{"id":516,"date":"2012-02-16T13:54:15","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T18:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/?p=516"},"modified":"2015-06-22T16:18:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T16:18:30","slug":"massachusetts-sentencing-bills-are-still-in-negotiation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/2012\/02\/16\/massachusetts-sentencing-bills-are-still-in-negotiation\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts sentencing bills are&#8230; still in negotiation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For those of you following the current controversy over Massachusetts sentencing bills, Families Against Mandatory Minimums has this update:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As of last month, the conference committee that was trying to negotiate a compromise between the Senate and House sentencing bills had not made progress.\u00a0 As you know, the Senate bill included\u00a0<strong>mandatory minimum reforms<\/strong>\u00a0(along with many other issues) while the House bill only addressed habitual offenders.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The House leadership then announced that the House of Representatives would be debating and voting on a\u00a0<em>second<\/em>\u00a0sentencing bill that covered some of the other issues from the Senate bill.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>But by early February, the House leadership said that the House members of the conference committee could negotiate a final bill after all, without the need for the House to take up a second sentencing bill.\u00a0 FAMM members did a terrific job of writing to their representatives in the House, urging them to include drug sentencing reforms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Meanwhile, there has been an outpouring of concern about changes to the\u00a0<strong>habitual offender law<\/strong>\u00a0(also called the \u201cthree strikes\u201d law) that both the House and Senate passed.\u00a0\u00a0 FAMM has joined community leaders, clergy and activists in speaking out against mandatory\u00a0<em>maximum<\/em>\u00a0sentences.\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/capwiz.com\/famm\/utr\/1\/NTNDRJIPQH\/KDUPRJPKYY\/7934272701\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a>\u00a0for our fact sheet. (Lowell area members, we hope to see you at tonight\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/capwiz.com\/famm\/utr\/1\/NTNDRJIPQH\/AMCTRJPKYZ\/7934272701\" target=\"_blank\">community forum<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Opposition to the habitual offender parts of the bills has slowed down the conference committee\u2019s work \u2013 and rightly so.\u00a0 This is a critical criminal justice issue that needs to be fully considered.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For those of you following the current controversy over Massachusetts sentencing bills, Families Against Mandatory Minimums has this update: As of last month, the conference committee that was trying to negotiate a compromise between the Senate and House sentencing bills had not made progress.\u00a0 As you know, the Senate bill included\u00a0mandatory minimum reforms\u00a0(along with many [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legislation","category-local","category-sentencing","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}