I’ll be interested to see the accounts of people who know more than I, but I’m surprised that the criminal justice reform bill passed by the House seems … impressive! — with some major gaps. It got rid of mandatory minimums for a number of offenses. Even as many DAs fought to keep them, Chief Justice Gants has called for an end to most mandatory minimums, and given that political cover, the legislature is now on board.
Generally, it seems like a major step towards addressing crime in a rehabilitative way. That’s how a civilized culture should act: Punishment for its own sake has its own ugly consequences, and it tends not to work as a deterrent. A society has the right to use imprisonment in order to protect itself, but we mainstreamed pure sadism and torture a long time ago.
House leaders said that by stripping away mandatory-minimum sentences for some drug offenses, including some involving cocaine and methamphetamine, they could provide an easier path back to productive society for some convicts. Those provisions loosely jibe with the Senate’s template.
Also similar to the Senate, the House is looking to expunge criminal records for many offenders, including those who committed crimes when they were juveniles or whose offenses are no longer crimes under state law. That measure has grown particularly salient due to voters’ decision last year to legalize recreational marijuana in Massachusetts.
You don’t say!
The House did unfortunately pass the gratuitous and unnecessary amendment increasing penalties for assaulting a police officer. One can imagine how this might be abused. They didn’t legalize sex between teenagers close in age (not something the state should be involved in policing). They create a mandatory-minimum for selling fentanyl-mixed drugs; that’s a political statement that’s a reaction to the horror of opioid deaths, but I can’t imagine how that’s actually going to save any lives. It’s just the wrong tool for the job. I hope the conference will use some sense and not substitute a political-signaling act for a policy act.
ProgressiveMass again did yeoman’s work, keeping track of all the amendments. Many thanks to them.
hesterprynne says
I’d certainly agree that the House bill qualifies as meaningful reform.
In addition to the items Charley mentioned, I’d include the reclassification of theft offenses so that the theft of property worth more than $250 no longer qualifies as a felony (a subject I’ve mentioned before). A felony, in our criminal justice lexicon, refers to a crime of greater seriousness; a crime of lesser seriousness is a misdemeanor. To use the term “felony” to describe both murder and the theft of property greater than $250 is a failure of semantic hygiene as well as an injustice.
The biggest story out of this year’s criminal justice reform debate, I think, is that both the House and Senate repealed some mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. This is a first.and represents a setback for the 9 of 11 District Attorneys who argued that the safety of the public requires that they all be retained.
Prosecutors (understandably) want to retain mandatory minimum sentences because they guarantee that prosecutors continue to operate all the levers of power in drug cases. They decide whether to use the threat of a mandatory minimum sentence to coerce a defendant into accepting a plea deal. And if accepted, that plea deal comes with an agreed-upon sentence that the judge has no power to reject or amend. This amounts to a perversion of our justice system and it has been in place for more than 30 years. Now there’s hope that we can return the sentencing power to judges, where it belongs.
terrymcginty says
Thank you for pointing out just some of the missed opportunities, but progress is progress.