Unless anything changes, four weeks from today -- Friday, July 31st -- the formal part of the 191st Legislative Session of the Massachusetts General Court will come to an end.

That means that there are four weeks for the MA Legislature to up its game on pretty much every single front.

The following letter was drafted by Caroline Bays and Jonathan Cohn from the PM Issues Committee and transmitted to the CJR conferees: 

House Chairwoman Claire Cronin, Joint Committee on the Judiciary

Senate Chairman William Brownsberger, Joint Committee on the Judiciary

Majority Leader Ronald Mariano

Chairwoman Cynthia Creem, Senate Committee on Bills in Third Reading

Ranking House Minority Member Sheila Harrington, Joint Committee on the Judiciary

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr

*********************************

January 17, 2018

Dear Members of the House-Senate Conference Committee:

The Massachusetts incarceration rate, while low compared to other states, is three to four times higher than that of European countries. In fact, there are only seven countries with a higher incarceration rate than Massachusetts.

There has been a growing consensus that the policies of the “tough on crime” era were misguided. They did not make us safer, but instead entrenched lasting racial and economic inequities. Studies have shown that high levels of incarceration have devastating consequences for minority communities, including an increase in crime, poverty, and homelessness. They prevent individuals and communities from thriving and living up to their full potential and make cherished rhetoric of “liberty and justice for all” ring hollow.

We are grateful to the House and the Senate for their exhaustive work on Criminal Justice legislation. Both the House and Senate bills have many excellent provisions, and in the following letter, we identify (a) essential provisions in both bills that should be included in a final Conference report, (b) places where one bill or the other was superior and whose provisions merit inclusion, and (c) a few places where the bills stray from their intent. The subsequent recommendations will best help to achieve our mutual goal of ending mass incarceration in Massachusetts.

Mon, Tue, Wed of this week (Nov. 13-15), the Massachusetts House will start voting on a comprehensive criminal justice reform. The House bill, as expected, is not as comprehensive or as progressive as the Senate bill.

We must work to make it better before the vote on its final form: we must contact our State Representatives, NOW, loudly, and in as large numbers as we can. 

The House will be voting on amendments Monday through Wednesday. 

It's vitally important representatives hear that you want to see a stronger bill that delivers on the promise of comprehensive criminal justice reform. Mass incarceration has proven socially a socially and economically damaging phenomenon, and it's time for Massachusetts to move beyond it.

Email/call your Representative TODAY (a copy/paste email script is here: progma.us/cjr-house-2017nov) and tell them to support/oppose the amendments below (when you're done--take a sec and let us know you called/contacted your Rep: it helps us know where we need to target more!). We'll be tracking the progress on these measures in the spreadsheet below. 

When I talk to allies on Beacon Hill, they say that criminal justice reform is going to be one of the top issues the Legislature takes up this fall. But whether it will be real reform, or just tinkering around the edges, remains to be seen. Massachusetts needs to turn the tide on a failed “tough on crime” paradigm that has wreaked havoc on communities and fueled mass incarceration without making us any safer.

And that’s where you come in.

Representative Claire Cronin, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, is planning to meet with every state rep about the bills in her committee. She needs to hear from her constituents and her fellow representatives that Massachusetts wants real reform.

Call your state representative today and ask them to tell Chairwoman Cronin that Massachusetts wants bold criminal justice reform this fall.