Boston D.A.

by Sean Flynn

cerated in his lifetime. Half of all prisoners are convicted of a felony within three years of their release. Last year in the United States, more than 3,000 juveniles were arrested for murder. Racial biases, repeat offenders, and juvenile crime are chroric ills from which no urban area has been immune. Boston, a city long affected by racial tension and a cronyist political system, has been plagued by them all.This fall, public television turns its full attention to investigating the city in its longest series yet on justice in America. The series focuses on the vision and the tenacity of one man, Suffolk County District Attorney Ralph Martin II, who is helping turn Boston's justice system into a model of crime reduction and racial fair play. With full access to the production team and the offices profiled in the shows, award-winning journalist Sean Flynn, who has covered Martin's achievements and Boston's crime scene for more than 10 years, has been following the Boston D.A. from crime scene to courtroom to jail.

A black Republican in a city of white Irish Democrats, who has publicly criticized the Boston police, Martin grew up as the son of a New York City police officer. In Boston, he has used the courts as an instrument of reform unlike anyone to date. He has challenged racial bias, fought for progressive social outreach programs, and cracked down on juvenile crime. With sparkling prose, Flynn takes the reader behind closed doors to paint an unforgettable picture of the American justice system. This masterful book is for every reader interested in the successes, failures, and enduring riddles of American crime and punishment.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

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Reviews

[Amanda Linehan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was OK. I expected a bit more, actually. It purported to discuss crime trends in Boston during the last two decades, starting with the crack epidemic in the 80s and through to the rise in gang violence in the 90s, touching on seminal cases such as Charles Stuart as points of analysis for the racial subtext to crime in Boston. What I got was a lot of snapshots of specific criminal cases, linked by the common theme of Ralph Martin as Boston DA, but very little analysis or even commentary on how crime changed as the city changed. The Boston of the late 80s was a very different place than today, and there's so much that could have been explored: the changing racial map of Boston's many neighborhoods (especially post-busing in the 70s), the rise and fall of the mafia, the gentrification of the South End, North End, Mission Hill, Somerville, Southie and other former hot spots for crime/drug activity...the list goes on. I was interested in this book as I read it, but I felt that it drew no conclusions, nor was it useful to me in affecting the way I think about Boston, crime, and the criminal justice system here.