More MA Miracles...

An agency where patronage is job one

By any measure, Deirdre I. Kennedy was an outstanding candidate for chief probation officer at West Roxbury District Court. A Wellesley College graduate with two master’s degrees, Kennedy was a streetwise veteran of the Dorchester courthouse who spoke fluent Spanish. She was also a proven leader who had run an antidomestic violence program that won nearly $8 million in federal grants.

But, in the closed world of the Massachusetts Probation Department, dazzling credentials scarcely matter. Probation Commissioner John J. “Jack’’ O’Brien chose the 73-year-old father of a state legislator instead, doing a favor for then-House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, one of O’Brien’s key political mentors, who said he sought the promotion for James J. Rush as a “capstone’’ to the man’s 41-year probation career.

Read the whole article. You know it's bad when the Globe exposes it. Running a state agency like one's own personal fiefdom isn't new, nor endemic to MA by any means. But damn, we take it to the next level. We don't mess around with small departments or anything - this is the Probation department, where all those criminals that our revolving door justice system lets go after serving a tenth of their sentence.

It's the kind of department where you want to have competent, compassionate people who know what they're doing employed in the upper and lower ranks. It's exactly not the kind of place you want know-nothing hacks whose only qualifications are donating the right sums of money to the right people or simple lineage. However, that seems to be exactly how the department was staffed.

Welcome to Massachusetts, where you're a felon for having a shell casing stuck in your boot without an FID, but don't worry - some hack who has no clue whatsoever about the justice system workings will oversee your probation.

That is all.