The CT Mirror (https://ctmirror.org/tag/scott-semple/)
The recent birth of a baby in an inmate’s cell – as well as large budget cuts, a lack of outside oversight, and a history of complaints – have fueled concerns among some legislators and civil rights groups about the quality of medical and mental health care being provided to Connecticut’s inmates, most of whom eventually will be released. Continue Reading →
Inmates released in 2014 were arrested, convicted and sentenced for new crimes at lower rates than past groups, continuing a positive trend in those post-prison outcomes, but returns to prison are not declining at the same rate. Continue Reading →
Connecticut is closing the Enfield Correctional Institution, a prison that opened in 1962 as the Osborn Prison Farm and nearly doubled in size by 1987, the early years of a stunning sixfold increase in a state inmate population that peaked in 2008. Continue Reading →
First Lady Cathy Malloy interrupted an impromptu interview Wednesday at the two-day conference she and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy are co-hosting, Reimagining Justice, to say goodbye to a friend, Tracie Bernardi. The two women hugged, and Bernardi said, “I love you.” They met years ago on Malloy’s visit to prison. Bernardi was doing time for murder. Continue Reading →
Our Q&A with Alexandra Frank of the Vera Institute of Justice about her organization’s partnership with the Connecticut Department of Corrections to reimagine prison. Her project is the new special unit at Cheshire Correctional to deal with the most disruptive demographic in prisons: young adults ages 18 to 25. Continue Reading →
CHESHIRE — Warden Scott Erfe once asked a 20-year-old inmate with a habit of assaulting prison classroom staff, “What is your malfunction?” He is about to host a project to test the notion that pretty much every 18-to-25-year-old inmate has a malfunction: a brain that doesn’t mature until 25. Continue Reading →
The correction commissioner picked up his plastic spork and dug into his first prison meal since his days as a warden. Up and down the row of fixed tables and stools, an economist, a banker, a teacher, a fire chief, a former city councilman, a church worker and others did the same, their introduction to how 1,400 men do time at Osborn Correctional Institution, a prison that opened 53 years ago. Continue Reading →
Edwin Glass went to prison with the expectation he would serve 51 months of a 60-month sentence, the 85-percent standard for a violent crime. He ended up doing 56 months, or 93 percent. Does that make Connecticut tough or lenient? Continue Reading →
Connecticut’s prison population briefly fell below 15,000 inmates this month for the first time in nearly 20 years, a drop Gov. Dannel P. Malloy attributes to the bipartisan passage last year of lowering penalties for drug possession, a reform aimed at reducing incarceration without compromising public safety. Continue Reading →
CBS’s 60 Minutes takes viewers Sunday on the same tour of Germany’s prison system that inspired Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and his correction commissioner, Scott Semple, to try a different way to treat younger defendants and inmates. Continue Reading →
EAST LYME — Until three weeks ago, 90 percent of Amy Gully’s daily routine in York Correctional, the state’s only prison for women, was staying in a cell, marking days off a 30-month sentence for embezzlement and waiting her turn to make a phone call home. She told Gov. Dannel P. Malloy that her new routine is dawn-to-dusk activity aimed at preparing her to go home. Continue Reading →
Dannel P. Malloy is a socially progressive Democratic governor trying to make prison a place for second chances. Scott Semple is a Republican who came of age as a correction official when the primary mission of U.S. prisons was to punish. Together, they are trying to remake criminal justice in Connecticut. Continue Reading →
EAST LYME – The Connecticut prison system shrinks again this weekend when the final two dozen inmates depart the Niantic Annex, a section of a century-old complex of prisons that was reopened in 2011. Continue Reading →
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy thanked his audience of veterans for their service in the preservation of liberty. Malloy caught himself and said, “That sounds a little weird, talking about freedom in a facility like this.” Some of the men nodded. A few smiled. All were prison inmates. Continue Reading →
In a major policy speech Friday at a criminal-justice symposium, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed overhauling Connecticut’s bail system and making the state the first in the U.S. to treat defendants as juveniles up to age 20. Both proposals could significantly lower incarceration rates. Continue Reading →