"MASSACHUSETTS SPENDS MORE than $1 billion a year to incarcerate roughly 13,000 people in its state prisons and county houses of correction, but a lot of the details of that spending are shrouded in mystery and uncertainty.
As part of the recent wave of attention to criminal justice reform, the Legislature recently formed a special commission to try to make sense of correctional spending in the state. The call for a commission was driven by a steep drop in the state’s inmate population – the total is now roughly half the peak of recent decades – that has occurred with no corresponding reduction in corrections spending. Meanwhile, per inmate spending varies widely among the state’s 14 sheriffs who oversee houses of correction, and there is widespread concern among those outside the system that inmates are not receiving adequate rehabilitative services while behind bars.
A big takeaway from the commission’s recently issued report, said its two co-chairs, Sen. Will Brownsberger and Rep. Michael Day, on this week’s Codcast, is the need for much clearer information on spending and inmate programming in order to assess what changes are needed. "
Correctional Funding Report -> https://correctionalfunding.com/commission-report/
"THE BOSTON GLOBE is facing a growing chorus of criticism from public health advocates and media critics for working with Philip Morris to create and publish stories featuring interviews with prominent scientists, many of whom say they were never told the true purpose of the interviews – for inclusion in Philip Morris ads.A coalition of six leading public health organizations sent a letter last month to Globe owner and publisher John Henry in an effort to persuade him to get rid of the tobacco ads. He did not respond.To be sure, the Philip Morris ads in the Globe today are nothing like the tobacco ads of the past. Gone are the Marlboro man and his ilk. Instead, the tobacco ads in the Globe nowadays take the form of what’s known as “sponsored content” articles, a type of advertising that looks similar to Globe news stories with headlines, bylines, and even the same font the paper uses. The ads run under the heading “From our Partners” on the Globe’s website."
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| CommonWealth Magazine: transparency needed in evaluating correctional expenses and with Globe sponsored content |
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