From Boston College Law School Magazine:
The Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy held an all-afternoon Re-Entry Symposium on November 15 focusing on initiatives for formerly incarcerated individuals in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The first panel, composed of public officials, addressed programs currently implemented in Massachusetts, as well as challenges and vision about what could be improved. The participants were moderator Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS); State Representative Brandy Fluker Oakley; Commissioner of Probation Pamerson Ifill; Andrew Peck, undersecretary of the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS); Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins; and Meghan Winston, chief parole supervisor of transitional services at the Massachusetts Parole Board. Benedetti opened by asking the panelists to discuss the systemic innovation and developments in their respective areas.
State Representative Oakley responded to Benedetti’s question with one of her own. “How do you actually have innovation,” she asked, “in a system that is archaic?” The issue might not be innovation within the system, but the system itself, she said. She acknowledged the hard work of her fellow panelists and the efforts of legislators to financially support programming, but argued that it’s not enough. “At the end of the day, we are truly tinkering around the edges of a system that is not serving us in this day and age,” Oakley said. Continue reading >>
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