GREENFIELD — Franklin County Sheriff Christopher Donelan has announced he will run for reelection, seeking a second six-year term.
Donelan said the biggest accomplishment during his first term has been overhauling the treatment and reentry unit at the jail, which offers evidence-based, trauma-informed treatment to help men with addiction by attacking the underlying mental health or trauma issues that may cause initial substance abuse.
“We’ve really revamped that program and the impact that it’s having is significant on men being able to find places to live and jobs when they get out of the House of Correction,” he said.
Donelan, 51, is a lifelong Orange resident and began his career as a police officer, serving a total of 10 years in Orange and South Hadley. He then went on to work as a probation officer in Orange District Court, helped establish the first drug court in western Massachusetts and spent four years working in the trial court before taking the position of probation officer in charge at the Community Corrections Center in Greenfield.
He first ran for elected office in 2002, winning a seat in the Massachusetts House , where he served four terms before leaving to run for sheriff. He won his first bid in November 2010 and was sworn in the following January.
During a campaign kickoff party at Terrazza on Tuesday, March 29, Donelan spoke to a room full of supporters about the jail’s accomplishments over the past six years, including a program that teaches men how to be good fathers. In particular, he recalled a comment he said floored him from a man who told him he never realized his arrest could have an impact on his son.
“He said, ‘I will never do this again for him,’” Donelan said. “Now if we can have that kind of an impact on one person, then all the rest of the programs that we can do will have similar impacts.”
However, he said the work is never really done and hopes to devote the next two to three years to analyzing what’s been accomplished at the jail with the goal of helping other facilities across the country follow his department’s lead.