Last week, leaders of the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives named the six conferees who will be tasked with working out differences between the two chambers’ respective omnibus bills on criminal-justice reform. The Senate passed its legislation, S. 2200, in October, and the House followed suit last month with H. 4011 and H. 4012. Senator Will Brownsberger and Representative Claire Cronin—co-chairs of the legislative Judiciary Committee, which initially worked on the issue—will lead the panel, joined by Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, House Majority Leader Ronald Mariano, and Representative Sheila Harrington.
Each house’s bill would bring sweeping changes to the Commonwealth’s criminal-justice system, of the kind not seen for decades. Certain mandatory minimum sentences would be repealed, pre-trial diversion programs would be expanded, the burden of fines and fees on poor offenders would be somewhat eased, and meaningful reforms would be made to the bail system and to the laws on public access to individuals’ criminal records. These are just a handful of the topics covered by these comprehensive bills, but all of these areas were addressed in the BBA’s recent report, No Time to Wait.
Although neither bill would implement all the recommendations of our report, they would make progress toward those goals, and we will continue to advocate our positions to the conferees. There is no formal deadline for the conference committee to release a final bill, but the formal legislative session must conclude by July 31. (You can get more background on all this here.)
—Michael Avitzur
Government Relations Director
Boston Bar Association
