There’s a lot of talk about progressive prosecutors, good prosecutors, reform-minded prosecutors. As an abolitionist project, we care about how people are treated in court and, ultimately, eliminating the prosecuting office.

We also want to do everything we can to make sure people are treated better right now. We have paid special attention to the Massachusetts counties with ‘reformers’ in office, to see whether their campaign promises and office policies result in actual decarceration, eliminate racial disparities, or keep more people out of the system entirely.

This report offers our analysis of prosecutor-led “pretrial reform” in Suffolk, Middlesex, and Berkshire Counties, based on publicly available data.

Prosecutors in Massachusetts may talk about reform and decarceration, but the limited available data suggest their practices don’t live up to their rhetoric.