Senate Bill 1059 Undermines Safety for Staff and Inmates. Please Call Governor Lamont, Your State Senator and Your State Representative and Urge them to Oppose or Fix It Today!

• This bill mandates eight hours of daily out of cell time for all inmates in all facilities (except in case of emergency or if the inmate opts to stay in cell).  We know that there are discussions lowering this to 6.5 hours.  Even at 6.5 hours we worry that such a mandate risks safety.  This is because of the layout of facilities and the lack of staff.  There are too many inmates to safely accommodate lots of free movement in the existing facilities.
• A big challenge, in addition to gang-on-gang violence, is keeping predatory inmates from abusing passive inmates.  This requires eyes on inmates and the various sections of a correctional institution at all times
• We have asked for more staff in case such changes were made, but the governor’s and legislature’s budgets show no such staff increase
• It would also help if there were more employment opportunities in the facilities and programming for inmates, to occupy their time in a constructive way and train them to have jobs when they get out
• The shackling rules in the bill are currently too complex and onerous
• The reason we care about these issues is that we worry about losing control of a facility.  This did happen in the 1980s and 1990s during the infamous riots
• We do appreciate that the pepper spray ban at MYI was recently removed from a bill, but feel we must bring the above to your attention.

If you need more information please call Brian Anderson (860-690-2597) or Zak Leavy (860-989-9116).  Please let them know what your legislators say.  Thanks!

Governor Lamont toll free:  800-406-1527

Email link:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/Contact/Email-Governor-Lamont

 Link to state legislators:   https://www.council4.org/find-your-legislators