Mass Incarceration Is Bad for MA. These Bills Can Make a Difference.

Prison

October 5, 2021

Chairman Eldridge, Chairman Day, and Members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary:

I am submitting testimony in my capacity as Chair of the Issues Committee of Progressive Massachusetts. We urge a favorable report for the following bills:

  • H.1868: An Act regarding decarceration and COVID-19 (Sabadosa)
  • H.1900: An Act relative to telephone service for inmates in all correctional and other penal institutions in the Commonwealth (Tyler)
  • H.1905: An Act establishing a jail and prison construction moratorium (Tyler)
  • H.1797: An Act to reduce mass incarceration (Miranda/Livingstone)
  • H.1910/S.977: An Act to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences related to drug offenses (Uyterhoeven – Creem)

H.1868: An Act Regarding Decarceration and COVID-19

Incarceration is always harmful, but during a deadly pandemic—and at a time when many correctional officers have resisted vaccination, it is truly a matter of life or death.

Those who are not fed appropriately or allowed appropriate exercise, are more likely than most to have comorbidities, a fact which increases the likelihood that they will die from this disease. Whatever reason they might be in prison for, nobody was sentenced to illness or death. When the state incarcerates someone, the state becomes responsible for ensuring their well-being.  That means releasing as many people as possible in order to ensure that these tragic deaths do not continue and spiral out of control.

H.1900: An Act relative to telephone service for inmates in all correctional and other penal institutions in the Commonwealth

Families across Massachusetts are charged exorbitant fees to maintain vital connections with incarcerated loved ones. This is a regressive tax on the most vulnerable populations, and the MA Legislature can end it.

As communities already struggle with the high cost of housing, health care, and transportation, no one should be forced to choose between paying rent or buying groceries and maintaining contact with loved ones. Moreover, punitive policies targeted at the families of incarcerated individuals leave us all worse off: numerous studies have shown that contact with loved ones promotes public safety by supporting successful reentry.

H.1905: An Act establishing a jail and prison construction moratorium

Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of incarceration in the country, yet we spend more on jails and prisons than most other states. Indeed, while the incarcerated population in MA decreased 21% from 2011-19, spending on incarceration has increased 25% over the same period. According to the Department of Corrections, the cost of keeping one woman incarcerated at MCI-Framingham is $162,260 — money that could be better spent on social supports that help women get back on their feet.

Conditions inside many MA prisons and jails are toxic and inhumane, despite the millions of dollars already poured into them. We cannot put more money in them and expect a different outcome than the one we see today, one that exacerbates racial inequity and trauma.

A five-year moratorium on new prison construction and the expansion of existing prisons and jails will give the Commonwealth the chance to shift spending priorities, especially as we recover from COVID, and the inequalities COVID revealed. We need to give communities the opportunity to create and sustain solutions that address the root causes of incarceration.

Sentencing Reforms: H.1797: An Act to reduce mass incarceration & H.1910/S.977: An Act to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences related to drug offenses

In 2018, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a sweeping criminal justice reform bill. Recognizing that mandatory minimum sentences were a part of a failed “tough on crime” model that fueled mass incarceration, the Legislature eliminated many of them. However, the bill also created new mandatory minimums, continuing this problematic legacy of tying the hands of judges and failing to either deter or address the root causes of offenses.

Similarly ineffective is the sentence of life without parole. Studies have shown that severe sentences are not a deterrent to crime, and the sentence of life without parole forecloses on any possibility of rehabilitation, increases the size of our prison population, and saddles the prison system with the burden of elder care it is not equipped to provide. Enabling individuals who have served for twenty-five years to have a parole hearing is a common-sense reform.

We urge you to give these bills a favorable report and to contribute to our state’s re-evaluation of public safety in line with public health and racial equity.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Chair, Issues Committee

Progressive Massachusetts

The VOTES Act Is Good. Here’s How It Could Be Better.

Tomorrow, the MA Senate will be taking up the VOTES Act, which contains a number of important pro-democracy reforms such as making expanded early voting and vote-by-mail permanent and enacting Same Day Registration so that voters can register or update their registration at the polls.

The MA Senate deserves credit for advancing a strong and comprehensive bill with popular, time-tested, and effective reforms. But the Senate can also make the bill even stronger by including the following amendments:

Amendment #1 (Hinds): Protecting ballot access for eligible incarcerated people, which would require correctional officials to send incarcerated individuals information about their rights, distribute registration forms and absentee ballots to all eligible voters, and ensure that the votes are collected and transferred to election officials, among other reforms to the jail-based voting language.

Amendment #4 (Rausch): Paid time off for voting, which would guarantee workers 2 hours of paid time off to vote, making sure that long hours are not a barrier to participation.

Amendment #111 (Chang-Diaz): Providing Access for Transliterated Ballots, which provides for transliteration of ballots in languages that do not use the Roman alphabet, thereby ensuring that language is not a barrier to full participation.

Amendment #17 (Rausch): Ensuring Access to Ballot Drop Boxes, which requires municipalities to have at least one secure and accessible drop box location with a requirement that larger ones have at least one secured municipal ballot drop box for each twenty-five thousand registered voters.

Amendments #18 & 19 (Rausch): Ensuring Election Day Registration in All Elections / Ensuring Vote By Mail Access in Municipal Elections, which ensure that the reforms in the bill apply to preliminary and general municipal elections. Amendment #28 (Rausch): Permitting Vote By Mail Ballots to be Returned to Regular Polling Places, which would allow voters to drop off mail ballots at their regular polling locations.

Can you email your state senator in support of these important amendments?

Take Action in Support of #NoCostCalls

Right now, families are charged exorbitant fees to maintain vital connections with incarcerated loved ones. This is a regressive tax on the most vulnerable populations of the Commonwealth that also harms public safety by limiting communication and weakening community bonds .

While only 21 percent of the state’s population is Black or Latinx, more than 54 percent of the people imprisoned by the Department of Corrections are. Black and Latinx children are, respectively, nine and three times more likely than White children to have a parent in prison. As communities already struggle with the high cost of housing, health care, and transportation, no one should be forced to choose between paying rent or buying groceries and maintaining contact with loved ones.

Today, the Judiciary Committee will be hearing testimony on important legislation to eliminate such fees.

Can you submit testimony to the Judiciary Committee in support of the #NoCostCalls bill?

Redistricting and YOU: How to Effectively Lobby for Fair Maps in MA

This year — likely this MONTH, the Massachusetts Legislature will be drawing the legislative and Congressional districts for the next decade. The Drawing Democracy Coalition recently released a Unity Map informed by community groups across the state. What are the key features of this map? How does one set priorities in redistricting? What makes a map fair? And how can we be effective advocates?

Next Thursday at 7 pm, we’ll have a discussion with Jordan Berg Powers of Mass Alliance, Beth Huang of the Massachusetts Voter Table, and Roberto Jiménez Rivera of the Boston Teachers Union.

RSVP HERE.

Time to Press Pause on Prison Construction

The Massachusetts Legislature is currently considering a proposal to spend $50 million to build a new women’s prison to replace MCI-Framingham.

Backers of the project often tout that the new facility for the approximately 125 women still incarcerated there will be a “trauma-informed” prison. But here’s the problem: there’s no such thing as a trauma-informed prison. Despite the statistics which have proven that incarceration increases the likelihood that a person will reoffend once released, the state continues to pour money into a carceral system that we know does not keep our communities safe and, instead, increases recidivism.

Alternatives to the carceral status quo are necessary and possible, and the first step is to press pause on the construction of new prisons and jails that lock in the current system. That is why we’re supporting S.2030/H.1905, which would impose a five-year moratorium on prison and jail construction

Starting tomorrow (or, if you’re reading this in the morning, “today”), human rights advocates across the state will begin a week-long walk from Springfield to Boston to bring awareness to the need to create such alternatives to incarceration by directly addressing root causes, such as the inability to access housing, food, and jobs.

If you can join for all or part of the walk, RSVP here!

If you can’t join, you can still make a difference by contacting your state legislators in support of S.2030/H.1905. Send them an email here.

PM in the News: “Activists seek moratorium on prison construction”

Lily Robinson, “Activists seek moratorium on prison construction,” CommonWealth, July 20, 2021, https://commonwealthmagazine.org/criminal-justice/activists-seek-moratorium-on-prison-construction/.

“If you build this prison, I guarantee you, women will be beaten. Women will be starved. Women will be raped. How does that make our community safer?” asked Caroline Bays, board president of Progressive Massachusetts, an organization that pushes for racial, social and environmental justice, at a legislative hearing on the bill Tuesday.

A representative of the Massachusetts Department of Correction said that no final decisions have been made regarding the future of MCI-Framingham or women’s correctional facilities in the state.

From 2011 to 2018, the average daily prison population in Massachusetts declined by 21 percent. At the same time, the state ramped up spending by 25 percent, taking the budget from $254 million to nearly $1.4 billion. Few of those extra dollars went to programs to reduce recidivism, according to a study by MassINC, the parent company of CommonWealth.

Testifying in support of the bill, Bays recalled visiting an incarcerated friend at Cedar Junction, a prison in Norfolk, and laughing—then sometimes crying—over the irony of a sign in the waiting room declaring the facility a place of rehabilitation. She said she knew the reality of what went on within those walls: beatings and assaults such as the one that permanently crippled her friend.

Bays pointed out that Massachusetts has one of the highest prison budgets in the country, despite housing one of the smallest populations of people behind bars. The Department of Correction spends about $70,000 per inmate annually. For about two thirds of that cost, a student could spend a year at Harvard University. “Instead of a prison, why don’t you build a university?” suggested Bays. “At the end [of the sentence, an inmate] would have a degree and a future instead of a black hole on their resume and more trauma to recover from.”

There Is No Such Thing as a “Trauma-Informed” Prison

Tomorrow, the Legislature will hold a hearing on a bill to impose a five-year moratorium on the construction of new prisons and jails.

This is particularly urgent because the state wants to spend 50 million dollars to build a new prison to house just over 100 women, most of whom are safe to release to their homes and families.

This bill is personal because for the last five years I have been visiting a friend in prison, and I have watched with horror what prisons are really like and what they do to a person. My friend has endured torture unlike anything you can imagine — four years in solitary confinement, starvation, and assaults. The prisons here in Massachusetts are brutal, nightmarish places. As a system and institution for rehabilitation, they simply do not work.

Please submit testimony in support of a prison construction moratorium.

The state says this new facility will be different — it will be a “trauma-informed” prison. But, in visiting Andrew over the last five years, I have learned that there is no such thing as a trauma-informed prison because when a person has no autonomy or freedom in their life and when other human beings have complete and total control over them, there can be no progress towards rehabilitation and no healing from past trauma. We have an opportunity to use this five-year moratorium to reimagine rehabilitation. It costs less to send someone to Harvard then it does to keep someone imprisoned in our state. Think of how much money we could save, how many people could be healed if we were putting that $50,000,000 into education, into therapy, into affordable housing, or even just into food to feed hungry babies. 

Please submit testimony in support of a prison construction moratorium.

Every time I visited my friend, I would look at the sign on Cedar Junction’s waiting room that said the goal of the prison was rehabilitation. Sometimes when I read that sign, I would laugh at the absurdity of it, sometimes I would cry at the false promise of it. Massachusetts has an opportunity to think outside the box. We can come up with another alternative for treating people — people who have harmed others and themselves. But inflicting cruel punishment and torture does not make anyone safer. Instead we can approach solving this problem with true compassion and real rehabilitation.  

PS: For more information, check out this helpful toolkit from Families for Justice as Healing, Building up People Not Prisons, and the National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls.

“The time is right for Massachusetts to end felony disenfranchisement.”

Prison

Testimony in Support of S.18 and H.74

Legislative Amendment to the Constitution Relative to Voting Rights

Joint Committee on Election Laws

April 26, 2020

Dear Chairman Finegold, Chairman Ryan, and members of the Election Laws Committee, 

We, the Democracy Behind Bars Coalition, are writing in support of S. 18 sponsored by Senator Adam Hinds and H. 74 sponsored by Representative Mindy Domb. We believe it is time to take the first step to restore voting rights to people incarcerated for felony convictions. Therefore we urge you to send S. 18 and H. 74 out of committee with a favorable review to create a path for voting rights to be restored through legislative amendment or ballot initiative.

In Massachusetts, we strip incarcerated citizens of the ability to exercise their political voice even though they are our most governed population. This happens through de jure disenfranchisement for those serving felony convictions, and de facto disenfranchisement for those held pre-trial or on misdemeanor convictions, as even eligible voters behind bars have virtually no access to a ballot. These systems systematically revoke political power from hyper-policed Black communities and communities of color. We, the Democracy Behind Bars Coalition, are working to end both de facto and de jure disenfranchisement, but we write today specifically in support of S. 18 and H. 74 to end the de jure disenfranchisement of those serving felony convictions. 

As you will read in testimony submitted today by currently and formerly incarcerated leaders of our coalition, maintaining the right to vote is critical to protect the dignity, wellbeing, and fundamental humanity of incarcerated people. Stripping people serving felony convictions of their right to vote serves no restorative or rehabilitative function, and it has no deterrent effect on crime. It distorts democratic outcomes and maintains mass incarceration. Felony disenfranchisement and jail-based disenfranchisement are certainly not the only culprits – redressing these issues alone will not solve mass incarceration or political inequality – but they are direct holdovers from slavery, Jim Crow, and voter suppression practices that target Black voters and voters of color, skew representation and public policy outcomes, and have no place in a racially equitable democracy. 

The time is right for Massachusetts to end felony disenfranchisement. 

In Massachusetts, individuals serving sentences on felony convictions lost the right to vote twenty years ago as a result of a ballot initiative and constitutional amendment put forth by the acting Governor Cellucci. It was a punitive measure in response to civic engagement initiatives by incarcerated individuals in the Norfolk Prison. This is a dark stain on Massachusetts’ history that took place at a moment when some states were beginning to move in the opposite direction and liberalize voting rights for the formerly incarcerated and ‘tough on crime’ was beginning to pivot to ‘smart on crime.’ 

Twenty years later, it is time to restore the right to vote to all incarcerated Bay Staters. Especially in a moment when voting rights and democracy itself are under attack, it is critical that we in Massachusetts actively and unapologetically work to protect our democracy – especially the political voice of our Black communities and communities of color who have systematically been the target of hyper-policing, mass incarceration, voter suppression attempts, and gerrymandering. 

As a coalition advocating to end the disenfranchisement of eligible incarcerated voters (those serving misdemeanors and imprisoned pre-trial) and to bolster the political power of returning citizens, we know all too well that felony disenfranchisement has effects that extend far beyond whether those serving felony convictions can vote. Eligible voters behind the wall and returned citizens in community frequently do not vote specifically because of confusion about the extent and duration of disenfranchisement within the criminal legal system. 

Now is the time to end the disenfranchisement of those behind the wall in Massachusetts. We must undo the punitive and harmful measure passed 20 years ago, and rejoin Vermont, Maine, and Washington DC in recognizing that the right to vote should never be taken away. 

We would like to thank Senator Adam Hinds and Representative Mindy Domb for their leadership on this critical legislation. 

Thank you for your consideration, and we hope to continue working with you to protect access to the ballot for all people in the Commonwealth. 

The Democracy Behind Bars Coalition, which includes:

The African American Coalition Committee (AACC)

The ACLU of Massachusetts

Common Cause Massachusetts

Decarcerate Western Massachusetts

Emancipation Initiative

Families for Justice as Healing

Healing Our Land, Inc. 

The National Council for Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls

The Massachusetts Voter Table

MassPOWER
Mass Political Cooperative

MOCHA

Progressive Massachusetts

Prisoners Legal Services

It’s Time for the Legislature to Stand up to the Governor

This week, Republican Governor Charlie Baker showed repeatedly that he doesn’t have the best interests of the commonwealth at heart. And we’re not just talking about his stubborn refusal to close in-door dining, casinos (?!), and gyms or ensure that workers and small businesses have the supports they need to weather the dark winter. (Although more on that later.) 

We’re talking about his refusal to sign good policies passed by the Legislature and his desire to run out the clock on all of them.

Rather than signing the Legislature’s compromise police reform bill, Baker proposed amendments that would harm the progress made by weakening regulations on the use of force and of harmful facial surveillance technology; weakening the oversight powers of the POST Commission; and delaying the implementation of reforms that we needed yesterday.

And rather than signing the budget passed by the Legislature, Baker — who only pretends to be pro-choice — sent back amendments to fully undermine the Legislature’s efforts to create more equitable abortion access.

Even more, while the COVID-19 pandemic has been spreading rapidly in state prisons, Baker struck vital oversight language to ensure that prisons and jails meet public health standards.

That’s not okay. And the Legislature shouldn’t let him get away with it.

Email your legislators in support of reinstating key language on police reform, reproductive justice, and prison oversight.

Supporting Black Lives on Juneteenth (and Every Day)

Black Lives Matter

Today is Juneteenth, the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union army general Gordon Granger announced federal orders in the city of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were now free.

Juneteenth honors Black freedom and Black resistance. And it serves as a reminder that, despite our country’s founding rhetoric, many were excluded from that promise of freedom — and, indeed, that promise has yet to be fully realized.

Racism, both individual and systemic, remains a pervasive problem in society, especially in policing and the criminal-legal system.

However, as Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley says so well, if policy created these injustices, we need policy to undo them.

An Act to Save Black Lives by Transforming Public Safety

We still have work to do in Massachusetts to address the structural inequities. An Act to Save Black Lives by Transforming Public Safety, introduced by Representative Liz Miranda (HD 5128) and Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Creem (S.2968), will take important steps in the effort toward equity and justice. This legislation establishes:

  • Strengthened use of force rules
  • New investigatory requirements within Attorney General’s Office
  • Creates a “Duty to intervene” when an officer witnesses abuse of force
  • Establishes that unnecessary use of force by an officer violates someone’s civil rights
  • Data collection and reporting processes to prevent hire of abusive officers
  • Prohibition on no-knock warrants
  • Prohibition on the use of choke holds, tear gas, and other dangerous “less than lethal” weapons and tactics
  • Public records of police misconduct investigations and outcomes

Massachusetts needs to pass HD5128/S2968 to save Black lives and transform our public safety system.

Can you email your state legislators in support?

Investing in Communities, Not the Carceral State

But reform can only go so far.

As budget season nears, the Legislature will have the opportunity to put words into action and craft a budget that shows that they actually mean it when they say that Black Lives Matter.

What would that look like?

Our allies at Families for Justice as Healing are calling on Governor Baker, Senate President Spilka, and Speaker DeLeo to commit to the following: 1) No capital bond money for new jails or prisons 2) Cutting the budget for the Department of Corrections 3) Cutting the budget for sheriffs 4) Increasing funding for communities, which means housing, healthcare, community-led organizations, and community-led economic development

In short, we should be spending on communities not on criminalization.

Can you email Baker, Spilka, and DeLeo in support?

Want to do more? Of course you do! Families for Justice as Healing also has an ongoing week of action, where you can find new things to do each week to advance a more humane, just, and equitable society.

Mass Incarceration is a Threat to Public Health

Testimony in support of Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa’s, bill HD.4963/H.4652
An Act Regarding Decarceration and COVID-19

Thank you for taking testimony in support of this critical bill during this terrible crisis.

My name is Caroline Bays, and I am testifying on behalf of Progressive Massachusetts as well as on behalf of those who are behind bars and do not have the ability to testify for themselves.

This has been a hard time for our state. We all have found this time difficult and sometimes even scary. Imagine if you had to live through this without any control of your surroundings. Imagine if you had to live with your ability to stay safe completely in the hands of others — and imagine if those others are people who have previously shown no indication that they care about your welfare or well-being. This is a truly scary time for men and women in the prisons in Massachusetts.

In addition many in prison are more vulnerable to this disease. Those who are not fed appropriately or allowed appropriate exercise, are more likely than most to have comorbidities, a fact which increases the likelihood that they will die from this disease. Whatever reason they might be in prison for, nobody was sentenced to illness or death. When the state incarcerates someone, the state becomes responsible for ensuring their well-being.  Well, that is what the state needs to do. And that means releasing as many people as possible in order to ensure that these tragic deaths do not continue and spiral out of control.

Other states have released people from prison.  Iowa has released over 800 people and is still expediting releases. Hawaii has granted early release to almost 700 people. Even Louisiana is releasing people from prison early! (To see what other states are doing in both jails and prisons you can go here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/virus/virusresponse.html)

Why haven’t we joined these states? Instead, the governor has remained silent while this insidious virus works its way through the prison system. We witnessed how fast this virus made its way through our community. We know that it silently plowed through our state, making us one of the worst affected in the country. There is a strong likelihood this will happen in our prisons. That is why we need to get people who will be vulnerable to this disease out, now. We don’t want to join Ohio in the catastrophe that is happening inside prisons there.

We pride ourselves on being a humane state. We pride ourselves on not having the death penalty. Well, now it’s time to act on our values and release these men and women from prison and allow them to endure this pandemic in a safe place. Because allowing them to stay in unsafe conditions when we can easily release them is the very definition of inhumanity.

As of this writing there have been 7 deaths in Massachusetts prisons, and last week alone we had 130 new cases, up from 37 the week before https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/05/01/a-state-by-state-look-at-coronavirus-in-prisons. Please — before it is too late — release all those who we possibly can before tragedy strikes our prisons.

Sincerely,
Caroline Bays
Board President, Progressive Massachusetts