Crime bill craziness
We occasionally joke that some Democratic lawmakers dream of flinging open the cell doors at Massachusetts jails and prisons and letting the inmates stroll right out. With the release of the state Senate’s criminal justice “reform” bill — set for a vote Thursday — it seems less like a joke.
Among a slew of other changes — the measure spans 113 pages — the bill would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug crimes. But not just on a going-forward basis. Buried in section 231 of the bill is a measure to apply that change retroactively, making a person who is now serving a mandatory term for a conviction on one of the enumerated crimes immediately eligible to petition for release.
So on the one hand Massachusetts has endured scandal after scandal involving official misconduct that has led to the unwanted release of drug criminals, many of whom had acknowledged guilt. Now thanks to the Senate we have an official, intentional effort to release more convicted drug dealers, who will be free to ply their trade in the streets.
If this aspect of the bill makes it through the Senate, it ought to be met with a firm “hell, no” in the House. And same for another section, which goes into a deeply creepy level of detail under which teens in Massachusetts can engage in consensual sex.
The Senate wants to address those situations in which, for example, a 16-year-old who is having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend could be charged with the crime of statutory rape. (The age of consent in Massachusetts is 16.) But the bill goes on to spell out when it is legally impermissible to have sex with a child under
age 12 (a crime only if the defendant is more than one year older).
We’re not sure how senators went from an effort to reduce the state’s prison population (already one of the lowest in the country) and eliminate disparities in sentencing to regulating sex among children. But somehow in the thick fog of progressive policymaking senators lost their way.
Strip the nonsense out of this bill and it might be worth a conversation. Until then it ought to be DOA.