House Bill 1521/Senate Bill 198 Position:
There were two versions of a "Sentencing Guidelines" bill filed this year.

The Senate version of the bill, filed by Senator Marian Walsh, is an exact mirror of the recommendations of the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission (MSC), which was directed to establish said guidelines as part of the "Truth in Sentencing" legislation passed in the early ‘90s. This same legislation had been filed in the previous legislative session, and the CJPC reluctantly supported it then. While the MSC guidelines did not maintain prison population neutrality as directed, it did allow for changes in mandatory minimum sentencing, and incorporated alternative sentencing as an option for a range of offenses. Harsher than necessary, the CJPC nonetheless supported the bill for these reasons, and because the bill represented the unanimous consent of the MSC – which was comprised of a somewhat balanced (yet still prosecution-heavy) set of criminal justice experts. Since Massachusetts seemed destined to have Sentencing Guidelines, our position was that this set of recommendations was probably as balanced as we could hope for. Therefore, the CJPC supported Senate Bill 198 again this year – with the same reservations.

The House version of the bill, filed by Representative A. Stephen Tobin, also builds on the MSC’s recommendations that were filed last session. In the last session, the District Attorneys association recommended many increases in sentences, and these recommendations were amended into the bill as it was reported out of the Committee on Criminal Justice, which Rep. Tobin co-chaired (and still does). Rep. Tobin re-introduced the amended version of the Sentencing Guidelines bill this year. The CJPC is firmly against House 1521 because it is too prison-reliant, increases Sentencing Guideline penalties that were already stiffer than those currently handed down, restricted departures from mandatory minimum sentencing, and by making changes in the calculations of criminal histories, skewed the entire grid. The CJPC’s position is that this bill is totally unacceptable.

As of the time of this writing (7.28.99), both bills have been referred to a "study" (i.e. they’ve both been scrapped). Our understanding is that the House and Senate Chairs of the Committee will be working on some sort of compromise draft this summer, and will report the bill out of committee this fall.