In a Boys & Girls Club not far from the State Capitol, the administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy renewed its push Wednesday to expand the reach of the juvenile court system, a reform endorsed by a leading criminal justice expert at Harvard and imitated by the states of Illinois, Massachusetts and Vermont.
second chance
Posted inJustice
A peek behind bars, and an invitation to reimagine prison
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.
Posted inJustice
House Democrats say Malloy’s bail reform bill is dead for 2016
House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, declined Thursday to call Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s bail reform legislation for a vote, effectively killing of the measure for 2016. Sharkey told reporters after a House Democratic caucus that legislators support the governor’s goal of ensuring that no one is jailed only for an inability to afford bail, but they had too many questions about his approach.
Posted inJustice
Criminal-justice reformer questions Malloy’s approach to bail
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposal to begin an overhaul of Connecticut’s bail system with the limited step of eliminating bail for non-violent misdemeanors is viewed by the head of a national criminal-justice reform group as a political compromise of questionable value.
Posted inJustice, Money, Politics
Looney says budget deal, ‘Second Chance’ are on for Thursday
The leader of the Connecticut Senate said Wednesday night he has the votes to pass Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s criminal justice reforms and last week’s budget deal when the Senate returns Thursday in special session. The House of Representatives has yet to schedule a vote.
Posted inPolitics
Outside budget spotlight, one of Malloy’s key bills languishes
Updated 1 a.m. Tuesday
The Senate delayed a vote Monday on Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s major criminal justice initiative, An Act Concerning a Second Chance Society, raising questions about whether it had sufficient Democratic votes to pass before the session ends at midnight Wednesday. Other bills were being held as leverage in budget talks.
Posted inJustice
Session Notes: See what Malloy saw in a German prison
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.
Posted inJustice
With broad support, bail reform seems inevitable
Pushed by a coalition that stretches across the political spectrum, reform is coming to Connecticut’s bail system. The only question seems to be how far and how fast the General Assembly is prepared to go.
Posted inJustice
Pew tracks sharp rise in ‘punishment rate’ in CT
As the General Assembly considers reforms intended to divert younger defendants from prison, a national study concludes that Connecticut moved farther than nearly every state in embracing harsher punishment over a 30-year period marked by soaring U.S. incarceration rates.
Posted inJustice
A new approach to prepping women to leave prison
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.
Posted inJustice, Politics
Malloy dubs bail, sentencing reforms as ‘Second Chance 2.0’
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy came to the Citadel of Love, a black church in the North End of Hartford, on Thursday to roll out “Second Chance 2.0,” a second round of proposals to negate the permanence of criminal mistakes, especially those committed by the young. He will ask the legislature next week to curtail bail for minor crimes, treat many defendants younger than 21 as juveniles and broaden the reach of a record-expunging youthful offender law.
Posted inNews
At Harvard, hints of what Malloy intends on justice reform
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is to present details on his plans for criminal justice reform Thursday in Hartford, but he shared his thoughts on bail reform and treating criminal defendants as juveniles until they turn 21 at Harvard. A preview on what’s to come this week.
Posted inJustice
Another Connecticut prison is bound for mothballs
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.
Posted inPolitics
A governor’s visit to a smokehouse that offers second chances
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy dropped in on Bear’s Smokehouse in Hartford on the day before Christmas for a low-key photo opportunity to promote his Second Chance initiatives and to thank the owners, Cheryl and Jamie “Bear” McDonald, for hiring ex-offenders. He stayed for the brisket.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Giving young offenders a second chance means system-wide reform
Early in my time as superintendent in New London, staff at one of our schools found a young teen nearly unconscious from a substance overdose, an empty bottle next to him. He had tried to commit suicide. Technically he should have been suspended and then expelled for a series of violations of district policies. But […]