Issue Position: On Criminal Justice Reform

Issue Position

While I was completing my Masters in Social Work at Hunter College in New York, I had the opportunity to help lead a national campaign called Mothers In Prison, Children in Crisis, which called attention to the mass incarceration of women--especially poor women and women of color--and the impact on their children.

Crime rates in Massachusetts have declined every year for the last six years, and with them, overall rates of incarceration. Yet there's much more to this story. We have to look closely at the continued disproportionate rates of incarceration in communities of color.

While roughly 6.6% of the state's population is Black, approximately 28.3% are incarcerated. And while roughly 10.6% of the state's population is Latino, the incarceration rate for Latinos is approximately 26%.

In April 2018 Massachusetts enacted a wide-ranging criminal justice reform bill that achieved the following:

puts into place measures aimed at making sure people are not incarcerated awaiting their trial because they can't afford to post bail;

makes it easier for people who committed a minor crime under the age of 21 to seal their record;
puts restrictions on the use of solitary confinement;

provides for compassionate medical release of nonviolent prisoners who pose no safety risk;
eliminates mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenses;

brings Massachusetts more in line with the rest of the country by significantly increasing the amount of property loss or damage required to trigger a felony prosecution; and

raises the age children can prosecuted in juvenile court from 7 to 12.

But it's not enough. To foster racial and economic justice and to end mass incarceration and the warehousing of people struggling with addiction and mental illness, we can and must do better.

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