Please read and share my newest article at DIGBoston It’s about the issues for so many lifers of parole that they must remain on despite success in the community.
It begins:
“Khalid Mustafa attempted what many considered unthinkable: he tried to sue the Massachusetts Parole Board.
Specifically, Mustafa took legal action against the body for decisions under former Chair Gloriann Moroney. It was Moroney’s 2021 three-line decision that denied Mustafa’s petition to terminate his parole…”
Please read and share my latest article which examines why Massachusetts should expand college education behind bars. This is a subject near and dear to my heart since I taught in prison for 10 years before Pell Grants were abolished. Here
It begins “Knowledge of the power structure that runs society has made the biggest difference in my life.”
John Yang was released from MCI Concord in 2020, and is now completing his BA at Emerson College in Boston. In a far-ranging interview, he spoke about being one of four students featured at a March 24 Education in Prison conference at Emerson which aimed to show how and why college programs behind bars need expansion.
“By picking up a book, I was creating a different way of being, finding new strengths and abilities that I didn’t know I had.” MORE
An important 168 page report was issued January 5 to the new governor Maura Healy) and her lieutenant governor, Kim Driscoll via PLS in MA from a number of incarcerated groups in the Commonwealth. It is a must-read, in my opinion. You can find it here.
According to an email from PLS Attorney Jesse White:”This briefing was led and written by the Lifers Group, Inc., the Norfolk Inmate Council, the African American Coalition Committee at MCI-Norfolk, and incarcerated community members from Old Colony Correctional Center, MCI-Concord, and Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center. It outlines issues within the Department of Correction, and proposes solutions to rectify them.”
Key takeaways from the report:
1. Infuse Outside Leadership into the DOC
2. Return DOC to Health & Human Services
3. Require DOC and Parole Board Work Together
4. Utilize Lower Security Facilities
5. Separate Mental Health from DOC
6. Increase Skilled Training and Jobs
7. Expand Education
8. Eliminate Privatization
9. Use Medical Parole
10. Restore Furloughs
The report also expands on the need to
11. End Life Without Parole
12. Create Presumptive Parole
13. Have Civilian Oversight of the DOC
14. Have Adequate Wages
As well as these areas of concern
1. The DOC’s Deliberate Acts of Falsely Identifying Individuals Race & Ethnicity/Truth in Numbers
2. Strengthening Rehabilitation Through Strengthening Family & Community Bonds
3. Strengthening Education and Civic Duties
4. A Separate Authority with Power to Oversee the DOC & Parole Board
5. Help Implement Legislation to Provide Legitimate Oversight Authority of the DOC
Please see and share my newest at DIGBoston.
It begins: “When Stacey Borden exited MCI-Framingham for the final time in 2010, she was done with more than three decades of jail stints and drug use due to untreated trauma. She was determined to start a residential reentry program for women and beat the odds for the formerly incarcerated.” MORE
Please see my newest article on DigBoston.It begins:
“It seemed that last week a decades-old controversial case was headed for a pardon vote.
Outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker had recommended a pardon for Cheryl Amirault LeFave and her brother, Gerald, in the well-known and highly disputed Fells Acre Day Care case. The Amiraults were accused and found guilty of sexually assaulting more than a dozen children in 1984 at the Malden daycare…” MORE.