{"id":1045,"date":"2013-09-24T14:58:48","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T18:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=1045"},"modified":"2021-03-15T16:57:23","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T20:57:23","slug":"famm-brief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/24\/famm-brief\/","title":{"rendered":"Brief cites PPI&#8217;s research on &#8220;sentencing enhancement zones&#8221; in Mass."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Massachusetts has just passed the one-year anniversary of <a href=\"\/zones.html#progress\">scaling back<\/a> harmful and ineffective 1,000-foot &#8220;sentencing enhancement zones.&#8221; As our <a href=\"\/zones.html\">research <\/a> found, the old zones were <a href=\"\/toofar\/report.html\">too big<\/a> to meet the indended goal of deterring drug activity from particular areas. We also found that the old policy led to <a href=\"\/graphs\/MA_drug_use_defendants_zoneconvictions.html\">alarming racial disparities<\/a>, so we were certainly glad when the legislature reduced the size of the zones to 300 feet.<\/p>\n<p>But, as our friends at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.famm.org\">Families Against Mandatory Minumums (FAMM)<\/a> can tell you, a lingering question remains in the courts: should the old rules or the new rules apply to the people who committed offenses before the law was changed, but who were sentenced after the change?<\/p>\n<p>Advocates at FAMM are <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130927115451\/http:\/\/famm.org\/famm-weighs-in-on-massachusetts-school-zone-appeal\">urging the court<\/a> to apply the more reasonable 300-foot zone policy to all cases that were pending when the law was changed. We completely agree, and are thrilled that our <a href=\"\/zones.html#reports\">two reports<\/a> were cited throughout FAMM&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20150526092413\/http:\/\/famm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Com_.-v.-Pagan-FAMM-amicus-brief-9-23-13.pdf\">friend-of-the-court brief<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The case, <i>Commonwealth v. Pagan<\/i>, will be argued in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Monday, October 7, and the public is welcome to attend. I&#8217;ll be there, and I hope to see you there, too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the harmful older zone law has been scaled back, questions still remain in the courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-1045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11762,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions\/11762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}