Robert O. Motley Jr. Photo by Caitlin Cunningham for BC Photography.
In the Massachusetts judicial system, courts may order violent offenders to undergo mental health evaluations as part of discovery, the pre-trial process in which litigators gather evidence and information. But these mental health assessments are not required by law.
Robert O. Motley Jr., an assistant professor at the Boston College School of Social Work, wants to change that.
Motley recently received a one-year, $75,000 grant from the Charles E. Shannon Community Safety Initiative, a state-sponsored program that aims to reduce gang violence in Massachusetts, to study the effect of early childhood trauma on young adults incarcerated for violent crimes.
He argues that early childhood trauma should be a mitigating factor in the sentencing of violent offenders regardless of age, pointing to the link between trauma in childhood and violent behavior in adulthood.
And he hopes to use his findings to pave the way for a new law that makes mental health assessments a required component of the evidence-gathering phase of trials in the Commonwealth, saying that judges, juries, and prosecutors should have the opportunity to hear how abuse, neglect, and other adverse childhood experiences may have influenced the behavior of people who have committed violent offenses.
“The goal is to show empirical evidence for the need to bring pre-trial mental health assessments into correctional facilities,” says Motley, who directs BCSSW’s Racism-based Violence Injury and Prevention Lab, which examines how racism, violence, and trauma affect the well-being of Black emerging adults aged 18 to 29. “Knowing that violent offenders are experiencing elevated levels of anxiety, or depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder would be an invaluable piece of information to have prior to sentencing because we know these conditions can contribute to behaviors.”
Sean “Truth” Evelyn. Courtesy photo.
His study is an outgrowth of an informal research project led by Sean “Truth” Evelyn, a spoken word artist and social justice advocate who spent more than 15 years in prison for second-degree murder.
While incarcerated at MCI-Norfolk, the largest medium security prison in Massachusetts, Truth surveyed more than 250 fellow residents who had been convicted of violent crimes in an effort to quantify their exposure to violence. He found that 78 percent of participants in the study had witnessed homicides in their communities, while only 16 percent had received mental health evaluations prior to the start of their trials.
“I concluded that people who were arrested for violent crimes rarely received mental health evaluations and thus were very likely to be overcharged and over-sentenced,” says Truth, who received a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies while he was in prison. “In my research, I saw that a lot of existing information just isn’t acknowledged or brought up when individuals are being prosecuted.”
Rethinking restorative justice
Truth plans to help Motley collect new data from 350 violent offenders serving time in correctional facilities throughout Massachusetts, including MCI-Norfolk, where he was incarcerated from 2007 to 2022.
The researchers will focus on surveying and interviewing 18- to 25-year-old residents, zeroing in on prisoners’ criminal histories, exposure to violence, and early childhood trauma.
They also plan to ask inmates to describe what they know about restorative justice programs, which require people who have committed violent crimes to work with victims and survivors to address the harm they’ve caused.
Motley says that violent offenders could benefit from pre-trial restorative justice programs, particularly if victims’ families make favorable sentencing recommendations as part of the process. But while Massachusetts law allows some offenders to participate in these programs, violent offenders are generally not eligible.
That’s why, in addition to laying the groundwork for mandatory pre-trial mental health evaluations, Motley wants his study to spark legislation that allows violent offenders to participate in restorative justice programs prior to being sentenced.
“The judge can take the recommendations of victims’ families into consideration,” he says. “The offender may not get as much time or may be diverted to another program as a result of going through restorative justice practices.”
Melissa Wood Bartholomew. Courtesy photo.
Truth discovered restorative justice practices about eight years ago at MCI-Norfolk. As part of a two-day retreat, he and his fellow residents, all 30 and under, joined a group of judges, prosecutors, and mothers whose children had been killed by violent offenders. The goal of the meeting was for residents to talk about what happened in their lives as kids and how it may have led them to contribute to a culture of violence in their communities as adults.
“We heard stories of inmates talking about youthful trauma that carried over into the adult infraction that was not acknowledged at the front end of prosecution,” says Truth. “And I saw the ways in which the outsiders were impacted by these stories. You have prosecutors and judges saying, ‘Listen, we are not trained to acknowledge any of what you shared with us.’ Some of them were tearing up while they’re listening to the stories.”
Melissa Wood Bartholomew, associate dean for diversity, inclusion, and belonging at Harvard Divinity School, who teaches Introduction to Restorative Justice: Transforming the Law from Within at the BC Law School, facilitated an eight-week restorative justice reading group at MCI-Norfolk while Truth was there and shared Truth’s initial study with former BCSSW Professor Tyrone Parchment, who passed it along to Motley.
Bartholomew extols the virtues of restorative justice, calling it a “worldview rooted in indigenous wisdom that reminds us that we are all connected.”
“No matter what any one of us does in life, our actions cannot break the bond that connects us. We are interconnected,” says Bartholomew, M.S.W.’17, Ph.D.’21. “Through various values, principles, and practices, restorative justice provides a framework for us to reinforce our connection to ourselves, each other, our community, and the natural world.”
Making connections
The ins and outs of Motley’s study may look different if Truth had not met Dan and Andrea Delaney at a talk at the Harvard Club of Boston.
The Delaneys, a husband and wife team, run the Delaney Policy Group, a lobbying firm that helps clients access public funding. When Truth asked a question after the talk, wanting to know how to translate his initial findings into public policy, Andrea told him, “This is exactly what we do.”
Dan Delaney. Courtesy photo.
Later, Truth connected Motley with the Delaneys, who learned more about the professor’s project. The Delaneys, in turn, asked Motley to write a research proposal. The husband-wife duo then pitched the proposal to Sen. Jamie Eldridge and Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven, who championed the idea; provided a one-page fact sheet to other key legislators; and filed an amendment to the 2025 state budget asking for funding for Motley’s research. The amendment passed, granting Motley $75,000 and access to inmates at MCI-Norfolk through the Shannon Community Safety Initiative.
“Dr. Motley had the academic infrastructure in place, Truth did the pioneering work, and we knew how to take what they were talking about and shepherd it through the legislature successfully,” says Dan Delaney of the factors that enabled this partnership to succeed. “If this had just happened in isolation, then it might not have been able to make this kind of full cycle.”
Motley and Truth plan to publish peer-reviewed papers and policy briefs highlighting findings from their study. The Delaneys will use those findings to lobby Eldridge, Uyterhoeven, and others in the state legislature for more funding for Motley and his research team.
Assuming they get the funding, Motley and his colleagues will conduct follow-up studies examining the interplay between trauma in childhood and violent behavior in adulthood as well as the benefits of restorative justice programs. Eventually, the Delaneys will draft a bill that aligns with Motley’s vision for new legislation, pitch it to key legislators, and lobby for it to become law.
“The state’s getting better about sentencing and diversion, but a lot of the time that happens after an offender has been charged,” says Dan. “If we have robust results from this study, we’ll be able to show prosecutors, judges, police officers, and others that there are other things they need to know about besides what happened at the scene of the crime, like mental health issues and early trauma. We want offenders to get more appropriate, whole person charges instead of having to rely on the state catching up after the fact.”
Regardless of whether Motley’s exact vision comes to fruition, he may not have to wait long for restorative justice programs to become more commonplace in correctional facilities. In the near future, he will begin working with judges across Massachusetts to evaluate a restorative justice pilot program for 40 people who have been convicted of violent transgressions. Time will tell if the results of this pilot study yield any changes to the criminal justice system.
