Closing Ash Street Jail rides on a crowded state fund, and so does the lockup South Coast police rely on

NEW BEDFORD South Coast 360 is still reporting this developing story and will have more after its interview with the sheriff and after the Dartmouth Select Board takes up the regional lockup Monday, Nov. 16.

Police across Bristol County bring the people they arrest after court hours to the Ash Street Jail in New Bedford, where the sheriff's office holds them until they go before a judge, for $75 a day. New Bedford police paid the sheriff's office $169,425 for that service in 2025, the department told South Coast 360.

Sheriff Paul Heroux wants to close the 138-year-old jail and move its work to the county jail in Dartmouth, and he has asked the state for $27.1 million to make room there, though he told South Coast 360 on Nov. 5 that ending the jail operation at Ash Street in 2027 "is an idea, not a plan." His request is competing for a state repair fund that the state's own capital plan sizes at $150.3 million over five years. Sheriffs have asked for about $241 million in all, The New Bedford Light reported Wednesday, Nov. 11, in a story built on Heroux's application, which he shared with the Light for the first time. DCAMM, the state agency choosing the projects, has not announced any awards.

If the jail closes with no new home for its lockup, the cost lands on local police, their chiefs say. The county's police chiefs met Nov. 6 and had "no interest" in running a regional lockup themselves, Dartmouth Police Chief Brian Levesque, president of the Bristol County Chiefs of Police Association, told South Coast 360. Levesque has estimated that guarding Dartmouth's own prisoners could cost the town roughly $180,000 a year, about $150,000 more than it budgets now.

Ash Street held 96 people on Nov. 9, according to the sheriff's office. The state Inspector General said in June that the jail "has reached the end of its useful life and should be decommissioned," and state health inspectors who walked through it in May found 77 violations of their standards, 57 of them repeats. The sheriff says closing it depends on putting locks and toilets in cells in Dartmouth, where about half the housing units have no locks because their cells have no toilets.

The towns' bill

New Bedford pays "a set rate of $75 per day," Public Information Officer Holly Huntoon said, so the city's $169,425 in 2025 covered about 2,259 days of custody, by South Coast 360's math. The department has not had its own holding cell for at least 30 years, Huntoon said. When Ash Street turns someone away, officers generally take the person to the State Police barracks in Dartmouth or back to police headquarters, where an officer watches them until court opens. On Feb. 9, she said, an officer spent more than four hours transporting and watching one person after Ash Street refused that person twice. A proposed new police headquarters could include holding cells, she said.

Dartmouth averaged 277 prisoners held for a total of 320 days a year over the last two fiscal years, about $24,000 a year at the $75 rate, Levesque said. The department budgets $29,900 for it, according to his letter read aloud at the Dartmouth Select Board's Oct. 26 meeting. When Ash Street rejects a Dartmouth arrestee, the person stays at the police station until court or a clerk magistrate's release, watched by an officer pulled off the road or one called in on overtime, Levesque said. His $180,000 estimate assumes overtime about a third of the time, and the letter called it "a rough estimate only."

Freetown police took 40 people to the sheriff's custody in 2025 for 46 billed days, a total of $3,450, Chief Scott Rose said. The department has three cells, but holding someone there takes an officer to supervise them, and longer stays would mean staffing changes, he said. "Our primary concern is whether those services would remain available at another suitable location," Rose wrote.

Fairhaven has no holding cells at all, Police Chief Daniel Dorgan said in an on-the-record interview with South Coast 360 on Nov. 6. "We have a bench, which is affixed to the floor and to the wall, and there's an eyelet with a handcuff attached to it," he said, and "it's not proper or humane to leave someone there for any extended amount of time." His department relies on Ash Street "100%," sending about 75 to 100 people in a typical year, he said. When someone has nowhere to go, Fairhaven borrows a cell in Mattapoisett or Acushnet and sends one of its own officers, "most likely on overtime," to watch the person around the clock, sometimes all weekend when the arrest is on a default warrant from court. At an overtime rate of about $65 an hour, he said, the $75 a day is the cheaper choice.

The chiefs' notice, read into the record at the Dartmouth meeting, counted 32 refusals after medical and mental health screening in 2022, 135 in 2025 and 92 through August 2026, against 1,720 people accepted, a rate it said rose from under 1% in 2022 to roughly 7% in 2026; its own figures through August work out to about 5%, by South Coast 360's math. Each refusal falls on the arresting department, the notice said, and closing the lockup would turn an occasional cost into a standing one that could shift "unfunded to 20 municipal budgets." Heroux wrote to the chiefs on Oct. 6 that his office refuses some arrestees "for good reason."

The sheriff's five options

"I need to close Ash St for a lot of reasons. It is a money pit," Heroux wrote in that Oct. 6 letter to the county's police chiefs, which he forwarded to South Coast 360. Splitting his staff between two jails causes forced overtime in Dartmouth, which hurts retention and leaves fewer officers, he wrote, and "the only thing keeping me from closing Ash St is the regional detainee service we provide to the PDs." Eleven of the Dartmouth jail's 22 housing units have no locks, he wrote, and he has asked the state for lock money for more than three years.

The letter laid out five options: keep things as they are; stop the regional service and bring his staff and inmates back to Dartmouth, which he called "a bold move"; let police departments do something on their own, independent of his office and Ash Street; have the Legislature pay for the locks, which he called "optimistic but not realistic"; or have his office leave Ash Street and turn the lockup over to the chiefs, "the most realistic." Under that last option, departments would use the money they now pay his office to hire matrons, his office could lend trained staff on a per diem basis and give up some transport vans, and he would keep paying the building's utilities for several years. "We would not ask any PD to pay for the use of Ash St," he wrote. "I would like to close Ash St in 2027."

Asked about that timeline on Nov. 5, Heroux wrote, "I would like to end the jail operation (not necessarily regional lock up) at Ash St in 2027, but I don't always get what I want." Ash Street costs his office "several million each year," he said, and ending the jail operation there would save $2 million to $3 million a year "by our estimates." Keeping 45 security staff at Ash Street leaves 45 fewer in Dartmouth, spreading the office too thin and driving the overtime he called a major reason officers burn out and leave. Locks for the Women's Center in Dartmouth would cost "several million," he said, and he has asked the state for that money "countless times."

Later that day he wrote that if the Dartmouth cells had locks, "I would bring the regional operation back to Dartmouth and continue to do that." The problem, he wrote, is not the lockup itself but running it from two places. He also said he had recently learned that "almost all of the PDs have their own holding cells that are not used." New Bedford and Fairhaven have none, their departments said, and the Dartmouth and Freetown chiefs say holding someone at the station takes officers off patrol or onto overtime.

The chiefs' answer

Levesque said the chiefs have met several times on the lockup, most recently Nov. 6, and took up the sheriff's preferred option of having them run Ash Street. "We discussed this option and there was no interest amongst the chiefs in running a regional lockup," he wrote. "I am also not aware of any regional lockup in the State that is operated by local police departments. Historically, this has been a service run by the sheriff's departments around the state." Asked whether that position is written down, he wrote, "There is nothing in writing that I can share."

Levesque wrote on Nov. 6 that he supports the sheriff's original plan to close Ash Street and move his whole operation to Dartmouth. "While the Sheriff has offered us a facility, it is the service that we need," he wrote, adding that the cost, staffing and administration of a regional lockup are "beyond our ability."

Dorgan, who said he came to the interview from that afternoon's chiefs' meeting, called handing the lockup to the departments unworkable: the towns would be "on the hook" to put money into a building the sheriff calls a money pit, and he sees no workable way for every department, including his own 38 sworn officers, to keep someone there 24 hours a day. "Our official position is that that option that he believes is best is not viable," he said, adding that the chiefs want to work with the sheriff and legislators "to keep that service going." He said the chiefs' legal counsel raised concerns about some of the wording in an agreement the sheriff's office gave them to sign to continue the service, and that the chiefs will send it back to the sheriff.

Police officers are "not jailers," Dorgan said, and the two are "very different jobs." He said moving everything to Dartmouth would work for Fairhaven "100%," that he thinks a guarantee of "no interruption in the service" would win the sheriff the support of every Bristol County chief, and that, speaking for himself, he would be willing to pay "anywhere up to" $100 or $150 a day "if that's what really needed to happen." "It's never been about where he does it, where he houses the regional inmates," he said. "It's the service that he provides is invaluable to us."

Dorgan described what a closing would mean for Fairhaven in a Nov. 3 letter to Town Administrator Keith Hickey, the Select Board and state Rep. Mark Sylvia, which he sent to South Coast 360 on Nov. 12. Each refusal at Ash Street means officers must take the person to a hospital for medical clearance and then work out how to keep them in custody, which often means staying at the hospital, keeping watch at the station or arranging a cell in another town, the letter says, and "a single prisoner refusal can require two officers to be unavailable for regular patrol responsibilities for several hours or, in some circumstances, an entire shift." He recommended that the town consider an overtime contingency for prisoner costs in its fiscal 2028 police budget and that it not base staffing or budget decisions on the assumption that Ash Street will stay open or keep taking every prisoner.

Representatives of the county's chiefs have met with members of the state legislative delegation, the letter says, and U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss "reached out to representatives of the Bristol County Chiefs in support of their position and to offer assistance" before meeting with them. Potential next steps "may include working collaboratively with the Department of Justice in an effort to facilitate negotiations" between the departments and the sheriff's office, Dorgan wrote. "Our objective is not to challenge the Sheriff's authority or litigate individual intake decisions," he wrote, but to make sure the costs are addressed "before they become an unfunded municipal responsibility."

Heroux has questioned how his proposal reached the Dartmouth board. In his Nov. 5 email, he wrote that what he presented to the chiefs "is very different than what the chief may have presented to the Dartmouth select board," and that he was "hearing" Levesque "is trying to use leverage with a select board to help the jail get the money it needs to put locks on doors." "So I think the police are leveraging their influence to help me get what I need so that I can continue to help them do the regional operation," he wrote. Asked about that, Levesque said he told the board the sheriff may close Ash Street and stop accepting Dartmouth's arrestees. "Although the Sheriff's listed several options in his letter, the purpose of my letter was to notify the Select Board of the impact on the Dartmouth Police Department if the regional lockup was closed," he wrote.

The state fund

The money Heroux is chasing comes from a competitive program in the state's five-year Capital Investment Plan, which the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, known as A&F, writes for the governor. Because "some capital needs are larger than the formula distribution can reasonably support," the plan sets aside $150.3 million through fiscal 2030 for larger sheriffs' projects, and this year's update puts $31.7 million into the line that pays for them.

The state Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, known as DCAMM, closed applications in January, the Light reported. Its form favors projects that fix health and safety problems, add no square footage and "yield surplus land or buildings that could be made available for housing production."

Six sheriffs, Bristol's among them, gave their applications to the Light, which posted them. Those six alone ask for $161.3 million, more than the program's full five-year budget, by South Coast 360's count of the totals on each form. Hampden and Hampshire told the Light their requests were $3.8 million and $9.3 million, which leaves about $66.6 million, by South Coast 360's math, for the six remaining offices, which declined to release their applications, the Light reported.

Sheriffs' capital requests made public so far, with each office's average daily population in fiscal 2025 (Inspector General's report)

Sheriff	Request	What it would pay for	Average in custody, fiscal 2025
Dukes	$34 million	Renovate and expand the Edgartown jail and house of correction	14
Franklin	$33.2 million	Roof, masonry, heat, elevator and sprinklers at the Old Main Jail in Greenfield, built about 1886	176
Essex	$29.1 million	Rebuild the kitchen and dining area at the Middleton jail	924
Bristol	$27.1 million	Locks, in-cell toilets and an intake center in Dartmouth so Ash Street can close	659
Worcester	$24.7 million	Repair modular housing units in West Boylston and tear down a former nurses home	689
Berkshire	$13.2 million	Replace showers and two chillers at the Pittsfield jail	195
Hampshire	$9.3 million (told the Light)	A new camera system	132
Hampden	$3.8 million (told the Light)	Exterior repairs to housing towers	1,088

Locks, toilets and an intake center

Bristol County's application opens with one line: the office "requests funding to put locks on doors and toilets in cells." About $11.8 million would rebuild the four units of the Women's Center in Dartmouth with plumbing in every cell and new doors so it could hold people brought in by police, and about $2.2 million would turn an unused kitchen there into an intake area. The women held there, 46 when the application was written, would move to a renovated unit in the main jail.

Another $5.3 million would rebuild two main jail units, GA and GB, whose 96 cells have no plumbing and no locks and which the application says have stood empty since a 2023 disturbance. Construction comes to about $19.4 million, and DCAMM's standard 40% markup brings the request to $27,112,791. The office wrote that it cannot pay for any of it from its budget.

State health rules require a working toilet and running water in any cell where a person is locked in, so cells without them stay unlocked, the Inspector General's report explains, creating "serious safety concerns" for inmates and officers. The report lists the main Dartmouth building as holding 1,100 people; it held 475 on Nov. 9, according to the sheriff's office. Health inspectors who toured it March 11 found 282 violations, 203 of them repeats, and unit GB closed "for security reasons."

Inside Ash Street

The sheriff's office says Ash Street opened in 1888 and calls it the oldest operating jail in the nation. A 2024 study of its brick facade was ordered after bricks were reported falling onto the street below, the Inspector General's report says, and the application puts essential repairs at about $11 million, including more than $7 million to repoint the masonry.

State health inspectors at Ash Street on May 21 found plumbing or a toilet out of order in 10 cells, mold on ceilings and walls in cells and outside showers, rodent droppings by a fire exit door and hot water at 61 degrees at an inmate sink in the intake area, according to the Department of Public Health report filed with the Legislature. Fifty-seven of the 77 violations were repeats; a December 2025 inspection had found 120. The department accepted the sheriff's plan of correction July 13.

On Nov. 9 the jail held 67 people awaiting trial, 15 serving sentences and 14 people arrested by local police, the sheriff's office reported; the application says about 3,000 arrestees spend at least one night there each year.

The cost to the state

The Bristol County Sheriff's Office spent $73.3 million through its main state account in fiscal 2025, about $9.9 million more than its appropriations and reserve transfers, according to the Inspector General's report. South Coast 360 reported on that gap in October. Spread over the 659 people the office held on an average day, that spending works out to about $111,000 a person, or about $305 a day, by South Coast 360's math, a little below the weighted average of the other sheriffs on a chart in the report.

The application says closing Ash Street would pay for itself in under three years, counting about $800,000 a year in utilities and maintenance and $4 million a year in forced overtime saved by moving the 48 correctional staff it counts at Ash Street to Dartmouth. It shows no math behind those figures, which differ from the $2 million to $3 million a year and the 45 security staff Heroux gave South Coast 360. The Inspector General wrote that consolidating in Dartmouth "would almost certainly result in immediate cost savings" and recommended that A&F and DCAMM "work to decommission Ash Street Jail and place locks on all cell doors in the remaining facility."

The Ash Street block

The state owns the two-acre Ash Street block, which the city assesses at $6,471,200 for fiscal 2027, according to the state's parcel data. The application says the site "could serve the greater community and the Commonwealth by providing much needed space for housing production," either as public housing or through a sale to a developer. Heroux told the Light that once he leaves, the building goes back to the state, and that New Bedford's mayor and City Council should "say to the state delegation, the state reps and the state senators, this is what we want to do."

If Ash Street's inmates move to Dartmouth under the plan, families visiting them would go to the Dartmouth campus, where visiting hours are set unit by unit; Ash Street visits now run in 45-minute blocks four days a week, according to the sheriff's posted schedule.

If the money does not come

Heroux told the Light that without state money he could keep Ash Street open as it is, screening arrestees and turning away those it cannot safely hold, or stop taking arrestees from local police. "I bring back just the regular inmates and not do the regionals anymore," he told the Light. He also told the Light, "I don't expect to get anything at this point." Hampshire County Sheriff Patrick Cahillane, president of the Massachusetts Sheriffs' Association, told the Light he does not expect awards before December.

Who decides, and when

DCAMM picks the projects, and its decisions are pending as it accounts for new controls on sheriffs' spending, the Light reported. Those controls, in Section 112 of the fiscal 2027 state budget, direct A&F through fiscal 2031 to cap each sheriff's staff, prevent spending beyond appropriations and set "procedures for any large capital expenditures." A sheriff's office that ends this fiscal year in an undocumented deficit, or breaks those controls, goes under a new Sheriff Fiscal Oversight Council that must get monthly reports on its building projects and can, in the end, appoint a receiver.

Bristol's application assumed money would arrive in July 2026, with Ash Street open until construction ends. Its own schedule runs 28 to 42 months from the day money arrives, by South Coast 360's count, so an award early next year would put the move to Dartmouth between spring 2029 and summer 2030.

What happens next

The Dartmouth Select Board has put the regional lockup on its agenda for Monday, Nov. 16, at its 6 p.m. meeting in Room 304 of Town Hall, with Levesque and Heroux listed as invited guests, and Levesque said he will attend. Dorgan wrote Nov. 12 that Fairhaven had not been invited and that he is working on the department's 2024 and 2025 counts of arrestees taken to Ash Street. In the Nov. 6 interview he said he had asked that his letter be discussed in open session in Fairhaven, and that the town, which is planning a new public safety building, wants holding cells in any design.

Heroux, who shared his Oct. 6 letter and answered South Coast 360's questions by email, has offered to talk further, and that interview is being scheduled. He wrote that South Coast 360's follow-up questions would take time to research to get exact numbers. South Coast 360 has also asked DCAMM and A&F about the program's timing and the Ash Street site, New Bedford's mayor's office about the future of the block, and state Sens. Mark Montigny and Michael Rodrigues and state Reps. Christopher Markey, Antonio Cabral, Christopher Hendricks, Mark Sylvia and Steven Ouellette about the program. On Nov. 12 it asked U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss's office what he discussed with the chiefs and what role, if any, he sees for the federal government. This story will be updated after the interview with Heroux, as the other offices answer and after the Nov. 16 meeting.

How we counted: request totals come from each application the Light posted, and the Hampden and Hampshire amounts from the Light's report. Populations are the Inspector General's fiscal 2025 averages, and the cost per person divides the office's fiscal 2025 spending through its main state account by that average. New Bedford's days of custody divide its 2025 payment by the $75 rate.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.