Update: The Boston Globe reported on July 26 that Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins admitted she used inaccurate information to refute a previous Globe story about how Rollins' office handled an assault case earlier this year. Rollins said that her office had offered the defendant a tough penalty in a plea agreement that mirrored the one offered by Rollins' predecessor, Dan Conley — a statement disputed by Conley. “I have previously stated that the plea offered under my administration was the same requested by a past administration. That was not accurate,” Rollins told the Globe.

Conley's office offered the defendant, who attacked a woman and her dog in the Charlestown Navy Yard in 2017, an 18-month sentence with a recommendation that he serve six. Rollins' office made a deal that allowed the defendant to avoid jail so long as he went to mental health counseling.

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Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins on Tuesday slammed a recent Boston Globe article as having used unfair reporting tactics in their analysis that questioned the effectiveness of Rollins' office's policies.

The article, which was written by reporters Andrea Estes and Shelley Murphy, focused on Rollins’ signature policy of not prosecuting 15 low-level offenses. The piece went into extensive detail about the case of a 2017 attack on a woman in the Charlestown Navy Yard, in which prosecutors cut a deal with the attacker and allowed him to plead to a lesser assault charge while going on probation rather than to jail.

Rollins said the article failed to portray the full story behind the 2017 case and that the reporters engaged in “fear mongering.”

“I’ve handled over 8,000 cases since I took office Jan. 2, and Andrea Estes and Shelley Murphy want to talk about one case and they are fear mongering,” Rollins said in an interview on Boston Public Radio.

On Friday, 19 law school professors at Boston area universities published an open letter to Globe editor Brian McGrory in response to the article, saying the piece was unfairly biased against law enforcement officials.

“It is imperative that when reporting on these issues, journalists provide the factual context that readers need to understand the policy decisions that shape our local criminal justice system — context that enables an objective, informative discussion,” they wrote. “Unfortunately, this article does not provide that necessary context. Instead, it relies upon a limited narrative structure to convey a clear, yet misleading, message to the reader: Rollins has gone too far, and the city is not safe.”

In a statement to WGBH News, a spokesperson for the Globe defended the article, and said that while they respect the academics' right to share their opinion, the Globe stands by the piece.

“We respect and appreciate the feedback from the academics, as well as the work that some of them have done on social justice issues,” said Jane Bowman, vice president of strategic partnerships and marketing for the Globe, in the statement. “But we believe the story they question contained ample context, voices on different sides of the discussion, and clear, extensive explanations by District Attorney Rollins of her goals and initiatives.”

The article states that, "Some police, court clerks, and fellow prosecutors say they fear her policy is putting the public at risk and emboldening criminals to believe they can commit crimes with impunity." It also quotes an earlier Globe op-ed by Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe, in which he condemned "the ‘social justice district attorney’ agenda."

The professors, however, argue that by limiting the perspectives to primarily those in the law enforcement community, the reporters failed to portray the scope of the criminal justice debate, and inevitably left readers with the impression that Rollins has made Suffolk County unsafe.

“The Globe coverage of Rollins has overstated the public safety issue and understated the many likely benefits of her policy that are grounded in research and data,” said Daniel Medwed, a professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern University and one of the letter’s signatories.

“A less punitive, and more rehabilitative, approach to low-level offenses will have many long-term benefits and allow her to allocate resources to what we should all be concerned about: prosecuting violent crime,” Medwed, a regular contributer to WGBH News, added.

Ron Sullivan, a law professor at Harvard Law School and the director of the school's Criminal Justice Institute, also signed the letter. He said that the Globe piece is built on anecdotal information. Sullivan said the piece has little to no actual data to corroborate any of the fears voiced by those quoted.

“I decided to sign the letter because the recent coverage of DA Rollins is so unmoored from the reality that it threatens to form an opinion, rather than describe the criminal justice space,” Sullivan said. “The article also places bad policy and good policy in equipoise, ignoring the mountain of uncontested research that demonstrates DA Rollins' policy proposal are squarely in line with the country’s best thinking about criminal justice.”

Many critics, including Rollins, point out that the article contained no quotes from Rollins’ supporters and omitted data from the Boston Police Department that shows that crime has overall gone down in the city since Rollins entered office. She also said that the article framed the decision not to demand jail time for the perpetrator of the 2017 Navy Yard attack as a result of her own policy, arguing that the plea offered to the perpetrator was nearly identical to the one offered by former Suffolk County DA Dan Conley.

“Dan Conley offered the same thing that my office offered. The only difference is we offered $5,000 restitution,” Rollins said. “Can I please speak about the 7,999 other cases where we got appropriate results for people or we had victims who were elated with what we did for them? ... But it is a responsibility that you have that you do not cherry pick matters and fear monger to say that the community is no longer safe.”

As a part of the emerging “progressive” prosecution movement, Rollins understands that her policies and views are remarkably different than her predecessor, but finds it offensive that some believe she is not focused on public safety. She said that while safety is her ultimate goal, she also wants to focus on other factors such as recidivism, not jailing people in pre-trial detention if unnecessary, and focusing on putting people who suffer from mental illness or drug addiction into treatment programs.

“There are violent crimes that, I agree, you need to be removed from the community. We just disagree as to where you should serve your time,” Rollins said. “If you’re mentally ill, I want you in a facility that gets you treatment. ... Other people just say, ‘Send everyone to jail.’ All I’m doing is sifting it a little differently.”