In April 2018 amid much self-congratulation, Massachusetts legislators passed into law the so-called Criminal Justice Reform Act.
In addition to other sections of the law that have not been enacted and enforced was a provision requiring sheriffs and the Department of Correction to collect and provide standardized data to legislators, the DOC, sheriffs and others including data from arrest to sentencing, parole and probation. The legislation specified that the data was to include the offense, the race/ethnicity and gender of the person, time in jail/prison, participation in programs, and if the person was convicted of another crime.
A year after the CJRA passed, I wrote to Sen. William Brownsberger, one of the bill’s sponsors and now co-chair of The Special Commission on Department of Correction and Sheriff’s Department Funding and asked for an update on any progress. He suggested I contact the Justice Reinvestment Policy Oversight Board. I did. They said that they were working on a questionnaire. Almost four years later, nothing has been done.
One reason the Legislature included the need for data collection in the CJRA was a year before, also to much legislative fanfare, the Council of State Governments attempted to review the DOC and the sheriffs, as they had done in 29 other states. At the completion of their review work, they reported that they could not make recommendations due to a lack of data from sheriffs and the DOC.
A recent story in the Gazette (“Panel finding big gaps in probe of corrections,” Jan. 17) on the Special Commission said: “Lawmakers originally created the commission in the fiscal 2020 state budget and gave it a deadline of Sept. 1, 2020 to submit a report and recommendations concerning ‘the appropriate level of funding for the department of correction and each sheriff’s department’. After two extensions, the panel now faces a Jan. 31, 2022 deadline.”
It was only three weeks before the latest looming deadline that the Commission decided to hear from the public. On Jan. 11, 53 organizations including The Real Cost of Prisons Project, submitted written unified testimony to the Commission. We wrote: “The critical question we must collectively ask is: what is the purpose of this spending, and is this purpose being served?”
Massachusetts now spends an average of $100,000 per year to incarcerate one person for a total of $1.3 billion a year. There are 13,000 people in jails and prisons. Of the 13,000 people, approximately 6,500 are in jails where half have not been convicted of anything. While many detailed reports have been written about Massachusetts’ incarcerated population by organizations, including by excellent incarcerated researchers, the DOC and sheriffs are seemingly unable to accomplish this.
One of the newest is “The Paid Jailer,” released Jan. 7 by Common Cause and Communities for Sherriff Accountability. They report: “Massachusetts sheriffs received up to $2,686,129 in potentially conflicted donations across just 13 sheriffs’ campaigns, with sheriffs in these five counties being the top recipients: Suffolk County, $319,002; Bristol County, $324,870; Hampden County, $396,604; Worcester County, $504,516; and Plymouth County, $738,008.”
With the Special Commission about to end, there are now suggestions for what to do next. These include a proposal for an additional $10 million to create the long-awaited standardized data with Brownsberger agreeing to this and suggesting a separate department. This was proposed despite the fact that in 2020 an information technology bond bill authorized $10 million for a data collection project which of course went unused. Former Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe, one of the current commissioners, is proposing a second commission.
We know that the DOC and sheriffs are experts at building walls. Walls to keep people in. Their walls are also designed to keep information locked in. Data may sound like subject for nerds. Who cares about data? Clearly the answer is that sheriffs and the DOC do. They know that standardized data will hold them accountable.
What is the way forward? Sheriffs and the DOC have powerful allies: among them guards and police unions, district attorneys and the thousands of companies profiting from caging people. Sheriffs and the DOC are intent on maintaining and increasing their funding despite the decreasing number of people incarcerated.
It is past time to stop creating meaningless commissions. We must ask current legislators and candidates for governor and attorney general if they will take the necessary steps to tie transparency to the more than a billion dollars a year going to “corrections.” I propose that the Legislature create an independent oversight board — a board composed of members most impacted by jails and members who do not benefit from protecting the fiefdoms of sheriffs.
Transparency will lead to a significant reduction in the bloated budgets resulting in what jailers fear most, closing their ineffective and often cruel jails and prisons. Millions could then be invested in communities to reduce mass incarceration and do the most good for all of the people in the commonwealth.
Lois Ahrens is the founding director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project, a national organization based in Northampton.