Crime and punishment

July 18, 2025

By Michael Jonas

When it comes to public safety and criminal justice reform, Massachusetts has long been driven by two big strains of thought. 

The state has proudly boasted about its strict gun laws. A 1975 measure known as the Bartley-Fox law imposes a mandatory one-year sentence for possession of an unlicensed firearm, a sanction subsequently bumped up by the Legislature to 18 months. At the same time, Massachusetts has sought ways to give offenders, especially younger ones, second chances, passing a succession of reform measures that divert defendants from prison and into programs designed to reduce recidivism by helping them onto a more productive path.  

Those twin goals are both easy to support as broad policy aims. But what happens when they collide in a specific case? That was exactly what made the story of Tim McManus, an 18-year-old caught with a gun in a tough area of Dorchester just off Blue Hill Avenue, so compelling. 

When executive editor Michael Jonas began work on the story – “Crime and punishment” – for CommonWealth’s Fall 2016 issue, McManus was nearing the end of a mandatory 18 months behind bars. But were the twin goals of justice and neighborhood safety best served by the sentence. McManus had no prior record, and his case dragged on so long that he was on pretrial probation awaiting trial – wearing a GPS monitoring device – for nearly as long as the 18 month sentence he was facing. During that time, he not only stayed out of trouble but managed to finish high school and started to learn drywalling and other construction skills through a city-affiliated job training program.  

“Young people carrying guns, even if it’s for protection and they’re not intent on using them, represent one of the biggest threats to safety in city neighborhoods,” Jonas wrote, a reality that explains the ongoing support for the mandatory sentence for gun possession.  

At the same time, McManus’s lawyer said his client seemed hardened and more withdrawn from his time in jail, a harsh experience at a formative age that some say may only increase his odds of reoffending. Given how well he was doing while awaiting trial, even the prosecutor assigned to the case initially supported a plan to have McManus face a lesser charge that would bring probation but not jail time. That was ultimately rejected by higher-ups in the district attorneys’s office.  

“I would absolutely characterize it as a dilemma that I faced as a prosecutor,” Peter Pasciucco, the front-line prosecutor in the case, told Jonas. “If you don’t enforce the 18-month sentence, you send the wrong message to the neighborhood that illegal gun possession and gun violence aren’t being taken seriously. But you also have to weigh each case. Is this person going to be better off if they’re given straight probation and certain conditions are attached to it?”