a public defender

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If it’s January, it must be time to get ready for the special session of the legislature. The only focus, as everyone probably knows, is how to fix the state’s criminal justice system which is so horribly broken. I mean, it’s in tatters. So much so that it’s almost a miracle that the wheels haven’t come off, inmates aren’t roaming the streets of our city in packs hunting little babies for Satanic rituals and the plague isn’t upon us.

So the Democrats released their proposals yesterday and the Governor followed up with her own today. I’ll mention the choice ones:

1. A new crime of home invasion, which would be a violent crime. It basically reads like this: “A home invasion occurs when an individual unlawfully enters or remains in a dwelling which is occupied and such dwelling is located in any of Connecticut’s affluent suburbs. For the rest of you, it’s still a burglary.”

2. Re-working the “three strikes law” to make it more…workable. The Governor goes further and provides for a mandatory life sentence for third time violent felony offenders, which cannot be reviewed until 30 years have passed. The Dems want to make it a 25 year minimum, putting it on par with murder. There goes incentive not to kill.

3. The Dems want to establish tougher and more secure re-entry procedures for offenders returning to the community as they complete their sentence. The Governor doesn’t think re-entry is important enough to be considered during the special session, so she leaves it for the regular session. Good job. If we don’t ever let ‘em out, we don’t have to worry about re-entry!

4. The Governor then goes overboard with some bizarre victim amendments, like victims have to be notified before a plea offer is made and family members of the victim are also now officially victims. Whatever.

By the way, I don’t see a single proposal for increasing funding for Corrections (not that it isn’t the biggest money hog ever) or Correctional officers or more training or… I know…prevention. No, no. That’s too damn liberal. Sorry.

So there you have it. A whole lot of nonsense that still leaves a horrible taste in my mouth because this “urgency” came about only because three white people from an affluent suburb were killed. Yeah, I said it.*

I’m considering turning comments off for this post, but I’ll leave them on for now. Be warned, though. I have an itchy trigger finger on this one. I will close comments if I feel like it, without warning. It’s my blog. Deal with it.

*Now before any of you go saying “Oh you don’t care about people you killerhugger” and “how can you say that. three people died! it’s horrible!”, let me re-iterate (meaning I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again) that I don’t condone violence or crime. Obviously. No one does. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. So please understand that.

A couple of other interesting articles worth reading:

First, this guest op-ed in the Courant, title “More Prisons Wrong Approach“, which argues that

Although these bills claim to reform the justice system, most of them propose a more extreme form of the existing system, which over-funds imprisonment and de-funds education, health care, welfare, basic human services and job training.

The most prominent of these bills, proposed by Rep. Michael P. Lawlor of East Haven and Sen. Andrew J. McDonald of Stamford, proposes to spend $260 million on two new prisons, which would cost $400 million in bonding over 20 years.

The same bill proposes to spend $1.77 million on counseling. This is a ratio of 100-1 of spending on prisons, as opposed to people. This is not a reform bill. It is a more extreme version of policies that have already destroyed tens of thousands of lives and families and decimated many communities.

To see the devastating effects of the already existing harsh prison laws in Connecticut, we need look no farther than our state capital.

Each imprisoned generation, under our system of priorities, begets an even larger imprisoned generation. At some point in the past, one out of 10 children in Hartford had a parent in prison. Harsher sentencing laws were passed.

Now one out of six children in Hartford has a parent in prison. Based on the trends we see, harsher policies — more prisons, “three strikes” laws, mandatory minimum sentences and parole bans — will lead to a situation where one out of two children in Hartford will have a parent in prison. And soon the statisticians will start to count the number of children in Hartford with both parents in prison. Will this lead to greater safety? No.

and second, there’s rumblings from the ACLU on prison overcrowding:

The American Civil Liberties Union is raising questions about what it calls potentially dangerous and inhumane conditions from prison overcrowding in Connecticut.

The civil liberties organization is asking Connecticut prison officials for a response to complaints about conditions.

The ACLU letter to state Correction Commissioner Theresa C. Lantz warns about alleged unconstitutional treatment of prison inmates.

Seems like we don’t learn from our own lawsuits.

Given that the legislature has voted to return in a special session this upcoming January to discuss the legislative proposals to fix the criminal justice system, the “state” asked Central Connecticut State University to conduct a study on the impact a three strikes law would have had in CT.

The study, which examined the murder convictions in 2004, found that out of the 49 convictions in the State, only 6 of the defendants would have been subject to a three-strikes law. The study also showed that 60 percent of the 49 people convicted of murder statewide in 2004 had no record of previous violence.

“I don’t know that there is a proposal that would have stopped what happened in Cheshire,” said the study’s author, Stephen Cox, chairman of CCSU’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. “Common burglars just do not turn into murderers who sexually assault people.”

The study’s results do not necessarily mean a three-strikes law has no value, experts said; six of the convicted murderers could have been in prison for life under California’s three-strikes law, and they wouldn’t have gotten the chance to kill.

“As a policy analyst, I’d say that’s a small number,” Cox said. “But as a victim advocate, I’d say it’s huge.”

The study found that 28 of the 49 murderers had been arrested at least three times before killing someone but mostly for nonviolent crimes or petty offenses.

Twelve, nearly 25 percent, had never been arrested before. About half the murders involved domestic violence.

It would be impossible to predict who of the general population, without a record, is going to commit a murder. The question then becomes, do we focus on the 3% that would have come within a 3-strikes law or the 50% that wouldn’t?

“A three-strikes law will make us feel better,” state Rep. Gail Hamm, D-Middletown, said during a special Judiciary Committee public hearing last month. “But it won’t address the revolving-door criminals. What are we going to do with the people who are getting in and out (of prison) all the time?”

Hamm also touched on the unpredictability of homicide.

“Anybody can walk into anybody’s home at any time and kill them,” she said.

Still, it is common for people to believe they can predict and prevent tragedies, experts said.

“The notion that you can predict events based on someone’s behavior through legislation is mythic,” said Todd Fernow, a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law and director of the school’s Criminal Law Clinic. “It comes from a natural human tendency to believe you are in control of things.”

“There’s no silver bullet that’s going to give us the accuracy we’d like to have and the public would like to see us have,” said William Carbone, head of the state’s Court Support Services Division.

A day after the judiciary committee held a public hearing on 15 proposals submitted by various people on how to reform Connecticut’s criminal justice system, I finally have the time to sit down and put my thoughts down on paper screen (I know you’ve all been dying to hear from me on this).

I see this as a golden opportunity going to waste. If the legislature is going to conduct a comprehensive reform of the system, then they need to do it right.

Undoubtedly, there is a class of defendants that poses a very real risk to society and public safety and if there is to be any legislation that strengthens penalties for these folks, then it needs to be tailored very specifically to affect only those people. It is very clear, despite any protestations to the contrary, that these hearings are a direct response to Cheshire and Cheshire only. I think legislators might have a bit more credibility if they admitted that at the outset.

Having said that, I have to disagree with the prevailing sentiment that there are serious offenders out there getting community service. It just isn’t happening. If you spent any time talking to prosecutors or public defenders in any of the Part A courts, you will know that the sentences for first, second or third time offenders of serious felonies are in double digits, usually starting with a 2 or 3.

If there are any hippie liberal judges in this State handing out reprimands instead of jail sentences on a daily basis, please let me know. I don’t know of any and I bet if you ask any practitioner in the State, they couldn’t name one either. The reality is that sentences are high and sentences are harsh. Which is how we arrived at the prison overcrowding problem in the first place.

Another common theme in the proposals has been mandatory minimums. I was very glad to see the Judicial Branch, led by Chief Judge Quinn and Judge Pat Clifford, come out against this. Defendants are people and should be treated on an individual basis. A Federal sentencing guideline type scheme is the last thing we want in this State. It removes any sort of authority vested in judges and under the guise of treating people equally, treats them more unequally than before. Judges should have the authority to consider the specific facts of each case and each defendant and determine the appropriate sentence. Again, there are no liberal judges in this State. Honestly.

Which brings me to why I think this could become a missed opportunity. While the legislature is considering the strengthening of punishment for a certain class of people, it is must also consider how to deal with overcrowding and how we came to it in the first place. It must deal with the Gov.’s promise of releasing non-violent offenders to make room and the wisdom in that. It must deal with ensuring that no one, not a single offender commits another offense upon release.

That is truly in the interests of public safety. Almost every inmate will at some point be released. In order to keep the public safe, the legislature must ensure that these people have no incentive to reoffend. Rehabilitation has long since been abandoned as a goal of corrections and the legislature should use this opportunity to rectify that. When an inmate is released after a prolonged period of incarceration, without an education, without any employable skills and definitely without any money, it is no surprise that a return to a life of crime is a foregone conclusion. This is not necessarily because they like crime, but mostly because they have no other choice. Left in the middle of one of CT’s large cities, with no hope for the future; no job to provide an income, no skills with which to obtain a job, it is very tempting for people to return to the quick and easy: selling drugs, robbing a bodega, etc. This only further puts public safety at risk. If we want to avoid that; if we want to give people a reason not to reoffend, them it is our responsibility to provide them with the tools to do so.

More halfway houses, more educations programs, more vocational programs will not only be a more effective use of money right now, but it will also pay great dividends in the future in terms of lower law enforcement costs and greater public safety.

More prisons is not the answer. Preventing people from going back to prison is a more logical and useful solution.

For other people’s takes on this, read CTLP’s posts here and here, the New Haven Independent continues its terrific work here, the Connecticut Post has a story here, the Norwalk Advocate has one here, something from The Day here and the Courant’s coverage is here. PDF files of all the testimony submitted to the Committee are here and Senator McDonald offered his thoughts here.

Sorry for the long post.

With the Judiciary Committee hearing today and Gov. Rell’s sentencing task force committee hearing yesterday, there are just too many stories out there to cull into one cohesive post. So I’ll leave you with the links and update later tonight.

From the good folks at CT News Junkie comes this brief report on yesterday’s hearing, at which the Gov. herself testified.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s Sentencing Task Force received an earful Monday about how to improve Connecticut’s criminal justice system. The task force, which was formed in response to the deadly home invasion in Cheshire last summer, heard testimony from victims, as well as, legislators, parole officers, and the governor herself.

It’s been reported that since Rell halted the release of violent offenders to parole the prison population has increased, but what hasn’t been talked about much is the workload of parole officers–tasked with making sure parolees are able to successfully transition back into the community.

Tonia McCown, a parole officer for 15-years, told the task force that while more scrutiny of parolees is fine, more officers will be needed to accomplish the task. McCown said she has about 50 to 55 cases at the moment, but given the increased supervision–35 to 40 would be more realistic. Corrections Department Commissioner Theresa Lantz said she would do the best she could to get more resources for parole officers.

The Stamford Advocate has this fantastic roundup of the Office of Fiscal Analysis’ study [pdf] of all the legislative proposals. The most expensive are the Republican’s proposal for a three strikes law and the co-chair’s behemoth.

[Jud Committee Co-chair Mike] Lawlor said the leading Republican three strikes proposal would likely cost too much. It calls for an automatic life sentence for any offender convicted of a third dangerous felony. The state’s existing three-strikes law gives a judge the power to impose any sentence, up to a life in prison, for those convicted of a third violent felony.

The fiscal analysis found there are about 103 such offenders each year. They are now sentenced to an average of eight years in prison, the study found.

It costs about $4.3 million to keep 103 offenders in prison for one year. The cost of imprisoning three-strikes inmates would jump $4.3 million per year with each annual imposition of life sentences. In the 50th year under such a proposal, the state would be spending nearly $225 million on inmates sentenced to life in prison, the analysis found. The changes could require a new 1,000-bed prison, costing about $100 million, every 10 years, the analysis found.

The Advocate story also mentions an equally real but non-monetary impact of such a three-strikes law: An increase in the number of trials.

Lawlor said the Republicans’ “all or nothing” proposal would spur defense attorneys to duck the three-strikes law by having clients facing a third conviction plead guilty to something other than a dangerous felony.

“No one in their right mind is going to plead guilty to life without the possibility of release,” he said. To avoid such deals, prosecutors would be forced to go to trial, Lawlor said.

Presiding over dozens, or hundreds, of extra trials each year could cost the state about $5 million annually in staffing costs, the analysis found.

Finally, I keep hearing from Gov. Rell and Comm’r. Lantz that hundreds of non-violent offenders will be released to make room for all the violent offenders. It’s been 4 months since her “ban” went into effect and no one has been released. Meanwhile the prison population has ballooned, leading to this protest outside the hearing yesterday and another one today.

“Many non-violent offenders are behind bars, and that’s making them violent,” said Barbara Fair of People Against Injustice.

Owen Kozlovich said he saw conditions behind bars firsthand. He was released from the prison Monday after being jailed for failing to pay child support.

He said he was locked up with violent offenders, housed on a gymnasium floor with 50 other prisoners and only one corrections officer.

“When you cram that many people into a room, eventually someone’s going to blow their top,” he said.

Kozlovich said that the system is broken and a parole ban isn’t a proper solution.

Today’s hearing will definitely be interesting. I’ll post whatever information I get at the end of the day. If you hear something, leave a comment.

The Judiciary Committee’s public hearing on the 14 legislative proposals to reform CT’s criminal justice system is less than a week away. I covered the co-chair’s proposal here and the rest are available here.

As has been discussed ad nauseam, the most popular proposals include a three strikes law, making “home invasion” a violent offense, GPS monitoring, abolishing parole, building more prisons and perhaps higher sentences.

Yet, a Quinnipiac poll last month showed that CT voters are more nuanced than that. Recently, the JFA institute released a report [pdf] entitled “Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America’s Prison Population”. It is a very interesting report and is a must read. Hopefully the legislators like Mike Lawlor and Andrew McDonald will take a look at it before the hearing next week. If offers up the following six recommendations:

• Reduce time served in prison
• Eliminate the use of prison for parole or probation technical violators
• Reduce the length of parole and probation supervision periods
• Decriminalize “victimless” crimes, particularly those related to drug use and abuse
• Improve conditions of imprisonment
• Restore ex-prisoner voting and other rights

So, with the holiday coming up and blogging being light, let’s have a poll. What do you think the most effective reform to CT’s criminal justice system would be?

Say two thirds of those polled in this latest Quinnipiac University poll. There you go legislators.

Only 35 percent of voters support a so-called “third strike” law where a person convicted of three violent felonies automatically is sentenced to life in prison, while 63 percent say sentences should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Oh thank God.

There are some other interesting results in this poll. For example, only 27 percent say they feel less safe at home since Cheshire. On prison overcrowding:

48 percent of voters say build more prisons, while 39 percent say release inmates earlier. But only 47 percent of voters want to pay higher taxes for new prisons, while 50 percent are opposed.

Meanwhile, by a 62 - 32 percent margin, Connecticut voters are willing to pay higher taxes for more community supervision of offenders.

Interestingly, the Cheshire murders have not sparked a huge increase in support for the death penalty. Connecticut is in favor of the death penalty by a margin of 63-27, which is a slight increase from 60%, which was prior to Cheshire. However, when given the alternative of life in prison without parole, the state splits 47-44 in favor of the death penalty.

Stan Simpson has this fine piece in the Courant today, urging legislators to learn from the State’s past and resist the urge to simply expand prisons as a solution to reforming the criminal justice system.

The last time the state went on a massive prison expansion escapade, it spent $1 billion to build 12 new prisons - the last in 1996. The overcrowding problem got worse, not better. Inmates were sent to out-of-state facilities.

Prison expansion was costly and largely ineffective. The state Department of Correction’s budget ballooned, from $92.4 million in 1985, with 5,379 inmates, to $605 million this year. In recent years, Connecticut got smarter and embraced prison-diversion alternatives for nonviolent offenders.

This recent enlightenment is what led to Connecticut being reported favorably in a private report released by the Pew Charitable Trusts back in February. Connecticut was one of two states, the other being Delaware, that was projected to have no increase in its prison population. That, obviously, no longer holds true. The policies that the State put in place and followed, however, are still valid.

“When an event as tragic as the Petits’ occurs, obviously, the first response is to identify why it happened and to do everything to prevent it from happening again,” said Ryan King, policy analyst for The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based prison reform advocacy organization. “Unfortunately, that response has traditionally been longer sentences of some kind, restricting parole release, those sorts of things. And the fact of the matter is there’s been very little empirical evidence that any of them have had the advertised effect.”

“The conversation that can’t be lost in this dynamic is that at the end of the day, creating and maintaining comprehensive re-entry services for individuals is a better way of increasing safer communities,” said Maureen Price-Boreland, a member of the governor’s task force and executive director of Community Partners in Action, which runs re-entry programs for former offenders.

Stan suggests that legislators should not overreact, but instead invest in job training, drug counseling and housing assistance programs, reserving prison beds for the “true incorrigibles”.

Now, will legislators listen?

Meanwhile, there was a community meeting in Hartford last night, where ex-offenders and their families confronted Gov. Rell Commissioner Lantz about the negative effects of the parole ban.

The Clean Slate Committee also made demands of Lantz. They asked her to guarantee that by Nov. 30, every inmate released from incarceration would be given a state-issued identification document and that the state review of all parolees and inmates eligible for community release programs would be completed by Nov. 21. They also asked that the governor establish a commission - to include former inmates, their families, advocates, public officials and two members of Clean Slate - that would work on parole and community re-entry.

Lantz agreed to establish such a commission, but said she could not meet the deadlines on the other two demands.

For those of you interested, the search warrants in the Cheshire case have been made public. The Bristol Press (of all things) has made them available on their website here.

There’s really nothing remarkable in any of them (and certainly not anything new), except for one bit that I found a little laughable.

The police sought permission to examine Komisarjevsky’s family laptop because it is their experience that

the world wide web contains web sites that include information that provide detailed directions on how to restrain people, how to conceal, destruct and alter evidence as well as detailed accounts of criminal activities such as burglary, kidnapping, robbery and arson.

It certainly is curious that they didn’t include murder or even felony murder.

The Judiciary Committee announced yesterday that it would hold a public hearing on submitted proposals to reform the criminal justice system. The hearing is currently to be held on November 27 at 1pm.

From the press release:

One of the fifteen proposals that will be heard at the hearing has been submitted by Sen. McDonald and Rep. Lawlor.  Some of the major points of reform included in the chairmen’s proposal are: establishing a new crime of “home invasion” and designating it as a violent offense; re-writing and strengthening the state’s “three-strikes” laws; providing more resources to the state’s criminal justice agencies including corrections, the parole board, probation, victim services, and prosecutors; and requiring the development of a new state-of-the-art communications system that will allow all criminal justice agencies to easily, rapidly, and securely exchange information electronically.

The chairmen expect that full drafting of the fifteen proposals, fiscal estimates and summaries will be completed by the non-partisan legislative staff by the end of next week.  Upon their completion, all of the proposals will be made available online.  Members of the public will be able to testify at the committee’s hearing.

Oh boy. This is going to be interesting. Once the proposals are up, I’ll link to them.

Full text of the release after the jump, if you’re interested.

Yesterday, Judge Damiani ruled that redacted versions of the 11 search warrants used by police to investigate the Cheshire killings be unsealed. The Hartford Courant sought to have the warrants unsealed, presumably to keep publishing sensational stories.

The defense’s argument is a logical one: Given the existing media coverage, it will be difficult to find an impartial jury. If further details from the warrants are made public, specifically the alleged confessions, the task gets even more arduous. Judge Damiani’s response was to have portions of the warrants redacted. Which portions? We do not know.

Tom Ullman showed up at the last hearing with a thick binder with contained all the media coverage of the killings up to that point, documenting the extreme reactions of the people of Connecticut. That folder is about to get thicker.

Besides the fact that this would be a cash cow for the press, I cannot think of another reason why the Courant is so invested in having these warrants unsealed. Their argument that “the citizens want to know” or “have a right to know” or some such nonsense doesn’t outweigh the defendant’s right to have a fair trial by an impartial jury.

This will just make the already difficult task of picking a jury for a capital trial that much more difficult.

The title of my post last evening was slightly off. By all accounts, Comm’r Lantz seems to believe that there is no such thing as an overcrowded prison.

With the state’s prison population at a record high after Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s recent restrictions on parole, legislators futilely pressed Monday to learn how many more inmates can be safely confined.

Correction Commissioner Theresa Lantz suggested that the ultimate capacity of the prison system is unknowable, an answer that left some legislators slack-jawed.

Lantz described a prison system that is “fluid,” expanding and contracting to accommodate a changing population, despite existing in the finite realm of steel and concrete.

Yeah, she really said that.

Thankfully, legislators weren’t buying that.

This is going to be a real problem. The prison population has already increased by almost 600 inmates in a span of two months and they’re living on mattresses and beds laid out on gym floors and in large open spaces. This is in addition to the already crowded dorms.

I guess the only thing one can do at this point is hope that the legislature takes some action (like, maybe, enforcing a statute or recognizing the inherent separation of powers problem here) or some inmate files a lawsuit challenging either the conditions at a facility or the deprivation of his liberty interest in parole and pray that no one gets hurt in the meantime.

Very little has been reported thus far on today’s emergency judiciary committee meeting on the parole ban. The only thing out there is this meager story by Channel 3.

From what I can gather, Commissioner Lantz doesn’t seem to think there’s a problem.

The state’s prisons commissioner said she doesn’t need more staff or new prisons to handle any influx of inmates from the temporary ban of parole for violent offenders.

Lantz said an additional 228 beds are being added. Also, she said the corrections officers are trained to handle fluctuating prison populations. Currently, there are about 300 portable beds set up on gym floors and in function rooms.

There are currently 19,000 inmates in Connecticut’s prisons — 2,000 more than what the system was designed for.

Nope, nothing to see. Move along.

I guess I’m still surprised that the legislature has no problem with the Governor effectively overriding a statute.

Forgotten in this Cheshire mess is the sentencing commission that started work in May, which was charged with looking at how to change the state’s sentencing laws for the better. Ah, back in May, when Komisarjevsky was still on GPS monitoring and the Petit women were alive.

Glad to hear that someone thought to ask them of their other business. Cheshire has overshadowed the fact that CT has draconian drug laws and there is a racial disparity in sentencing and even charging.

[New Haven Public Defender Tom] Ullmann and several other members suggested the task force may be missing a chance to make long-term changes in the justice system.

Others said the group will continue to discuss issues such as mandatory minimum drug sentences and racial disparity in sentencing even as it deals with parole system gaps exposed by the Cheshire case.

Some of the juicy things on their agenda:

The task force divided into four subcommittees that would discuss alternatives to incarceration, sentencing structure, the racial imbalance in prisons and how to classify some drug offenses and other crimes that carry a broad range of possible sentences.

These are all excellent areas of investigation and reform. Thankfully last year the legislature eliminated the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing (I think…I may be imagining it).

Prison overcrowding is an immense problem and all of these avenues will help to reduce it and hopefully, get to the source of the problem for most drug offenders: addiction.

I wish there was some way to study racial disparities in charging, but it seems too daunting a task.

Of all the groups commenting on Cheshire, this task force has been oddly silent. Not all members agree:

Some members say the task force should lend its voice to the Cheshire debate so the state does not make any rash changes.

“I think it’s incumbent upon us to respond,” said Andrew Clark, a group member and the administrator of the Institute for the Study of Crime & Justice at Central Connecticut State University. “We have to ask tough questions and come up with real solutions.”

But there has been, at least for some members, a shift in focus.

The sentencing task force changed its focus at the same time. It studied tougher burglary laws and looked at the impact a tougher “three strikes and you’re out” law would have on prison overcrowding.

“It’s almost like members are bending over backward to join the throng of punitive measures,” said Jon Schoenhorn, a task force member and president of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. “It violates the entire purpose of why this task force was created.”

“Three strikes laws” + prison overcrowding: Not gettin’ better any time soon.

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.