By Jim Circo May 4, 2023
Review: “Good broad-based, serious overview, using one state's lively and fascinating history to shed light on a dark, misunderstood part of American life. Well done.” --Peter Goldmark Former Secretary, Executive Office of Human Services
INTRODUCTION We are in an age of disruptors. From politics to technology, man, and machine - for better or worse -we are introducing new ways of thinking or looking at age old problems. We are breaking down systems to rebuild them, reshape and reinvent the future. Former Massachusetts Correction Commissioner John Boone and the men and women both in his charge and at his side were disruptors 50 years ago. They tried to change the trajectory of the Massachusetts Correctional system in the 70’s. The hope and promises of those days were to bend the business of confinement toward a more realistic and balanced system of justice, with an emphasis on reentry and community corrections. It was assumed that 99% of those in custody would eventually return from prison to their communities. The hope was they would return, not as a risk to the community but rather prepared to be productive members of society.
EARLY 70’s: The Lead Up The correctional leaders and policy makers in Massachusetts, from Governors Frank Sargent and Mike Dukakis to Commissioners Jack Fitzpatrick, John Boone, and Frank Hall -with all their teams of advisors- attempted to redefine the objectives, programs, and outcomes of the correctional system. They decided in favor of making a distinction between sending offenders to prison “as punishment”, rather than “for punishment”. They added “rehabilitation” to the widely accepted reasons for incarceration- those being: punishment, deterrence, and retribution. Existing conditions in major institutions were recognized as inhumane, degrading, and in no way fostering better behavior during incarceration or successful reintegration to the community. If men and women were to be incarcerated for long periods, went their thinking, it best be done with least amount of pain and suffering and perhaps with an eye toward successful reintegration. Their political calculation was that they would be judged anyway by what happened in the state’s prisons, so they might as well make the greatest positive impact possible within the scope of the public’s tolerance. If their time in positions of power meant anything to each of them, it was a desire to make things better for a moment in time and to move in a positive direction. Each had ambitions beyond Governor or Commissioner, and all had experienced bad press when it came to prisons. Governor Dukakis, who followed Sargent to the Governor’s office, told me when I became Assistant Secretary for Criminal Justice: “Corrections can’t help a Governor, but it sure can hurt one.” Those words would later haunt me when he ran for President as we experienced the difficulties of siting new prisons, and the torturous saga of the Willie Horton furlough escape.
But it was those who would benefit most from changing the system based on punishments, who meted out punishments of their own. The brutality of prisoner-on-prisoner crimes including homicide; manufactured or smuggled weapons and drugs; strong-arming; and escapes on furloughs accompanied by crimes in the community- all ultimately took a toll on credibility of these leaders and their reforms in the public conversation. Sensational headlines helped strip away justification for a more merciful and objectively successful system that included education and work release, furloughs, pre-release centers, halfway houses, and parole.
Upon taking office in 1969, Governor Sargent reorganized the oversight of all agencies by creating a Secretariat system. Put in charge of Human Services was Peter Goldmark. A 30-year-old Harvard grad, Goldmark found himself overseeing a massive bureaucracy. He had worked as Chief of Staff for Mayor Lindsay in New York and was an inventor at heart. In fact, his father was an actual inventor with many to his credit including a critical one in World War II: the mechanism to jam German radar.
Fifty years later, Peter asked out loud over lunch in DC: “Why did they hire me? Honestly, why did they do it? I had no real experience that prepared me to run the largest part of state government. Really, I thought that they hired me, because if it went badly, they could fire me and just move on. But I went to work, and I had ideas to change things. Every time I thought my tenure might end; I served up another program. I never sat still.”
In September 1971, the New York Attica Prison Riot or better known as the “Attica Prison Massacre” occurred. When it was over, 43 men were dead. (33 prisoners, 10 Correction Officers). Poor prison conditions, racial disparities and poor prison design led to events that focused many leaders on reform.
Goldmark brought Jim Isenberg, a criminologist and reform-minded recent graduate of Berkeley school of Criminal Justice to Boston. Ironically, he arrived on the same day as the Attica riot. A Massachusetts prison lockdown was ordered by then Commissioner Jack Fitzpatrick who was worried about prison unrest in the shadow of Attica. Shortly after, Fitzpatrick had a heart attack in the middle of contract negotiations with Norfolk Correction Officers and had to leave office.
After a search for a new commissioner conducted by Isenberg, John Boone was recommended for hire. Isenberg took a tour of the Federal prison in Lorton VA, with Boone, where he was Superintendent. He saw that Boone was greeted by prisoners and officers alike in a respectful and warm way. It was clear that he had respect and stature. After meeting with two other candidates, he believed that Boone was a good fit and recommended him for hire to Goldmark. It didn’t take much convincing with either Goldmark or Sargent. Goldmark reflected that Boone “seemed like a nice man with good qualifications. I thought he was a good fit with what we were trying to do.”
Goldmark was on a mission to shake up the prison system and introduce community corrections to Massachusetts. He reflected on the creation of the legislation in our meeting. “I met several times with the progressive Senate President Kevin Harrington (71-78). After a couple of meetings, Harrington was convinced that a community corrections approach was the right way to go. We mapped out legislation and the Speaker of the House David Bartley (69-75) went along with it. There were no changes to the legislation we proposed. After a couple of hearings, it became law. And we were off and running. It surprised even me.” The legislation was The Omnibus Prison Reform Act of 1972, better known as Chapter 777. It was a sweeping reform Act that allowed for Pre-Release Centers, Halfway Houses, furloughs, classification process revisions, work and educational release and even something called “program related activities” that allowed a Superintendent to authorize unescorted brief visits to the outside for things such as license applications and job searches, without having to go through the more cumbersome furlough process.
The goal of the Act was to keep Massachusetts from becoming a victim of the same toxic effects that plagued New York- overcrowded prisons with nothing to do and little hope of getting out. The intention of the Act, by those who had to implement it, was to have a more balanced prison system with more options, better reintegration programs and ultimately to reduce the offender recidivism. The system was highly influenced by other things that were also going on in the Mental Health and Juvenile Systems across the country, but particularly in Massachusetts. Old laws were eliminated, such as the “Defective Delinquent” statute, which empowered officials to indefinitely imprison people with intellectual disabilities who the state believed were likely to commit crimes. At the same time, Goldmark was pushing through major reforms to the Mental Health system and the Juvenile Justice systems deinstitutionalizing both, whereby facilities were ordered closed without adequate community placement alternatives. In effect many of these people later were being incarcerated in the County House of Correction system and the State’s prisons. Prison population was also growing rapidly due to the demographics (high crime ages consisting of 18–32-year old’s) and climbing crime rate. Offering in context at the time in Massachusetts, research in 1971 found that:
Fifty four percent of Massachusetts prisoners went no further than ninth grade. Only 17 percent graduated from high school.
More than 60 percent come from the state’s five major urban areas: Boston, Worcester, Springfield, New Bedford, and Lowell.
Seventy five percent worked as manual laborers or service workers and less than 10 percent as businessmen or professionals.
People of color represented 11% of the State’s population and 36% of the prisoner population. (Today, the population of people of color in Mass. Prisons is 42%)
The Department of Corrections research department was expanding its reach to follow up on the effectiveness of the various programs. It wasn’t enough to simply institute community correctional programs. Eventually, you’d have to prove their effectiveness.
For his part, Governor Sargent was all-in with the reforms. He had toured many of the facilities as had his Lt. Governor Donald Dwight with Jim Isenberg. They were appalled by what they had seen. The Governor was a strait-laced MIT grad, Bronze Star WWII Veteran and now Dover resident who spoke with a slight hiss at the end of his words. He gave a lot of free rein to Goldmark and the Governor spoke wistfully with the press about his knowledge that any Governor’s time in office is limited and that he wanted his time to count for something. He also knew that he couldn’t ignore the national implications of Attica on state governments.
Sargent was beset by many compelling issues facing the Commonwealth during his single term. Corrections was only one of them. Front and center were the “Bussing Crises” and school desegregation. Sargent’s “freedom of choice plan” whereby black children would be bussed to suburban schools ran into sharp community opposition requiring him to call up the National Guard. I met the Governor during that time. I was one of the National Guard MP Lieutenants he called to be staged at the Wakefield Armory and later the Fargo building in South Boston. He met with us at the Commonwealth Armory before deploying us. He told us that he didn’t want us to see street duty, but he was concerned about the potential for riots. The deaths at the hands of the National Guard at Kent State had to also be on his mind. He said he would do everything he could short of active engagement, and he did. We never saw the streets, but we heard the curses and anger coming from our fellow Bostonians and it wasn’t pretty. Boston was then a racially charged city with open hostility towards people of color, and towards others who played an active role in desegregating the schools. Although this animosity towards minorities was on vivid display during the bussing crises, Ican’t help but believe it had played some role with certain leaders, correctional staff, and the public in the rejection of Boone himself as distinguished from his ideas.
The Boone Years
John Boone was brought in with an expectation that he could be a change agent. He fell right into the role. He had served in WWII and was heavily influenced by the Civil Rights movement. He joined the Federal Bureau of Prisons and made his way to become a Federal Bureau of Prisons Warden in a Southern State. The first Black Commissioner of a major correctional system, Boone was almost instantly a target of criticism. Correction officers accused him of being “all in for prisoners” and ignoring officer’s concerns. Recently a former Supervising Correction Officer at MCI-Concord recalled, “You never meet with the prisoners before the staff.” The officers were primarily convinced that the move toward community corrections would eliminate their prison civil service jobs. “Boone could have worked to get us a 20-year retirement bill, but instead focused on hiring more minority officers”, said this retired officer. For his part, Boone never got pastconsidering the Correction Officers of Massachusetts merely untrained and unmanageable prison guards.
The Correction Officers Union was split on what support they would offer Boone. Some attempted to elicit concessions and others had members and leaders who were downright hostile to Boone’s reforms. Much has been written about the Boone years, so I’ll try to focus on those things I know first- hand or from others I have personally interviewed as part of this project.
Most people never get to see the inside of a prison, jail, or house of correction. I started working in them when I was 20 years old. In all the years since, I haven’t experienced any places more depressing, demeaning, or frightening. Bridgewater State Hospital is in a category of its own with the Sexually Dangerous Unit, criminally insane, and Alcohol Civil commitments and more. The difficult and diverse populations at Bridgewater confound administrators to this day.
I started as a co-op student at Northeastern University when I was assigned to the Research Department in 1970. The Commissioner was Jack Fitzpatrick who stunned me when he introduced himself in the corridor of Central Office and asked if another student and I were interested in attending a Fellowship meeting, he held once a month. Fitzpatrick would hear from community members, clergy, former prisoners, correction officers and others at his home. Commissioners were viewed as father figures who had great responsibility, and most displayed a mix of courage, compassion, and vision. Fitzpatrick displayed all those characteristics.
The research Department was headed by Frank Carney and Carroll Miller. In June 1972 we published a paper which investigated the comparative recidivism rates of men paroled in Massachusetts vs. other states. The study found that Massachusetts had a significantly higher number of state offenders reincarcerated within two years of Parole (42% vs. 28%). This was due, in large part, to Massachusetts offenders having a higher number of non-prison sentences. Criminal histories were longer, and they were likely to have had more serious offenses. In short, Massachusetts offenders had many more bites at the apple than other states before being incarcerated in the State’s prisons.
My first assignment was to perform a disciplinary report review at MCI-Walpole. The goal was to find whether there were racial disparities in both the number and dispositions of these reports. I don’t remember my findings, but I do remember my impression that disciplinary reports weren’t always well written and very often lacked detail.
Fred Butterworth was the Deputy Superintendent at the time and was annoyed that the Central Office had sent me. Fred would later become Superintendent during the Hall Administration and is largely credited with bringing greater stability to the institution. While he was Superintendent, he once turned himself over to a prisoner in exchange for a hostage- in total violation of protocol and without Central Office knowledge or approval. Sometimes the end justifies the means, and there wasn’t a more courageous Superintendent. But on the day I met him during the Boone years, he was clearly unhappy with me, Central Office and what he perceived as interference and second guessing. There would be more of that to come during the Boone administration. Boone was attempting to run the Department less like a family-owned small business, and more like a state agency with the most serious task in government-depriving citizens of their liberty.
Boone was clearly attempting to change the culture of Massachusetts prison administration. The officer corps had many WWII returning Veterans. It was a Civil Service position. Many had taken the civil service test for Police Officer and Firefighter and, for one reason or another, couldn’t get on those forces. “Becoming a Correction Officer was not their first choice”, said the Supervisor referred to earlier. “You have to remember who Boone was dealing with”, he said. “The pay was low, the stress was high, and they weren’t the most skilled workforce.”
Indeed, Boone planned to professionalize the Department. He wanted to offer greater due process to prisoner classification and disciplinary procedures. It was no longer acceptable to simply take the officer’s word for an offense. New standards were introduced for “Rights and Responsibilities for Staff and prisoners.” Disciplinary Boards offered rights to representation for out of state transfers and major offenses.
After my stint in the Research Department, I was assigned a full-time position at the newly formed Reception Diagnostic Center, authorized by Chapter 777- initially at MCI Walpole. Since I had obtained a full-time job, Northeastern University allowed me to finish my college studies at night.
The time at MCI-Walpole was tumultuous. In a matter of days and months, the institution went from total lockdown and searches generating stashes of weapons and drugs, to unrestricted prisoner movement. There were seven Superintendents or Acting Superintendents at Walpole during Boone’s tenure, some lasting only weeks. One abandoned his post, according to Jim Isenberg, saying the stress was too great, and later medical reasons forced him to resign. The murder rate was the highest in the country and Walpole was viewed as one of the most notorious prisons.
The most memorable time of my early correctional experience occurred in March 1973, when Correction Officers at Walpole walked-off the job. Prior to the walk- out, Boone had authorized the use of “community observers” to roam freely within Walpole recording what they saw and filing reports. He believed there were abuses by staff and the presence of outsiders would help to reduce that. At around the same time, the National Prisoner’s Rights Association (NPRA) had gained a foothold at Walpole. They had “elected” representatives and Boone began personally negotiating with them. According to Bob Bell, the Department Attorney at the time, “John believed he could talk to anyone, understand their perspective and negotiate in good faith-coming to a positive resolution.”
According to Bell, Boone had all but given up working with the Correction Officers Union and had recognized that the Superintendents he’d hired weren’t sufficiently skilled to manage without his direct involvement. The leaders of the NPRA were among the most notorious criminals in the state. The NPRA came close to being recognized by the State’s Labor Relations Board as a bargainingunit, but the Board decided against it when they reviewed the legislation creating the DOC which gave the Department nearly complete authority over a person’s time incarcerated. The combination of all these factors and negative press coverage of Boone -mostly by the Boston Herald, emboldened the officers to walk off their jobs. Introducing community observers proved the last straw for the Union officers, who thought they could remove Boone by their walk-out.
Fourteen non- uniformed correctional staff were ordered into the prison to manage inner control, the visitors room, industries, avocation, hospital, segregation units- in effect everything but the perimeter wall boxes that were manned by state police. I was among the fourteen. My assignment was A-2 in the so-called “minimum section” of the prison, and alternating time in the visitor’s room. In twelve-hour shifts, I spent the next eight days inside MCI-Walpole.
On March 16th, the second day of the officer’s walk-out, Boone asked that we assemble all 576 prisoners in the Auditorium- all at once. I doubt that had ever been done before nor do I believe it has happened since. I know that was the date because I recently found a press photo of the Commissioner arriving at the prison on that day.
The Commissioner gave a rousing speech. Boone promised in his address that the prison would “reopen” after lockdown and prisoners could return to avocation jobs, and other programs in the morning. In essence he told those assembled that we could do without the guards. In taking this action, Boone took a major gamble. He assumed that, with the guards out of the prison, tensions would dissipate. He gambled that the prisoners would act responsibly, and the replacements would introduce a “kinder-gentler” hand in dealing with the “residents”. He also thought that the officer cadets and observers would help to keep calm. This worked for a period, but not for long. The observers were largely unscreened, untrained, and unknown except for a few community leaders. With the introduction of drugs and weapons, lack of enforcement, and just the nature of the worst offenders in the state -things got out of control and fast. At one point, Walpole had so many Superintendents, that many of us referred to them as “Queen for a Day”- mimicking a 50’s TV show where women of limited means were bestowed great gifts for which they later had to pay taxes. The result of Boone’s experiment was disastrous and had a significant effect on the Governor and his staff in Human Services.
With Correction Officers gone- administrators, officer cadets and non-uniformed staff were left to manage the prison. But the message sent by John Boone that night sealed his intent to move even further toward prisoner self-government at one of the most dangerous prisons in the country. And staff like me were pretty much left to our own devices.
On my block, were George Nassar and Al DeSalvo. DeSalvo was the purported Boston Strangler. Nassar was a two-time convicted murderer, who had been sentenced to life for killing a gas station attendant. He was released after serving 15 years in jail, only to be incarcerated again for a second murder. The two became my new best friends.
Things started out ok. I’d go around during the morning shift unlocking cells, saying things like “good morning, breakfast is on”. Years later when I was Superintendent at MCI-Shirley Pre-Release, a new arrival asked if I remembered him. I didn’t. He said, “Good morning, breakfast is on. That was you right? I remember because I spent a lot of years at Walpole, and no one ever said:‘Breakfast is on’.” I was struck by how a small gesture of kindness could be so long remembered.
My eight days working 12 hour rotating shifts on the blocks at Walpole were more strained as the days passed. Initially it was quiet. Prisoners went about their programs and avocations, but as time went on things were more and more stressed. Prisoners were clearly obtaining drugs, and tensions were rising. A prisoner in another block overdosed and was found dead on the toilet, with a needle still in his arm. Prisoners were setting fires in trash buckets. I was threatened when I attempted to end the visit of a prisoner with his girlfriend for inappropriateness. One prisoner told me, “If I were you, kid, I wouldn’t come in tomorrow.” The group of us from other institutions and the Central Office asked to meet with the Superintendent Walt Waitkevich. We told him returning inside was too dangerous, and we planned to walk-off in the morning before reopening the institution. A colleague Terry Holbrook, spoke for all of us when he laid out clearly and directly our concerns: “I have a wife and a young family. This job isn’t worth risking my life over.” Waitkevich protested, but there wasn’t much to be said after Terry spoke. It wasn’t terribly long before the Superintendent was out of options, and he and the Commissioner had no choice but to call in the State Police.
Prior to calling in the State Police, Boone had insisted that the officers who had walked off would not be allowed to return to work until they had received “retraining” at the police academy at Framingham. I was even asked to provide a class on “behavioral observation”. The Commissioner believed that, prior to their walk-out, officers were not anticipating prisoner actions and were getting hurt. The officers were polite in listening to me but made clear their dissatisfaction with the Commissioner. Truthfully, I never have understood why Boone didn’t order the officers back to work. Had they failed to return, I think he would have been well within his rights to fire them. Their actions violated their oath, left the institution unattended, and risked lives. Say what the Union might about disagreements with how the Commissioner was running the Department, a Correction Officer had statutory authority and obligations that their replacements did not.
I recently had a conversation with a former State Trooper who is now in his 80’s. We were separated by 8 years, so he was in his 30’s during these times at Walpole and I- in my 20’s. He was one of the officers called in to restore order at Walpole. Now, I never thought of him as fearing anything in all the years I’ve known him. But, in this conversation, he spoke of “fear”. He said, “It scared the living daylights out of me to go into Walpole”. I’m not certain that, until that conversation, I ever admitted to anyone else that I was afraid to work in Walpole as well. We know from Peter Remick’s book “In Constant Fear” about his time at MCI-Walpole, that prisoners experienced that fear even more intensely than we did.
What followed my friend’s entrance with other Troopers into Walpole was utter destruction. Four troopers at a time stood outside each prisoner’s cell. If a prisoner gave them lip or resisted in any way, they were met with an overwhelming use of force. Their cells were emptied, and their contents sent off the tier. The troopers knew the prisoners had weapons, and they were intent on ensuring that there was no way they were going to be given an opportunity to use them. Living or working in prisons is an exercise in the management of use of force and outsized fear.
I went back to working at the Diagnostic Center where my title was “Assistant Staff Psychologist”. Working under a certified Psychologist, I administered psychological tests and met with prisoners to discuss their criminal histories. I was successful enough to perform write-ups and even participated in meetings with a Judge or two who had sentenced prisoners to a “revise and revoke hearing”. Newly appointed to the Superior Court Judge David Nelson wanted to know whether the prisoner’s sentence made sense. That struck me because, as we were to learn during the meeting to review the prisoner’s assessment, he was detailed in his questions and deliberate in his approach. He wanted to know that the prisoner would be given the opportunity to change without being confined so long as to become institutionalized.
http://www.longroadtojustice.org/topics/leadership/david-nelson.php
Not satisfied that the Probation Department knew enough about the State Prison system to advise him, he gave us several weeks to meet with and observe the prisoner and make a recommendation. It was an exciting prospect to know that the work we were doing in understanding an offender’s criminality and potential progression through the prison system could be viewed as an important consideration by a sentencing Judge.
I went on to have many assignments in the Departments of Correction and Human Services. Those early days, however, shaped and influenced everything that followed. Fifty years later, it still feels fresh and somehow relevant. But I can’t help but be saddened that the innovations of community corrections, pre - release centers, and furloughs have been abandoned for state prisoners as well as all others.
Lessons Learned
Boone’s Administration of Corrections and implementation of the Governor’s ideas on reintegration should perhaps be viewed through several lenses. First, the one document we can find that outlines Boone’s thinking is one that equates the existence of prisons to slavery. It is not a leap to understand his view of the prison unrest of the early 70’s as an extension of the civil rights movement. The second might be whether, in the context of his time, Boone acted in haste, and without a solid implementation plan to reform a system in crises. The question might be whether Boone was a change agent or merely a disruptor setting the stage for more effective changes or was his hasty implementation a deterrent to long term progress? The third view might reflect Boone’s disruptive desire to immediately impact all levels of the system including MCI-Walpole as quickly and dramatically as possible. Perhaps it was all too much, too fast.
What can also be learned from the 70’s in Massachusetts corrections is that successful impact must focus on doing everything reasonable to identify those at risk earlier in their criminal career before they enter the system. There is little positive impact that comes out of prisons. Large prison populations suck up resources for the basics: real estate costs, staffing, food, medical care, transportation, and the like. The total cost to US citizens in keeping the Federal system and the 3,000 county and municipal jails and state prisons is $90bn. That figure doesn’t take into account the construction costs and loss of use land value to the community, or the effects on families and the community at large. Take a facility the size of MCI- Shirley. It was 1100 acres. The value of that land in today’s market is about $200m. It can’t currently be used for housing, education- or other beneficial community purposes. The cost to house the 500 prisoners for a year approximates $50m. Assuming a life cycle cost of a prison is 50 years, my calculator runs out of 0’s to calculate the economic cost to the community in land use and operating costs. Much was done in the 70’s to implement community corrections and identify components of reintegration programs and the implications for improved public safety by programs that fostered work skills, and rehabilitation- not to mention the economic benefits. There is- what I consider- the 5% rule. Programs could be effective with 95% of the population, but the 5% failures would garner all the headlines.
There are more than 2m people currently incarcerated in the US in prisons and jails- a 500% increase since the mid 80’s when I was Assistant Secretary for Criminal Justice in Massachusetts. The growth is staggering and predictable. As a nation, we’re obsessed with numbers: the value of our homes, our businesses, our schools, and every aspect of our lives --except what happens in our jails and prisons. We demand to know why the costs of gas and groceries are rising. We want to hold politicians accountable for inflation. But few people want to talk about this alarming rise in prison population.
Prisons inherit all the failures of the community at large. Where parents, schools, police, mental health, and the courts all fail, the corrections system is expected to fix it. However, prisons have historically been terrible at fixing things. While the Sargent Administration could close DYS facilities, and mental health hospitals; no one seriously contemplated closing prisons. But something had to be done if only to keep them from blowing apart like Attica.
The successes of the Boone years included creating programs that worked in reducing recidivism- an obvious advantage for public safety. A failure of this, and perhaps of subsequent administrations as well, was the inability to tie the concept of public safety to the success of reintegrative programs. Additional failures include the inattention or absence of strategic planning. By that I mean the involvement, at every level, to create, communicate and build support for a plan of action that sets out the goals and objectives of the administration relating to Corrections. Without it, people are left to guess at, and challenge, leadership goals. So, if I’m a correction officer in the Boone Administration at MCI-Walpole, I’m free to assume that my job will be eliminated because I don’t view myself as part of the reintegrative or treatment plan. Conversely, if I’m a correctional counselor at a pre-release center, I worry that a new administration may close them all when the philosophy returns to one of “introducing prisoners to the fine art of busting rocks, as Governor Bill Weld (1991 -1997) believed.
The ability to cohesively effect lasting changes depends on a plan that includes a statement of goals, is based on facts and empirical data, with objective measurements and milestones-accompanied by solid communications. Commissioner Boone had vision, dedication, passion, and the backing of hisGovernor’s Administration. But he didn’t have a plan, or at least a plan that was widely understood if not universally accepted.
Today, as our prison populations rise across the country, the Massachusetts experience could benefit from a serious review. From the early 70’s to early 2000’s, the Massachusetts state prison population increased by 500%. Over the last twelve years, however, it has decreased by more than 50% (12,000 to under 6000 prisoners). A focus on front- loaded community alternatives for the at- risk population, not unlike those conceived and initiated in the 70’s, are being effectively applied to offenders before they see state prison commitments. Sentencing reform has also likely had a significant impact. The State still has serious problems with aging facilities, limited mental health services for prisoners, and more. But with Massachusetts closing prisons rather than building new ones, the disruptors of the 70’s may take some comfort that their ideals and goals are gaining some traction.
Politics aside, Governors, Commissioners, and the public benefit from understanding history and the results and impacts of previous reform efforts.
By, Jim Ciro
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