Assaults and weapons confiscations have skyrocketed at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center since the implementation of a controversial double bunking policy that made the jail the state’s only maximum security prison, records show.

The Department of Correction, however, insists the spike in violence at the Shirley prison is not tied to double-bunking, but rather the influx of violent convicts from MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole.