYS still works that way. It serves young people ages 12 to 21, both youth detained while a case is pending and youth committed after a judge finds them delinquent, usually until 18, or until 21 for youthful offenders. Unlike most states, Massachusetts runs juvenile detention at the state level rather than through counties. Juvenile records are confidential, so families should contact DYS or the youth’s caseworker directly.
To search for an inmate or juvenile, or to learn how to visit, call, write or send money to someone in the Massachusetts Department of Correction or Department of Youth Services, choose a facility from the list below.