MIDDLESEX COUNTY PRISON COORDINATING COMMITTEE NEWSLETTER
MCPCC met on
March 5, 2002 in Newtonville. Beverly Wilkins, Tom
Crowther, Judy
Lustig, Dorothy Weitzman and Marjorie Moerschner
were present,
together with our guest speaker and long-time
friend, Lee
Gartenburg.
Attorney Lee
Gartenburg has been on the Middlesex County Sheriff's staff as the provider of
inmate legal services at Billerica HOC and the Cambridge Jail since 1982; he
has also been on the board of directors of MA Correctional Services since 1983.
He has just completed a term as chairman of the Criminal Justice Section
Council of the MA Bar Association.
He spoke first
about Chaplain Bud Wood, who died February 15.
Bud wanted to
help people celebrate their faith, whatever that
faith might be.
He had had a tough time himself as a youth; he
understood the
men and could talk their talk. He was completely
devoted to his
work and to the men, and this kept him going in
spite of
increasingly serious health problems.
Lee then talked
about reintegration, a current trend in criminal
justice.
Reintegration means that prisoners who have completed
their sentences
or are being paroled, will be sent back into the
streets with
sufficient preparation and sufficient support
systems to give
them a chance of making it out there. Ideally,
this process
starts when a man enters prison, with a program
created for him
which will stay with him when he is back in the
community.
Accountability, treatment, teaching and monitoring
all help a man
to stay away from bad habits and out of prison.
In spite of
budgetary constraints and the cutting back of
programs, this
process is beginning to happen. The truth-in-
sentencing law,
though far from perfect, did set up an office of
community
corrections; there are now community corrections
facilities in
every county except Plymouth. Middlesex has an office in Cambridge with one
about to open in Lowell. These offices are funded through the legislature and
subcontracted to the sheriffs who operate them in cooperation with Probation
and Parole. The overall office of community corrections is an agency within the
trial courts.
There are three
ways that an inmate can get to an office of
community
corrections.
1. If he is near the end of his sentence
he can be
classified to
level four. This involves electronic monitoring:
men live at home
and may have jobs, but if they go where they are not authorized to go, the
electronic bracelet sets off an alarm.
2. The court can place a person on
probation with the
condition that
he participate in the office of community
corrections,
which provides monitoring, education and treatment
programs and
gets him hooked up with community agencies.
3. Through the parole board. Parole is a
perfect match
for community
corrections. Drug testing etc., which parole may
require, can be
done by the community corrections office.
The proposed
sentencing guidelines legislation, which plays into
the
reintegration concept through its proposal for intermediate
sanctions , has
been stalemated in the legislature for eight
years. The
Senate wants a bill which follows the truth-in-
sentencing
proposals; the House proposed a tougher bill. The
D.A.'s Ass'n
opposed both as too liberal. Lee is a member of a
MA Bar Ass'n
Task Force aimed at working out an acceptable
compromise. The
Task Force came up with a proposal for post-
incarceration
supervision, applicable to all those sentenced to a year or more of jail time.
The longer the sentence, the longer
the period of
post-incarceration supervision, 6 months being the
shortest period.
Those who choose to serve out their sentences
rather than take
parole, and those who have taken parole and
failed, would be
subject to this supervision; those who have done well on parole would not.
Supervision would be by the parole board, with resources to be provided by
probation and offices of community corrections, institutions which already
exist.
A sentencing
guidelines proposal finally made it through the House of Representatives, but
it had been amended so much that it was a bad bill, unwieldy and very costly;
however it did include the good post-incarceration proposal. A sentencing
guidelines bill will probably not pass the Senate at this time.
Meanwhi1e, Mass.
Inc., a think tank, proposed Post
Incarceration
Supervision for everyone, setting up an elaborate
bureaucracy to
implement it without any provision for funding. A
Globe editorial
recommended the MA Bar's Task Force proposal as a simpler and more sensible
one. Lee feels that the proposed
Senate bill,
plus the Task Force proposal for post-incarceration
supervision
would be the ideal compromise.
Parole
Board. The Board is made up mostly of police
and D.A.s.
Michael Pomerol
is now the chairman of the Parole Board and some
changes are
being made in the way it does business. Parole Board
members now go
themselves to county correctional institutions to
interview
prisoners requesting parole; before, only a hearing
officer would go
to conduct these interviews. A few years ago
paroles were
almost non-existent and regarded as irrelevant; now
more prisoners
are being paroled, and the Parole Board is once
more an
important part of the criminal justice system. This is
reintegration
again- prisoners are encouraged, with supervision
and
accountability, to work toward reentry into society. Until
recently, many
prisoners opted not to work toward parole, but to
serve out their
sentences in prison, after which they'd be
through with the
system, at least until they got into trouble
again. Now
they're again choosing to leave prison sooner and go
on parole. Good
time now can come off parole.
Though
sentencing guidelines have not passed, judges actually
are using the
guidelines proposed by the Senate bill. They can
do this as long
as they stay within the statutory limits, which
are quite broad.
The sentencing
commission still has an office. Every year it
issues a very
useful analysis of sentences given during the past
year, how many,
type, duration, and so forth.
The prisons are
seeing more people with mental problems now
whether those
problems are diagnosed or not. This is mostly due
to cuts in
mental health and retardation money. Grant money
allowing
sheriffs to hire social workers has been cut. There is
one full-time
social worker at Billerica. Two psychiatrists
visit Billerica,
and one goes to the Cambridge Jail.
Many court
emp1oyees, including interpreters, have been laid
off. There are
fewer resources and the justice system functions
more slowly.
People will be in jail longer awaiting trial. Many
of the
courthouses themselves are in bad shape.
The D.O.C. is
eliminating many minimum security beds, which will
adversely affect
the preparation of inmates for reentry into the
community.
Billerica will
not be building a new facility in the foreseeable
future, but has
plans to expand and modernize.
The Protestant
chaplain and the two Catholic deacons want to set
up a
spirituality program at Billerica. Lee wants to make sure
this caters to
all religions, and the chaplains are open to this. Religion and even programs
like AA sometimes assume an unhealthy, drug-like quality in prison, almost
addictive in themselves.
Many thanks to
Lee for speaking with us!
******
Beverly
reported the good news that Dr. Seth Asaré will be again going to the Cambridge
Jail one evening a month.
We discussed the
possibility of our joining the Criminal Justice
Policy
Coalition.
The MA Bible
Society will provide Billerica with Portuguese
Bibles,
and we thank them for their helpfulness.
Robin Cazarjian,
author of Houses of Healing, gave a talk
recently in
Concord. Judy attended and found it very inspiring.
Dorothy Weitzman
reported that the Social Work Criminal Justice
Committee has
started what she hopes will be a series on county
corrections. She
would like to have input from MCPCC at a
meeting in May
or June. Beverly and Mary Ann Donaldson will go.
MCPCC's web
address: http://home.earthlink.net/~mcpcc/
Next meeting
April 2, 2002