Mass. Bar Association calls for major reforms

The state’s largest bar association is recommending sweeping criminal justice reforms in a first-of-its-kind report that will be used to push legislation that could change the way the system operates for years to come.

“The next step for this is to pursue and support legislation that will make effective changes,” said Jeff Catalano, president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. “These resolutions are responsive to many concerns that we have with criminal justice generally and with law enforcement.”

The report, which was published by the MBA earlier this month and provided to the Herald, was created through a highpowered collaboration of prosecutors, defense attorneys, civil rights attorneys and a judge.

Among other issues, the MBA is pushing for reforms to how fees, fines and bail are handled in the commonwealth. According to the report, low-income defendants are being incarcerated or financially crippled through court costs, and legislation is needed to fix the problem.

“A person who is incarcerated for failure to pay fees likely costs the state more than the revenue that would have been generated by payment of the fees,” the report states.

The MBA is also seeking reforms to the state’s drug labs, which have been under fire after two controversies have cast thousands of convictions in doubt. The report also urges state prosecutors and the Attorney General’s Office to adopt “conviction integrity programs” aimed at preventing and rectifying wrongful convictions.

On the law enforcement side, the MBA is calling for enhanced data collection to “prevent discrimination” and “foster trust in the criminal justice system.” The resolution would require all law enforcement agencies to collect and report demographic data stemming from traffic stops and stop-and-frisk encounters.

“Each year the data would be analyzed, and if a department had statistically significant disparities in pedestrian or traffic stops, those departments would have to collect again, year-after-year, until those disparities no longer existed,” said Richard Cole, former civil rights division chief in the Massachusetts Office of Attorney General’s office, who helped write the report.

The MBA is also calling for the “universal adoption by Massachusetts law enforcement agencies of police body-worn camera technology.”

Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel at the MBA, said the association is now looking at whether it will file its own legislation regarding some of the agreed-upon resolutions.