Relative to criminal justice reform

What it means

This criminal justice bill changes many parts of the court and corrections system. On juveniles, it raises the minimum age for delinquency charges from 7 to 12 and excludes some first-offense misdemeanors (those punishable by a fine or up to 6 months in jail), and it lets people expunge records of some offenses committed before age 21 and shortens record-sealing waits from 5 to 3 years and from 10 to 7 years. On sentencing, it removes some mandatory minimum terms for lower-level drug sales, sets trafficking penalties for fentanyl and carfentanil, raises the dollar line between misdemeanor and felony larceny from $250 to $1,200, and creates crimes such as assault and battery causing serious injury to a police officer (1-year minimum) and soliciting a felony, plus a fine of up to $250,000 for a business that commits manslaughter. It also requires judges to consider a person's ability to pay when setting bail, rewrites rules on restrictive housing (solitary confinement) in prisons and jails, expands pretrial diversion, creates a restorative justice program, eases some fines and fees for people who cannot pay, and sets up several study commissions.

Source: official text and history of S.2371 on malegislature.gov.