A SUPERIOR COURT judge has ordered state Auditor Diana DiZoglio to remove redactions from audits her office released last year involving medical care and inmate deaths in jails operated by two sheriffs’ departments.
DiZoglio’s office had invoked an exemption from the state public records law in redacting passages in the reports, claiming their release could jeopardize public safety or cybersecurity, but Suffolk Superior Court Judge Michael Pineault ruled that the redactions were not justified.
“The redacted passages . . . do little more than set forth — at a high level of generality — [the Office of the State Auditor’s] recommendation that the [sheriffs’] departments develop additional written information technology policies and procedures and provide more IT training to their employees,” Pineault said in his nine-page decision. “The Court finds none of the recommendations to be particularly revelatory.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts filed suit in May of last year, challenging the auditor’s office redactions. The ACLU maintained that even if there was sensitive information that informed the audits, the audit reports themselves should be fully public.
“We . . . hope that other agencies take note that they cannot broadly claim exemptions to avoid transparency under the Public Records Law,” Daniel McFadden, an attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement. “There is no reason to hide from the public information about whether state agencies are taking proper steps to safeguard highly confidential health information.”
“In the case of these audit reports,” McFadden said, “people who are incarcerated, their families, legal advocates, journalists, and more need the information to understand whether prisoners’ legal rights to medical care and medical privacy have been imperiled.”
In a statement, DiZoglio’s office said it never sought to shield information about inmate health or deaths during incarceration, but only “redacted information in accordance with the law related to cybersecurity vulnerabilities.” The office, which was represented in the lawsuit by the attorney general’s office, said the “vulnerabilities we identified have since made their way to the public domain, therefore risks associated with disclosure no longer exist.”
At the request of both sides, before rendering his decision, Pineault conducted what’s known as an in camera review, which entailed privately reviewing the audits in their unredacted form.
The auditor’s office had redacted the portion of the audits that contain a section in which it makes recommendations to the sheriffs for improving their information technology systems. Even the title and general subject matter of the section were redacted.
The two audits in question examined the provision of medical care to inmates in the custody of the Plymouth County and Barnstable County sheriffs’ departments as well as the sheriffs’ compliance with regulatory requirements concerning inmate deaths. The ACLU was particularly interested in the Plymouth audit because the organization has filed multiple lawsuits related to inmate health and safety at the facility.
In her cover letters accompanying both audits, DiZoglio wrote: “This version of the report is the limited version we are issuing publicly; it excludes an issue that includes confidential information.” The sheriffs were given a copy of the unredacted reports.
The ACLU claimed in its May 2023 lawsuit that, as a result of the redactions, both the ACLU and the public “are left unable to assess whether the ‘issue’ discovered by [the auditor’s office] presents a risk to prisoner health and safety.”
The court ordered the auditor’s office to provide the ACLU with the unredacted reports by June 30.
Close to the same time the ACLU filed its lawsuit, CommonWealth Beacon filed a public records request with DiZoglio also seeking a copy of the audit of the Plymouth County sheriff’s department. When her office provided only the redacted version of the report, an appeal was filed with the state supervisor of public records, who, after conducting her own in camera review, sided with DiZoglio, contrary to the subsequent Superior Court decision.
Colman M. Herman is a freelance CommonWealth Beacon contributor.
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