It’s been a challenging month in Massachusetts, if you care about meaningful opportunities for prisoners to change. While there was the wonderful passage (finally) of the anti-shackling bill, and the history-making juvenile lifer bids for release (which I will be writing more about at a later date), there was also the recent Legislative Judicial Committee hearing on a truly wrong-headed bill insisting that juveniles who who commit homicide should have to serve thirty-five years before parole. That bill goes against prevailing trends across the country as I wrote about in “Massachusetts Legislature: Don’t Set Back the Clock” which appeared here, on Truthout, and with a Texas-style twist, at The Rag Blog.

It is hard to imagine that another disaster-in-the-making would come down the pike so quickly. But on Wednesday, May 28, the Judiciary Committee heard H4084, “An Act relative to limiting recurring parole hearings for persons convicted of second degree murder.” While the Massachusetts Parole Board can currently make potential parolees wait five years if they receive a No vote from the Board (i.e. get a setback) this bill would insist that they wait 10 years in between hearings. In order to receive parole under any circumstance a parolee would still need to receive positive votes from 2/3 of the Parole Board members.

Research across the U.S. shows that those behind bars thrive on hope. Many work to change their attitudes through self-reflection, programming, and hard work, and even more so, when they have the hope of early release. For lifers this is particularly significant because they do so much time in prison before eligibility. A five-year setback is a long time, but it is not out of line with national standards. But hope for a meaningful chance for parole—not automatic release but opportunity— is certainly part of what motivates prisoners and what the newest parole proposal lacks.

Backed by Rep. Garrett J. Bradley (Hingham), H4084 if enacted, would be called “Leslie’s Law” in reference to the murder of Leslie Haynes who was tragically killed at age twenty. Bradley wants to stop what he feels is the “reoccurring nightmare every five years” for families and friends of loved ones who were murder victims. This is not to say that advocates who oppose this bill have no sympathy for families like the Haynes family of Hingham whose daughter and sister, Leslie, was killed. Nothing can replace such a loss or ease such pain.

But it is to say, as noted parole expert and Attorney Patricia Garin pointed out, representing the Coalition for Effective Public Safety at the hearing, that there are many ways victims can offer their opposition without actually attending hearings. Garin also pointed out that there is really not a “tradeoff” here. Victims’ advocates can read letters at hearings from people who feel it is too difficult to attend. When Representative Christopher Markey (Dartmouth), House Vice-Chair, asked Garin if it might be a good idea to give the Board discretion to go up to 10 years for a setback but not require it, she said that in 1996 when the 5 year setback was established, it became the setback most commonly used by the Parole Board. This would certainly happen with a 10 year setback. She also stated here was no support anywhere in the literature for a this kind of paroling policy.

Patricia Garin and Max Stern testifying at the Judiciary Committee.

Max D. Stern, also a partner at Stern, Shapiro, Weissberg & Garin LLP, represented the Massachusetts Association Committee of Defense Lawyers as he testified against the bill. He made the excellent point that this bill would actually be a sentencing tool. It would conflate 1st and 2nd-degree murders, making them “almost equivalent” adding to the length of time behind bars. Since the intended purpose of the Parole Board is not to sentence people but to judge their behavior in prison and their growth, this could be problematic. Plus, judges currently have the ability to sentence 2nd degree murder defendants anywhere from 15-25 years before parole eligibility. In other words, they have latitude already. If someone who was sentenced to 25 years came up for parole and was denied, they then would have to wait 10 more years. Since most applicants are turned down the first time they come up for parole, the Parole Board would edge closer to being a sentencing body. Said Stern, in his opinion, “2nd degree murder pleas would become extinct.”

Committee Chair, Sen. William Brownsberger (Belmont) seemed interested to see the science from Stern and Garin. He might begin with the fact that lifers are rearrested much less than all other prisoners. As I wrote in Boston Magazine in 2013, “the best case for parole actually comes from those who have committed some of the worst crimes. According to a 2009 study by the Michigan-based Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending, parolees originally convicted of homicide re-offended the least of all groups of ex-prisoners. Of 2,558 homicide parolees in that state, only 2.7 percent were returned to prison for any new crime, and only 0.5 percent were returned for another homicide. Other states have observed similar trends.”

Joel Thompson of Prisoners Legal Services (PLS), and a Harvard student from the Prison Legal Assistance Project also testified against the bill, as did Susan Tordella of Toastmasters, a volunteer group that goes behind bars.

Massachusetts is just beginning to come back from low paroling rates which hinder public safety, increase over-crowding, and are exorbitantly expensive for taxpayers. Not to mention that correction officers do not want to work in overcrowded prisons with people who feel despair. According to a White Paper on Parole written by Garin and attorneys at PLS in 2013: “The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Corrections (NIC) and the Pew Center on the States recognize that success increases and, accordingly, recidivism rates decrease” when Parole Boards motivate prisoners and parolees to change.

Massachusetts need not make another backwards criminal justice move—away from what is proven good policy, the national trend, and certainly, the right thing to do.