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Prison reform advocates are calling for the closure of Northern Correctional Institution, the state’s only maximum-security prison, followed by a reinvestment in the prison’s dollars to programs for those released from incarceration to reintegrate back into their community.
Advocates under the banner of the Justice Reinvestment Coalition discussed their demands for the Somers facility’s closure via a Zoom conference Tuesday afternoon. They called for the prison’s $14.4 million budget to go instead toward programs for ex-offenders.
The state, which has seen a declining prison population, has been looking to close one of its 15 correctional facilities.
New Haveners participating in Tuesday’s Zoom conference included State Sen. Gary Winfield, Leighton Johnson and Barbara Fair of Stop Solitary C, Columbus House CEO Margaret Middleton CEO, and Lisa Puglisi of Yale Transitions Clinic. The group includes members of ACLU, CT Coalition To End Homelessness, and SEIU 1199 New England.
The advocates called into question the prison’s restrictive policies and treatment of inmates. “Northern is a place primarily filled with young men of color. They’re sent there to break their spirits, to shatter their minds and to reduce them to broken men who face a lifetime of scars from that torture,” Fair said.
Laura Glesby Photo
Barbara Fair, center, and Gary Winfield, right, at an August event honoring them for criminal-justice reform efforts.
Fair said Gov. Ned Lamont and state leaders continue to fail to understand and humanly address the needs of the vulnerable incarcerated population.
“I see a state governed by one whose view is from Greenwich, Connecticut. One of the richest cities in the nation. A view that skews to the point that the incarcerated are almost invisible,” Fair said.
The coalition is demanding that Northern’s annual operating budget be reallocated into programs and services that support the health, shelter, and societal reentry of formerly incarcerated people. Middleton is currently administering a rehousing program at Columbus House with grant money from the Department of Corrections. The program has enabled 20 former inmates to get a cellphone, job, and disability benefits Middleton said.
Leighton Johnson spent nearly five years at Northern. He compared his experiences at the facility to those of inmates at ADX Florence in Colorado. “You feel dead in this place and you’re treated nonhuman,” he said.
The group agreed the state must prioritize funding physical and mental health care for former inmates. Puglisi said former inmates have 12 times the risk of dying in the first two weeks after release compared to the general population.
The advocates additionally called for funds to be reinvested in housing programs, medical and mental health services, criminal record erasure, and employment services.
Winfield recalled touring the Northern facility a decade ago. The tour was led by a “gleeful” corrections officer who marveled over the facility’s ability to break people, he said. “People who wear the uniform of the state really thought it was a positive thing that we treat human beings as anything less.”
Winfield co-chairs the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, and committed to support a bill to close the facility.
Correction Department spokesperson Karen Martucci told CT News Junkie that closing Northern would not free up most of the $14.4 million budget, because $13.1 million of it pays labor costs that would be absorbed elsewhere in the department. She rejected accusations of inhumane treatment of inmates.