The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

As Connecticut legislators hashed out compromises in Hartford ahead of today’s special session devoted to criminal justice reform, residents outside the Whalley Avenue jail protested Gov. Jodi Rell’s parole ban and some of her proposals to fix what most agree is a broken system.

Both the ban and the proposed reform were prompted by the triple murder of a mother and her two daughters last summer in Cheshire. Two men on parole have been charged with the crime.

While decrying the horror of the Cheshire killings — which took place in the suburbs — speakers asked why prior murders, in cities such as New Haven, had not prompted the same outrage and calls for reform. And they said they rejected two of Rell’s proposed solutions, which have also found vocal opposition among state Democrats.

One would mandate life imprisonment with parole possible after 30 years for anyone convicted of three violent felonies, a so-called “three-strikes” law. The other would make the invasion of an occupied home a violent felony, regardless of whether the perpetrator thought anyone was home.

Chris Cooper, a spokesman for Gov. Rell, said the governor’s set of 18 proposals, including the two over which there is contention, is a “very straightforward public safety issue.” He said there is no time table on the parole suspension and that Rell will lift it once she has confidence that reforms to protect the public have been put in place.

Cooper explained that the home invasion provision is necessary to ensure that every intruder does not simply claim to the prosecutor that he or she did not know anyone was home in order to avoid the tougher penalties. Among other things, Rell’s proposal also calls for minimum five-year terms for burglaries committed with a firearm or at night.

But speakers at last night’s vigil said the parole ban and the governor’s proposals only exacerbated an overcrowded prison system. Prison-guard unions in Connecticut have said they are severely understaffed, the Associated Press reports, though protestors noted with some irony that conditions are much worse for inmates than guards.

One speaker noted that a new inmate with tuberculosis was brought in by guards with masks and then promptly dumped in a crowded cell. Shelton Tucker, a member of the PAI coalition, told those gathered outside the correction center walls that he’d heard of maggots crawling out of drains in the bathrooms.

Vigil attendees argued that prison reform should focus on reducing the populations in prison, whose conditions many described as unconscionable — and not on building new ones.

But, added Tucker — who said he has spent time in prison — the community needs to do its part as well: “[Prison] cannot be seen as a rite of passage. We have to be better parents … [and] fight like hell to stay outside.”

Khalil Iskarous, also of PAI, explained how drug laws unfairly target primarily lower-income and minority populations, who tend to live in more densely populated areas.

He said laws imposing stricter penalties for drug possession within 1,500 feet of a school are effective everywhere within the New Haven city limits — except the Yale Bowl. Suburban residents, where the schools are spread further apart, do not need to worry about these laws, he said.

Representative Mike Lawlor (D-99), who has publicly recounted the poor and overcrowded prison conditions he has witnessed on tour at the Whalley Avenue jail, said the goal of the special session would be to find ways of taking nonviolent offenders out of the prison system.

“There’s a lot in [the proposed bills] on diversion, reentry and treatment. All of those things are certainly cheaper than prisons, and more effective, for some people, so we can focus prison resources on the dangerous ones,” Lawlor said. “Many convicts are mentally ill or homeless, so you can’t just push them out the door.”

Rell has asked that any proposals “carrying a price tag” be delayed until a Feb. 6 budget session, her spokesman said, and that tomorrow’s session focus solely on changes to the penal code, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and protesting victims’ rights.

But Lawlor disagrees: “We have to get these resources out there immediately.”

Still, he said, there is bipartisan consensus on at least 85 percent of the proposed changes.

Back outside the jail though, the concerns of the protestors, some of whom had friends or family inside, were closer to home and on a system they said had failed them. Some wondered aloud about the injustice they said they face each day: how the color of their skin makes them targets for drug or weapon searches, or how their children were in jail on minor drug charges even as Yale students receive a free pass.

In closing the hour-long vigil, many also asked why more people were not out on the frigid night with them. Like Dr. King’s efforts, they said, this must be a day-in and day-out struggle.

It is easy, some said, for clergy members and community supporters to take a stand from the comfortable and warm indoors.

“If our churches don’t get out here,” one protester asked, “why are we going in there?”
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23046

Posted on Tue, Jan 22, 2008
Protesters rally outside Whalley Ave. jail
By Abram Katz, Register Staff

NEW HAVEN — About 50 protesters braved low temperatures Monday evening outside the New Haven Correctional Center on Whalley Avenue to denounce prison conditions, decry proposed stiffer criminal penalties, and invoke the name of Martin Luther King Jr. in a campaign to reduce crime in black neighborhoods.

Representatives of People Against Injustice, the Committee Against the Parole Ban, New Haven Family Alliance, and other groups, spoke through a megaphone, hoping that prisoners in the jail could hear them.

“What do we do when we’re under attack? Stand up and fight back!” the group erupted at several points in the hourlong candle-light vigil on Country Street, off Whalley Avenue.

Bundled up against the 24-degree cold, participants held candles shielded in paper cups. Only street lights illuminated the event.
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Barbara Fair of People Against Injustice said, “We’re here to bring hope to people behind bars.” She criticized overcrowding in the jail, contending that 55 prisoners have to share a single toilet.

“It’s deplorable and inhumane. We’re here to give voice to the invisible. All of Martin Luther King’s dreams have not been fulfilled. Schools are still segregated. Housing is still segregated. The gains made in the 1960s have been lost. The reality is that this fight is for our children,” Feir said.

Nikki Brown, also of People Against Injustice, said recent revelations of allegedly criminal activity in the Police Department probably means that many people incarcerated in the jail have done nothing wrong.

Speakers did not minimize the break-in and homicides in Cheshire that spurred the three-strikes and no-parole bills in the General Assembly, but said city children are felled with little notice or response.

“Our babies are being killed on the street all of the time. The crime in Cheshire led to the ‘end of parole’ law,” Brown said.

Brown’s son, Shelton Tucker, said, “Martin Luther King’s dream was for justice and that has not been realized here. ‘Parole’ and ‘three strikes’ are horrible, horrible. We must fight, fight and keep fighting.”

Tucker said that if drugs and guns were eliminated from New Haven’s streets, so would most crime.

Brown said, “This is not about ‘one day.’ We’re not going to let Dr. King’s dream die.”

http://www.nhregister.com/WebApp/appmanager/JRC/BigDaily;jsessionid=MvJ5HVyLnhyvLzTG7Mp7rTfygJL7yjhTdwL8nsscq32LXnsv4625!1735560039?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_article&r21.pgpath=%2FNHR%2FHome&r21.content=%2FNHR%2FHome%2FTopStoryList_Story_1454188