State Rep. Heroux Talks Prison Reform

A report was released last month by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, Community Resources for Justice and the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Reform Coalition on prison sentencing and related issues in this state. The report is titled Crime, Cost and Consequences: Is it Time to Get Smart on Crime?"

"As the title suggests, the report calls into question Massachusetts' current approach to corrections, which favors long prison stays at the expense of treatment, reentry programming and post-release supervision," an introduction to the report states. "Without a change in course, the report concludes that Massachusetts will spend more than $2 billion over the next decade on corrections policies and practices that provide limited public safety benefit for the taxpayer."

Go here to read the report. 

State. Rep. Paul Heroux, whose district includes most of Attleboro, issued a press release about the report. The text of the release can be found below:

I read the entire report by MassINC this past Monday night. I found it to be a very good report. The idea that we need to loosen up some mandatory minimums (MM) is a good one since we know that longer sentences don't do anything to reduce recidivism but they do cost a lot. If someone is going to re-offend it doesn't matter if they are in prison for 5 years or 10 years, the person is going to re-offend, which leads us to the importance of prison programs and making sure that programs actually work.

It is also important to note that mandatory minimums were first done to decrease the sentencing disparity seen with racial minorities; they had nothing to do with justice or getting tough on crime. There is some need for long sentences when addressing some criminals, but for petty drug offenders or small time property offenders, there isn't a good case.

One problem I had with the report is that the cost savings on reducing recidivism by 5% and getting a savings of $150 million were exaggerated; in my opinion we won't save nearly that much. I spoke with the author of the report Ben Foreman who did that analysis and he said that it was a number to work with, but to "not take to Wall Street."

As promised in my campaign, I have been relentlessly watching over how different agencies arrive at the conclusions they make. I have found many errors in methodology.

This report is a good report and I am angry that we are not talking about prison reform at a time when we are talking about raising taxes. On average, we spend  $45,000 on inmates per year in Massachusetts; we spend around $10,000 on students. We have our priorities wrong. Spending more on education could be a way to spend less on incarceration in the long run.

A way to do this right now is to make better use of alternative punishments to incarceration in turn decreasing the prison population and in turn freeing up a lot of money for education. We can do this now, but no one is talking about it. I plan to bring this issue up before long.