Michael Horrell, a staff attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts — an organization focused on protecting civil rights of people in prisons — said the pandemic has worsened the quality of health care in the state’s correctional facilities, which has “never been great.”

Through an exhaustive investigation of the Massachusetts DOC, the DOJ found that prisoners on mental health watch were left under-supervised, resulting in them hurting or killing themselves, according to a DOJ press release.