Looking ahead toward his second year in office, Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux recently announced his “big ticket items” for 2025, which includes housing projects such as working to get GB back online following the April 2023 inmate uprising.

Additionally, Heroux is looking to continue his work on recruitment, training and fostering a better work environment. He is also seeking feedback from his employees — relaunching his survey and inviting them for a policy review task force.

Housing

Back in April 2023, Heroux planned to move inmates out of the GB housing unit, where there are no locks on doors, to another unit while GB underwent a retrofitting for suicide resistance. 

However, upset they would be in a unit with locks, the inmates trashed the GB unit, forcing the department to change their plans. Instead, housing unit FA was retrofitted and is now ready to open for inmates. 

Heroux said he had wanted to put locks on all the doors in the jail and additionally install cell toilets, but the project would cost $20 million. 

However, Heroux said it was discovered his department can afford to get the GB housing unit back online through a mix of in-house and outside contractor work. Set to cost the department approximately $2.5 million over the next two years, the plan is to make the unit suicide resistant as well as add locks, toilets, air conditioning and ventilation. 

The department will begin purchasing, planning and designing and construction is anticipated to begin by the end of the year.

With air-conditioning recently installed in the Women’s Center, Heroux said the rest will be installed one housing unit at a time, with GC being the last.

Also on the housing front, Heroux noted his continued work with the state legislature and Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance to get one-time money to retrofit the “MODS kitchen” and program area on the Dartmouth Campus to become a new home for the regional detainee operation, which is currently located at the Ash Street Jail in New Bedford. 

Heroux has made an effort in the last year to make this transition happen, in hopes of closing the Ash Street Jail, which is in need of a lot of expensive maintenance work. 

He said the plan is to have design study completed for the retrofit, get an estimate on construction and then complete the construction, adding he anticipates at least another two years on this project, but possibly longer.

Heroux noted he is looking to transition the EB, a small housing unit, into office space. 

Staffing

With the new training academy open, the office will continue to recruit large class sizes until it reaches 3-3-2 staffing in each housing unit, which will assist in eliminating forced overtime, according to Heroux. 

At this time, housing levels are 2-2-1, which means two correctional officers in a housing unit on first shift, two on second shift and one on third shift in a given housing unit. Heroux noted increasing staffing will also ensure safety in the units.

Heroux also announced all LTs who did not have a full weekend are now on partial weekends and he plans to do the same with all the correctional officers.

Employee feedback

Heroux is relaunching the survey he sent out when he first took office two years ago for employees. He said filling it out again is vital for finding out what is working, what isn’t working, what can be better and more.

Additionally, he is asking employees to volunteer for a Policy Review Taskforce, who will meet several times to go over policies. The taskforce will then send Heroux the policies possibly in need of change.

Heroux said the idea behind this is to make the day-to-day operations better based on input from the people implementing the policies every day. Once this taskforce submits findings, Heroux will review it with his team.

Any changes that can be made will be, but if they can’t, he said he plans to explain why.

Interested employees should contact Caitlin DeMelo in Human Resources.