Justice

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Top state officials seek review of criminal justice system

The Boston Globe reports that, “the top officials in Massachusetts government are asking for an independent review of the state’s criminal justice system.” The nonprofit group the Council of State Governments will conduct the analysis with the funding of the US Department of Justice and the Pew Charitable Trusts. Senator Brownsberger, who has been studying Massachusetts criminal justice statistics?, told the Globe that the request is a solid effort to get more data in an area where the state needs to make progress, “which is how do we get people safely back out onto the street in a way they can succeed and not return to being incarcerated.”

Mandatory Sentences Disproportionately Impact Minorities.

Illegal drug use spreads through all racial and ethnic groups and whites are the group most commonly convicted of possession (70.9% in Fiscal 2013). The racial disproportionality at the mandatory minimum level is therefore troubling, especially because of the unique role of prosecutorial discretion in bringing and enforcing mandatory minimum charges.

The average sentence impact of repealing mandatories is likely to be modest.

In testimony before the Judiciary Committee in on June 9, 2015, witnesses offered differing predictions of the likely impact of repealing mandatories. We are left with irreducible uncertainty as to the expected change in sentence levels. It seems certain that some particular cases will be resolved differently, but hard to imagine that average sentence levels will completely collapse.