This was the entire article;
Sentinel & Enterprise Monday, August 02, 2004
Challengers: Sheriff not doing enough to help cities fight crime
By Matt O'Brien
FITCHBURG -- Three challengers running for Worcester County sheriff say incumbent Sheriff John "Mike" Flynn is not doing enough to help this city and others combat youth violence and drug crimes. But Flynn said rehabilitation is what most first-time convicts need, and rehabilitation is what he's given them during his 17 years running the county's correction system. "I've got every program known to mankind. Name me a program," Flynn said in response to his political challengers. His three opponents argue Flynn's programs either don't reflect modern correctional philosophies, are not managed properly, or don't exist for the people who need them most. "Once a former inmate leaves a jail facility, they go back to their same neighborhood, and what do they do?" said McCarthy, who served as a state police trooper in Connecticut and teaches criminal justice at Quinsigamond Community College.
McCarthy and his rivals, Democratic state Sen. Guy Glodis of Auburn and independent candidate Frank A. Beshai of Worcester, have all criticized present management of county corrections. Each of Flynn's challengers has said in recent interviews he wants to turn the sheriff's office into a more "modern" law enforcement agency, which collaborates with other regional agencies, something they all say Flynn has not achieved. Flynn, who is a Democrat, calls their arguments uniformed, and politics as usual.
The Flynn perspective
Flynn points to his office branch in Cleghorn, where he says between 30 and 50 people visit daily, getting monitored as they try to reintegrate into their community after being convicted of a crime. "About half of them are my prisoners on the end of their sentence, living at home on the ankle bracelet," said Flynn, who said the other half are on probation and did not go to jail. When it comes to violent crime, Flynn said he takes a hard line on those who he does not believe can be rehabilitated, but who still pose a danger to society. "The gang leaders: They're locked up 23 hours a day," Flynn said. "Those gang leaders, there are some people we're not going to change, whether you're a sheriff or a church or parents. ... They're taken out of the population." But for about 80 percent of inmates, including many whose crimes were fueled by drug addictions, Flynn said he sends them out as better citizens.
Glodis' plan
"The sheriff's department can be more than just a jail. It can be a proactive, crime-fighting, public safety entity focused on improving the quality of life and safety," he said. He said he first wants to achieve "national accreditation" for the jail, which he believes will lead to more public safety grants. And then he wants to make it help communities such as Fitchburg by relieving the police department and other overburdened public safety agencies. "We can be getting and gathering intelligence about where the drug dealers are, where the gangs are," Glodis said. "When an inmate comes to jail, many times they have a beef with another inmate (or) a rival gang." Glodis wants more rehabilitation programs, but he suggests they be managed with tough incentive-based programs that take inmates out of taxing conditions if they improve their behavior. "Right now when an inmate comes ... there's no incentive to rehabilitate yourself," he said. "I think we need to do a better job. There's no incentive to take those programs, because they can play pool and use the ping-pong tables." Glodis, now a veteran state legislator, cites his experience as a former correctional officer, including his work in a maximum security ward in West Boylston. He believes in finding a middle ground between the Southern correctional model of "give 'em nothing" and a Northern philosophy he describes as "society's fault," and he says that new "Western" model comes out of Boulder, Colo. Glodis said one of his first-term priorities is establishing a combined mentoring and boot camp program for juvenile offenders and inmates entering jail for the first or second time. Rehabilitated ex-cons would help out in reaching these young, first-time offenders.
McCarthy's vision
McCarthy also wants to implement a program for young offenders who he says have a strong chance of reverting to crime when they're released. He refers to his proposed program as "after-care" and said it would focus on a collaboration between community agencies. "The after-care program allows these youths who have been in trouble to understand the consequences of some of their actions," he said. "We've heard about community policing, but this is about community corrections. Community corrections lets inmates know about the consequences of their actions." McCarthy said he also wants to take a visible role in helping out cities such as Fitchburg, where gang violence erupted this summer.
"They've acknowledged there is a problem. So once you acknowledge there is a problem, you have to mobilize the community," he said. "They know who may be a gang community." "The people from the schools have to get involved. Probation, youth agencies, grassroots organizations that can keep a community safe," McCarthy said. "As you know, a gang is really just a group of people who continue into some type of criminal activity." McCarthy said after-care participants would travel to jails, to morgues, to see the impact of their actions. He said a county jail under McCarthy would be designed in a way so no one would want to go back. "I want to take a holistic approach," McCarthy said. "That doesn't involve going out there and patrolling. Let's utilize the resources of the sheriff's office as a resource to pull people together. You have researchers who work right there at Fitchburg State College. Let's get those people to work."
Beshai's approach
Beshai won about 74,000 votes when he ran against Flynn on the Republican ticket in 1998, and he says the county would have been a lot better off if more people had listened to his ideas last time around. When Gov. Mitt Romney released a report last month that found the state prison system had not focused enough on rehabilitation, Beshai said he knew the tide was finally turning in his direction. When he learned of a gang-inspired drive-by shooting that injured three people in Fitchburg on July 24, Beshai called the Sentinel & Enterprise to say the county is becoming a battleground that needs help fast.
"It's turning into the Wild West out there," Beshai said. "I know I'm the only candidate who's got a plan for it, instead of people throwing barbs at each other. ... You've got to be involved in the trenches, and not one of these candidates has been involved in the trenches." Beshai, like McCarthy and Glodis, said his priority is turning the sheriff's office into a collaborative agency. "It's going to take a collaboration between the sheriff's department, police departments, state (agencies)," he said. The difference between him and his rivals, said Beshai, who served time at the county House of Correction in the 1980s for larceny, is that he actually knows how to work with the offenders who arrive at county jail. He runs an organization that provides faith-based and secular transitional programs for jailed youth in Massachusetts and other states. "I work a lot in DYS facilities," Beshai said. "I know the kids and their mentality when they're 17. They're brought up in an environment where they think what they're doing is normal." "When they start hearing negatives from everybody around them, they don't trust anybody. You need to win their trust first," Beshai said. "Twenty to 24 is not too late. When you start to get up to the 30s, that's too late." He said he would stick inmates into these programs, while also sending out people to go to their homes and work with their families. "The streets are dangerous, and everybody knows it," Beshai said. "If there are city officials telling the public that the streets are safe, they're giving them a false sense of security."
