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Mass. Corrections Policy "Disaster" Says Task Force

Mass. Corrections Policy "disaster" Says Task Force

Emphasizing that state spending on prisons has skyrocketed while taxpayer confidence in the level of public safety has plummeted, a joint Task Force of the Boston Bar Association and the Crime and Justice Foundation has warned that without radical change a criminal justice system that is " dangerously out of balance today will be out of control tomorrow."

The task Force on Justice recently released its findings in a report entitled Crisis in Corrections and Sentencing in Massachusetts. The report comes in the wake of the group's six-month investigation of corrections practices and policies in the Commonwealth.

"Aided and abetted by the media, we have spent years playing a high stakes game of self-deceit, bankrolled by the taxpayers of Massachusetts," said John Driscoll, Jr., president of the Boston Bar Association. "We have erroneously equated public safety with mandatory sentencing and the building of prisons. To stay on that course is to bankrupt the Commonwealth."

The report noted that spending by the Department of Corrections had increased by nearly 300 percent over the last decade.

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