Hampden Sheriff's Department

This is a state performance audit of the Hampden Sheriff’s Department covering July 1, 2015 through September 30, 2016.

“I am pleased to provide this performance audit of the Hampden Sheriff’s Department.”

The outgoing sheriff asked for the review to help the next sheriff take over and to flag anything that needed fixing.

“The outgoing Sheriff requested the audit to review the status of certain fiscal and administrative operations in effect, to ease the transition to the newly elected Sheriff, and to identify any areas needing corrective action and improvement.”

The department runs major jail, correctional, treatment, education, and civil-process functions, so its controls affect public money, public safety, and people in custody.

“As presently structured, SDH is responsible for running and overseeing all aspects of its programs and facilities: the SDH administrative offices, the Hampden County Jail and House of Correction, the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center, the Pre-Release Center, York Street Industries, the Western Massachusetts Correctional Addiction Center, and the Community Safety Center.”

If you are a Massachusetts taxpayer, this audit checked whether a department using state money had basic financial and security controls in place.

“During our audit period, SDH was appropriated $153,085,305 of state funds to cover operational expenses.”

The auditor concluded that the department had adequate controls and practices for the specific areas tested.

“Based on our audit, we have concluded that SDH has established adequate controls and practices in the areas we reviewed that were related to our audit objectives.”

The report was meant to support the handoff to the newly elected sheriff, who was scheduled to take office on January 4, 2017.

“The current Sheriff of Hampden County will retire after 42 years of service, and the newly elected Sheriff will be sworn in, on January 4, 2017; the conclusions reached in this report refer to office operations in effect during the current administration.”

This was a clean result for the areas examined: budgeting, spending, payroll, reporting losses, internal controls, and facility security all received “Yes” conclusions.

“Below is a list of our audit objectives, indicating each question we intended our audit to answer and the conclusion we reached regarding each objective.”

An “object code” is just an accounting label that says what a payment was for, such as salaries.

“An object code is an identifier used in MMARS to show what an expense is for (e.g., object code A01 represents employee salaries).”