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
Please read and share my newest at DIGBoston. As Massachusetts Reconsiders Life Without Parole for 18 to 20-year-olds, Will Race Matter? begins:
“A potential history-making hearing was held before the seven justices at the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) on Feb. 6, as two linked cases called for an end to mandatory life without parole sentences (LWOP) for “emerging adults,” those who were 18 to 20-years-old at the time of their crime.
These cases spring from Diatchenko v. District Attorney, the historic 2013 Massachusetts ruling in which the SJC ordered that any life-in-prison sentences for juveniles (those under 18 at the time of their crime) without parole possibility were unconstitutional, i.e. constituting cruel or unusual punishment. Following that decision, 66 juveniles became eligible to see the Parole Board.
Ending the sentence of LWOP for emerging adults would impact approximately 200 people currently in the Mass prison system, nearly half of whom have served at least 25 years behind bars. They would be able to petition the Parole Board to serve the remainder of their sentences in the community with supervision.” 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