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| Mass. Governor Eyes Mandatory Supervision |
| By Boston Globe |
| Published: 02/11/2002 |
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Acting Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift recently proposed mandatory supervision for anyone leaving a state prison or county jail, aides said, in response to a study that found that more than half of inmates are returning to their old neighborhoods without controls of any kind. Under Swift's proposal, inmates leaving county jails - who typically are serving sentences of less than 2 1/2 years - would receive a minimum of six months of mandatory supervision after being released. Inmates leaving state prison would receive a minimum of two years of supervised release, said Swift's spokesman, James Borghesani. ''Right now, for many people getting out of prison, there is nothing that ensures they are supervised in a way that increases the safety of the public,'' Borghesani said. ''This will reduce recidivism and reduce the number of future victims.'' The program would be run by the state Parole Board, Borghesani said. Officials have not calculated the cost, he said, but the plan is to phase it in gradually because it cannot be applied retroactively to people who have been sentenced. The governor's idea is not new. It was filed as part of a larger proposal for statewide sentencing guidelines for judges hearing criminal cases; but, since the guidelines debate on Beacon Hill has lasted eight years without resolution, Swift decided to try to separate the two issues, Borghesani said. Officials said the move was motivated, in part, by a study released by MassINC, a nonpartisan think tank, that found that get-tough measures and decreased use of parole over the last decade have led to the unsupervised release of roughly half of the 22,000 inmates released each year. Meanwhile, state court officials announced recently that, as overall prison populations have swelled, the number of violent criminals on probation has also grown significantly. In fact, the number of so-called ''hard core'' offenders - people convicted of crimes ranging from attempted murder to domestic assault and sex crimes - who were put on probation in 2000 rose more than 200 percent from a decade earlier. Court officials attributed part of the increase to increased reporting of sex crimes and domestic abuse. |
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