Officer Maguire

Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems that the media and elected officials alike have been somewhat guarded in criticizing the state Parole Board for releasing Dominic Cinelli, a violent career criminal who murdered Woburn police officer John Maguire last week.

Yes, everyone is saying what you would expect. The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have both published editorials saying the board erred in releasing Cinelli. Yes, the board made a huge mistake in not notifying the Middlesex County district attorney’s office before the 2008 hearing at which Cinelli’s parole was approved. And Cinelli, whom a dying Maguire shot to death in the course of an attempted robbery at Kohl’s, seems to have been an unusually poor risk.

Here is another wrinkle. According to a report by Gordon Vincent of Woburn’s Daily Times Chronicle, Cinelli would not have been eligible for parole until 2023 were it not for a decision by the state Appeals Court that overturned a ruling made by the Parole Board regarding the start date of Cinelli’s sentence.

Yet today’s Globe story by Jonathan Saltzman includes some facts worth pondering:

  • The Parole Board apparently did not think releasing Cinelli was a close call, as it voted 6-0 in favor. Of those six (three appointed by Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick and three by Republican governors), two were retired police officers and one worked in the Hampshire County Sheriff’s Department. In other words, it doesn’t sound like the board can be caricatured as a bunch of soft-on-crime types.
  • About 6,000 inmates are granted parole every year, which suggests that the county and state prison systems could be thrown into chaos if parole standards were tightened significantly.
  • Since 2005, according to Saltzman’s reporting, the board has granted parole to about two-thirds of those applying, and to somewhere between 27 percent and 40 percent of the lifers seeking parole, depending on the year.
  • Lifers and older inmates, Saltzman reports, tend to pose the lowest risk of recidivism. Cinelli was 57 when he shot Officer Maguire.

The death of Jack Maguire, a 60-year-old policeman on the verge of retirement, is a terrible tragedy. Back in the 1980s, I covered Woburn for the Daily Times Chronicle, and though I did not know Maguire, I knew of him. I did know the future police chief, Philip Mahoney, an impressive, compassionate policeman who has served as an outstanding spokesman for his city’s grief this week.

It may well turn out that the Parole Board made a mistake in releasing Cinelli. We already know that it made a mistake by not giving the district attorney a chance to testify. But the issue is not as simple as locking up people like Cinelli and throwing away the key.

Based on the Globe’s reporting, it appears that inmates whose past crimes were as serious as Cinelli’s are released regularly, and that society benefits. The investigation that’s now under way is the right way to go, and the media should give it a chance to play out — as they seem to be doing so far. The situation calls for intelligent analysis, not a witch hunt.