Metal lockers, which have been used by inmates at the state’s maximum-security prison in Somers to make weapons, will be removed from inmate cells at that facility within two weeks, according to the state Department of Correction.  This report from the Journal Inquirer.

The department made the decision following a meeting with legislators, which was prompted by an attack at the prison earlier this month where two inmates used weapons made from the lockers to stab another inmate. But in a related matter, the department has denied a correctional officer’s request to wear his own stab vest for protection while on duty at the same facility.
In planning for the removal of the lockers Correction Department officials are exploring alternatives in providing storage space for inmates … “We have contacted correction agencies across the country to determine what alternatives are available to us that will meet fire code and, most importantly, keep our staff safe,” [DOC spokesman Brian] Garnett said.

There is a lot more background in the full article.

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The Connecticut Department of Correction graduated 16 inmates from its certified nursing assistant program, but they aren’t sure yet if the program is a success.  None of the new graduates has left the prison system.  Report from The Day.

Prison officials said the ultimate goal of the program is to reduce the number of repeat offenders. They hope that when an inmate leaves prison with a state-certified nursing assistant program certificate in hand they will be able to get a job, although White-Lewis admits finding employment is the biggest challenge for the newly released …

Inmates involved in the program had been incarcerated for a variety of offenses, ranging from burglary (maximum sentence of five years) to manslaughter (maximum sentence of 28 years) … More than 50 inmates applied for the program at Corrigan-Radgowski, but after an intense selection process, the maximum of eight were chosen based on their character, determination and ability to be role models. Coordinators started the program in October. Inmates did 70 hours of classroom instruction – about five hours of classes every day – and more than 120 hours of clinical instruction in the prison’s infirmary.  At the infirmary, the men going through the program were restricted from giving prescriptions to other inmates/patients and weren’t allowed to discuss with others a patient’s medical history.  They did other tasks like taking a person’s temperature and blood pressure, bathing patients and other basic aid.  ”We were able to work around the restrictions,” nursing supervisor Emily Savoie said …

[G]raduate, Jamar Sullivan, thanked coordinators for “putting their names on the line” and starting the program.  ”We are in jail. It’s hard for people to trust people in our situation,” Sullivan said. “I’m grateful that there are still people that believe in us incarcerated.”

vericatrajkova Connecticut, Inmate Programs, Re-Entry

In a long and comprehensive piece in Government Technology, the problems with GPS monitoring of sex offenders are examined.

GPS monitoring — embraced as a simple technological solution for tracking the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders — is proving to be something less than a silver bullet for state and local public safety agencies … But there are problems with the way the technology is used and monitored. False alarms number in the thousands in some jurisdictions, straining manpower and casting doubt on the viability of GPS as a tracking tool for high-profile felons. In Arizona, a 2007 legislative study found more than 35,000 false alerts by 140 subjects wearing the GPS-monitoring devices …

In California, the percentage of transient parolees, those who’ve been declared homeless, has increased by 900 percent since a law was passed that included GPS as part of the solution. Now, officials say, they’re guessing about where the offenders are because more have become transient and the GPS monitoring can be unreliable, especially when the offenders lack real housing where they can charge the devices.   And in Connecticut, officials are pushing for a state-run monitoring facility to keep track of offenders being monitored by GPS after numerous false alarms involving several subjects, including one whose case prompted action …

A Connecticut Court Support Services report acknowledged a general misconception about GPS and sex offender supervision, and frustration for law enforcement officials who must deal with voluminous false alerts. The report acknowledged that probation officers’ work hours don’t extend into the nighttime and weekends, and probation officers must respond to alerts while off duty. If the officer is out of cellular range or not near a computer, he or she may be unable to review the tracking data.  The report recommends assigning a secondary officer to high-profile cases to cover for the primary officer when he or she is unavailable. It also recommended a monitoring center to screen GPS and electronic-monitoring data and alerts at all times …

Critics contend that the law is making sex offenders harder to track because some, either intentionally or not, are becoming homeless.  And the trouble with homeless sex offenders is there may be nowhere to recharge the unit’s batteries. “GPS units need to be plugged into a wall,” said Robert Coombs, director of public affairs for the California Sex Offender Management Board. “So it is a real problem that these guys have gone transient, and unless we let them into our public libraries or Starbucks or any other place where they can plug in, we’re not going to be able to maintain this problem.” Before the 2008 law passed, 88 registered sex offenders were homeless. That number has risen to more than 1,000 since then, and it’s because the law focuses on GPS, Coombs said …

Sources said policymakers have made promises about the technology that won’t hold up. “In our business, they invent these things, they advertise and the attorney sells the judge, ‘Rather than put my client in jail, put him on the GPS,”‘ said Mike Goss, deputy chief of the Maricopa County, Ariz., Adult Probation Department. “It’s a snazzy thing; it’s become sort of a fad.”

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vericatrajkova Connecticut, Economic Issues

With high fuel prices and tight state budgets, Connecticut and at least 10 other states — Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee — report using teleconferences between judges and inmates more often to improve public safety and save some cash.

It costs the state of Connecticut at least $1,600 every time multiple murder suspect Joshua Komisarjevsky appears in a courtroom. Despite his slight build and boyish appearance, Komisarjevsky is classified as a high security inmate, facing charges of murder, rape and arson from a 2007 home invasion in which a woman and her two daughters were killed in Cheshire. At every court appearance, a special detail of corrections officers and two state troopers are assigned to accompany him. So, when Komisarjevsky was due in family court earlier this year on an unrelated matter, prison officials opted for a teleconference. Instead an expensive trip to the courthouse, officers escorted Komisarjevsky down the hall from his cell at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, to a room where he participated in the hearing via two-way video …

Although some inmates say they’d prefer to plead their cases in person, correction officials believe the technology offers a fair alternative to spending millions of dollars moving inmates in person. “It’s vehicles, it’s gasoline, it’s maintenance of those vehicles, it’s the driver plus another officer for security purposes,” said Connecticut Corrections Commissioner Theresa C. Lantz. “It’s all the work that is involved in taking an inmate out of a facility, putting them in a secure vehicle, transporting them to another location.”

On Oct. 1, Connecticut finished installing teleconferencing equipment in all of its 18 correctional facilities. During that month, about 151 inmates used the system to participate in hearings involving parole, civil and family court, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Social Security Administration. The state’s court system has a working group looking at expanding the technique. “As the economy worsens, we’re all going to have to be a little more creative in how we handle these things,” said Judge Patrick Carroll, the deputy chief court administrator in Connecticut …

Kansas also is moving toward expanding teleconferencing. It already uses the technology for parole hearings and internal disciplinary matters. For a state encompassing more than 82,000 square miles, Department of Corrections spokesman Bill Miskell said officials believe it’s a way to save both time and fuel. “If there’s a way we can limit a 350-mile drive for a three-hour discussion with six or seven or eight inmates, we’re going to try to do that,” he said.

Pennsylvania has been using teleconferencing since the mid-1990s. Susan McNaughton, a spokeswoman for the state prison system, said it was originally used to let inmate patients meet with a doctor. Today, it’s used for court cases, parole hearings and immigration hearings. “We have video conference coordinators at each facility,” said McNaughton, referring to the state’s 27 prisons. “It’s practically a full-time job when you think about all the hearings inmates are involved in.”

Much more on this at the Rocky Mountain Telegram.

vericatrajkova Connecticut, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Video Use

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released the 2005 Census of Federal and State Correctional Facilities.  The document has a wealth of data across all States, including the numbers of privately-operated facilities.

The document can be accessed from the Basic Stats list at the top right sidebar.

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• Patrick County VA makes pitch for next state Prison; nothing in plans says DOC
• St Martin’s Parish LA, Yolo County CA, and the State of Alaska improve sex offender monitoring and notification.
• All the Jail Superintendents have been replaced in Pakistan.
• Angel Quiros, the third Warden in a year at CT Womens’ Prison aims to stay around for a while.

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The sheer numbers are astounding.

From 1985 to Feb. 15, 2008, Connecticut’s prison population has soared from 5,422 to 19,690. If the trend continues, the prison population could surpass 25,000 in just four years. “If those represented the numbers of people attending our institutions of higher learning I would say that’s fantastic,” said Fitzpatrick, past president of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. “Unfortunately, those are the extraordinary numbers of people in our prisons.”

The increase in inmates has been exacerbated by an increase in costs.

The average daily cost of keeping an inmate incarcerated has also soared. It’s risen from $58.68 a day in fiscal year 1989-90 to $86.08 last fiscal year. “It’s crazy,” state Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, said. “We are spending more money to run our prisons than run our colleges.”

Connecticut is far from being the only State dealing with the same issue. And the list of suspect causes are the same in CT as elsewhere.

Drug violence and crack sales led to the Legislature imposing harsher penalties. As of Jan. 1, 2,824 of Connecticut’s sentenced inmates are there for possession or sale of narcotics. Another 1,035 are there for robbery and 667 for third-degree burglary.

The outcry over a revolving door of recidivism led to the truth-in-sentencing laws of 1993 and 1994, according to legislators and prosecutors. “That required violent criminals to serve 85 percent of their sentence and everyone else to do at least 50 percent of their term,” said Lawlor. “Before the truth-in-sentencing laws, inmates were only serving 10 to 20 percent of their terms. We also took away good time credit and the ability to be free on supervised home release” …

Lawlor also said the mainstreaming of mentally ill patients into the community without proper supervision resulted in many being sent to prison. “The hospitals wouldn’t take them and the police couldn’t deal with them,” he said. “So it was easier to place them in jail.”

In the past decade, the Legislature approved mandatory minimum sentences, enhanced terms for persistent felony offenders and new laws to deal with drunken drivers, domestic violence and sexual predators.

And now, with the state’s prisons bursting beyond their 18,000- plus capacity, Lawlor sees only three options.

Finally, Lawlor said “we can do nothing and face being sued in federal court. Then we’ll get a federal judge running our prisons.”The most obvious he said is “to build more prisons” … Another option to reduce the population is by “releasing more non-violent inmates” … Finally, Lawlor said “we can do nothing and face being sued in federal court. Then we’ll get a federal judge running our prisons.”

There is a great deal more detail in the story from the Connecticut Post.

vericatrajkova Connecticut

Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell has signed into law an Act that amends parole availability in the State.

Rell said that the Board of Pardons and Paroles may begin processing parole applications from what she called appropriate violent offenders. She signed legislation Friday that passed the General Assembly just days earlier with strong bipartisan support. Laws against home invasions were toughened and improvements were made in how the judicial system handles prisoners on parole. Rell said a moratorium on parole for violent offenders imposed last September also gave state officials the opportunity to establish new procedures.

Story from Newsday.

vericatrajkova Connecticut, Probation and Parole

• Zambia plans prison building and improvement program.
• 1,500-bed ICE prison planned for Mecklenburg NC now may go to neighboring county.
• Controversy continues over California’s early release plans.
• Editorial in Austin pushes for more money and officers in Texas.
• Complaints of bureaucratic slowness at Connecticut’s Parole Board.

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