Massachusetts bill offers time off to inmates for organ donations

A bill under consideration in the Massachusetts House of Representatives would offer inmates a chance to reduce their sentences by donating their organs or bone marrow. Bill HD.3822, called the “Act to Establish the Massachusetts Incarcerated Individual Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program,” would allow inmates to receive between 60 days and a year off their sentences.

“All costs associated with the Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program will be done by the benefiting institutions of the program and their affiliates-not by the Department of Correction,” the bill reads. “There shall be no commissions or monetary payments to be made to the Department of Correction for bone marrow donated by incarcerated individuals.”

Democratic State Representative Judith Garcia, one of five cosponsors of the bill, published an infographic last week. She noted that there are nearly 5,000 Massachusetts residents currently awaiting organ transplants and “biological relatives are significantly likelier to be compatible donors than strangers.”

“There is currently no path to organ or bone marrow donation for incarcerated folks in [Massachusetts] — even for relatives,” Representative Garcia said in the infographic. She added that the bill would “restore bodily autonomy to incarcerated folks by providing opportunity to donate organs and bone marrow.”

The Massachusetts inmate organ donation bill has had its share of detractors, including Kevin Ring, president of the nonprofit organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Ring described the bill as “out of a science fiction book or horror story.”

“In most state systems, you earn good time credits from participating in programming that is intended to reduce your risk of reoffending,” Ring told Insider. “Those are things that are at least connected, relevant, to releasing them early. This one seems like it’s not, though… it’s just this sort of idea that we have this class of subhumans whose body parts [we] will harvest because they’re not like us or because they’re so desperate for freedom that they’d be willing to do this.”

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