All is calm after incident at Bristol County House of Correction

It appears all is calm after an incident that took place with inmates at the Bristol County House of Correction.

This morning, the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office was taking steps to make the facility in Dartmouth more suicide-resistent which included moving inmates to different housing units. Some inmates in one of the housing units did not want to move, leading to an incident.

At 2:17 p.m., officials announced that all staff were accounted for and there were no staff hostages. It was also believed that inmates had not taken other inmates as hostage.

At 4:11 p.m., it was announced that one of the two units involved was under control and there were no injuries in the operation.

At 5:19 p.m., it was revealed that both units were calm, and officials were finalizing inmate movement to conclude today’s incident response.

A source stated that damage was done to two of the units and inmates were attempting to take them over earlier in the day. Damage was reported to be in the $100,000-$200,000 range.

Sheriff Heroux stated that the incident in the first unit involved 75-80 inmates with 17 ringleaders that issued a list of demands. Once the unit was under control, the ringleaders were relocated throughout the state. He didn’t characterize the incident as a riot and stated that use of force was minimal.

The second unit had 63 inmates in it and that incident was much milder and Heroux stated that later inmates were cleaning up after themselves.

Heroux announced recently that all inmate suicides involved bunk beds in the facility. The information came to light after Lindsay Hayes, who headed the U.S. Justice Department’s only nationwide reviews of correctional suicides, conducted a review.

According to Heroux, in the future, video of the incident will be released.