Bay State DAs back $5M plan to combat recidivism
Top Bay State prosecutors are unanimously supporting a $5 million budget request that would fund residential re-entry programs aimed at preventing inmates from reoffending when they are released.
The Massachusetts District Attorneys Association announced yesterday that it voted without dissent to support funds for the Community Resources for Justice, a Boston-based nonprofit that conducts “community based residential re-entry programs designed to decrease recidivism — the return to jail of the newly freed.”
“It is pretty clear from those numbers that recidivism is the fire where we should be pouring more of our water,” said Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey, president of the MDAA. “The District Attorneys have been working at this for quite a while. We believe Community Resources for Justice and the defense bar, in advocating here to meaningfully address recidivism, reinforce our position at a critical time; we hope this funding is written into law.”
The MDAA statement indicates mass incarceration in Massachusetts is not an issue, but that it does have “a challenge of recidivism.” Citing data published by The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based nonprofit research center, the MDAA reported that Massachusetts’ incarceration rate of 179 per 100,000 of population is now secondlowest of the 50 states.
According to that data, the total number of incarcerated people in Massachusetts has been on a steady decline since 2011, when there were 10,316 people behind bars. By 2015, that number had dropped to 8,954.
“The low incarceration rate in Massachusetts is not an accident,” Morrissey said. “It is the result of significant hard work by the Legislature, the District Attorneys and other stakeholders in crafting a system that keeps incarceration and crime rates simultaneously low.”
Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, in a separate statement, said his prosecutors are encouraged to find alternatives to incarceration.
“That’s how we’ve cut the population of the Suffolk County House of Correction by 40 percent over five years,” Conley said. “But when a defendant is sentenced to a prison or house of correction, he or she deserves a fair chance at success after release. Meaningful re-entry services are a route to that success, helping to build new lives and prevent new