FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) – With the state’s only women’s prison well over its capacity, the state Department of Correction is weighing a series of reforms aimed at improving conditions for female inmates.

The MCI-Framingham prison is built to hold 384 inmates, but more than 600 women were housed there during a recent count by the department. The number fluctuates on a daily basis.

Nearly one-quarter of the inmates are awaiting trial.

Lynn Bissonnette, the prison’s superintendent, said a report on the conditions facing female prisoners is due out by the end of the year. The report is expected to include a series of proposals designed to improve conditions for female inmates.

“I think, for the first time that I’m aware of, the issues at MCI-Framingham are reaching the forefront,” Bissonnette told the MetroWest Daily News. “I’m really, really pleased with that, because now there’s a dialogue.”

Many of MCI-Framingham’s inmates come from counties that have few, if any, jail cells set aside for female offenders. From July through September, for example, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk and Worcester counties sent more than 700 women to MCI-Framingham.

State Rep. Kay Khan, a Newton Democrat who serves on a legislative subcommittee that is studying the issue, said keeping nonviolent offenders in county jails would do more than just alleviate the crowded conditions at MCI-Framingham.

“There could be much more enhancement of the facilities around helping women connect to their families and more to be done with re-entry,” she said. “If they’re stuck out at Framingham and they come from the western part of the state, it’s harder to keep that connection with their family (or) with their children.”