The Eagle Tribune Editorial Board. “Our View: Lawmakers Owe Constituents Light, Not Darkness.” The Eagle Tribune. March 16, 2024.
“So much of the legislative process occurs behind closed doors,” said Jonathan Cohn, policy director of the group Progressive Massachusetts. “Recorded votes are a critical opportunity for legislators to show the public where they stand.
Colin Young, “Sunshine week meets shade on Beacon Hill,” State House News Service, March 15, 2024.
As Sunshine Week got underway, Progressive Massachusetts pointed out that the Massachusetts House has taken fewer than half as many recorded votes so far this session than it had in any of the previous six legislative sessions. The House took 202 roll calls by March 11, 2012; 297 roll calls by March 11, 2014; 206 roll calls by March 11, 2016; 313 roll calls by March 11, 2018; 164 roll calls by March 11, 2020; and 155 roll calls by March 11, 2022, the group said.
So far this legislative session, the House has recorded 81 roll call votes.
The trend has been similar, but not quite as dramatic, in the Senate. Progressive Massachusetts said the Senate had taken 186 roll calls by March 11, 2020, then 135 roll calls by March 11, 2022, and had taken 114 roll call votes so far this session as of the start of the week.
“So much of the legislative process occurs behind closed doors, and recorded votes are a critical opportunity for legislators to show the public where they stand. When the House refuses to bring up votes until they are unanimous and when legislators withdraw their amendments without discussion or debate, we lose out on opportunities to make progress on the many critical challenges facing the commonwealth,” Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Massachusetts, said.
Al Blake, “Letter: Legislature must act on state’s housing crisis,” Berkshire Eagle, March 2, 2024.
To the editor: Massachusetts and the Berkshires have a housing crisis.
To rent the average two-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $41.64 per hour, more than twice the minimum wage. Homeownership has become increasingly out of reach as the state’s median home price nears $600,000.
The high cost of housing has led to displacement, and in a growing number of municipalities the local workforce can no longer afford to live there. The Legislature needs to take action before the crisis gets worse.
I’m glad that Gov. Maura Healey has responded to this crisis by introducing the Affordable Homes Act, which combines funding authorizations for various housing programs with important new policy measures for affordable housing. One of the most exciting proposals is the real estate transfer fee local option. This would enable cities and towns to levy a small fee on large real estate transactions in order to create a dedicated revenue stream for affordable housing production and preservation.
I am grateful that the housing crisis will be at the center of the Legislature’s attention this year, and I hope that our Berkshire legislators will advocate for the strongest legislation possible as the only way to make or keep that a reality is through good policy.
Al Blake, Becket
Happy International Women’s Day!
Today should serve as a reminder of the fundamentally intersectional nature of the push for women’s rights. Women need pay equity, universal health care (including and especially reproductive health care), affordable child care, affordable housing, and so much more.
This International Women’s Day, take action on two important issues: saying no to another women’s prison and saying yes to creating a better maternal health care system.
Massachusetts is planning to spend $50 million to build a new women’s prison to replace MCI-Framingham. As of January 1, 2022, the population in MCI-Framingham stood at 179, with more than 20% held in pre-trial detention. Why would we expand a system that costs $235,000 per person and only causes further harm?
That is the question that women from MCI-Framingham asked in a historic hearing last summer when they were able to testify to state legislators about the myriad better uses of that $50 million, especially in terms of investing in communities and support services at MCI-Framingham, expanding programming, and improving access to health care.
Studies have repeatedly shown that society cannot incarcerate its way to safety, and the family separation of incarceration and the well-documented inhumane conditions in Massachusetts’s prisons and jails fuel the community instability that is detrimental to public safety. Instead, investments in housing, health care, economic opportunity, and other social supports have been shown to be the true foundation of public safety for all.
The Prison Moratorium bill (S.1979) would create a 5-year pause on major jail and prison construction and expansion, without preventing essential repairs, to allow for a focus on reducing the number of people in prison, implementing alternatives, and investing in communities.
The Legislature, in fact, has already gone on record in support of this bill by passing it at the end of the session, but Republican Governor Charlie Baker vetoed it. Let’s finish the work this year.
Find out if your legislators are already co-sponsors here.
Massachusetts is facing a maternal health care crisis, which is devastating all of our communities, and hitting Black, Indigenous and people of color especially hard. This crisis has been compounded by a cascade of maternity care closures across the state. Policies are urgently needed to reverse this alarming trend.
A study published by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health last year revealed that rates of severe maternal health complications nearly doubled between 2011 and 2020. The situation is especially dire for black women, who are twice as likely than white women to die from maternal health complications in Massachusetts.
We need to demand that all women and birthing parents have access to the care that they need.
An Act promoting access to midwifery care and out-of-hospital birth options (H.2209/S.145) would improve maternal health outcomes and promote racial and economic justice by expanding access to midwifery care and birthing choices, eliminating maternal care deserts and increasing access for low-income families.
March 5, 2024
Pamerson O. Ifill
Commissioner of Probation
One Ashburton Place # 405
Boston, MA 02108
Re: Sealing of erroneously denied youthful offender sealing petitions
Dear Commissioner:
We are writing on behalf of youth, community, legal services, and other organizations to request that you direct the Sealing Unit in your office to comply with the law and seal the youthful offender records of petitioners who were previously denied sealing due to the Sealing Unit incorrectly applying the adult sealing statute (G.L c. 276, § 100A) rather than the juvenile
sealing statute (G.L. c. 276, § 100B) to youthful offender offenses. On February 14, 2024, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled that the delinquency sealing statute (G.L. c. 276, § 100B) “is the proper statute for the sealing of records of youthful offenders.” Matter of Impounded Case, No. SJC-13465, 2024 WL 590605, at 1 (2024). However, our understanding from General Counsel Nina Pomponio is that, except for the petitioner in this particular SJC case, the Sealing Unit will take no action to seal the records of individuals who were previously denied sealing of their youthful offender records based on the erroneous application of the adult sealing statute unless they file a new petition. We respectfully submit that this position is flatly inconsistent with the Court’s decision, a dereliction of the Sealing Unit’s basic responsibility as a government agency, profoundly unjust, and unnecessary based on the Sealing Unit’s practice of treating youthful offender records as sealable under the juvenile statute less than a decade ago.
This position is particularly disappointing when compared to the laudable steps your office is taking to seal adult offenses ending in a not guilty finding to implement the SJC’s recent decision in Commonwealth v. J.F.1 The number of sealing requests related to youthful offender offenses is almost certainly much smaller than the number of adult offenses that ended in a not
guilty finding which your office is now sealing.
The failure to seal these records is legally unsupportable. The SJC’s unanimous decision last week is unambiguous: “We conclude that § 100B, the juvenile delinquency statute, is proper statute for the sealing of records of youthful offenders.” Slip op. at 2 (emphasis supplied). Nothing in the opinion remotely suggests that its holding was limited to the individual youthful offender who brought the petition. To the contrary, its language is not restricted to the case before it. “After review of the text of §§ 100A and 100B and an analysis of legislative intent as to youthful offender adjudications as revealed in §§ 53 and 60A and more broadly, we conclude that the Legislature intended that, in the context of record sealing, youthful offender adjudications be treated more like delinquency adjudications than adult criminal adjudications.” Slip op. at 13 (emphasis supplied). Any reading other than that youthful offender records are to be treated for sealing purposes as juvenile records is baseless.
The failure to seal these records disregards the agency’s basic responsibility to do its job. The refusal to seal these records effectively deprives persons eligible for sealing of its benefits because the sealing unit misled them. Before this decision, the Sealing Unit sent letters to individuals who requested sealing of all juvenile offenses that erroneously instructed them in some instances that they could never seal their youthful offender offenses and in other instances that the longer seven-year waiting periods applied to any felony offense. Sealing is a non-discretionary duty under section 100B if a person has filed a petition to seal and the offenses are eligible for sealing. See G.L c. 276, § 100B (the commissioner “shall” seal eligible
offenses after filing of a petition). The Sealing Unit has a responsibility to correct its errors.
This inaction by the Sealing Unit is profoundly unjust. It deprives Black, Latinx and LGBT+ individuals the opportunity to mitigate the racism and collateral consequences related to the disproportionate involvement of these young adults in the juvenile court system. It also places an undue burden on the public to follow SJC slip opinions. Those with youthful offender records also are a vulnerable population because so many children in the juvenile court are from poor and low-income communities and have families that are, or were, involved with the Department of Children and Families.
This inaction is also utterly unnecessary and simply cruel. Less than a decade ago the Sealing Unit routinely (and correctly) treated youthful offender records as akin to delinquency records for sealing purposes. Attorneys from Greater Boston Legal Services and Northeast Legal Aid recall having past clients who sealed their youthful offender records under G.L c. 276, § 100B after a three-year juvenile waiting period in 2018 or 2019. Moreover, a 2013 chapter in an MCLE publication authored by your office’s then-deputy legal counsel stated that delinquency and youthful offender offenses can be sealed after the same three-year waiting period without any exclusions. 2
Thus treating youthful offender records like juvenile records for sealing purposes is well within the Sealing Unit’s ability, and the relatively short period of its erroneous application of the law suggests there are a small number of persons affected.
Individuals with juvenile court records are as deserving of second chances as adults, and as the SJC has held, less culpable for their past offenses given what is known about brain development. See Diatchenko v. Dist. Att’y for Suffolk Dist., 466 Mass. 655, 660 (2013).
In sum, we urge you to instruct your office’s Sealing Unit to approve all the prior requests for sealing which were denied because of the misapplication of the adult sealing law to youthful offender records without requiring individuals to file new petitions. This is the only way to prevent continuing stigma and harm in the form of collateral consequences related to wrongful denial of these petitions. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Pauline Quirion, Director, CORI & Re-entry Project, Greater Boston Legal Services
Mia Alvarado, Executive Director, Roxbury Youthworks, Inc.
Virginia Benzan, Director of Racial Justice Advocacy, Massachusetts Law Reform Institute
Hon. Jay Blitzman (Ret.)
Mary Bonauto, Senior Director of Civil Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders
Stacey Borden, Director, New Beginnings Reentry Services, Inc.
Jonathan Cohn, Policy Director, Progressive Massachusetts
Jessica Collins, Executive Director, Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts
Professor Margaret Drew, UMass School of Law Human Rights at Home Clinic
Ryan Dominguez, Executive Director, Mass CultivatED
Daniel French, Board President, Citizens for Public Schools
Ed Gaskin, Executive Director, Greater Grove Hall Main Streets
Lauren Gibbs, End Mass Incarceration Together (EMIT)
Alyssa Golden, Senior Supervising Attorney, CORI/ Re-entry, Community Legal Aid
Rahsaan Hall, Executive Director, Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts
Sophia Hall, Deputy Litigation Director, Lawyers for Civil Rights
Phillip Kassel, Executive Director, Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee
Paul Kominers and Kristen Gagalis, Anderson & Kreiger
Susan Malouin, Senior Attorney, Criminal Record Sealing Unit, Northeast Legal Aid
Julie McCormack, Director, Safety Net Project, Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School
Dave McMahon, Co-Executive Director, Dismas House
Rev. Jo Murphy, Executive Director, Unitarian Universalist Mass Action (UU Mass Action)
Kayla Hamlett Murray, Executive Director, Bethel Institute for Community Development
Ariel Nelson, Criminal Justice Debt & Reintegration Project, National Consumer Law Center
Matthew Parker, Director, Union of Minority Neighborhoods
Marlene Pollock, Coalition for Social Justice Action
Nichelle Sadler, Executive Director, UTEC Training Center for Excellence
Professor David Siegel, New England Law | Boston CORI Initiative
Leon Smith, Executive Director, Citizens for Juvenile Justice
Rev. Chris Sumner, Boston Reentry Collaborative
Jessica Tang, President, Boston Teachers Union
Lisa H. Thurau, Executive Director, Strategies for Youth, Inc.
Vincent Ware, Greater Boston Reentry Taskforce
cc: Nina Pomponio, General Counsel, Office of Commissioner of Probation
1 J.F. overruled a 1995 decision prohibiting immediate sealing of any offenses ending in not guilty dispositions. See Commonwealth v. Doe, 420 Mass. 142 (1995), overruled by Commonwealth v. J.F., 491 Mass. 824, 831, (2023).
2 See Nicola J. Pangonis, Criminal Records: Sealing and Expungement, § 18.4.4, CRIME AND CONSEQUENCE-THE
COLLATERAL EFFECTS OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT (MCLE 2013 ed.).
Melanie Gilbert, “Lowell’s adult homeless shelter at peak capacity,” Lowell Sun, February 21, 2024.
There are more homeless people than available beds in Lowell, leading to people in need of emergency shelter being turned away, said Isaiah Stephens, managing director of the Lowell Transitional Living Center on Middlesex Street.
“People are coming into the shelter faster than we can house them,” Stephens told a group of service providers and advocates attending a remote meeting of Solidarity Lowell on Jan. 28.
Solidarity Lowell is a volunteer group of community members of Greater Lowell working toward social justice in areas such as housing and homelessness.
Join us and allies on Sunday, February 4, at 4 pm in Porter Square to take action with our partner organizations to promote civic engagement in the company of your friends and neighbors. You will write postcards, make phone calls, and take other actions on a range of issues from voter registration, voter turnout, and progressive state policy.
We will be phone banking in support of key bills on housing and climate in the state legislature.
Join the movement for Polluter Accountability!
Join the Make Polluters Pay Campaign on Sunday, February 4 from 1-3 PM for an afternoon of strategizing and socializing in the Democracy Center (45 Mount Auburn St, Cambridge). We’ll go over our accomplishments from 2023 and plan out our campaign strategy for 2024 over tea and cookies.
The Polluters Pay bill would levy a one-time fee on major polluters to provide for critical climate resilience upgrades across the commonwealth, especially in environmental justice communities.
| Join education justice activists from across the state tomorrow for the Thrive Act Virtual Day of Action! Sign up here! bit.ly/taday24actions The Thrive Act would end the undemocratic state takeover system, stop the misuse of the MCAS as a high school graduation requirement, and build a school accountability and assessment system that centers student success and our communities. 10:00-11:30AM Coffee & Conversation on the Thrive Act: Have questions about the bill? Want to write a letter to the editor or posts for social media? Need a few talking points or encouragement to write to legislators? Bring your beverage and ideas to our zoom conversation and action hour! Come as you are, no experience or previous knowledge necessary! 12:30-1:30PM: Your Voice Matters! Tell your Story! Drop in Storytelling Workshop and Action: An opportunity for folks to get support writing letters to their legislator, letters to the editors, forming social media posts, and other storytelling mediums! 4:00-5:30PM: Your Voice Matters! Tell your Story! Drop in Storytelling Workshop and Action: An opportunity for folks to get support writing letters to their legislator, letters to the editors, forming social media posts, and other storytelling mediums! 6:00-8:00PM: Mobilize and Phonebank!: We’ll be calling education justice supporters across Massachusetts to talk to them about the Thrive Act and help them contact their legislators in support of the bill. Sign up here! bit.ly/taday24actions |
January 23, 2024
Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security
Rep. Carlos González, House Chair
Sen. Walter Timilty, Senate Chair
Joint Testimony in Support of An Act to Strengthen Visitation Rights of incarcerated people (S.1541) and An Act to Strengthen Family and Community Connection with Incarcerated People (H.2314)
Dear Chair González, Chair Timilty, and Honorable Members of the Committee:
We, the undersigned organizations, were active in the advocacy for No Cost Calls, and we applaud the Legislature’s recent work in passing that legislation. There is more work to be done on the vital issue of keeping families connected. In that spirit, we write to you today to urge you to give a favorable report to S.1541 and H.2314.
This legislation is needed because too often, people hoping to visit a friend or relative encounter barriers, disrespectful treatment, or even being turned away because of arbitrary dress codes or routine operations such as drills. Under current rules, people fortunate to have a big circle of support must choose a small number of people who can be approved to visit. This legislation will lift that cap and guarantee certain minimum standards, such as adequate visiting hours and the ability to hold one’s child during a visit. It will also allow for visits when an incarcerated person is hospitalized in critical condition, a time when everyone needs the comfort of loving attention from people they know.
Decades of research document the many benefits when people who are incarcerated are able to maintain robust relationships with their friends and family, from better mental health to easier transitions home, ultimately improving public safety and community life across Massachusetts. [1] This legislation can help to ameliorate the disproportionate impact of restrictions on Black and Latinx families, whose children are more likely than White children to have a parent who is incarcerated because of the structural racism in the criminal legal system that the Commonwealth is working to address. [2]
On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we thank you for your attention to these important issues and ask that you give S.1541 and H.2314 a timely and favorable report.
Actual Justice Task Team of the Southern New England United Church of Christ
Ameelio
BIJAN (Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network)
Bristol County for Correctional Justice
Coalition for Effective Public Safety (CEPS) Steering Committee
Community Action Agency of Somerville, Inc.
Disability Policy Consortium
Drop LWOP New England
Justice 4 Housing
Massachusetts Action for Justice
Mystic Valley Action for Reproductive Justice
National Lawyers Guild-Massachusetts Chapter
New Vision Organization, Inc.
Parole Review For All
Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts
Progressive Massachusetts
Save Our Sons
SURJ Worcester
The Harriet Tubman Project
The Real Cost of Prisons Project
Unitarian Universalist Mass Action
Women & Incarceration Project, Center for Women’s Health & Human Rights, Suffolk University
[1] Leah Wang, “Research Roundup: The positive impacts of family contact for incarcerated people and their families,” Prison Policy Initiative, Dec. 2021, available online at the Prison Policy Initiative website.
[2] Final Report of the Special Legislative Commission on Structural Racism in Correctional Facilities of the Commonwealth, recommendations on visitation, Dec. 2022, available online.