Civil Rights Lawyer Krayeske Tops List of Finalists for Prison Ombudsman Position

by Hugh McQuaid

Attorney Ken Krayeske topped a list of three candidates recommended Thursday to the governor as finalists to serve as a new correctional ombudsman to advocate on behalf of people incarcerated in Connecticut prisons. 
The advisory panel voted late Thursday to send a ranked list of finalists to Gov. Ned Lamont, who will ultimately select one of the three candidates for the position.
Krayeske — a longtime civil rights attorney who has represented incarcerated people in litigation against the Department of Correction — took the top spot in the group’s recommendations. He was followed by Barbara Fair, a veteran activist behind the advocacy group Stop Solitary CT, and Hilary Carpenter, an attorney and assistant public defender.

Lamont’s office had yet to formally receive the recommendations as of Friday morning, but Julia Bergman, a spokesperson for the governor, said he would make an appointment within 30 days of their arrival. 
“Upon receiving the list of candidates, the Governor’s Office will conduct a thorough review and fulfill the statutory obligation of appointing someone to the position,” Bergman said. “The governor thanks the committee for their evaluation of these candidates.”
The panel announced the rankings after a closed door vote that followed a multi-hour meeting and public hearing in the Legislative Office Building, which included testimony from all three candidates. 

Tadhg Dooley, an attorney who serves as the advisory panel’s co-chair, said the group was impressed by the first-year plan Krayeske articulated for setting up the new oversight office on a limited, $400,000 budget, which members argued fell well short of the required support.
“What was meaningful to us about Mr. Krayeske’s application was the amount of thought and detail he had put into his plan for the first year of the office,” Dooley said. “That’s going to be really important for the first person to hold this office, to sort of get it up and running.” 
The committee quizzed all three candidates at length. For Krayeske, a prolific litigator, and Fair, an outspoken critic of the prison system, many of the questions centered on their ability to work with the same state and Department of Correction officials with whom they have clashed for years. 

Krayeske said he hoped to win the ombudsman job, in part because he hoped to find a better way to affect change in the state’s prison system than “constantly fighting.”
“Look, my job is to be an advocate. My job is to be a relentless hammer. That’s what I do, that’s what a litigator is,” he said. “An ombudsman is not a relentless hammer. An ombudsman is a long tradition of building bridges.” 
Much of the public input was directed at Fair, whose advocacy work helped drive passage of a series of prison policies, which, among other things, created the ombudsman position to provide more oversight of Connecticut’s correctional system. 

Fair received support from many current and formerly incarcerated people, who credited her as an unwavering voice for the state’s prison population. She also received staunch opposition from correctional staff, who said she had demonstrated a strong bias against those working in state prisons. 
Fair told the committee she was concerned with the welfare of both incarcerated people and prison staff. She said she was unbothered by the opposition to her appointment. 
“When I know I’m on the right side of justice and I’m doing the right thing, there’s going to be people who are on the wrong side of justice that are not going to like what I’m doing,” she said. “I don’t let that bother me. I wear that as a badge of honor. It tells me I’m doing the right thing.” 

Meanwhile, Carpenter, whose experience includes work with the Innocence Project and advocacy to abolish the death penalty in Connecticut, said she had devoted her life working on behalf of incarcerated and indigent clients. 
Carpenter stressed the importance of discerning patterns in the concerns expressed by those in prisons, and found certain issues repeated with regularity including problems accessing mental health treatment, medical care, and work opportunities. 
She told the advisory committee that she had a proven ability to work productively within the system, which the ombudsman will be charged with overseeing. 

“I’ve maintained professional relationships with department personnel, knowing that burning bridges will not help with current and future clients, but I am not afraid to speak truth to power, especially when it comes to my clients,” she said.