WITH POLICING PRACTICES, high incarceration rates among minorities, and stiff drug sentencing laws drawing scrutiny across the country, Massachusetts will join a national wave of state efforts to rethink criminal […]
Criminal Justice
Posted inCriminal Justice, The Download
Focusing in on police actions
Since last summer, when the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York at the hands of police triggered a national debate on the use […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Lost years
ABRIGAL FORRESTER REMEMBERS the day he climbed out of the prison van delivering him to state prison in Walpole. “I felt like I was walking into a pressure cooker of […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Rethinking tough-on-crime
BONNIE DITORO DOESN’T try to hide from her past. She was a heavy-duty cocaine user, a newly widowed mother of two whose life in the mid-1990s was spiraling out of […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Man in the middle
Photographs by Frank Curran JOHN GROSSMAN calls himself an intermediary. It’s an unusual job description, but it’s one that captures what he does putting together complex deals that leverage money […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, The Download
A sorry sorry from Tsarnaev
Everyone knew yesterday was the day Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would be formally sentenced to death. No one seemed to expect that he would choose to address the court, never mind say, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, State House News Service
Baker unveils plan on opioid addiction
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE CLEAR IN HIS AIM to reframe substance abuse as a public health crisis that can’t be solved by law enforcement alone, Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Opinion, The Back Story
Fact-checking the state’s incarceration rate
In the debate over mandatory minimum sentences and corrections reform, those resisting major changes say there is little need for wholesale reform because the state incarceration rate is so low. […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Opinion
Massachusetts can lead in inmate college education
MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO, Congress voted to make prisoners ineligible to receive Pell Grants, the funding program aimed at low-income college students. This summer the Obama administration expects to […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, State House News Service
Sentencing reform takes over Beacon Hill
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE STATE’S TOP JUDGE AND PROSECUTORS, who are sparring over sentencing reform proposals, brought their battle to Beacon Hill on Tuesday as activists flooded the capitol […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, State House News Service
Sheriff: War on drugs ‘joke’
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE SAYING MANY OF THOSE incarcerated in his facilities belong elsewhere, Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins on Tuesday said the War on Drugs was a “joke” and a […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, The Download
W. Springfield’s troublesome grenade launchers
As part of post-Ferguson policing reforms, President Obama cracked down on the transfer of military-grade equipment to police departments across the US with an executive order that prohibits sending items […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, The Download
Conservative hypocrisy on police unions
In the charged atmosphere surrounding the debate on race and policing in American cities, nuance and fresh perspective have often been in short supply. That made Ross Douthat’s column in Sunday’s […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, State House News Service, The Download
Boston asks the Baltimore question
A dead black man, peaceful protests, and then riots. The “could it happen here?” syndrome has gripped Boston again with the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Gray’s death in police custody […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, The Download
Sparing us further talk of Tsarnaev
For the first time today, jurors will begin to hear a defense of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It will not be a legal defense that tries to plant doubt about his guilt […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
We need to reverse course on mandatory minimums
AT LAST MONTH’S second annual Massachusetts Criminal Justice Reform Summit, we heard two opposing views on the public safety impact of mandatory sentences for drug offenders. One camp, represented by […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Opinion
Lessons from Ferguson
FOR MONTHS WE’VE all watched the travesty in Ferguson, Missouri, unfold from the death of Michael Brown, to the militarized police response to public protest, to the Department of Justice […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Politics
What really happened at Probation’s electronic monitoring operation?
IT STARTED WITH Michael Bizanowicz, a dangerous sex offender who broke into a Woburn home in 2004 and raped and killed Joanne Presti and then murdered her 12-year-old daughter, Alyssa. […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Economy, Politics, State House News Service
Gun advocates protest billboards
A war of words over words erupted this week as gun rights advocates checkmated Boston developer John Rosenthal’s effort to spread his anti-gun violence message across Massachusetts via billboards. The […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, The Download
Rethinking cop cameras?
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and his police commissioner may be cool to the idea of outfitting police with cameras, but video from the scene of a police traffic stop gone […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Politics
Gants argues against mandatory minimums for drug offenses
The following is a transcript of Chief Justice Ralph Gants’ keynote address at the second annual Massachusetts Criminal Justice Reform Coalition summit on Monday, March 16th, 2015 at UMass […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Politics
Crime brings together unlikely bedfellows
WHAT DO THE liberal Center for American Progress, tea party-infused FreedomWorks, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ultra-conservative Koch brothers have in common? Not much, but they have banded […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Politics
Gants blames DAs for lack of reform
THE STATE’S TOP judge went all-in on his call to eliminate minimum mandatory sentences for drug offenders, saying the state’s prosecutors “hold the cards” and are the biggest obstacle to […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Health Care, Opinion
Doctors should talk to patients about guns
IN 1991, PRESIDENT George Bush proclaimed March 30 as National Doctors Day, to salute physician leadership in the “prevention and treatment of illness and injury.” Physicians honor the designation; few […]
