By Steve Klamkin WPRO News  

Twenty inmates will face charges in last Friday’s uprising at the Bristol County House of Correction that left upwards of $200,000 worth of damage, Sheriff Paul Heroux said.  

Some 130 correctional officers, including 70 from the Massachusetts Department of Corrections and more from at least four other counties converged on the North Dartmouth jail. They used CS gas and flash-bang explosives to put down the inmate uprising. 

Heroux said inmates rebelled against plans to move some of them to a housing unit with bunks designed to present less of an opportunity to tie bedsheets to facilitate suicides.  

He credited quick thinking and patience by correctional officers who avoided an early confrontation with the inmates for averting any injuries.  

“The CO’s (correctional officers) shutting things down, backing out, just cordoning off that housing unit, that kept us from having a true riot. You know, so otherwise this was just damage,” Heroux said in a news conference Monday at the facility.  

Heroux displayed photos of the extensive damage and said he has texted Governor Maura Healey and other state officials, asking for money to fund improvements that can make the jail safer, more secure and less likely to see a repeat of this kind of incident.  

Some of the photos showed shanks, or makeshift weapons. One showed a fire extinguisher emptied by an inmate out of the window of the jail, seen on aerial footage shot from news helicopters overhead.  

No one was injured in the hours-long incident, and Heroux believes there will be a positive outcome.  

“The silver lining to this is now we’ve got the state’s attention. Because we were going to put toilets in cells and locks on doors in these two housing units to prevent something like this from going on. Now the state knows exactly why we need to be able to lock doors,” Heroux said. He criticized the facility for its poor design.  

Heroux said it would cost about “a half million dollars” to modernize each of nine housing units to reduce the conditions that give inmates greater opportunities to commit suicide.  

Photos taken April 24, 2023 provided by the Bristol County Sheriff’s office showing damage three days after an inmate uprising at the Bristol County House of Correction in North Dartmouth, Mass.