by Hugh McQuaid CTNewsJunkie
Lawmakers and advocates for incarcerated people called Wednesday for transparency in Connecticut’s prison system in response to a September incident at a prison in Newtown, which resulted in criminal charges against three correction officers.
Members of Stop Solitary CT joined lawmakers including Sen. Gary Winfield, co-chairman of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, to call on the state to improve oversight of the Department of Correction and hire a candidate to serve as an ombudsman to the prison system as required by a law passed last year.
The event was prompted by an incident at Garner Correctional Institution on Sept. 25, which led to 3rd Assault charges against three officers, Anthony Marlak, Joshua Johnson and Patrick McGoldrick.
On Wednesday, Barbara Fair, lead organizer of Stop Solitary CT, said video footage of the event showed an unnamed incarcerated man “brutally assaulted” by the officers and called on the state to improve oversight of the system, including through the hiring of an independent ombudsman required under a 2022 law.
“Legislators did their job. They passed a bill,” she said. “It even got funded. It’s been funded since 2022. We are getting ready to go into 2024 and we still don’t have an independent person that’s going to go inside the Department of Corrections and probably put some kind of reduction in the assaults that are happening on both — on staff and incarcerated people.”
According to the DOC, the agency placed the three officers on paid leave two days after the incident. State Police later filed arrest warrants for the officers, who each turned themselves in to Troop A in early November. All three were free on $20,000 bond, State Police said Wednesday.
Winfield, a Democrat from New Haven, said that although an ombudsperson may not have changed the incident at Garner, that person would help to illuminate how the state’s prison system is functioning.
“Clearly there’s a need for transparency in the system and an ombudsperson is part of the work that we’ve been doing to get that transparency,” Winfield said.
“We have to have real conversations about how this happens and why this happens,” Winfield said of the September incident, noting that the prison system was fraught with trauma. “People are going have explosions including prisoners acting out against guards and guards acting out against prisoners… We’ve got to do something about this system.”
The incident comes as the Correction Department works to address steep increases in assaults against staff members, which have been on the rise since 2019, and increases in the number of fights between members of the incarcerated population.
Following several high-profile staff assaults this summer, the agency convened a committee to make recommendations to increase safety and has been soliciting proposals for an independent consultant to review DOC policies.
The department has also been working to implement the provisions of recent legislation designed to reduce the use of solitary confinement in state prisons. Those efforts led to the creation of the ombudsman position as well as new requirements designed to increase the amount of out-of-cell time for incarcerated people.
Unions representing correctional employees have argued the new policies have caused unsafe working conditions. In a statement Wednesday, Mike Vargo, president AFSCME Local 1565, declined to comment on the pending charges facing the officers involved in the September incident.
“AFSCME Local 1565 supports our members’ right to due process,” Vargo said. “We respect the ongoing investigative process and await its completion. Until then, we will not comment further on this matter.”
Advocates including Fair did not discount the impact that increased staff assaults have had on the state prison systems, but argued they were accompanied by assaults on incarcerated individuals, which they said often went unreported.
Wednesday’s hour-long press conference was at times emotional as Fair and Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, told of the traumatic impact prison sentences had had on both their sons. They read letters from currently incarcerated people who said the system continued to subject them to dehumanizing conditions.
Fair urged state officials to quickly hire an ombudsperson and revealed she was among the candidates who had applied for the position. She said she interviewed with the state last month.
“There’s no better candidate to go in there and take a look at what’s going on, that’s not going to be bought by the system,” she said. “I think what they want is somebody they can buy.”
A spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont’s office said that an ombudsman would ultimately be selected by the governor after a Correction Advisory Committee provided him with a list of approved candidates. As of Wednesday, the panel had yet to provide Lamont with that list, the spokesperson said.