LAST YEAR’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM LAW tried to nudge the state toward a more humane policy on solitary confinement in the state’s prisons and jails by adding due process protections for all prisoners confined to their cells for more than 22 hours a day and creating a 12-member Restrictive Housing Oversight Committee consisting of mental health […]
Margaret Monsell
Posted inOpinion
The ‘wolf’ of solitary confinement
AFTER THE ENACTMENT of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 prolonged the impasse over slavery with little hope for a peaceful resolution, Thomas Jefferson offered this assessment of the nation’s quandary: “We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” That image — a perilous dilemma from […]
Posted inOpinion
Mass. GOP’s unconvincing urban strategy
REPUBLICANS ACROSS THE NATION gleefully passed the popcorn this past weekend as they watched the spectacular fall of Ralph Northam, the Democratic governor of Virginia. Northam, who had defeated his Republican opponent in part because of the latter’s support for protecting monuments to the Confederacy, suddenly came under fire for his own apparently racist past […]
Posted inOpinion
EF grows on backs of cheap labor
A CAMBRIDGE COMPANY, Education First, is a big winner in the race for state business tax credits. The privately owned Swedish company now occupies two buildings (and, thanks to its tax credit, will soon occupy three) in the city’s redeveloped NorthPoint area abutting Charlestown and East Somerville. Of the $15 million in economic development incentive […]
Posted inPolitics
Baker administration drops ball on regs
WITH ONLY DAYS left in this legislative session, plenty of lawmaking remains to be done. And even after the session ends, there will still be work left to do. One big task: Various executive branch agencies will have the job of putting forward regulations to fill in details that statutes didn’t cover. Some examples. The […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
For casino job hunters, good news and bad
SOME GOOD NEWS recently for the MGM casino in Springfield and for folks hoping to land jobs there: The casino now has more discretion to handle criminal background checks for potential employees. Some background. Last year, at MGM’s request, the state Gaming Commission reviewed the law governing casino employment and concluded, to MGM’s disappointment, that […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Opinion
Debating immigration policy on Beacon Hill
IMMIGRATION REFORM isn’t part of the criminal justice reform bill House members will begin debating today, but Republican lawmakers want it to be. Maybe they’re right and it should be — but the Legislature should instead move in the opposite direction of the harmful plan that Republican amendments are proposing. Last week, Siham Byah, a […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Baker opens a legal can of worms
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER filed new legislation last month to battle the opioid crisis. His bill proposes some “important updates” to our arsenal of weapons in this fight, one of which, he says, would add a measure of “accountability” to the current strategy of treatment, education, and prevention. Specifically, the governor intends to “ensure that those who […]
Posted inGambling
Convictions shouldn’t preclude all casino jobs
THE MGM SPRINGFIELD CASINO is scheduled to open late next year, and casino managers are worrying about how they’ll fill all the jobs that will need filling. The big problem: a section of the 2011 casino law that requires the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to prohibit the employment of any casino job applicant who was convicted of […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Opinion, Politics
Solution to domestic violence homicide: Fewer guns or more guns?
SINCE 2012, THERE have been 82 domestic violence homicides in Massachusetts, many involving the use of a gun. What’s to be done about these tragedies? The Legislature’s Judiciary Committee heard testimony on Tuesday on two bills with starkly opposing solutions to the problem, both solutions involving access to guns. One bill would create a new kind […]