Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Sheriff Donna Buckley:How One Sheriff is Reducing Recidivism Through Compassion
Mon, 26 May 2025
Send us a textSheriff Donna Buckley shares her journey from attorney to becoming the first female sheriff in Barnstable County's 333-year history, along with her innovative approach to transforming incarceration through mental health support, comprehensive case management, and post-release services.• Buckley's background as legal counsel representing public employees, including police officers and educators• How the prevalence of mental health issues and addiction in jails inspired her to run for sheriff• The role of Barnstable County Sheriff's Office in managing the jail, criminal investigations, and emergency services• Jails functioning as "de facto mental health and addiction treatment" facilities due to lack of proper infrastructure• Implementation of a case management model to ensure personalized support for every incarcerated individual• Training corrections officers in mental health first aid and cognitive behavioral therapy• The newly opened Bridge Center that provides comprehensive post-release support services• Development of specialized programming for women that addresses their unique needs• Success stories of individuals breaking the cycle of recidivism through proper support and resources• Sheriff Buckley's philosophy: "The best way to keep the public safe is to make sure that when people leave our jails, they don't come back"To learn more about Sheriff Buckley's approach or to share your story, visit TonyMantor.com and click on Contact.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: What inspired Sheriff Buckley to run for sheriff?
Well, it's my pleasure. And yes, very important conversation. Can you give us a little background and more about your journey on becoming sheriff of your county?
It's sort of a nontraditional path to being sheriff. I've spent my entire career as an attorney. And in 2018, I accepted a job as general counsel for the Barnstable County Sheriff's Office. In that position, I had an opportunity to see both what was happening inside the sheriff's office, as well as be part of one of the major criminal justice reform legislations that was passed in Massachusetts.
in 2018 and think about, you know, sort of how that was going to be implemented, what other sheriff's offices were doing and what we were doing. And so through that work, lots of discussion about recidivism, lots of discussion about mental health and addiction being the primary reason that people are in jail. And when the current sheriff indicated that he was going to retire,
there was only one candidate who stepped forward.
And that candidate didn't, in my view, seem to share the priorities that were necessary to address what was happening in the criminal justice system, which was the prevalence of addiction and mental health in people who are incarcerated and a lack of recognition for the fact that a lack of services, pre-incarceration, pre-criminal behavior is what led a lot of people to spiral into the criminal justice system.
So it was one of those put up or shut up moments where, you know, you can't complain about the way things are going if you're not willing to do something. And I was at a point in my life where it's like, you know what? I have a responsibility to have a conversation with the community about what we could be doing at the sheriff's office, especially in relation to incarceration.
So I ran with the purpose of having that conversation and giving people an option. Other sheriff's offices in Massachusetts and throughout the state were realizing that we needed to not just lock people up and then let them out when their time's up. So we had the conversation and upset of upsets, I won.
Well, some things are just meant to be. What was your legal expertise? Was it defense or prosecution? What was the transition for you from legal to sheriff?
Well, here, no, actually, I spent my career before I came to the sheriff's office representing public employees. So I represented police officers, firefighters, public school educators. So I actually sat on the employee side of the table for probably 90% of my career. But I will say this, no matter what side of the table you're on, It is the employees who do the work.
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Chapter 2: How is Barnstable County addressing mental health in jails?
retraining our staff. They're all trained in mental health first aid. They're trained in cognitive behavioral therapy. We're working specifically on increasing the ability of our staff to interact with the populations that we have.
We're going to be hosting in September a training that includes a focus on autism and a focus on correctional behavioral health workers because that's the job we're asking them to do. So we have to train them for that. We're seeing success, and maybe if the answer to the question that you have is that we rethink
I don't think the jail facility itself is the best place to hold people, but if the work that we can do is checking off all the boxes, then that's a good thing.
Yeah. Now, the unfortunate part is some of these jails, prisons, they have some people that are very bad people in it. They don't have serious mental illness, autism, or anything. They're just bad people in general. So unfortunately, sometimes you have situations where all these people get put into the general population. Then you have the worst of the worst.
Chapter 3: What innovative approaches is Sheriff Buckley implementing?
You have autistic people, serious mental illness. You've got all them together, and that's a bad mix. What's the best way to handle something like that?
So you are 100% right. I'll talk specifically about Barnstable. One of the things that we instituted when I became sheriff in January of 2023 was a case management model. So now every person who's in our facility has a case manager and everyone has an assessment. That helps us figure out placement. It helps us figure out classification.
We also, as a rule, have a separate housing unit for, I call them high-profile, more serious types of cases. That's not part of a general population unit. And then we really do our best to meet people where they're at, whether it's an orientation unit or a programming unit or different levels of programming or special management.
We are making sure that we are not putting people in worse positions through the experience of coming through the jail. So that is a primary effort on our part. I don't know. The model that you described to me is sort of that stereotypical state prison model where, you know... Everybody's here and everybody's got to figure it out. That is not how we operate.
Okay. Now let's focus on your deputies. How are they trained and how are they incorporated in the changes that you have been trying to make?
So we actually call them corrections officers.
Okay.
Those are the security staff who work in-house. And actually, that's who I was referring to when I talked about who we are training to deal with the population. So mental health first aid was the first thing that we did. We've already put one cohort through and we're working on the rest to make sure all of our staff have cognitive behavioral therapy training. We're going to be hosting.
It is correctional behavioral health training and certification so that we'll be hosting that in the fall. You know, we're asking people who are signing up to be security officers to be medical and mental health workers at the same time. And what's interesting is that a lot of people are interested in that job. We are getting a lot of people.
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Chapter 4: How does the case management model work in jails?
So I look at the work that we do here in sort of three spaces. We have a really robust youth program. We work with both sort of mainstream youth as well as at-risk youth. We do it through a summer program. We do it through school vacation weeks.
Because if we can build and develop relationships with kids, especially kids who are at risk, and keep those relationships going, maybe it's less likely they spiral into the system. Then we look at the work that we do while we have people in our custody. The age-old choice is they can sit here and do their time, and then we let them out, and we've met our responsibility.
But we know that doesn't make us safe. So we look at the work that we do here is to try to figure out individually, what does each person need? Do they need education? Do they need vocational training? Do they need medical and mental health services? Do they need addiction treatment? Do they need a combination of all of those things? And we start that work the day they walk in the door here.
And then the third place that we are trying to impact public safety is when people are released. So actually just last Friday, we opened, it's called the Bridge Center. Understanding that the most consequential thing that we do at the sheriff's office is let someone out. Because that is the place where they're either going to move into the positive territory or revert back to negative behavior.
And there's a victim. There's victims. There's harm that results if people revert back to negative behavior. So we have to figure out how to support people post-release, from the minute they walk out the door, when they are at their most vulnerable. And our community is at its most vulnerable when someone is released.
So the Bridge Center is a one-stop shop, an opportunity for us to tie together all of the amazing resources that exist in our community. All that the person being released needs to know is they need to go one place. Do they need help with a job? Do they need help with housing? Do they need food? Do they need transportation? Do they need mentors? Do they need to go to a meeting?
Do they need a support group? And there's community partners who have been knocking on our door wanting to work with us in this space. Now we have actually a physical facility that brings all of this together. It's impossible for someone like me to navigate all of the services that we have. I don't know about all of them.
Imagine if you're the person getting out of jail who doesn't many times append it to your name, may not even have a ride. That's all the work we try to do while people are here, but you've got to sustain it.
Yeah, absolutely. Now, when you were elected, how did the people that were there accept what you wanted to do because you wanted to come in and make some changes? And as we know, most people in most places, the one thing they hate is change.
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Chapter 5: What training do corrections officers receive?
We do security so that we can do all of the other work. And it's been amazing. It's been absolutely transformative here.
Now, the system that you inherited, it did not have some of the changes that you have going on now when you first came. Is that correct?
It did not. I mean, it was a system that was grounded in a very different philosophy. You brought up earlier the forward-facing law enforcement patrol. This sheriff's office before I became sheriff was very much interested in that area. So it was a very different philosophy. We're actually doing a presentation next month for the AJA, American Jail Association, on something from nothing.
So one of the examples of that is when I came on, we housed women, but we didn't have any women's programming. So we developed from nothing women's programming, a women's therapeutic treatment program, which is designed to treat women. Women are offenders, but women are also victims. And women are also caretakers. One day we did a statistic. We had 95 women who had 109 children.
But you think about the collateral consequences to our public safety in the community when those women are incarcerated. Start to talk about generational incarceration because now those kids think incarceration is part of their future because that's what my mom did. That's what, you know, that's what's in my family. So we decided to work with focus programs specifically for women.
And it came from nothing.
Okay, so now we've covered a lot of things. We've covered the people that work with you and for you. Now, what about the inmates themselves? Of course, there were some that were there before you got there. And then, of course, you've got newer ones coming in. Did they see the differences that you brought? And I guess the ultimate question is, how did they adapt to the change?
Can you give me a minute? Because I'm going to read you something that I received last week. Is that okay? Sure. All right. Hang on one second.
Yeah, sure.
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Chapter 6: How does Sheriff Buckley plan to reduce recidivism?
I said to someone I could see why some people fall back into bad habits. Luckily, I did not have a drug and alcohol issue, and I have a family that's there to support me. But it's still a tough road some days. So I truly just want to say thank you for making what could have been a real nightmare for me much more bearable.
When people ask me what jail was like, they are surprised when I say it could have been much worse or it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I used my time wisely and came out with a plan and with several books ready to go. I hope you continue your support of the women's program, and if I can ever be of help, please let me know.
Would you consider a program for released inmates I would be in even if I have to travel? So that's her words. Another example, we had someone who has been in custody in Barnstable County for the majority of his adult life, and he's probably in his 50s or 60s. He was here when I was here as general counsel. He was here when I came in as sheriff.
But through the work that we did, sort of refocusing instead of just housing that person, we worked with the Department of Mental Health. And it wasn't easy, but we were finally able, even though he was a client of the Department of Mental Health, they kept denying him services. So what we were able to do was to figure out, you know, how are we going to house this person?
Anyway, the person had housing. The person finally had support and stayed out of here for the longest time ever. Found himself back here recently, but then those charges were dismissed. But the behavior, this person was a high-maintenance person, self-injurious, but that behavior didn't exist the last time they came back. And when the charges were dismissed— They had a stable place to go back to.
So that's the kind of stuff that we see all the time, but we're working on it.
Yeah, that's great. Well, this has been really good. Great information and information that people really need to hear. I've had a lot of people come on my podcast. I don't believe I've had anyone that has focused on this part of the system as you seem to be.
Well, thank you. I, as you can tell, am passionate about this. I believe as a sheriff, our job is public safety. And the best way to keep the public safe is to make sure that when people leave our jails, they don't come back. Public isn't their next victim. That's why we do what we do.
Do the work here to make sure that the people in our community are safe, that no one is their next victim, and that we're not this revolving door.
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Chapter 7: What challenges does the legal system face regarding mental health?
Yeah. Well, this has been great conversation, great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share everything you're doing with us.
Chapter 8: How are inmates classified and housed in Barnstable County?
Thank you so much. Good luck with your show. And if you ever want to talk some more or if you're ever out in Massachusetts and you want to come visit us, let us know.
I certainly will. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymantor.com. Contact, then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show.
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