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Sheriff decries federal mandate to release accused cons


Faced with having to free an accused child rapist, murderer or burglar, Worcester County Sheriff Guy Glodis is choosing none of the above.
He has already jettisoned more than 200 prisoners - mostly nonviolent pretrial detainees - from his jam-packed Worcester County Jail and House of Correction to comply with a federal mandate to control prison overcrowding. And now, all that remains are the most dangerous of accused felons, those arrested for the types of startling crimes that compel homeowners to check the locks at night.
So Glodis is going before U.S. District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel as early as Wednesday to ask for more time and more leeway to comply with the order.
“It’s disturbing,” Glodis said last week in an interview. “They wouldn’t be there if they weren’t violent or dangerous.”
Fears that one of the released prisoners could kill someone have become so great for Glodis and the authorities in Worcester County that earlier this month, no one could agree on which inmates to spring.
“The pretrial population today is far worse than it was five months ago,” Deputy Superintendent Jeffrey R. Turco said.
And the Trial Court, which has to sign off on those releases, came down with the same set of ulcers.
In July, Zobel ordered the chronically overcrowded Worcester County Jail to comply with orders to reduce its prison population to 1,251 inmates (the jail’s official capacity is 822).
Glodis brokered deals with other counties to take a total of 96 prisoners off his hands. The Department of Correction approved more than a dozen transfers to its state facilities. And two-week furloughs were granted to 21 sentenced inmates. Short of taking the criminals into his own home, Glodis did everything he could to trim the jail’s population.
Last week, Turco provided a list of the 593 alleged felons currently awaiting trial in the jail, which is over its legal limit by 41 inmates. A quick glance at that list makes abundantly clear the sheriff’s untenable predicament. Among the ranks of accused felons are 22 accused child rapists, 54 accused murderers and 70 accused cocaine traffickers in his custody.
Experts say Zobel’s next step may be to put the jail into a kind of receivership where somebody - a retired judge, a local lawyer, a federal bureaucrat with no ties to the community - will act as sole arbiter in deciding which inmates to let go.
The whole debacle stems from a 1989 federal lawsuit filed by Worcester County prisoners who complained of severe overcrowding. Since Glodis became sheriff in 2005, the jail has resorted to housing prisoners in its gym and infirmary.
“We all know what the solution is, and that’s a new building,” Glodis said.
The state’s prison overcrowding crisis is nothing new. In 1990, Hampden County Sheriff Michael J. Ashe Jr. shocked the nation when rather than releasing more prisoners from his chronically crowded jail, he grabbed the local prisoners and took over a National Guard armory, boldly declaring, “I refuse to leave.”
No doubt it was his seizure of that armory that finally forced Beacon Hill to build him a new jail. Perhaps it will take a similar jolt for Gov. Deval Patrick - who is biding his time with a “study” on prison overcrowding - to sign off on a jail expansion in Worcester County.


jvansack@bostonherald.com

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