despite its lower-than-average crime rate, Massachusetts ranks near the top in state spending per capita on the criminal-justice system. One reason is that the Bay State tends to spend more […]
The price of justice
Posted inPolitics
150th anniversary of a caning
In 1856, Charles Sumner’s tirade against slavery won him national fame – and a crack on the head us sen. edward Kennedy stirs up the emotions of both supporters and […]
Posted inUncategorized
Letters
Why do reporters assume they have the knowledge to judge one crime reduction strategy over another (“Crime and Puzzlement,” CW, Winter ’06)? Based on 35 years of experience in crime […]
Posted inEconomy
Historian Thomas O’Connor on making Boston the Athens of America
Thomas O’Connor has been telling Boston’s story for more than three decades. His 1976 book, Bibles, Brahmins, and Bosses, based on a series of lectures delivered at the Boston Public […]
Posted inEducation
Troubled charter schools get direction
INTRO TEXT Charter schools burst onto the scene as a bold challenge to the status quo. Supporters said that charters – which are publicly funded but operate free of bureaucratic […]
Posted inEducation, State House News Service
The pilot school concept comes to Fitchburg
INTRO TEXT would you lend ancient Chinese masterpieces to a middle school? Maybe not, but the Sackler Foundation didn’t blink before sending 33 priceless artifacts, among them Chinese Buddhas and […]
Posted inEconomy
Public pension chaos attracts scrutiny
INTRO TEXT when he was fired three years ago as the state’s correction commissioner, Michael Maloney stood ready to take his medicine – but hoped for a little sugar to […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Postrelease supervision gets little traction
INTRO TEXT a new yorker cartoon captured the problem succinctly. It showed a prison cellblock with a large banner hanging overhead: WELCOME BACK, RECIDIVISTS! According to a 2002 report by […]
Posted inPolitics
Kerry gets a new aide with game
INTRO TEXT jon jennings knows a thing or two about the transition game. And not just the kind he helped direct during eight years with the Boston Celtics, the last […]
Posted inEconomy
Fairhaven loses both taxes and jobs to ATT
INTRO TEXT an at&t call center in Fairhaven will soon close its doors after a contentious nine-year relationship with the town, leaving many people feeling like they’ve been hung up […]
Posted inPolitics
Then and Now
in the lifetime of a magazine, 10 years can be an eternity. In the case of CommonWealth, they represent 44 issues on the shelf and, considering the failure rate of […]
Posted inPolitics
Shifting Ground
Illustrations By Travis Foster Four years ago, Mitt Romney beat Shannon O’Brien to become governor of Massachusetts. Another way to look at it is that the town of Westwood, where […]
Posted inUncategorized
Hazardous Duty
the department of social services was in the dock – again – and that meant Harry Spence was on the hot seat. This time, it was the horrifying tale of […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Uncategorized
Mayflower presents the Plymouth story as tragedy
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and WarBy Nathaniel PhilbrickNew York, Viking Press, 480 pagesWinter 2006 beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House, tucked away safely in the […]
Posted inEducation
Grading the graders
massachusetts is about as good as it gets when it comes to setting standards for public school teachers and holding schools accountable for outcomes, according to Quality Counts 2006, the […]
Posted inPolitics
Paul La Camera takes WBUR local
some 50 staff members of WBUR Radio have crowded into the third-floor cafeteria for a lunchtime event with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick. They settle into chairs or stand around […]
Posted inPolitics
Constituent service
one effect of the ongoing shift in population from city to suburb is that more and more town selectmen in Massachusetts have constituencies that dwarf that of city councilors. The […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
CW comes of age
Spring 2006Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.” In much the same vein, I intend, on the occasion of CommonWealth’s 10th anniversary […]
Posted inPolitics
Rereading CommonWealth
Spring 2006 ORIGINALLY, I PLANNED to treat the 10th anniversary of the magazine as an excuse to re-read – and, I must confess, when it comes to some older issues […]
Posted inPolitics
Meet Jim McGovern: congressional class of 96 and godfather of Worcester politics
bald and bespectacled, he doesn’t exactly look like power in pinstripes as he moves though the Capitol. Still, after 10 years in Congress, Jim McGovern is increasingly taking on the […]
Posted inPolitics
Upscale Medway teeters on the brink of financial ruin
Medway On a Monday night in late February, several hundred residents of this small town on Interstate 495 gathered in the high school auditorium for what was said to be […]
Posted inPolitics
Statistically Significant
Illustrations By Travis Foster GLOBAL SOUL MATESWe usually compare Massachusetts with other states, but there’s a whole world out there to search for possible doppelgangers. According to the 2006 World […]
Posted inEconomy
Heritage Road Revisited
In a Billerica subdivision, making it in the middle class is still a full-time job JOHN AND LAURA PETERS ended up on Heritage Road in much the same way many […]
Posted inEconomy
The Garden of Peace is no walk in the park
Winter 2006 Dominic Chavez, The Boston Globe It’s unfortunate that the Garden of Peace, a little- known memorial to homicide victims, got its 15 minutes of fame for a nasty […]