HAMPSHIRE COUNTY – Hampshire County Sheriff Patrick Cahillane has announced that he is seeking a second six-year term in charge of the Sheriff’s Department at the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction at 205 Rocky Hill Rd.

Cahillane, who was elected as sheriff in 2016, told Reminder Publishing that part of his goals for next term, if re-elected, would be to make sure all operations are brought back up to speed after two difficult years with the pandemic.

“Some of these situations were stalled during COVID-19,” said Cahillane, when describing certain operations at the jail. “So, we’re making sure everything comes back together. We have just been through two years where the outside world was really shut down, and so we had to really rethink how we did things.”

According to Cahillane, certain state legislation that passed during the pandemic has allowed the facility to focus more on the education of staff, as well as criminal justice reform. Much of this education of staff involves making sure employees are trained to play more of a dual role in treatment-based operations, as well as security-based ones.

“With so much going on at the same time, we’re trying to make those pieces work together,” said Cahillane. “It has to be a team effort from all departments to make a system work properly.”
Part of that reform also includes prioritizing mental health care and making sure the LGBTQIA+ population is appropriately treated in jails throughout the commonwealth.

To push this work forward, Cahillane has served as a representative on a commission created by the Legislature to study the health and safety needs of LGBTQIA+ individuals. The sheriff said that the commission is currently still working on ways to better assist the population with certain aspects such as healthcare needs.

Cahillane, who currently resides in Leeds, said that the substance abuse problem is still something that concerns him, and the issue did not go away during the pandemic. The facility works with the Northampton Recovery Center, as well as with in-house services like the Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) program to address this issue. In 2021, the sheriff’s office became a federally licensed Opioid Treatment Program (OTP), which gave the facility the ability to operate the MAT program with more autonomy when prescribing medicines like Vivitrol, buprenorphine and methadone. The facility is the second in the state to become their own OTP.

As of press time, Caitlin Sepeda is Cahillane’s only opponent in the Democratic primary on Sept. 6. Sepeda, a South Hadley resident, has worked as a correctional nurse at two Western Massachusetts facilities including nine years at the Hampshire County Jail.

Cahillane has worked in the Hampshire County Jail for over 35 years. During his tenure, the sheriff has been a correctional officer, captain, major in charge of security, deputy superintendent, as well as special sheriff of Hampshire County, before then being elected as sheriff in 2016. Cahillane received his Bachelor of Science degree at Westfield State University, followed by his master’s in criminal justice administration from Western New England University. He has also been an adjunct faculty member within Westfield State’s Criminal Justice program since 2006.

During his tenure as sheriff, Cahillane has pushed a message of “meaningful incarceration,” which aims to offer justice-involved people an individualized plan for treatment, recovery, and educational opportunities so that they can have the best chance possible of rejoining the community as productive citizens.

“We have to take human beings that may have had traumatized childhoods, and while they’re with us, we have to try and get them to a healthy place, so that when they go back out to society, we can put them back out in a better format,” said Cahillane. “If we go back to the days of just locking people up, we fail, because if we don’t try to help them get skill sets, they’re not going to succeed.”

While sheriff, Cahillane said that he has expanded the facility’s overall bonds with the community. In mid-2020, the Community Justice Support Center team moved into a larger space at 492 Pleasant St. in Northampton, which provided probationers the opportunity with access to programming for substance abuse issues and online classes for job skills and educational development.

Cahillane also spearheaded the Rocky Hill Re-entry Collaborative next door to the facility, which is a 90-day program for freed inmates with nowhere to live. In this program, the collaborative’s staff helps former justice-involved individuals readjust to outside life and offer assistance with certain necessities for finding work.

The jail has also continued its expansion to the Bridge to the Future House across the street, which allows temporary care and shelter for justice-involved people about to re-enter the outside world.
Additionally, Cahillane continues to offer the jail’s Nurturing Fathers Program, which was a partnership launched in 2016 with The Children’s Trust; a Boston-based nonprofit working to improve the lives of children and families.

“I’ve been an honorable public servant, and as such, I will continue to be an honorable public servant,” said Cahillane. “Look at what we’ve done, look at the things we have built with the community, look at how we treat people. If you look at that, you’ll see that I’m here to do the right thing.”