A year after his appointment as ombuds for the Department of Correction, DeVaughn Ward has a backlog of 388 complaints and no staff to help address them. 

Ward said during a meeting of the Correction Advisory Committee last Thursday that he was heartbroken he’s been unable to respond to many of the incarcerated people who reach out to him. 

“It’s a horrible feeling. Every single day I hear some type of atrocity that’s going on in a facility, and I don’t have the tools or the staff to be able to deal with it,” Ward said. 

Ward told the Connecticut Mirror he’s been asking the state’s Department of Administrative Services and the Office of Policy and Management, the agencies responsible for hiring and for the state’s budget, to hire staff for the office since last November. 

Initially, there was only enough money to hire two people. The Office of Policy and Management had approved those positions, an agency spokesperson said.

But hiring plans changed in June when the legislature voted to increase the budget of the ombuds office from $400,000 annually to $800,000. The additional funding allowed for a total of five positions — an administrative assistant, a clerk typist, an associate ombuds, an assistant ombuds focused on investigations and a nurse consultant. At Ward’s request, hiring for the two original positions was discontinued in favor of the new positions.

Ward said that two of those positions, the administrative assistant and the clerk typist, have since been posted on the state’s employment website and the postings closed last week. He said he hopes the positions will be filled by October, so the office can begin to address the backlog in complaints.  

Ward said not being able to answer complaints jeopardizes his relationship with the people he serves. “The confidence in the office amongst the incarcerated community is just being eroded. And that’s very unfortunate,” he said. 

The lack of a nurse consultant poses a particular problem, Ward said, since he is required to submit a report to state lawmakers by Dec. 1 on the quality of healthcare in the correctional facilities. Without that position, Ward said he did not believe it would be possible for him to meet that deadline. 

Chris Collibee, spokesman for the Office of Policy and Management, said the nurse consultant position required the creation of a new job class, which the administration is currently working with labor relations to create. 

“The administration remains committed to ensuring this office has positions that the legislature has approved and that all state labor agreements are followed for job classifications,” said Collibee, who noted he was also speaking for the Department of Administrative Services and the governor’s office. 

Collibee said the assistant ombuds position had been approved by the office. He underscored that his agency must follow the state’s established hiring process in recruiting for the positions. 

Leigh Appleby, spokesperson for the Department of Administrative Services, said hundreds of people have applied for the administrative assistant and clerk typist positions, and those positions could be filled as early as October. He said the agency is preparing to submit paperwork for approval of the associate ombuds role, which will be an appointed position.

During their meeting with Ward Thursday, members of the Correction Advisory Committee also expressed frustration and confusion about the delays in hiring. 

“It’s very hard for me, personally, to understand why, after a year, there is no progress here,” said Tadhg Dooley, the co-chair of the committee and an attorney with Wiggin and Dana LLP.

Dooley’s fellow co-chair, Marisol Garcia, told CT Mirror she thought the delay was “ridiculous” and that it was indicative of the state’s priorities around criminal justice. 

“This office has had struggles since its inception for support,” she said. (Garcia is also a member of CT Mirror’s Board of Directors.)

In a call with CT Mirror, Ward called the bureaucratic delays “death by a thousand cuts” for his office. He expressed frustration that DOC had been able to hire a number of correctional officers, but he was unable to hire a single position in his office. 

According to Andrius Banevicius, a spokesperson for the Department of Correction, the department has hired 155 correctional officers since July 1.