Robert David Sullivan 2

Mass. had steepest drop in imprisonment rate in 2008

According to new data from the Department of Justice, the number of people "under correctional supervision" in the US hit 7.3 million at the end of 2008, an increase of 0.5 percent over the previous year -- but that was the slowest increase since 2000. The number of people actually in prison was a bit more than 1.6 million -- or one out of every 198 Americans.

The full report has state-level data. Outside of Maine and Minnesota, the Bay State had the lowest imprisonment rate in the US: For every 100,000 residents, 218 were serving prison sentences of more than one year. The highest rate was in Louisiana, where 853 out of every 100,000 people were doing serious time, followed by Mississippi and Oklahoma.

Just one year earlier, the imprisonment rate in Massachusetts was 249 (and seven states were lower than we were). Our one-year drop of 31 percent in the imprisonment rate was tied with Texas for the highest in the nation, just ahead of Texas.

Bay State sheriff defends his right to bill inmates

The Standard-Times reports on Supreme Judicial Court arguments around Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson's practice of charging inmates $5 a day for his hospitality. Lawyers for a prisoners' rights group say Hodgson doesn't have the authority to exact tribute, but the sheriff's lawyers say he's covered "by common law going back to England." Plus, it's only fair:

"We're talking about people who are costing the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars every year for their incarceration," said Hodgson, estimating that his department would have raised $3 million in fees since 2004, when the policy was stopped.

"It's time these inmates pay to help cover these expenses," said Hodgson, who lobbied state lawmakers last month to enact a bill to allow sheriffs to charge inmates a $2-a-day fee.

Hodgson has a history of raising revenue in creative (and not inmate-friendly) ways, as reported by Bruce Mohl in the Winter issue of CommonWealth: 

Hodgson is perhaps the most aggressive innkeeper of all. When he first became sheriff in the late 1990s, he closed a gym set aside for inmate exercise, giving the bleachers to a nearby community and the scoreboard to a boys and girls club. He then converted the gym into a makeshift jail for illegal immigrants detained by the federal government, eventually turning enough profit on that operation to build a separate facility that he essentially leases to the feds. His federal business brought in $6 million last year but he says it cost only $3 million to run, leaving an operating profit of $3 million that was used to pay for other sheriff operations.

Willie Horton Doctrine guides Bay State governors

Micheal Blanding writes in this week's Boston Globe Magazine that "The Long Shadow of Willie Horton" has put an end to the commutation of prison sentences in Massachusetts, regardless of the specifics of any case. The case of Willie Horton, a Bay State prisoner who raped a woman after escaping from a weekend furlough authorized by Gov. Michael Dukakis, may have forever changed the decision-making process in the Corner Office:

... years later, it lays bare the thorny political calculus of letting a felon out of jail. There is almost nothing for a governor to gain and everything for him to lose should the criminal commit another crime. “Ever since what Willie Horton did to Mike Dukakis, governors are going to think not twice but 10 times before they ever commute anyone,” says retired judge Robert Barton, who presided over the Donovan case. Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry agrees. “If I was a governor’s adviser,” he says, “I would recommend he be very cautious.”

The last commutation in Massachusetts came in 1997; governors Cellucci, Swift, Romney, and Patrick have all turned down all requests for shortened sentences.

Three strikes in two states

Juxtaposition of the day: The Massachusetts Legislature considers "Melissa's Bill," a three-strikes-you're-out law targeting violent criminals, as reported in the Patriot Ledger. And National Public Radio reports that three-strikes laws in California have contributed to a prohibitively expensive and overwhelmed prison system.

Southern NE, Hawaii have fewest gun victims

The Violence Policy Center yesterday released a ranking of the states by frequency of deaths by firearms. The gun control group concludes states with tougher laws against firearms, such as Massachusetts, have the fewest fatalities:

The analysis reveals that the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, and Nevada. Each of these states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32 per 100,000 for 2006. Each state has lax gun laws and higher gun ownership rates. By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death. Ranking last in the nation for gun death was Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York.

The VPC's spin is understandable, but it could be implying more causality than really exists. Massachusetts has long had a low level of gun ownership compared with the rest of the US, so it's unsurprising that there are fewer gun deaths here -- and unsurprising that strong gun control is politically palatable. If Louisiana and Massachusetts swapped gun laws, I doubt that their rankings in the VPC chart would change all that much.

At any rate, here's how the numbers look geographically:

Massachusetts is dead last in seat-belt use

Seat belts were used in a record 83 percent of car trips last year, according to estimates by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But seat-belt use actually declined in Massachusetts by 1.9 points to 66.8 percent, putting us dead last, reports the Boston Globe.

The map below (click to make bigger) shows that we're in odd company. The Northeast in general has high seat-belt use, but Massachusetts and two neighbors (New Hampshire and Rhode Island) are more like Wyoming and Mississippi when it comes to reckless driving and riding. As the Globe story mentions, Massachusetts is not among the 28 states where police can stop drivers or riders for not wearing a seat belt.

Another outlier is Rhode Island, where seat belt use supposedly dropped by 7.1 percent. There was no decrease of more than 4 percent in any other state.

 

FBI: Gangs migrating to suburbs; 640 gangs operate in New England

The FBI has just released its National Gang Threat Assessment 2009, which estimates that there are "approximately 1 million gang members belonging to more than 20,000 gangs" in the US as of September 2008. Among this year's trends:

Gang members are migrating from urban to suburban and rural areas, expanding the gangs’ influence in most regions. They are doing so for a variety of reasons, including expanding drug distribution territories, increasing illicit revenue, recruiting new members, hiding from law enforcement, and escaping from other gangs...

According to the report, "approximately 640 gangs with more than 17,250 members are criminally active in the New England region." The "most signficant" gangs here are the Hells Angels, Latin Kings, Outlaws, Tiny Rascal Gangster Crips, and the United Blood Nation. And here's a slippery statistic: "Gangs are responsible for as much as 60 percent of the crime in some communities" in New England.

Chicago appears to have the worst situation, thanks to an influx of "West Coast-based Hispanic gangs." Curiously, Boston is one of the few big cities whose police department is not listed among the sources for the FBI report. The Boston field offices of the FBI and DEA are credited instead.

CommonWealth magazine reported on gang activity on the North Shore last year, in a story by Jay Atkinson.

Prisons making more demands on state governments

Stateline.org reports on states trying to cope with runaway prison costs (the fourth biggest expenditure for state governments, after health care, education, and transportation). In Kentucky, this has meant the early release of 1,800 inmates; in Massachusetts, there are calls to reduce mandatory minimum sentences.

Massachusetts has a relatively low incarceration rate, but it has the second-highest cost per prisoner in the US: $43,026 a year. (Rhode Island is first.)

As reported in the current issue of CommonWealth, the Patrick administration is trying to cut costs by taking over county jails, which now depend on aid from the state.

So far, there's been no push on Beacon Hill to emulate the state of Alabama, where sheriffs who somehow feed inmates for less than $1.75 a day can personally profit from this brute efficiency.