Bill
HD 6201
Provides a standardized, quarterly, non-identifying aggregate jail population report across Massachusetts facilities to inform policy and transparency.
Status: Submitted by the Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association; relates to the quarterly population report required by law (Chapter 126, Section 40).
Purpose and intent
- To provide a standardized quarterly aggregate report on the population of Middlesex County Correctional Facility (and, by extension, other jails and houses of correction) as required by Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 126, Section 40.
- The report aggregates data from sheriffs’ offices while omitting any information that could identify individual inmates.
Key provisions and requirements
- Data to be recorded for each person committed to a jail or house of correction:
- Probation Central File (PCF) number
- State Identification Number (SID), if available (fingerprint-based)
- Race and ethnicity
- Offense-based Tracking Number (OBTN)
- Type of release
- Type of admission
- Length of sentence
- Jail credit from pretrial incarceration
- Earned time
- Program participation and outcomes during incarceration
- Case disposition
- Bail amount or reason if no bail was set
- Data aggregation:
- The sheriff shall assemble aggregate data for each jail/house of correction into a quarterly report that covers the entire calendar quarter.
- Reports must not include identifying information about any individual inmate or detainee.
- Submission schedule:
- Each quarter, the sheriff shall deliver the report from each jail/house of correction to:
- Secretary of Public Safety and Security
- House and Senate chairs of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary
- House and Senate chairs of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security
- Clerks of the House of Representatives and the Senate
- Data source and collaboration:
- The report is produced in part with the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS) and uses data from the Commonwealth’s Criminal Justice Cross-Tracking System.
- Data definitions and caveats:
- The bill includes definitions for PCF Number, SID, and OBTN, noting SID/PCF/OBTN creation timing and possible data lag.
- A disclaimer clarifies that SID/PCF/OBTN numbers aren’t always available at intake due to lag in FBI processing and manual entry delays.
- Important data limitations:
- Three data points (case disposition, bail amount, and reason for no bail) originate from the Trial Court and are not owned by the Sheriffs’ Offices. As such, those fields may not be populateable by sheriffs alone.
- The Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association (MSA), in coordination with the Trial Court and EOPSS, is working to refine methods to retrieve these metrics from the Cross-Tracking System for electronic reporting.
Who is affected
- Primary: Middlesex County Correctional Facility population data, as reported by the Middlesex Sheriff's Office.
- Secondary/statewide context: Other jails and houses of correction in Massachusetts are similarly governed by Chapter 126, §40; this bill references the same framework and data-sharing mechanisms.
- Data users: The Secretary of Public Safety and Security, the Joint Committees on the Judiciary and on Public Safety & Homeland Security, and legislative clerks.
Procedural and timeline considerations
- The bill outlines a recurring quarterly reporting cadence.
- It emphasizes privacy and non-identification in the published reports.
- It relies on interagency data systems (Cross-Tracking System) and ongoing coordination with the Trial Court and EOPSS to improve data completeness, particularly for fields not directly controllable by sheriffs.
Potential impact
- Improves transparency and availability of jail population data to lawmakers and the public while protecting inmate privacy.
- Encourages standardized data collection across sheriff-operated facilities.
- Highlights interagency collaboration to fill data gaps (especially for trial-court-derived fields like case disposition and bail details).
- May inform policy discussions on sentencing, pretrial release, jail occupancy, and program effectiveness based on aggregated, non-identifying statistics.
Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.
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