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Notes -
Dukakis pocket veto'd a bill in citing interference with reform, but I'm not able to find the exact text of the change to see how broad it was. This is anti-Dukakis and quotes him saying the bill would “cut the heart out of efforts at inmate rehabilitation” but also says the bill's goal was "prohibiting furloughs for any first-degree murderers, or other violent offenders, who were never supposed to be released from prison."
Reform might seem pointless for life sentences without parole, but in practice "life" didn't really mean that. Massachusetts was (and I think still is?) one of the minority of states that requires life without parole for first-degree murder (with a judicially-created exemption for those under 21), and in practice into the 1980s this largely involved a nontrivial number of 'life without parole' cases really just having the governor's commutation board as their parole hearing, and a large majority of commutations were for lifers or lifers-without-parole under the state's mandatory sentences for first- and second-degree murder.
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