This is from a single sample, sold as fentanyl, from the drug supply in Lynn, MA. This is what it looks like for government to surrender its regulatory power to the market. This is what we are subjecting our friends and family to instead of oxy or heroin. This is a policy CHOICE.

DHS' UASI grant, which funds BRIC along w/ surveillance & emergency mgmt across 9 cities now requires 10% go to collaboration on border enforcement, like 287g agreements and detainer requests. Maybe now Mayor Michelle Wu 吳弭 will listen to community demands to abolish BRIC and reject UASI!

This should be a huge concern for all cities (Boston Brookline Cambridge Chelsea Everett Quincy Revere Somerville Winthrop) receiving UASI for emergency mgmt and policing & surveillance. Many of them buy shotspotter, cameras, and license plate readers w/ UASI.

UASI already required a percent go to law enforcement & terrorism prevention as well as requiring funding a fusion center (BRIC). The point of BRIC & UASI is collaboration w/ DHS and FBI which we know led to at least one deportation. These new reqs just make the purpose clearer!

“They complied with all of the instructions. They’ve done everything that they were supposed to do,” said Heather Arroyo, senior immigration attorney at Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. “This was just arbitrarily stripped from them.” wgbh.org/news/local/202…

Public policy should be rooted in evidence. Nearly every study of bail reform has found significant human & fiscal benefits and no negative public safety impacts. Here's a 🧵with critical examples of research studies and landscape analyses supporting the efficacy of bail reform:

First up, check out our Faculty Director Sandra Susan Smith's 2021 HKSFacultyResearch landscape analysis of bail reform, cited in this 2022 episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on the absence of evidence that bail reform is linked to increased crime: x.com/HKS_PCJ/status…

A July 2023 research synthesis by Prison Policy Initiative of 13 jurisdictions that implemented some form of bail reform also shows that all these jurisdictions saw decreases or negligible increases in crime or re-arrest rates after implementing reforms. x.com/PrisonPolicy/s…

A synthesis of studies by the Brennan Center published in August 2024 similarly found no evidence for increases in crime or major public safety harms after bail reform across 33 jurisdictions: x.com/BrennanCenter/…

Studies of New York's bail reform by Data Collaborative for Justice (datacollaborativeforjustice.org/work/bail-refo…), FWD.us (fwd.us/news/new-york-…), and CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance (islg.cuny.edu/case-study-bai…) have consistently found decreases in recidivism for people facing misdemeanor charges and huge benefits for affected families.

A June 2025 Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law study found improved public safety after Harris County, TX implemented misdemeanor bail reform: wcsj.law.duke.edu/news/ending-ca… That follows a prior University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Quattrone Center study supported by Arnold Ventures with similar results: arnoldventures.org/newsroom/new-d…

A report published with Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and Loyola Chicago Center for Criminal Justice Don Stemen found that across four jurisdictions (Chicago, Harris County, Philly, and NJ), there was not significant change in the likelihood of new criminal activity after bail reforms were implemented. loyolaccj.org/blog/bail-refo…

Early looks at the impacts of the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act, including by researchers for Safety and Justice, finds significant benefits in the offing: safetyandjusticechallenge.org/blog/looking-d… x.com/CCJLoyola/stat…

There is a wave of momentum across the country for bail reform, with legislative efforts across the country in dozens of jurisdictions. A report published by The Bail Project in March 2025 provides useful analysis: bailproject.org/press/new-repo…

The harms of cash bail and wealth-based detention cannot be overstated. Bail is a penalty borne by the poor. If jailed by bail, people may lose their jobs, grow disconnected from their families, have medication interrupted. Even a day in jail causes harm: x.com/PrisonPolicy/s…

And of course, the socioeconomic reality of wealth inequality in the U.S. means that cash bail systems disparately affect poor people and people of color, rooting inequity into pretrial detention decisions for people who are legally presumed innocent: x.com/PrisonPolicy/s…

Studies on the harms of bail and the criminogenic effects of pretrial detention are numerous and well-supported. Rather than reprinting unsupported crime-and-punishment rhetoric, journalists and editorial pages should publicize policy rooted in evidence. x.com/JournoResource…

BREAKING: Just saw DC Police + federal agents detain a man on the National Mall. He appeared to try to escape, then was quickly tackled to the ground by several agents + was screaming in Spanish “please, I’m not a criminal, I work here, I want to be with my family” NBC4 Washington