Opened in 1635, the Boston gaol served as Massachusetts sole prison for eighteen years. As settlers fanned out into the wilderness, organizing new townships as they went, local facilities for incarceration sprang up elsewhere. The Boston jail sat on Prison Lane (1634-1708), which became later known as Queen Street (1708-1788), and then Court Street (from 1788). Around 1689, the old stone gaol on Prison Lane had outer walls of stone three feet thick, its unglazed windows barred with iron, the cells partitioned off with plank, the doors covered with iron spikes, the passage-ways like the dark valley of the shadow of death. In 1704, a new building replaced the old on the same site.
The prison and its dungeon were considerably repaired after the great fire of 1711, in that neighborhood, which destroyed the town house and first church. The keeper’s house was also renovated. The keys of the building were twelve to eighteen inches long and were expressive of the formidable character of the jail, the walls of which were three feet thick. There is no reason to suppose that Boston Jail was any worse than most other prisons of that period. But that it was a forbidding place is amply attested by Daniel Fowle, the Boston printer, in his “Total Eclipse of Liberty” If there is any such thing as a hell upon earth, I think this place is the nearest resemblance of any I can conceive of. A new building designed by Governor Bernard replaced the old in 1767.
The Massachusetts Charitable Society, at their quarterly meeting last Monday evening in December 1797, unanimously voted a blanket for each prisoner now confined in Boston gaol, and as much fuel as will be necessary to keep them comfortable during the inclemency of the season.
By 1807 the county gaol appeared as a plain stone building of considerable strength, located in the rear of the court-house. The jail was a three story building with corridors on the outside of the upper stories, in which were the prisoners confined for debt.
The Leverett Street jail opened in 1822, replacing the old prison off Court Street. “In 1823 the old gaol was taken down, and its materials were partly used in constructing the gun house and ward room on Thacher Street” in the North End.
Where the Jail and the House of Corrections became two – In 1823, “on inspecting the common jails of the city, in Leverett Street, it was found that, of the two stone prisons there situated, one was amply sufficient for all the usual exigencies of the courts of justice. It was determined, therefore, to convert the other into a house of correction, and employ the inmates in the adjoining jail-yard in hammering stone and like materials.” Thus “there were two separate prisons within the same enclosure.
Prior to 1896, the Suffolk County “House of Correction was located in South Boston. By Chapter 536 sec. 15 of the Acts of 1896 all the prisoners sentenced there were transferred to the former House of Industry on Deer Island. The last inmates were transferred from the South Boston facility by October 1902. Inmates on Deer Island, 1898 In the 20th century, the prison was administered by the Penal Institutions Department and the Penal Commissioner of Boston.
In 1990 the Suffolk County house of correction was transferred from the penal institutions department of Boston to the Sheriff. The transfer legislation removed correction officers and other employees at Deer Island from the provisions of G. L. c. 31 (1990 ed.), the civil service law, and brought them into conformity with the employees of the Suffolk County jail, and the employees of all other county houses of correction and jails, none of whom is under the provisions of the civil service law. With agreement of the current Sheriff at the time, all Suffolk County Sheriff’s employees became City of Boston employees. Due to the dismantling of the County Government at this time. Though the penal Department had been City of Boston employees already, it was easier to move the jail officers into the same system.
In 1991 about 880 inmates were transferred permanently to the Suffolk County House of Correction in Boston. The Deer Island prison buildings were raised in 1992 to prepare for the construction of the Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant, an outcome of the Clean Water Act.
Today the “House of Corrections” and the “County Jail” are within the same Department yet the officers are members of different unions. Both the “County Jail” and “House of Corrections” are under the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department but are very much different in so many ways. The different history of both departments probably has a lot to do with this.
Up until 2010 every employee within the department were City of Boston employees, on January 1, 2010 the State of Massachusetts forced the entire department into becoming state employees, with agreement by the current Sheriff.