Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. It’s got me thinking about about my parents.
After my dad came home from the Korea, he and my mother went down to North Carolina so they could go to school. As young as they were, they both threw themselves into the Civil Rights Movement. They sat at lunch counters, risking violence and suffering all kinds of verbal abuse. My dad got arrested more than once.
They did it all in the hope that the next generation would inherit a world that was a little more fair and a little more just. At this moment in our country’s history, that generational obligation weighs heavily on me because of my family’s history.
I often ask myself, what am I doing every day to not be afraid–to say what’s right and to not back away from my principles. Yesterday was one of those days.
Earlier this week, both houses of the Massachusetts legislature passed a criminal justice reform bill. Nearly all of the bill is excellent and some great advocates and good Democrats worked very hard on it for a long time.
I had to tell my friends in the legislature, many of whom I admire greatly, that I would have vetoed their bill if I were governor. I could not in good conscience sign any bill that creates new mandatory minimum sentences. They are discriminatory, ineffective, and lead to mass incarceration.
The criminal justice reform bill passed by the legislature includes new mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent opioid related offenses, even though the bill also repeals other such sentences for non-violent drug convictions. These new mandatory minimums were part of a proposal put forth last summer by Gov. Charlie Baker.
The opioid epidemic is a public health crisis, but Gov. Baker is still approaching it like a criminal justice issue. If we learned anything from the failed ‘war on drugs’ mentality of the 1980’s and 90’s, it’s that harsh sentencing laws that take away judges’ discretion can destroy communities and do absolutely nothing to curb addiction.
If we are finally starting to recognize that mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug crimes should be repealed, why on earth would we want create a new law that we know will have the same effect?
I know many of my friends on Beacon Hill are upset by my position, but I’ve seen what misguided policies like mandatory minimums have done to communities, particularly communities of color–and I just can’t look the other way.
Thanks for writing, Mayor Warren, and thanks for your steadfast opposition to mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. Many of the advocates working for the bill’s passage were hoping that more of these sentences would have been eliminated and are somewhat troubled by the introduction of two new ones intended to target people distributing synthetic opioids.
Your post raises a follow-up question: how would you intend that your veto be received by the overwhelming majorities who voted in its favor (including every member of the Democratic party) and who would say your veto throws the baby out with the bathwater? Would you expect your veto to be overridden? Since you think that nearly all of the bill is excellent, would you mind if that happened (since you’d be in a position to implement its excellent provisions — but only if an override happened)? Any additional thoughts you might have on the appropriate working relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches or on subject of principle versus pragmatism would be welcomed by your BMG readers. Thanks again.
Hello Hester – In the 8 years I was Mayor of Newton, I worked with 24 city councilors to get legislation passed. I understand the give and take of the legislative process, but I want people to know that there are some lines I just won’t cross in the name of “compromise.” We know that mandatory minimums target black and brown people. Even though we are only ~20% of the population of Mass, black and brown people make up 73% of those sentenced to mandatory minimum sentences. We also know that mandatory minimums have done nothing to lessen rates of addiction in the Commonwealth. The new mandatory minimum proposed by this legislation is another license to target communities of color with the same devastation that we’ve seen for decades from these kinds of failed policies.
I think the real question is, how can anyone who knows how devastating mandatory minimums have been for communities of color support this bill? Who is going to explain to the people and families whose lives are ruined by this new mandatory minimum that their suffering is acceptable because some other good things happened?
This is a tough one. I just find it so unfortunate that the legislature couldn’t … uh … kick the habit of mandatory minimums, in a bill that seems to do so much else right. Why not just cast off the entire horrible notion? Isn’t there consensus that it’s a lousy way to do things? Why are we keeping them, just this one time?
I have to admire the instinct that says, no. Really no more at all.
It really does sound like you are getting the perfect in the way of the good.
Yes, not placing a weight or purity level on Fentanyl or carfentanil with regard to mandatory sentencing is concerning, But I doubt (hope!) small bags of heroin sold user to user, as part of their economy, will be tested and then charged. But given the reality that a few grams of 100% fentanyl could kill hundreds of people with cut and sold, tough penalties are needed for those circumstances.
Why not as Governor send the legislation back to the Legislature with amendments that would prevent “street level dealers” (members of the local community struggling firsthand with the opioid crisis) from being caught up in mandatory sentencing…something you and I agree on?
I’m on the fence in the Governor’s race and I greatly appreciate you interacting with the BlueMassGroup community and that is my long way of saying…I’m concerned you’ve taken what appears to me to be a “take it or leave it” approach to a serious public policy issue.
From what I’ve read, there is a lot of good in this bill, not withstanding your legitimate concerns. But I think this imperfect bill–even if your amendments weren’t accepted–will have a better overall outcome then the status quo. I fear more people will suffer under current mandatory minimum laws, than the proposed changes.
Thanks for the link to the WBUR article, which I had not seen. The article misstates the bill’s provisions on fentanyl and carfentanil in two ways: (1) the bill requires a minimum weight of 10 grams of fentanyl to support a trafficking charge, and (2) as to carfentanil, the bill requires that the person have “specific knowledge” that the drugs being distributed contained carfentanil.
A thanks right back at you…so there is a minimum weight that, in my mind, seems reasonable. No user is going to be selling 10 grams of fentanyl to other users…given the strength of fentanyl. This undermines Mayor Warren’s position that this mandatory minimum targets communities of color…as the person being targeted for this crime, is selling a substance that, when cut, could kill hundreds of people suffering from a substance abuse disorder. It is this venerable population that needs to be protected from Fentanyl and, while I’m generally opposed to mandatory minimums, I’m generally in favor of jail for any first time offender trafficking in 10 grams of pure Fentanyl. As for Carentanil…right now that seems like a boogey man in the closet, as I haven’t heard/read of actually arrests or deaths. BUT, given it is exponentially more deadly than Fentanyl…if a person is aware that a dose of “heroin” has even a spec of carfentanil in it, it is effectively a fatal dose for the user. So why shouldn’t someone go to jail if they knowingly sold something to a person they KNEW was going to kill them.
I should have specified that the 10 gram threshold for “fentanyl” includes fentanyl mixtures. Yes, criminal justice reform advocates were not happy to see any new mandatory minimums adopted, but the headwinds coming out of the opioid crisis are fierce. We were glad that the final bill did not include another priority of the Gov — a five year mandatory minimum for anyone who sells a drug that results in the death of the user.
Then why not send it back with an amendment? A straight up veto accomplishes nothing. This whole things strikes me as a campaign attention-getter rather than a substantive attempt to shape policy.
That is the question that Mayor Warren should address. I certainly appreciate him interacting with the BlueMassGroup community, but I hope he doesn’t leave us hanging. And I do agree, at this point his position smacks of a ploy rather than a policy.
I said I would veto the bill because I want people to know where I stand and how I would govern.
But can’t you still show people where you stand by sending it back with a proposed amendment to your particular objection?
State House News (paywall) reports today on the reaction of Senator William Brownsberger, lead Senate conferee on the criminal justice reform bill, to Setti Warren’s veto promise:
“This bill repeals a number of mandatory minimums as well as doing a whole lot of other good, so you got to look at the bigger picture,” Brownsberger said. He added, “Following that statement, I endorsed Jay Gonzalez.”
Here’s what I told SHNS in that article:
Cute. Let’s endorse the guy who’ll be tractable (dare I say “not so uppity”?) for the legislature.
Sen Brownsberger might as well just sit on his hands and wait for Baker to win so’s they can both get back to doing nuttin. Them’s was the days.
A different take on the bill, by a legislator who represents a majority-minority district:
“Our state is turning a moral corner.
For decades, we have lived with a costly, ineffective, and systemically racist criminal justice system. It’s stubbornly continued the tactics of the “War on Drugs.” It’s drained resources from our budgets every year that could otherwise go to increasing education and opportunity. It’s trapped whole communities in destructive cycles of incarceration and crime,,,.
Last week, I was proud to stand with my colleagues and advocates as the Legislature’s conference committee released the finalized version of the criminal justice package. The package includes a comprehensive array of reforms that will fix issues all throughout the criminal justice pipeline.
This bill is a massive and joyful turning point for our state.
It includes key reforms to institute implicit bias and de-escalation training for local law enforcement, reduce the school-to-prison pipeline, fix our broken bail system, increase diversion to drug treatment, raise the felony threshold to make sure punishment is proportional to the crime, put important limits and data collection around the use of solitary confinement, significantly reform the CORI system to better support re-entry, reduce fines and fees on ex-offenders that tend to criminalize poverty and pull people back into incarceration and repeal some of the ineffective and racist “mandatory minimums” for nonviolent drug offenses.
These reforms finally start to honor the needs of communities that experience the most crime and who are too often ignored. As Massachusetts increased the proportion of our people that we lock up four fold over the past few decades, it’s these communities that have borne the damage: getting pulled into generational cycles of crime and poverty.”
I guess I wasn’t all that clear. My objection, in this particular diary, is not to any particulars in the bill or not in the bill, but to Sen Brownsbergers knee jerk endorsement of another candidate, merely because the one candidate stood up and said he wasn’t going to roll over on an issue considered to be of paramount importance.
I get that the bill does a lot of good things. I don’t know, however, that it was forged in a crucible of legislative detente, as was so much the case with the Legislature and Governor Patrick, so much as it was a result of a swaddled and nurtured coziness with a feckless Governor Baker. And pardon me for being particular, but I can’t help noticing that A) it’s a big difference and 2) such transactional love never goes well in the long run for the co-dependents…
In point of fact, the relationship between the legislature and the present administration bears such a distinction and difference from the previous administrations relations as to merit, at the very least, a sotto voce “wtf?” and, at a little further remove, some serious and intense scrutiny. But that’s me. I like a serious scrute here and again. Seems to me like Mayor Warren wants to cut through all that and say, up front, that he don’t play that game. I can respect that.
The major problem with our state government is that the two teams’ lineups printed in the boxscore (D vs R) do not correlate to which player is actually trying to score points for a certain side. A lot of the D’s are Embedded Yankees.
I admire Mayor Warren for acknowledging this, and for trying to take it on, as I have Governors Patrick and Dukakis 1.0 before him. I’ll probably vote for him, but I do not have any optimism that he would have any more success taking this on than did his predecessors.
This bill seems like something we have seen before: a big “progressive” reform bill on an issue whose time came a decade or more ago, and is therefore almost entirely uncontroversial, and which therefore passes without much in the way of notice by the electorate, other than issue activists. The “progressive” reform isn’t really all that liberal or progressive, but is just the minimum of what the Embedded Yankees in the legislature have to give up in order to get what they want.
What they want is for the opportunity to have a “See How Liberal and Progressive I Am?!” moment, which they get with enthusiasm from the “Party Loyalty is Important” people. That, along with the “Party Loyalty is Important” people, is sufficient to snuff any primary from the left, and then allows them to pretend that their opponent in the general, who might (at least in the past) well be more liberal than the incumbent, is Jesse Helms, again, with the support of the Party Loyalty people, who will then say, “Well, even though you might not agree with Embedded Yankee, Embedded Yankee will be much easier to deal with than an actual Yankee.”
Meanwhile, the governor gets to have a “See how Mavericky I Am?” moment that does not excessively piss off the crazy people who might vote in his primary. Everybody wins, except the Commonwealth.
So let’s play this out: Governor Warren vetoes the conference committee report of Criminal Justice bill. Message sent loud and clear. Then the House and Senate both override his veto, by a margin of 145-5 in the House and 37-0 in the Senate. (And the five outliers are the ones that think there are two FEW min mands in bill!) So the bill becomes law notwithstanding the objection of his excellency the governor, who has spent his political capital in a pointless endeavor that leaves even the Progressive caucus scratching their heads. Running against the Legislature plays well here and might just win a primary, but if you are trying to actually accomplish things and move the ball forward you can’t just thumb your nose at one entire branch of government.
Or, maybe, just maybe, one or even two, or even more, of the ‘Progressive caucus’ notices that there is a Governor in place who’s got a pair and so remembering whose got theirs and they take them back and decide to, however quixotic and fruitless it might seem, stand up and say the cozy little love-in we’re all having is just a little too cozy….
That’s the problem, right there, in a nutshell: DeLeo and Baker are having themselves a serious, and seriously icky, bromance and you think it’s normal and right and anything else — like, say, fulfilling the constitutional duties of checks and balances — is merely a petulant ‘thumb[ing] your nose.’ I’m so not buying that…