Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Framingham is the Massachusetts Department of Correction's institution for female offenders. It is located in Framingham, Massachusetts, a city located midway between Worcester and Boston. The prison was once known as "Framingham State Prison". However, MCI Framingham is its official name and is favored.
History
The prison opened in 1877 and was the second prison for women opened in the U.S. Several references note it as the oldest female correctional institution in the United States. Its original name was the Sherborn Reformatory for Women, because at the time of its establishment it was located in that town. In 1924, the town of Framingham acquired 565 acres in Sherborn, including the prison and its grounds. The reformatory aimed not only to incarcerate but to change the lives of inmates through work and other productive activities. The women worked a large farm and in later years other trades and manufacturing enterprises were tried. Visitors came to learn from the practices of the reformatory and its leaders. Several of its superintendents were well-known prison reformers including Ellen Cheney Johnson, Jessie Donaldson Hodder, and Miriam Van Waters. The prison's best-known superintendent, however, was Clara Barton, who served for eight months during a leave from her work with the Red Cross. The prison also employed female guards and physicians, and included both men and women among its board of visitors. Among the inmates who served time at Framingham were the 19th century bandits from the Oklahoma Territory known as Little Britches and Cattle Annie, depicted in the 1981 film, Cattle Annie and Little Britches.
MCI-Framingham is currently a medium-security correctional facility for female offenders. The prison houses both state and county offenders, as well as those awaiting sentencing. There are prisoners of a variety of classification levels. Sixty-three percent of the inmates are there for non-violent offenses, most often involving drugs. Some female inmates arrested in the Boston area are incarcerated at Boston's South Bay House of Correction under the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department. MCI-Framingham prison is reported to be the most overcrowded in the state. Three-quarters of the women in this prison are mothers. The design capacity for MCI-Framingham is 452 inmates. It currently houses less than 200 female inmates.
