Sheriff McDonald and his team have accomplished many great things at the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department over the last five years.

Some highlights include:

• Restored professionalism, integrity and pride to the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department. Created an agency-wide culture of performance and merit-based promotion and hiring.
• Assembled the most highly educated and experienced command staff of any Sheriff’s Department in the Commonwealth.
• Regained the coveted American Correctional Association’s (ACA) accreditation status for the Plymouth County Correctional Facility (PCCF), and placed the PCCF on par with the finest correctional institutions in the nation.
• Transitioned the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department (and all the remaining county sheriff’s offices) from a County to a State Agency, thereby stabilizing funding sources, maximizing efficiencies, and ensuring the savings of millions of tax dollars into the future.
• Helped to save the Plymouth County Farm by restoring it to operation as a community resource and an active farm featuring inmate rehabilitative programs.
• Created new and innovative rehabilitation and re-entry programs designed to reduce inmate recidivism and facilitate inmate re-integration to society upon conclusion of their sentences.
• Established unique and innovative intensive program units for substance abusers and violent offenders.
• Halted widespread pension abuses by making sure that job titles matched job descriptions.
• Re-organized and consolidated the management structure of the Department, saving many thousands of dollars in administrative costs.
• Conducted several annual corrections officer academy classes to train new correctional officers to achieve adequate and safe staffing levels within the correctional facility and substantially curtail overtime costs.
• Created and implemented the “Safe-Keep” regional lockup program to take custody of ALL state and local police arrestees, thereby relieving the local police departments of the burden and liability of holding defendants at their respective stations prior to their appearance in court.  This allows local police departments and their officers to concentrate their efforts on their primary mission… local patrol and police work.
• Encouraged specialized staff members and deputies (ie.  hostage/crisis negotiators, K-9 Deputies, IT specialists, firearms instructors, mounted patrol deputies, communications specialists and other specialized deputies) to share expertise with local communities, law enforcement and public safety agencies.
• Formed partnerships with federal law enforcement agencies (i.e. United States Marshal’s Service and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement), to assist in their respective missions, and bring in tens of millions of dollars in revenue to the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department.
• Swore in local police officers as deputy sheriffs to increase their jurisdiction for participation in regional task forces and law enforcement councils.
• Preserved and enhanced the Plymouth County Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), answering over 12,000 calls annually to assist local police departments in processing crime scenes and solving crimes.
• Maintained and improved the services provided by the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department Communications/Dispatch Center to include not only mutual aid fire communication services and County Medical Emergency Dispatch (CMED), but also regional reverse 911 capabilities.
• Saved local municipalities over two million dollars with “Project Labor”, by using inmate work crews to perform renovation and reconstruction projects on public buildings and parks.
• Began alternative energy projects at the Sheriff’s Department involving major studies of wind and solar power options to provide electric power to the farm and correctional facility (our wind turbine project is currently set to go out to bid).
• Conducted energy audits of the correctional facility resulting in energy savings of up to 75% in some areas.
• And much more.