Last year, Gov. Charlie Baker, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants and top legislative leaders charged an outside nonpartisan group with formulating recommendations they could use in a bill to address recidivism and other problems with the criminal justice system. But as the final recommendations come closer to fruition, there may not be consensus on Beacon Hill about how far next year’s reform bill should go.
The recommendations from the Council for State Governments Justice Center are being finalized - but they do not include anything about ending mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, something advocates say is crucial for dealing with the prison problem.
“The recommendations that they’re making is tinkering around the edges. There are some solutions in there, but they’re solutions that don’t fit the scale and magnitude of problems around incarceration that we have in Massachusetts,” said Rahsaan Hall, the Director of the Racial Justice Program for the American Civil Liberties Union. Hall said that lawmakers needs to know that advocates will demand the end of minimums in their final bill to address racial disparities in the prison system.
A working group will finalize their plan soon, but lawmakers or the governor could still expand the scope of the reforms.
Last year, the governor, legislative leader and the state’s Supreme Judicial Court chief justice tapped the third-party Council for State Governments Justice Center to conduct a research study on how the state could improve its criminal justice system to reduce recidivism. The 25-member working group has been meeting with Massachusetts elected officials, public safety officials, prisoner advocates and other interested parties for months and are getting closer to releasing a final set of recommendations. Those recommendations, Beacon HIll leaders hope, will inform a consensus bill that the Democratic Legislature can easily hand off to the Republican governor.
Tuesday’s meeting in Boston as the working group’s final meeting.
Not all criminal justice activists are enthusiastic about what will be included in the bill. The group Jobs Not Jails is pushing hard for the legislation to include provisions addressing mandatory minimum sentencing, a “front-end” problem advocates say will greatly reduce the prison population and help communities of color that have been unfairly targeted by strict sentencing guidelines. The group is also calling for more drug treatment and job training in place of traditional punishments and increasing the value amount of what is considered felony larceny thefts from $250 to $1,500.
Jobs Not Jails hosted an event on Beacon HIll earlier this month to warn lawmakers that simply dealing with the “back end” of parole, probation and reentry for prisoners won’t go far enough. Speakers with their own criminal pasts spoke out against mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses that have dominated their lives and forced them to struggle to stay employed after serving their time.
