Nearly a year ago at this time, the sense of outrage was palpable: How could a repeat armed robber - who had previously shot a guard while holding up a jewelry store - have been released on parole and freed to shoot again, killing a Woburn police officer in another jewelry heist the day after Christmas? The public outcry created political backlash that prompted the firing of the state Parole Board and swift reconsideration of the state’s policies on parole.
Parole overhaul still stuck in Legislature
Activists campaign against strict ‘three-strikes’ plan
But 2011 is coming to a close without legislative consensus on a plan to crack down on habitual offenders. Competing House and Senate plans remain lodged in conference committee, with no resolution expected to emerge until 2012. And a group of activists is panning the existing legislative alternatives as a “knee-jerk reaction’’ crafted by politicians trying to appear tough on crime.
“We support being hard on crime, but also demand that our legislators be smart on crime,’’ said Benjamin F. Thompson, executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition.
His nonprofit advocacy group, along with the Ella J. Baker House, will hold a community forum on Wednesday aimed at rallying the community against “three-strikes’’ legislation, which would revoke parole eligibility for anyone convicted more than twice of certain felonies and postpone parole for those convicted of certain crimes.
The forum is part of a coordinated campaign that activists are launching to try to turn the tide against three-strikes legislation. Critics, including former US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, former state corrections commissioner Kathleen Dennehy, and criminal defense attorney Max Stern, are joining a national pushback against such policies.
In Massachusetts, the group plans to counter the political pressure for tough-on-crime laws that followed the police shooting last year with a message that politicians should instead be smart on crime. They argue that three-strikes legislation will end up being much tougher on prisons and the state budget than they realize.
“It certainly fits on a bumper sticker: Lock up the bad guys,’’ said Leslie Walker, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services. “But some grownup in power needs to say, ‘What are we doing? Can we do this better?’ Instead of spending all this money incarcerating the bad guys after the third strike, why don’t we focus on them after the first strike and turn people who are human beings into tax-paying citizens?’’
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