Attleboro Mayor Challenges Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson

ATTLEBORO, MA — Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux is challenging long-standing and controversial Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson for the sheriff's seat in this year's election.

Heroux confirmed his decision to run for office and compete against Hodgson Monday, adding that he worked as a prison administrator in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania before entering politics in 2012.

Heroux, a Democrat who has tossed his hat into the ring for sheriff, said he wants to tackle the current model of the prison system.

"I would like to take the Bristol County jail system and turn that into a national model of evidence-producing corrections with a focus on reentry and reducing recidivism," Heroux said.

"I think the thinking 15 years ago was evidence-based government, evidence-based corrections — I want to take us a step further and not just do what works but measure here what works," he added.

Hodgson, who has held the Bristol County Sheriff's seat since 1997, will now have a fierce competitor when his fourth six-year term comes to an end in November, especially after running unopposed in 2016.

Though having held the title for over two decades, Hodgson has been under fire multiple times, after offering up Bristol County inmates to help build former President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico, attempting to collect a $5 a day inmate fee, and more recently criticized by the state Attorney General's Office, which found he had violated the civil rights of federal immigration detainees during a May 2020 altercation that sent three to the hospital during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

Heroux said he will prioritize housing, employment, and drug treatment for inmates leaving his jails — which he said are crucial after serving a sentence.

"We have an incumbent who has been there for 24 years and wants to go for 30 years, and I believe that’s probably too long," Heroux said. "I don't think that's what our founders intended."

Hodgson previously told 12 News he was "absolutely" running for another six-year term in 2022.

"I always believe we let the voters decide," Hodgson said. "I have a record that they can look at and we'll leave that up to them. … I think now more than ever people are really hungry for government agencies to be accountable."

Heroux will enter the Democratic primary alongside Nicholas Bernier, an attorney from Fall River who worked as a Bristol County prosecutor and was an executive at the now non-existent startup SnoOwl, founded by former Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia who was convicted of defrauding the company's investors and is set to face jail time later this month.