HAMPSHIRE COUNTY – Caitlin Sepeda, a registered nurse who has worked in two Western Massachusetts correctional facilities, has announced her candidacy for a six-year term as sheriff of Hampshire County in the upcoming 2022 election.

Sepeda, who will serve as a Democratic primary challenger to current Sheriff Patrick Cahillane, served as a correctional nurse under Sheriff Patrick Garvey for over nine years at the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction in Northampton until taking a job at the Berkshire County Jail and House of Correction last fall in Pittsfield, where she currently is now.

“If you’re a correctional nurse, you have to be a jack-of-all-trades,” Sepeda told Reminder Publishing in an interview. “Your triage and assessment skills have to be so honed because you never know what you’re going to see.”

There is a procedural day-to-day routine to correctional nursing, according to Sepeda, but anything can happen on any given day. For a lot of people who enter the facility, this is their first time in years having access to proper healthcare. With this in mind, Sepeda and her staff would always make sure that they are addressing people’s problems through an empathetic, individual-based mechanism.

“You have to be calm, cool and collected because you have people coming in day one on probably one of the worst days of their lives,” said Sepeda. “It’s a really unique opportunity in correctional nursing to meet people at an incredibly low point personally in their lives and also likely a very low point in their health, as well. And to offer the opportunity for some real substantial change … it’s amazing the change you can see in people in just a few months with us.”

Part of the reason why Sepeda is running for the sheriff position is to modernize an overall “antiquated” facility at the Hampshire County Jail, which was built in 1984. “The way corrections was done in 1984 is not how corrections is done in 2022,” said Sepeda. Back then, corrections were an indirect supervision practice where staff would have very little connections with justice-involved people. Corrections today, meanwhile, involves more of a rapport between staff and the individuals where justice-involved people are more willing to talk about their mental health and other issues, and staff are able to provide the resources people need.

When it comes to more short-term improvements to the Hampshire County facility, Sepeda said that there needs to be more modernization of technology because most record-keeping, assessments, and activity log systems are paper based through a typewriter. Additionally, Sepeda said that modern technology would accommodate a young staff as well as a justice-involved population that needs to become more tech-savvy before re-entering the world. Transitioning into a more digitized system would create a more efficient workspace, according to Sepeda.

When the facility instituted this paper-based/typewriter system in the mid-2010s, Sepeda said that there was little effort under the current administration to teach people how to use the system, which means that it is being used at limited capacity. “It’s used maybe 15 percent of its capabilities,” said Sepeda, adding that the facility also lacks Wi-Fi, which would also be an important facet to modernizing. “Any number of things that we do on a typewriter could all be digitized and looked back on. Simply by making the decision to utilize the program that we already have to the best of the ability would save the facility $10,000 just in paper.”

Sepeda was born and raised in Hampshire County, where she attended both private and public schools. She received a Bachelor of Science degree at Tufts University, and a Master of Science as well as Bachelor of Science-Nursing degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also a certified correctional health care professional, and currently resides on South Hadley.
Sepeda told Reminder Publishing that she brings a younger, more tech-savvy view to the sheriff position. As someone who has extensive background in dealing with mental health and substance-abuse issues, Sepeda said that she carries a more imaginative and modernized approach to corrections, rather than just sticking to one mode.

“I think what the facility is lacking now is a broader strategy and a little imagination,” said Sepeda. “If we want to be a real community member, part of what we need to be thinking about is how we’re doing that … we should be sending those justice-involved individuals out into the community with the absolute best that they can. It’s hard to do that when our staff is spending half of the day duplicating work and not being able to provide more rehabilitation services, more counseling services…because they’re bogged down in the minutiae.”

When it comes to the work environment, Sepeda’s goal is to instill trust between her and staff members, as well as a workplace where justice-involved individuals are prioritized without feeling rushed. “I think a little bit of forward momentum of any kind would be really well-received by staff, justice-involved individuals, and community alike,” said Sepeda.

According to Sepeda, some community members she talks to do not know that a regional jail exists in Hampshire County, or who the sheriff is. Through these talks, Sepeda has noticed a general disconnect between the jail and the community. “It’s important that the community know that we exist and what it is we’re doing,” said Sepeda. “I think there needs to be more push into the community about, ‘hey, here we are.’”

To obtain more community involvement, Sepeda believes that it is necessary for the jail to make more of an effort to create community partnerships and external events that could drive people in the community to be more involved with the jail, and their mission. Part of this involves highlighting volunteers and community members, as well as the work they do for the community. Additionally, Sepeda said she would love to see more correctional officers become more involved with the schools and conduct more outreach through job fairs and presentations to beef up vacant positions.

“There’s no reason why local kids can’t know criminal justice and corrections is a job opportunity for them,” said Sepeda. “This could be a way to cultivate the next generation of correctional officers.”

If she were to become sheriff, Sepeda will look to instill a healthy line of communication between her office and the local police departments to see if there is anything the sheriff’s department could do to offer support to these agencies. “Finding out what each town and city needs is a matter of communication,” said Sepeda.

When it comes to her overall message to voters, Sepeda emphasized her goal of creating a safe and healthy environment where people can come for proper care. “We’re real individuals trying to do a public safety job,” said Sepeda. “When people come to us, we’re trying to provide them good care in a trust and safe environment … adequate, robust, patient-specific, community-centric rehabilitation and vocational services so that when we release [justice-involved people] into the community, they have that much better chance to become a contributing member of their community.”

Sepeda is spending the coming weeks gathering 500 signatures required for her to appear on the ballots in 21 Hampshire County communities. Cahillane, meanwhile, began his term in 2016, and already announced his plans to run for re-election.