tweeted<\/a> several times about these bills and embarked on a listening tour in cities throughout the state to hear survivors\u2019 stories as he makes the push during his last year in office.<\/p>\nOne bill would expand the offenses that would qualify someone for a dangerousness hearing to hold them without bail, allow police to detain people who are in violation of certain court-ordered conditions and bring the state in line with federal guidelines to include someone\u2019s entire criminal history when determining whether to hold them without bail, instead of just the immediate offense at hand.<\/p>\n
The other bill would send a minor who possesses or distributes child pornography through a diversion program instead of through the juvenile justice system. It would also criminalize the unauthorized distribution of a sexually explicit image, even if it was taken consensually, bringing the state in line with 48 others.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf my abuser was held because of dangerousness, then he would\u2019ve never gotten the opportunity to repeatedly stalk me, break into my home, strangle me, kidnap me and my baby,\u201d one survivor said during a recent roundtable hosted by Baker\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
\u201c(People) don\u2019t understand why the scales of justice tip so hard against them, why they\u2019re the ones that have to put themselves, their children and their families at risk to \u2018do the right thing,\u2019\u201d Baker said at another roundtable on the subject. \u201cWe are failing victims here in the commonwealth over and over and over again, and we\u2019ve been doing it for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the bills have been endorsed by organizations like the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance, they have faced stark opposition. In 2019, over 30 organizations wrote a letter to the General Court raising \u201cgrave concerns\u201d about the dangerousness bill, noting that it would eliminate the time requirement to hold a dangerousness trial, and would allow judges to base dangerousness decisions on sometimes decades-old crimes.<\/p>\n
Baker has noted, though, that victims fear the release of perpetrators when the time requirement has passed.<\/p>\n
Although Toni Troop, spokeswoman for Jane Doe Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, said she appreciates the Baker administration\u2019s commitment to issues of sexual and domestic violence, she said that the bill as is could have a \u201cdisproportionate impact on marginalized communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are interested in pursuing and considering a civil remedy here, and not jumping exclusively to a criminal,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re trying to adopt a more holistic perspective about what accountability looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlos Cuevas, the co-director of the Violence and Justice Research Laboratory at Northeastern\u2019s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a practicing clinical psychologist, said Baker\u2019s approach was grounded in research.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ability to use the defendant\u2019s history of criminal convictions as part of the dangerousness hearing, from a research standpoint, makes sense, because prior criminal justice history, and certainly prior offenses are factors that have been associated with recidivism and violence risk,\u201d he said. He added that enhancing protections for survivors in the period immediately after a perpetrator has been removed \u201cis probably a good idea,\u201d he said, though, \u201cwhether this will do that or not is unclear.\u201d<\/p>\n
He would like to see \u201ca more robust victim-support mechanism within the criminal justice system,\u201d including economic support and child care, which he argued \u201cwould go much further in terms of helping survivors get out of abusive relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Baker administration notes that its Fiscal Year 2023 budget includes over $120 million<\/a> for these initiatives.<\/p>\nOn the explicit images bill, Cuevas praised Baker\u2019s move to separate juvenile offenses from adult ones, because \u201cretrofitting\u201d adult punishments to juvenile crimes \u201cgenerally doesn\u2019t work,\u201d he said, noting that most juvenile offenders don\u2019t fully comprehend the consequences of their actions, and don\u2019t often become adult offenders.<\/p>\n
Sarah Sobieraj, the chair of the Tufts Sociology Department who has studied attacks against women online, said several roadblocks impede the ability to implement the adult unauthorized distribution of explicit images portion of the bill, including the provision that would allow judges to order images to be permanently destroyed. If the images are stored on a server in a different state or country, it\u2019s difficult to ensure removal. She added that bills that tackle the online realm have been historically difficult to enforce.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt symbolically says this is a crime, this is not OK, you\u2019re not able to do this, and that is important and shouldn\u2019t be discounted,\u201d she said. \u201cFor it to have some teeth, there needs to be a real commitment to making folks in law enforcement knowledgeable about it, and to have the tools they need to try to enforce the law if it\u2019s passed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n