Members of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus on Tuesday gave impassioned speeches both in favor of and against a bill that would expand eligibility for parole to people who committed crimes at a young age.  

The bill, which the House of Representatives ultimately bypassed without bringing to a vote, received a favorable vote in the Senate last week with all Democrats except one voting in favor. 

Leaders in the House of Representatives initially told reporters on Tuesday that they would not bring the measure up for discussion at all. As initially written, Senate Bill 503 would have expanded eligibility for parole to anyone under age 26 at the time of the crime.

The bill needed 76 votes to pass that chamber. Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said during a press conference that the bill had 77 votes at last count, and that some of those votes were “squishy.” This meant that the vote count depended on attendance and possible amendments — particularly one that would make people who had committed sex crimes ineligible for the expanded parole, regardless of their age. 

But leaders said that with less than 48 hours before the legislative session ends on Wednesday night, they don’t have enough time, and they didn’t have a wide enough margin of support to bring the bill onto the floor without amending it. 

Later Tuesday afternoon, members of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus stepped off the House floor and huddled, angry that the House leaders had decided not to move forward with the bill. Some members were offended on behalf of Rep. Kadeem Roberts, D-Norwalk, a major proponent of the bill who had not been told in advance that House leaders had decided to kill the proposal. 

“Folks were upset. They felt as though with all the work done, it should not have ended the way it felt like it was ending, with a statement at a press conference,” said Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven.

Roberts told CT Mirror that the bill was supposed to be called on Monday, and that he believed they had the votes for it. 

“I think time was a situation, but at this point, this bill is so important that I felt like we needed to just run the bill,” said Roberts. 

Roberts said he had written an amendment to the bill that would have phased in the expanded parole for people who had committed crimes up to age 23 in 2026, and then expanded to those who committed crimes up through age 25 in 2029. The amendment also removed people who had committed sex crimes from being eligible under the bill. 

Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, chair of the BPRC, said they obtained an agreement from the speaker to call the bill for at least a brief debate, with no promise of it getting a vote.

“I think it’s important for people to hear the stories that happen for these folks — on both sides, by the way. We have members in our own caucus that don’t necessarily support the bill, who have their own victim stories,” Felipe said. “We want them to be able to tell those stories, but we also want to tell all the good this bill can do.”

Waiting for a vote

Current law, which was passed in 2023, allows people who committed crimes when they were 21 years old or younger to become eligible for parole after having served 60% of a sentence of less than 50 years, or 30 years of a sentence of more than 50 years. But the bill only applies to people who were sentenced before Oct. 1, 2005.

This bill would eliminate that cutoff date and raise the age from 21 to 25 years old or younger for early parole eligibility. The bill would also require judges to consider scientific evidence around the brain development of people in their 20s when sentencing someone who committed an A or B felony as a young adult.  

Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, said during the press conference Tuesday morning that he felt people didn’t fully understand how the bill worked. 

“Say you’re somebody who was sentenced to 50 years in prison. You still have to serve 30 years in prison before you’re even eligible for parole. But there seems to be sort of this bogeyman fear out there that it just means people are going to be let out right after they’ve committed some sort of heinous crime, and that’s not the case,” said Stafstrom. 

Stafstrom said that a young man who might have committed a murder at the age of 22 could be a very different person by the time he reached age 52. 

“ When that person is 52, if they can show they’re a completely different person, why shouldn’t we give them the opportunity to apply for parole? Nobody’s saying they’re going to get out of jail necessarily, but at least have the opportunity to apply for it,” he said.  But he acknowledged that it was difficult to educate people about the bill, and that it takes time. 

On the floor, Stafstrom gave several examples of people who attended a public hearing on the bill in March, people who were formerly incarcerated and had gone on to get college degrees.

Over and over, in both spoken and written testimony, individuals during the public hearing recounted how they had committed crimes through a foolish and impulsive act at a young age. Some described having been raised in difficult circumstances with little guidance. They all recounted how, in prison, they had made efforts to further their education and participated in rehabilitative programs.  

Earlier in the day, advocates had expressed dismay after hearing that the bill was not being called for a vote, and questioned whether leadership ever intended to call the bill at all. 

“I think [the bill] earned a vote,” said Bryan Jordan, who runs the nonprofit Guided By Purpose Initiative and has advocated for the bill’s passage.  

Jordan said people came out to the hearing and told painful stories of the cost of incarceration on their families or their own experiences having spent two or three decades in prison. He said experiences like this made it difficult to convince people that their voices mattered, and that they should come out and vote or participate in other ways in the democratic process. 

“At the end of the day, it was a political game at the expense of, I would say, our most vulnerable citizens,” said Jordan. 

Redemption

On the House floor, many of the BPRC members told personal stories of loved ones who were incarcerated for a period of time, or of their own experiences as victims of violence. 

Rep. Anthony Nolan, D-New London, said the possibility of being eligible for parole would make it more likely for incarcerated people to participate in education, job training, substance abuse treatment and other programs. 

“This benefits everyone. It creates a safer correctional facility. It reduces violence. It encourages accountability, and it creates the likelihood that individuals who do return home come back prepared to contribute rather than re-offend,” said Nolan. 

Nolan and others pointed out that many people who committed crimes had grown up in situations of trauma and family instability, and he noted that the legislature did not always invest in the programs that could help that population.

 Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, said that growing up in Bridgeport, he had neighbors and friends who lived in turmoil. 

“ They were not raised in conditions that taught them how to be respectful members of society, but taught them how to be survivors in a society that was trying to get rid of them. It’s an important distinction,” said Felipe.  

Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, said that when the legislature decided to move 16- and 17-year-olds from adult court into the juvenile justice system, the population of 18- to 21-year-olds who were incarcerated dropped significantly because they were able to provide people with support at a younger age. 

“You look at the children, you look at the adults. And you say, we’re not into coddling criminals. But maybe we need to find out why they got where they are. Maybe we need to look into their lives a little bit deeper. They are human beings just like you and me,” said Walker. 

She also noted the lack of services for people leaving incarceration.

“Adult incarceration is rooted in retribution and hate and trying to make somebody understand their place in society, and then they get out and we have nothing for them,” said Walker. 

Rep. Trenee McGee, D-West Haven, said the bill had opened up a conversation among the Black and Puerto Rican caucus about the nature of forgiveness and redemption. 

“We’ve created a society of selective redemption, but that’s not what redemption is. Redemption is grace. It’s another chance,” she said. 

Republicans largely opposed the bill, saying that allowing people to become eligible for early parole based on their age made no sense, and that the bill ignored the needs of victims of crimes. 

“When people are convicted of a crime, they have plenty of opportunities to receive good time credits, to receive parole reviews, and to think now that we’re going to go even further and ignore the victims — to let people get out of prison based on an arbitrary number —is something that we just shouldn’t be doing in this state,” said House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, during a press conference. 

Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, said that while it was good that people were able to change while incarcerated, they needed to focus on helping the victims. 

“When people get sentenced, there is a sense of closure. Many times it’s helpful when the family knows — those remaining family members know — that justice has some term to it with no chance of parole until a certain time. The legislation before us unpacks [this]. That’s not good. That’s not good public policy. It’s almost like teasing the family,” said Fishbein. 

Several people from the Black and Puerto Rican caucus also opposed the bill. 

Rep. Minnie Gonzalez, D-Hartford, said she remembered the “nightmare” it was in Hartford when the gangs were very active. She said her own two sons ended up joining a gang in Hartford, despite her best efforts to keep them inside, and that she found herself in the middle of the night going to some of the most dangerous areas in Hartford to look for them. 

Gonzalez said that while she believed in redemption, murder causes permanent harm. 

“Rehabilitation is not guaranteed. While some individuals may change, others may not. The risk is too high to get it wrong,” she said. 

But Gonzalez agreed with the need for job training, housing and mental health services for people who were coming out of incarceration and into the community. 

Rep. Travis Simms, D-Norwalk, said he’d lost multiple people to gun violence, including his twin brother, who was robbed and shot at 18, and his oldest brother, who was shot on Christmas Eve in 2007 when he asked two young men around age 25 to stop smoking PCP outside of their mother’s home. 

“Where was their compassion? Where was their sympathy?” Simms said of the shooters. “This happened to my brother 20 years ago. My family is still reeling over this.” 

Simms said he was conflicted about the bill, and that he believed in second chances. But murder, he said, wasn’t something you could come back from. 

“I don’t think anyone deserves a second chance when they decide to make a decision so cruel so harsh and so unsympathetic to the individual,” said Simms. He called the bill “a slap on the wrist and a slap in the face to victims and their families.” 

Rep. Larry Butler, D-Waterbury, who lost his brother to murder, questioned why the House of Representatives wasn’t passing a bill that would help victims’ families. He also rejected the arguments, made by many of the bill’s proponents, that neuroscience shows that the brain does not fully develop until the age of 25. 

“I’m not buying any of that. I’m not buying any of it, ” Butler said. “If we say that we are going to blindly give a blanket for poor decisions, fatal decisions, for people up until the age of 25, we are doomed.” 

Butler said he’d be happy to support people returning to society after incarceration, but they needed to complete their time incarcerated. 

Roberts said that people of color were overrepresented in prison. Like others, he noted the need to address root causes like poverty, but said lawmakers were not doing that, and he said that people receiving money for youth violence prevention in their communities needed to “hold ourselves accountable.” 

He recounted a story of when he was 16 and a friend of his committed murder at a house party. At age 18, that friend was shot in the head multiple times while Roberts was in the car with him. 

“Every day from 16 to 21 years old, it was trauma back and forth in my city,” said Roberts. 

When Roberts was 21, his other best friend murdered the person who killed their friend, and is currently serving a sentence of 35 years to life.  

“We want to go to war all the time about education funding, but we never go to war about funding for the nonprofits and for the kids who need it,” he said. 

Roberts said that if the bill were passed, only 3% of incarcerated people would be eligible.

“We’re not talking about millions of people coming home today, guys. And we’re not even talking about them coming home. We’re talking about them actually being given an opportunity,” he said.

Ritter said during the Tuesday morning press conference that he expected the bill to pass next year. But Roberts told CT Mirror that Senate leadership was changing and upcoming elections could change the composition of the House. 

“This was the year. For me, this was the year,” he said.

CT Mirror reporter Mark Pazniokas contributed to this story.