A misstep on prisons
Brandyn Keating was a member of Governor Deval Patrick's working group on public safety, one of the panels he put together during the transition to take the state's temperature on pressing policy issues he would confront this month as he took the reins as the first Democratic governor of Massachusetts in 16 years.
At hearings across the state, the executive director of the non profit Criminal Justice Policy Coalition heard a lot about crime, about mandatory sentencing, about the need for better community policing. What Keating did not hear was any suggestion that the state tap convicted criminals as a lucrative resource to pay for more police officers on the streets of the Commonwealth.
Imagine her surprise when the governor proposed just such a levy at the Massachusetts Municipal Association's annual meeting. Keating reacted in much the way Patrick's audience did, with stunned silence. "I didn't hear this idea floated anywhere," she said, and called it "unrealistic and counterproductive. I have to believe he will come to his senses."
Patrick might if he remembers that the campaign is over, and he won. The voters did not buy what the fear-mongers were selling last fall, that a lawyer who champions a criminal's legal rights would make a governor who is soft on crime.
Requiring offenders to pay for the repercussions of their crimes is a time-honored practice across the country, from Illinois's surcharge on child pornographers to fund counseling for sexually abused children to Indiana's levy on domestic abusers to support battered women's shelters. But this state already imposes any number of fees on offenders to pay for everything from witness services and victim compensation to the tracking devices some wear around their ankles.
"I couldn't understand where this came from. No one talked to us or anyone else I know," said Lanny Kutakoff, executive director of the non profit Partakers Inc., which runs education programs in four state prisons. "This seems very much the antithesis of Patrick's philosophy."
It is the antithesis of thoughtful public policy, too. Patrick's projections that he could raise $10 million a year from a largely indigent population that is plagued by substance abuse and mental health problems is fanciful. "These people can't afford the fees they are forced to pay now," Kutakoff said, noting that Patrick's predecessor as governor, Mitt Romney, sharply increased probation fees a few days before he left office.
In the week since Patrick floated this lead balloon, the administration has said no more about it. The press office did not return a call seeking more details. The silence probably reflects the feedback Patrick is hearing from the inmate advocacy community, which had hoped that 16 years of Republican pandering to the tough-on-crime crowd would give way to meaningful corrections reform.
"He's new to the job," said a patient Kutakoff. "He needs some time to be educated."
"He has an enormous amount of stuff to pore through right now," said an equally sympathetic Keating. "We think he is open to rethinking this idea."
Volunteers in the Partakers prison programs hope so. Many of them dip into their own wallets to help inmates pay for necessities. One woman who regularly visits an inmate at Bay State Correctional Center scoffed at the notion that prisons in Massachusetts are "hotels with fresh soaps and little shampoo and conditioner kits." She asked not to be identified because the prisons require volunteers to disclose any contact with the media (another policy ripe for change).
"A prisoner may earn up to $5 a week, half of which must go into savings. Out of this they may buy toiletries, school supplies, stamps, jeans and sneakers from only one vendor at a price double or triple what a free person would pay," she said. "People love to be tough on crime and therefore tough on criminals, but these men and women are human beings, too, and most of them are not only broken up, they're broke."
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@ globe.com 