Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa’s June 21 column “Fixing the ‘brokenness’ of the criminal justice system,” raises critical issues about how our self-satisfied view of ourselves living in “progressive” Massachusetts keeps us from facing the harmful and costly truth about our criminal justice system.

As someone dedicated to creating a fairer and less punitive criminal legal system, one of the biggest obstacles I face is dispelling the myth of “progressive Massachusetts.”

Here are a few examples of how Massachusetts is exceptional and not in a good way. In 2000, 60 percent of voters cast ballots to take away the right to vote for incarcerated people. It was the only time Massachusetts voters took away the rights of others.

Massachusetts is the only state that can jail people for substance use disorder through civil commitment under Sec. 35. Hampden County Sheriff Cocchi is doing this now.

In 2012, Massachusetts was the last state to pass a three strikes law. The state passing one prior to that was Arizona in 2005. Massachusetts and Arkansas are the only states that sentence people to solitary for up to 10 years. Every day, roughly 640 of 9,500 state prisoners are in some form of segregation. This does not include jails. Every jail has solitary.

As Sabadosa writes, Massachusetts has 1,300 women and men condemned to die on “slow death row,” that is, the sentence of life without parole. In 1977, there were 170 people serving life without the possibility of parole. The huge increase is not because crimes have gotten worse. It is because of the increased charging power of prosecutors though mandatory minimum sentences, and their ability to extract plea bargains from defendants who often lack good legal representation. These factors mean disproportionately bad outcomes for black defendants. In Massachusetts, only one person has received clemency since 1997.

Massachusetts is one of the few states proposing building a new jail for women being held pretrial who have been convicted of nothing.

We need legislators like Lindsay Sabadosa, who has stepped up to challenge this broken system. And legislators need us to support them to make desperately needed change.

Lois Ahrens

Northampton

Lois Ahrens is the founding director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project, a national organization based in Northampton.