A convoy of National Guard trucks arrived on the Island Wednesday morning to deliver a staff isolation tent to the Edgartown house of correction, and other supplies Islandwide.
The Massachusetts Department of Corrections and the state Department of Public Health assigned the Dukes County House of Corrections poor marks for substandard safety and health provisions for inmates.
The Dukes County Commission initiated a feud with the Martha's Vineyard Airport commissioners by voting unanimously Wednesday evening to devote 24.4 acres of land on airport grounds to a county jail and training facility for emergency personnel.
A 22-year-old inmate at the Edgartown House of Correction will be
arraigned on Thursday on three charges of escape. David Luce, who was
captured by local police after he was discovered missing from the jail
on Saturday, May 4, has also been charged with possession of counterfeit
$10 bills.
Last Friday afternoon at four o’clock, a woman on a red moped tossed a clear plastic water bottle off the eastbound side of the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road.
On Tuesday morning, Steve Duarte picked it up for her.
The simple act represented a huge change in the life of a man who was sitting in Barnstable county jail 12 months ago, serving the second year of a five-year sentence for a drug offense.
Behind the white clapboard house in prime Edgartown real estate, around the back fence — high steel fencing, covered in turf and topped with razor wire — a patch of grass has been turned over to a garden. Like other gardens in the neighborhood it is dormant and frozen over now, but soon it will be carefully tended by a crew who will pull its weeds, plant and harvest its vegetables, more than willingly and for no pay. Indeed, each man must earn his time there.
Citing concerns about allowing prisoners out on work release in a summer camp setting, the Edgartown conservation commission decided this week to end a work release program between the Dukes County jail and the Farm Institute in Katama.
“Because it’s open to the public and there’s a summer camp there, it’s probably not a good idea for the Farm Institute to have a work release program,” conservation agent Jane Varkonda said at a meeting of the commission on Wednesday.
