TEXT OF THE LETTER FROM THE BLACK-LATINO CAUCUS COMMENTING ON THE SENTENCING BILL Dear Colleague, As you know, the Conference Committee tasked with creating a compromise sentencing reform bill released its final report last night. The Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus (MBLLC), expresses our sincerest gratitude to the committee members and their staffs for their hard work on this complex and highly-charged issue. Our constituents—who are disproportionately victims of violent crimes, or the friends, family, and neighbors of victims—will be directly and deeply affected by this bill. It is on behalf of the thousands of constituents who have approached us to express the personal ways this legislation will affect their lives and their neighborhoods that, as a Caucus, we will be voting against the final bill. We respectfully urge you to do the same, for the following reasons: · As of 2009, Black and Latino people comprised approximately 12 percent of Massachusetts’ population yet accounted for 56 percent of its prison population. This bill is an unacceptable missed opportunity to fix this grossly disproportionate representation while we are otherwise amending our sentencing laws to increase incarceration. The MBLLC has advocated for the bill to eliminate mandatory minimums on non-violent drug offenses in order to promote more effective and equitable sentencing. Unnecessary and ineffective jail sentences devastate communities: they preclude valuable job training and educational opportunities, fracture families, and perpetuate a cycle of violence and crime that has had serious consequences on communities of color. · Data from the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission suggest that this bill will cost over $100 million over the next 10 to 15 years—funding that will be siphoned away from priorities we all share, such as public education, job training, and transportation improvements. · Half a dozen states around the country, including South Carolina and Kansas, have moved away from mandatory minimum sentencing laws and have seen their crime rates drop. Every legislator in this building is adamant about violence prevention and protecting our neighborhoods from repeat criminal offenders. No community in the state is untouched by the consequences of violence or the drug trade. However, it is our hope that we can also all agree that reforms to our criminal justice system should be data-driven and fiscally responsible. We believe this bill fails on both counts. It imposes new burdens on our courts and prisons while doing too little to promote actual rehabilitation for non-violent offenders and prevent recidivism. It also removes the judicial discretion that is fundamental to the purpose of our judicial system and the principal of separation of powers. This bill, in our view, is not balanced—and is yet another example of the communities most affected by violence and drugs being asked to put their solutions on hold. Voting down this bill during this legislative session will afford us the opportunity to work together—with the input of criminal justice researchers, legal experts, and our communities—to craft smart, data-driven legislation that truly achieves the ends we all agree will make our communities safer and stronger. Thank you for your consideration. Respectfully, Sonia Chang-Diaz and Benjamin Swan, Chair of the Black & Latino Caucus