Audit of the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

An overview of the purpose and process of auditing the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission.

Overview

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) has conducted a performance audit of certain activities of the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission (MSC) for the period July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018.

In May 2018, after MSC finished developing revised sentencing guidelines, members of the Massachusetts District Attorney Association (MDAA) questioned MSC’s process for implementing these guidelines. Members of MDAA alleged, among other things, that the guidelines were never submitted to the state Legislature for enactment into law but were used in the court system. Based on these concerns, OSA initiated an audit of MSC to determine whether MSC revised its sentencing guidelines and submitted them to the Legislature for enactment into law and to what extent, if any, the guidelines were used in the court system.

We performed this audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards, except Section 7.11 of Chapter 7 of the US Government Accountability Office’s Government Auditing Standards, which pertains to obtaining sufficient, appropriate evidence to meet the audit objective. See “Scope Limitation” below for details on the constraints imposed on the audit team that prevented us from being able to meet Objective 2. For the other objectives, we believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Below is a list of our audit objectives, indicating each question we intended our audit to answer; the conclusion we reached regarding each objective; and, if applicable, where each objective is discussed in this report.  

Objective	Conclusion
1a.   Did MSC revise its sentencing guidelines during our audit period?	Yes
1b.  Have those guidelines been sent to the Legislature for enactment?	No; see Finding 1
2.     Are the sentencing guidelines that are not enacted into law by the Legislature used in the Commonwealth’s court system?	Objective not achieved; see Other Matters

 

We gained an understanding of the internal controls we deemed significant to our audit objectives through interviews and observations. In addition, we performed the following procedures to obtain sufficient, appropriate audit evidence to address our audit objectives.

Scope Limitation

Section 7.11 of the US Government Accountability Office’s Government Auditing Standards states,

Auditors should . . . report any significant constraints imposed on the audit approach by information limitations or scope impairments, including denials or excessive delays of access to certain records or individuals.

To meet our second audit objective, we requested that the Executive Office of the Trial Court (EOTC) provide us with certain data on all the cases closed in the Superior Courts during fiscal year 2018 for which sentences were imposed. We wanted this information to establish a universe of transactions from which we could select a sample of case files to review and determine to what extent, if any, MSC’s most recently developed guidelines were used in the court system. However, EOTC denied our request for this information, citing as its reason that it believed obtaining and reviewing this information was not within the scope of our audit. As a result, we could not obtain documentary evidence to conduct substantive testing in order to determine to what extent the newly revised sentencing guidelines were used in the court system.

Guidelines Revised during the Audit Period

We obtained various documents from MSC related to meetings it held during our audit period, including meeting minutes and agendas. We reviewed these documents to determine whether the sentencing guidelines were appropriately discussed among members and whether there was a vote by all MSC members regarding their approval. During our review of these records, we noted that, although MSC held seven meetings, it only maintained minutes for four of them and only had agendas for three. However, there was documentation to substantiate that the revised guidelines were discussed and a vote was taken regarding their approval.

Guidelines Sent to Legislature

We conducted interviews with the current and former MSC chairs to determine whether the revised sentencing guidelines were submitted to the Legislature for enactment into law in accordance with Chapter 211E of the General Laws.

We interviewed officials from both the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives and the Office of the Clerk of the Senate. We obtained the Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts¹ and reviewed them to determine when MSC last submitted sentencing guidelines to the Legislature for enactment into law.

1.    These are the official records of the proceedings of the House, Senate, and joint sessions, kept by the Clerks of the House and Senate.

Date published:	November 7, 2019