The story of “Jane Doe,” the transgender teenager who has never been charged with a crime being sent to the Connecticut adult women’s prison, burned a path through the week of more predictable legislative and political news.
It’s being covered by news organizations across the country, sparking sentiment not just against the girl’s placement at York Correctional Institution, but vehemently, passionately against it.
In The Mirror this week, education/children’s issues reporter Jacqueline Rabe Thomas quoted the teen’s words from a court document, “I can feel myself growing more and more isolated, frustrated, and feeling alone in my current isolation.”
Editorials and op-ed pieces take DCF apart. Martha Stone, executive director of the Center for Children’s Advocacy, writes in The Mirror,
“The nation is shocked that Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families has sent an abused girl in its care – a girl facing no criminal charges – to an adult prison. I wish that I could be shocked, too. However, this move is another egregious example of a clear pattern of bad decisions regarding girls in state care.”
An editorial in the New Haven Register ends by saying, “In the meantime, this child — our child, because she is in the care of the state — needs help, not isolation in a prison cell.”
Meanwhile, a Courant story published Friday reports, “With criticism mounting each day a transgender girl stays in adult prison with no criminal charges, advocates and officials with the Department of Children and Families are starting to talk privately about getting the 16-year-old out of prison and crafting a suitable treatment program.”
Land of Milk and Money
You can’t see the issues for the political dough, flying left, right and center.
- A dozen Connecticut residents gave $800,000 to the Republican Governors Association in the first three months of 2014 — $250,000 from Linda McMahon alone, reported Capitol Bureau Chief Mark Pazniokas.
- Connecticut donors gave less — $340,000 — to the Democratic Governors group, Pazniokas wrote, but he noted that Gov. Dan Malloy helped the group raise $1.4 million from Nutmeggers in 2013.
- Two members of our all-Democratic U.S. House delegation – Jim Himes of the 4th and Elizabeth Esty of the 5th, also reported robust purses at the end of the first quarter: Himes raised $367,000, lifting his cash on hand to $1.4 million, while Esty pulled in $350,000, upping her cash on hand to over $1.1 million.
- Esty rival Mark Greenberg raised $26,000 and loaned his campaign another $120,900, bringing total loans to his campaign to more than $700,000.
- And, Washington writer Ana Radelat reported, defense companies’ political action committees are hyperactive. UTC’s PAC donated more than $1.1 million in the current campaign cycle, “and the same political giving is happening with General Dynamic’s PAC and the defense industry as a whole.”
Other stories in a busy week:
UConn’s 2,135 graduate assistants unionize;
DSS call center wait times drop, but two-thirds of callers still hanging up;
Medical fraud in CT costs feds millions of dollars — with interactive graphic: Medicare payout by provider;
CT legislative panel OKs contract with personal care attendants;
GOP budget scraps Malloy’s budget gimmicks, rebate — and credit for poor;
UConn’s Napier wins hunger games;
Could the ‘Shared Solar’ movement work in shady Connecticut?
Have a good weekend, and happy holidays to all.
Jenifer Frank, Editor, The Mirror