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Research dossier · General Reference

Nashua Street Jail

Jail in Boston, Massachusetts

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The Nashua Street Jail, also known as the Suffolk County Jail, is a jail located in Boston, Massachusetts. It opened on Memorial Day in 1990 as a replacement for the overcrowded Charles Street Jail, located half a mile to the southwest. This facility houses almost 744 pre-trial detainees in 13 different housing units. The jail has 453 cells containing 654 individual beds. The entire facility is maximum security. On August 15, 2010, Philip Markoff, the so-called "Craigslist Killer", committed suicide while in detention there.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nashua Street Jail” is jail in Boston, Massachusetts. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nashua, Street and Jail, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1990, 2010—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Nashua, Street and Jail is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “jail in Boston, Massachusetts” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1990 and 2010.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Nashua Street Jail”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Nashua Street Jail primary sources, Nashua Street Jail archive and Nashua research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nashua Street Jail”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Nashua Street Jail” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.