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Revisiting drug sentences

By Cynthia Stone Creem and James V. DiPaola/ As You Were Saying...
Saturday, June 24, 2006

During its budget debate, the Senate added hundreds of provisions to the budget and almost all of them will cost the state money. One amendment stands out from the crowd in that it will save the state millions of dollars and will improve public safety. By making a small change to the mandatory minimum drug laws to allow better use of parole, this amendment will ease prison overcrowding; allow a more controlled transition for prisoners from the cell to the street and could save Massachusetts millions of dollars a year.

The ever-rising costs for our state and county prison system is a problem that needs immediate attention. Over the past 10 years the state correctional population has increased by 3,189 inmates - a growth rate of more than 15 percent.

The greatest burden has been on the county correctional system, intended for short term prisoners, which has seen its population grow by 25.8 percent. This trend is a costly one, and it directs scarce resources away from other important state services.

For example, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation made headlines in 2003 when it pointed out that, for the first time in history, the state would spend more money on prisons than on higher education.

Twenty years ago, Massachusetts spent less than $200 million a year on corrections; this year we will spend more than $850 million.

This dramatic increase in corrections spending can be blamed, in part, on the use of mandatory minimum sentencing. These laws dictate that offenders serve a predetermined number of years in prison regardless of their criminal record, circumstances of the crime, or their rehabilitation efforts while in prison. Many first-time offenders or minor players in the drug trade must serve sentences far greater than their record or crime merits even if the sentencing judge believes that the mandatory sentence is too harsh.

The law also ties the hands of prison officials because these offenders must serve every day of their sentence in a costly - about $40,000 a year - and increasingly scarce, prison cell. Besides being costly, mandatory minimum sentences hurt public safety because they guarantee that most drug offenders are released back into their community without any conditions or restrictions. A recent study by MassINC found that almost half of all unsupervised prisoners will re-offend within three years of being released. Mandatory minimum sentencing, therefore, costs untold millions of dollars in future spending for law enforcement, prosecution and prison space. Fortunately, the Senate budget includes a provision that allows parole eligibility for prisoners who have served two-thirds of their mandatory sentences. This proposal does not repeal mandatory minimum sentences - drug offenders will continue to be sentenced to tough prison terms. Furthermore, offenders will only be released if they convince the law-enforcement oriented Parole Board that they no longer pose a threat to the community. By allowing the possibility of parole, however, persons who deserve release will no longer take up costly prison space and will receive supervision as they are integrated back into the community.

The Massachusetts Sentencing Commission estimates that expanded use of parole could safely shrink the prison population by over 500 inmates as quickly as the Parole Board can hold hearings. Such a significant decrease would save the state $21 million in the first year alone. Massachusetts would not be alone in this effort - as the negative effects of mandatory minimum sentencing has been felt across the country, 25 other states have passed similar legislation. In fact, this proposal does not go nearly as far as recent legislation in Louisiana, New York and Michigan that significantly limited, or even repealed, mandatory minimum drug sentences for fiscal and public safety reasons.

The time has come to moderate our costly position on drug sentencing. This is not an issue of being “tough” or “soft” on crime. Rather, this “smart on crime” measure will be an important first step towards getting our corrections spending under control while improving public safety. As the final budget is written, we can no longer afford to ignore mandatory minimum sentencing reform.

Cynthia S. Creem represents Newton, Brookline and Wellesley in the Massachusetts Senate and she is co-chair of the Joint Committee on Revenue. James V. DiPaola is the sheriff of Middlesex County. As You Were Saying is a regular feature of the Boston Herald.