Archive for September 25, 2007
Emergency hearing on parole ban and unconstitutionality of overcrowding
Sep 25th
The Judiciary Committee will hold an emergency hearing on Gov. Rell’s parole ban on Monday. Since she refused to testify, they’ve asked DOC commissioner Theresa Lantz to testify instead. Here [pdf] is the letter inviting her. The crux:
In particular, the committee would like to know whether you anticipate there will be a surge in inmate population. We also want to know what the contingency plans the Governor has to protect corrections staff and host communities in the event there is a population surge beyond what can be safely accommodated in Connecticut’s correctional institutions.
The Governor has implied that her ban on parole of violent offenders is temporary. On Friday, she stated: “This policy, which follows the arrest Friday of a Connecticut parolee accused in Hartford carjacking, will remain in place until reforms of the parole process are complete.”
We also need to know what reforms of the parole process the Governor believes must be enacted by legislation and which reforms can be done by the administration through regulations. Once we have the administration’s definitive enumeration of legislative proposals, we can include them on the agenda for the Committee’s upcoming hearing on criminal justice reforms.
A bit too nice for my liking, but this is politics.
I’d like to point to yesterday’s decision by a Federal Judge in California, holding that jail officials violated the prisoners’ constitutional rights when they had them sleep on concrete floors because of chronic overcrowding. The LATimes piece is here. Connecticut’s prisons are already overflowing and if you don’t think that inmates here are sleeping on floors then you’re lying to yourself.
Another thing that irks me is the continued misreporting of the Cheshire accused. During Colin McEnroe’s afternoon show on WTIC, the news included this statement: “Both accused had extensive criminal records”. No, they did not. Hayes did, Komisarjevsky did not. I guess I’ll keep repeating it till people get it right.
Early morning criminal justice roundup
Sep 25th
The most interesting story is this one about lawmakers considering a proposal to limit probation to a 2-year term, down from the current 5-years.
The goal is to focus supervision on offenders during their first two years of probation, when most violations occur, said William Carbone, executive director of the state Court Support Services Division.
Nearly 90 percent of probation violations in the state occurred during the first two years, according to statistics presented yesterday during a hearing in Hartford.
The option would give offenders an incentive to turn their lives around and would reduce the number of people who go back to prison, Carbone said.
Now this is sensible legislation, which comes from the sentencing task force, which has studies these issues over time.
Judge Patrick Clifford, chief administrative judge for criminal matters, said judges should have the right to order probation terms longer than two years.
Longer terms might be warranted in cases in which larceny offenders need time to repay victims, Clifford said. But he agreed most people on probation don’t need more than three years.
“If the person hasn’t violated within two or three years, it’s kind of just waiting for them to make a mistake,” Clifford said.
Okay, enough of the good stuff. On to the depressing stuff.
More stories this morning on Gov. Rell’s parole ban, but this time with more substance. First up is the prison population shift. As noted yesterday, more than 1,200 non-violent inmates are being fast-tracked for parole to make room for the violent offenders who have been denied parole.
The next one says simply: Parole Review Affects Hundreds.
Nearly 40 percent of all parolees were serving sentences for drug offenses, which are not classified as violent, according to state records. But there are also hundreds of parolees completing sentences for killings, rapes, robberies and kidnapping. Murderers are no longer eligible for parole, but 60 inmates who committed murders before a 1981 change in the law are on parole.
In recent years, the number of parole violators back in prison at any one time has hovered between 400 and 500, state records show. But that may rise considerably with Rell’s crackdown.
“If we identify anyone in this review who has failed to follow the terms of their release – or if anyone currently on parole fails to do so in the future – we will revoke their parole and return them to prison to serve the balance of their sentence,” Rell said last weeek.
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