Councilor Seeks Review of Police Booking Deal That Pays Suffolk Sheriff $150 per Detainee per Day

A Boston city councilor is seeking a public hearing on a 2023 agreement that allows the Boston Police Department to book and hold arrested adults at Suffolk County jails instead of district police stations, an arrangement under which the city pays the sheriff's department $150 for each detainee for each day or part of a day in custody.

The hearing order, offered by District 7 Councilor Miniard Culpepper, is on the agenda for the City Council's Wednesday meeting. It asks the council to examine the agreement's current status and purpose, how many people have been detained under it, their demographics, the cost to the city, and how injuries, deaths and complaints involving detainees are reported and investigated.

According to the order, the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department entered into a memorandum of agreement on Oct. 31, 2023. Under it, the sheriff's department may accept and detain adults arrested by Boston police until their first court appearance, provide space for up to two Boston police booking stations at the Nashua Street Jail, and, depending on operational needs, house some detainees at the Suffolk County House of Correction at South Bay.

The order describes how custody changes hands. Boston police are responsible for transporting each detainee, conducting a medical pre-screening, documenting visible injuries and known medical, mental health or substance-use concerns, and handing over arrest, booking, identification, property and medical paperwork. A transporting officer may not leave the facility until the sheriff's department formally accepts custody, the order says. After that, the sheriff's department is responsible for booking, medical intake when the detainee permits it, suicide-risk assessment, property storage, food, water, clothing, hygiene supplies, telephone access, transportation to court, casework and discharge planning.

The $150 daily charge "creat[es] a need for public information concerning the number and demographics of individuals detained under the agreement, the facilities in which they are housed, the duration of their detention, the services they receive, and the total cost to the City of Boston," the order states. The agreement's total cost to the city to date is not stated in the order.

The arrangement began in late 2023, during the city's clearing of encampments around Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, the area known as Mass. and Cass. GBH News reported in December 2023 that the arrangement was established as part of increased police enforcement there. Mayor Michelle Wu said at the time that the intent was to bring people arrested to the jail, "where there are dedicated supports for medical care, food and supervision," rather than booking them at district stations, according to GBH.

A coalition including the Massachusetts Bail Fund, the Material Aid and Advocacy Program, Families for Justice as Healing and CourtWatch MA questioned the transparency and legality of the process in a letter to Wu, the police department and then-Sheriff Steve Tompkins, GBH reported. The groups said central booking limited detainees' access to bail. A sheriff's department spokesperson told GBH that holding arrestees at Nashua Street provided supervision by trained staff and access to on-site medical care that would not otherwise be available in local police lockups, and that consolidating booking put more officers on the street.

GBH also reported that bills to formally establish a regional lockup in Suffolk County had stalled on Beacon Hill for years, and that an appeals court had ruled the previous year that if the city wanted to use the county jail to house incapacitated people held in protective custody, it must obtain authorization from the Legislature.

Culpepper's order cites a 2024 council hearing order that documented reports from advocates that people arrested in the Mass. and Cass area were taken directly to county facilities without first being processed at district stations, and that the process was put in place without adequate public notice. That order also described difficulty determining where particular people were being held, according to Culpepper's filing.

The new order points to deaths in sheriff's department custody. It states that more than 20 people have reportedly died in the department's custody since 2020. Among them, the order says, was a man who died in December 2025 after an altercation with correctional officers at the House of Correction; the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later ruled the death a homicide, caused by a brain injury resulting from cardiac arrest during physical restraint by correction officers. Boston.com reported in August that a homicide ruling by the medical examiner does not determine criminal liability, that the attorney general's office, the Suffolk district attorney's office and Boston police are investigating, and that no criminal charges have been filed.

The order also cites two people found unresponsive at South Bay on the same day: one in a holding cell while awaiting transport on a civil commitment for alcohol treatment, and another in a medical unit.

The council has pressed the sheriff's department on custody deaths before. In August, it adopted a resolution sponsored by Culpepper urging the department to place on administrative leave staff directly involved in the December 2025 restraint, Boston.com reported. Sheriff Mark Lawhorne said 11 officers involved had been moved into positions without contact with inmates or detainees, and that the department already enforces "many, if not all" of the safeguards Culpepper had recommended, according to Boston.com.

The hearing Culpepper is requesting would also cover access to review by a bail magistrate, notification procedures, the accuracy of public information about where people are held, standards for medical and mental health care, suicide prevention and use of force, and "key metrics concerning fairness in the treatment of detainees across race, class, gender, health condition, disability, and other relevant factors," according to the order.

The order does not say whether the 2023 agreement has been extended or amended; it lists those questions among the items the hearing should examine. The council meets at noon Wednesday in the Christopher A. Iannella Chamber.