Testimony I submitted to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary, June 3, 2025 in support of H.2052/S.1178: An Act to Reduce Mass Incarceration. Twenty-five years ago, when I began the Real Cost of Prisons Project, I naively thought if people understood the real costs of mass incarceration to people imprisoned, their loved ones and their communities and the hundreds of millions of dollars we pay yearly to keep people caged, they would see that this state-run, outrageously costly system harms, not helps, everyone involved.

In April and May, two men were killed by a firing squad in South Carolina. We can be shocked, but to me what we do here is crueler, caging more than a thousand people on slow death row for their lifetime. This is what the Massachusetts legislators do every year when they send similar bills “to study.” On Friday I received an email from a friend serving life about his friend and mine. He wrote: “I have held off emailing to see if there was good news. There isn’t. The latest is that he will be moving from the Shattuck (Hospital) to Shirley Medium (prison) probably to the end-of-life unit. Sad to say, it seems he is semi-conscious, cannot feed himself nor control his bowels. It is a terrible existence. They packed his cell which means they do not think he will be back.”

This person is smart, funny and kind and spent the majority of his life incarcerated. If this bill were law, he could have been paroled decades ago. And, yet, he will die in prison. Please pass this bill. Show your humanity.

Lois Ahrens

Northampton