06/24/2025
Important Boston Globe editorial for those who care about Criminal Justice Reform, our judicial system, helping formerly incarcerated people become productive citizens, and improving public safety. What is the proper role (and guiding philosophy) for Parole Officers, those who oversee and meet with people after they have been released from prison? At a recent National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) conference on juvenile justice, nationally-renowned advocate Brian Bivins made the presentation, "A Coach, Not a Ref." After three years of the caucus focusing on the Parole Board, Parole Officers and parole in general, I strongly agree with this frame.
The Boston Globe editorial (pasted in full below) highlights the shift that is happening among Parole Officers, and increasingly the Massachusetts Parole Board members and professional staff, that Parole Officers are not just law enforcement officials, but social workers, too. Over the past few months, I have asked to meet with the Mass Parole Officers Association, to learn more about the officers' perspectives. I greatly respect and appreciate the work of Parole Officers, and recognize that sometimes their work is dangerous. It's important for Parole Officers to also find more ways to support returning citizens, which benefits everyone in society. Full disclosure, the caucus led the effort to get the Parole Board to end the collaboration of Parole Officers with law enforcement department and regional task forces targeting non-parolees, which I believe was way outside Parole Officers' scope.
Full editorial below, and my quote:
"The newer parole officers are much like social workers,” said Senator Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton), a champion of criminal justice reform and a supporter of Gomez’s confirmation. “They recognize that people want to find a job and housing and don’t want to go back to prison.”
They see their roles as “coaches, not referees,” he added. “But if you have a parole officer focused on technical violations, they’re not really serving the cause of justice.”
Full Boston Globe editorial:
"The Massachusetts parole system — or at least, the more than 100 officers charged with helping to enforce its rules — is at a crossroads. Is the main job of officers to help reintegrate the formerly incarcerated back into society, or are officers largely enforcers — just waiting for a parolee to make a misstep to throw them back in prison?
Until recently, parole officers walked like cops and talked like cops. Officers make hundreds of arrests a year — and in the not-too-distant past, those included arrests of civilians who had nothing to do with the parole system. About two-thirds of those officers are licensed to carry fi****ms, they operate vehicles with lights and sirens, and have reported dozens of use-of-force incidents in the last four years, according to recent testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.
And they exercise enormous power over the lives of those ex-prisoners they are charged with supervising. A beer can on the table can mean a violation and that could eventually lead to reincarceration — and with it the loss of a job, housing, and those ties to community that take time to build or rebuild.
But Governor Maura Healey’s personnel choices signal that a shift is well underway. The man Healey has chosen to fill a vacancy on the seven-member Parole Board and who is widely expected to eventually be its next chairman, Angelo Gomez Jr., is on the surface an unlikely change agent. He has been a part of the parole officer force since 2012, including a stint as its chief supervisor.
ut he is also the son of Puerto Rican-born parents, who, he told the Governor’s Council Wednesday, came north with little money, and depended on a variety of social services for a “hand up.”
I believe those who come before the Parole Board are looking for a hand up,” he said, adding his guiding principle has been and remains “ser justo, to be just.”
He also told the council that since the passage of a major criminal justice reform act in the Legislature, parole officers have been transitioning to different roles. Today, he said, the job is “95 percent social work.”
“We’re not police. Our mission is different,” he added. “We have evolved dramatically.”
Well, yes and no.
Even a cursory read of the parole officer union’s page provides evidence that many are wannabe cops, longing for the glory days of joining in State Police raids. Or, as the union put it in a social media post, “We have been ostracized from working with state, local, and federal LE [law enforcement] agencies whom we have had longstanding relationships with for 30+ years.”
In fact, as recently as the last available annual report for the Massachusetts Parole Board issued July 2023, the Warrant and Apprehension Unit (which at the moment numbers six parole officers, according to state officials) made 398 arrests, but only 211 of those were parolees. The other 187 were made, the report notes, “in cooperation with interagency task forces and partnerships.”
Now keep in mind, parole field officers were never a part of the 2020 police reform law. They aren’t certified by the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission or subject to their training and certification requirements, although they are required to do 40 hours of annual in-service training.
And, as state Senator Will Brownsberger (D-Belmont), who helped draft and shepherd the police reform bill through the Legislature, explained, “We don’t really think of them as law enforcement officers. Their job is primarily supervisory.”
And so both parole and probation officers were never part of the regulatory scheme.
But that hasn’t stopped some parole officers from joining in the police action when the occasion presented itself — that is until a new agency protocol was signed, effective March 19, expressly prohibiting their participating “in other investigations and warrants” unless they directly involve a parolee.
The edict provided the impetus for at least one angry letter to the Governor’s Council, from Bryan Westerman, a parole field officer, who opposed Gomez’s confirmation and blamed him for “dismantled law enforcement partnerships.”
There is no hiding the tension between what the Healey administration, officials like Gomez, and his supporters want for the direction of the agency and what they are up against in moving the parole system into the 21st century.
“The newer parole officers are much like social workers,” said Senator Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton), a champion of criminal justice reform and a supporter of Gomez’s confirmation. “They recognize that people want to find a job and housing and don’t want to go back to prison.”
They see their roles as “coaches, not referees,” he added. “But if you have a parole officer focused on technical violations, they’re not really serving the cause of justice.”
And those who simply want the adrenaline rush of a police raid ought to be looking for another job.
Gomez, whose confirmation comes up for a vote before the Governor’s Council next week, is the right man at a critical time. But he and his fellow board members are up against a workforce that has had things its way for decades. Turning that ship around will be everybody’s job."
State parole officers at critical juncture — will they be social workers or cops?
