TO BE FAIR, the Sentencing Commission’s funding cut was hardly an isolated incident. Governor Swift, under pressure to shave $355 million from the 2003 budget, vetoed dozens of worthy programs last month. (Among the most visible was the budget reduction affecting the Massachusetts Cultural Commission, which lost $11.8 million.) Swift spokesperson James Borghesani says that, because the state "had very few dollars to spend," the governor chose to devote resources to core services in health care, mental-health programs, and education first. In this context, he adds, "funding a commission that had already issued its guidelines and had done its job was something we could not do." When told that Swift’s choice to wipe out an entire agency whose budget totaled around $230,000 strikes many as pure politics, Borghesani replies that "$230,000 can fund a great many services for needy people." He says, "If people were looking at this without any axes to grind, they’d see the cut as nothing but a tough budget decision."

Maybe so. Yet the governor’s action (and the legislature’s inability to override her cuts) displays a clear inability to take the longer view on a crucial criminal-justice matter. How else to explain why Swift did not realize that sparing thousands of dollars for the Sentencing Commission today could wind up saving millions of dollars for the state tomorrow? How else to explain why she did not realize its function as a reality check on politically expedient measures? Given the political shenanigans over the sentencing guidelines to date — and the commission’s role in setting them back on track — the funding loss deals a crippling blow to any meaningful change. As the BBA’s Keating puts it, "To pull the rug out from under this thing now seems extraordinarily shortsighted." Traft, of the commission, agrees: "This cut will mark a serious setback to the cause of criminal-justice reform."

A similar lack of foresight has already had devastating effects, which are playing out in the parole system as you read this. Just last week, the BBA released a report — the third one in the past 18 months (see "Jailhouse Blues," News and Features, June 22, 2001) — that shows what can happen when politicians give short shrift to criminal-justice issues. The culture of punishment — fueled by 12 years of Republican administrations — has turned the Massachusetts Parole Board into a panel that fails to live up to its own mission: paroling worthy prisoners. According to the BBA report, parole rates have drastically declined over the past decade. The reasons are twofold: not only are a greater number of parole applicants being denied, but as a result, fewer prisoners are even bothering to apply. In 1990 — right before former governor William Weld assumed office on a get-tough-on-crime platform — the parole rate for state prisoners hovered around 70 percent. By 2000, that percentage had fallen to 40. Throughout the 1990s, the total number of people under parole supervision plummeted by 17.5 percent, from 5217 in 1990 to 4304 in 1999.

At the same time, the report found that the proportion of prisoners who "wrap up," or complete their sentences in-house, has soared. As much as 57 percent of the 2308 prisoners released from state prisons in 1999 went from their jail cells straight to the streets — without the intermediary training and supervision provided by parole. Even more alarming is the fact that the number of male prisoners unleashed from maximum-security prisons to communities without parole supervision rose by 107 percent. This leads to yet another disturbing reality: a prisoner who gets out of jail without supervised release is more likely to re-offend. According to the BBA report, 18.2 percent of prisoners who’d served their sentences were sent back behind the wall within three years for committing new crimes, as compared to 4.2 percent of parolees.

Put simply, these trends are dangerous — and they persist because of the current political will to be hard on criminals. Such a reactionary approach, notes State Representative Ruth Balser (D-Newton), who sponsored a recent bill to revamp the woeful parole system, "is a tremendously misguided idea." Politicians, she adds, "don’t seem to understand that the lock-’em-up model has threatened the public’s safety."

The startling trends concerning parole have served to wake up some of her colleagues on the Hill, Balser claims. Her own bill, which would have balanced the composition of the current law-and-order-weighted parole board, failed to make it through the legislative session before it ended July 31. But it did manage to reach the House floor, where it was defeated in a tie roll-call vote. The close call suggests that the pendulum on crime issues has begun to swing the other way.

As for sentencing reform, Borghesani insists the funding cut doesn’t spell the end. "It’s up to the legislature and the executive office to decide what happens with the guidelines," he says. Legislators, too, maintain that the guidelines remain a top priority at the State House. According to Representative Stephen Tobin (D-Quincy), who co-chairs the Criminal Justice Committee, some even hope to rescue the Sentencing Commission and restore its funding through a supplemental budget or "some other avenue." Even if that effort founders, Tobin says legislators will stand behind the years-old reforms pursued by the initiative: "It’s not like there would be no hope without the commission."

But if history is any indication, we shouldn’t hold our breath. After all, it is the rare politician who can get beyond the fear of being labeled "too soft" on crime and who can handle these issues with the seriousness they deserve. Criminal justice, says Keating, "is the third rail in political dialogue. You just cannot talk about it rationally." He and other experts doubt that the legislators, beholden to cheap political clichŽs like "get tough on crime," can ever confront the real need for reform. They liken the chance of that happening to the remote possibility that government will tackle the issue of providing universal health care. "As long as the climate is lock-people-up-don’t-think-about-the-consequences," says attorney Costanza, "it’ll be impossible to have criminal-justice reform."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com