Last year, Connecticut taxpayers spent $1.56 Billion on Corrections, almost 7% of the state’s general fund expenditures. Since the 1990’s, Corrections have consistently remained one of the state’s most expensive functions.

According to the state’s Biennial Budget for 2025-2026, the Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC) mission statement is, “to strive to be a global leader in progressive correctional practices and partnered re-entry initiatives to support responsive evidence-based practices aligned to law-abiding and accountable behaviors.  To prioritize safety and security of staff, victims, citizens and offenders.”

This has remained the agency’s mission statement since 2014, but prison reform advocates, human rights organizations, formerly incarcerated people, the state’s Office of the Child Advocate, state auditors, and the DOC’s Ombudsman, Devaughn Ward, have repeatedly found DOC has fallen short of this ideal. In his ‘Conditions of Confinement’ report, released earlier this year, Ombudsman Ward concluded that DOC is “operating in a state of sustained institutional failure.” 

“The reality is we don’t have the staff right now to be able to do some of the basic minimum functions that we need to do as a prison and so, the programming stuff is, super aspirational, because we’re not doing the basics right now very well,” said Ward. 

For all the negatives typically associated with DOC’s operations — staffing shortages, frequent lockdowns, in-custody deaths, infrastructure issues, low-quality medical and mental health care — Ward, as well as other advocates who have worked with DOC, shared with Inside Investigator the various programs and initiatives underway to improve Connecticut prisons. 

DOC officials say there are hundreds of programs offered across the state’s fourteen facilities, and over 1,000 volunteers currently offering services in the state’s prisons. 

“I think the more programming you can offer folks, the better,” said Ward. “I think the more rehabilitative you can make these environments, the better society is, the better the individuals are. I think it’s a win-win for everybody.”

Ward explained that some DOC programming is offered facility-to-facility, while others are offered statewide. Ward said that each incarcerated person is provided with an “Offender Accountability Program”, which mandates they take certain programming based upon behavioral, mental health and vocational assessments conducted by DOC staff.

“I’m not in a position to say what’s popular amongst the incarcerated population,” said Ward. “But what I can say is there are a number of classes that are required for your offender accountability program, and folks desire those classes because they represent to the Board of Pardons and Parole, when you go up, that you’ve tried to rehabilitate yourself and you’ve tried to gain some skills to be able to better yourself when you’re in the community.”

Some of the programming most required of inmates’ accountability programs are DOC’s Alcohol Education, Fatherhood, and VOICEs (Victim Offender Institutional Correctional Educational Services), said Ward. Per DOC’s List of Programs and Services page, VOICEs is meant to “use volunteer support to broaden inmates’ understanding and sensitivity to the impact of their crime on others.” Ward said that programming provided by DOC often offers “critical skills that folks need to become productive members of society upon release.”

“I’ve certainly seen folks talk highly of those programs,” said Ward. “You know, folks who are incarcerated talk highly of those programs and talk about how it’s changed their perspective.”

Ward also highlighted “pretty cool” programs like Vocational Village, a DOC initiative to train incarcerated people in various occupations, offering 13 courses across 5 facilities. One course offers participants the ability to earn their commercial driver’s learner’s permit. Other courses offer training in auto detailing, carpentry, computer coding, concrete, cosmetology and barbering, hospitality, culinary arts, forklifts, and electronics manufacturing. Ward noted that one program allows participants to earn “market wages” working as machinists for Pursuit Aerospace, an aerospace manufacturer with four locations in the state.

Perhaps the most progressive initiative offered by DOC is the TRUE Unit (Truthfulness, Respectfulness, Understanding and Elevating), located in Cheshire. Starting in 2017, TRUE has been a specialized unit in which younger inmates, aged 18 to 24, are mentored by older incarcerated peers. TRUE residents are afforded greater freedoms, amenities and access to services than those in the general population. Ward said the unit comes equipped with flat-screen TVs, gaming consoles, kitchen facilities, and even a barbershop and recording studio. Per Open Budget, TRUE has been funded via ARPA since 2024, receiving an average of $296,478 since then. 

“The folks who are housed there, they have more supports,” said Ward. “The TRUE unit is in a league of its own within the Connecticut prison system.”

Chloe Aquart is the Director of Vera Institute’s Restoring Promise initiative, which she says works to “transform prison cultures, climates and spaces by partnering with correctional leaders and incarcerated people to reimagine housing units for young adults and realign corrections policies and practices.” Cheshire’s TRUE Unit is DOC’s implementation of this initiative, and was the first unit of its kind when it opened in 2017. Since then, Vera has opened eight units in five states following the same model.

Vera Institute, a New York-based non-profit criminal justice reform organization, conducts biannual German study tours, flying donors, advocates, and corrections professionals out to Germany to tour their prisons. The purpose of these trips, said Aquart, is to see “a system that is completely rooted in the belief that human dignity is an inviolable right.” A 2015 trip to Germany is what prompted the creation of TRUE.

“We took then Governor [Dannel Malloy] and Commissioner of Corrections Scott Semple on a trip to Germany,” said Aquart. “On return from the trip, Commissioner Scott Semple turned to Ryan Shanahan, who was the founding director of Restoring Promise, and asked whether we could do something inspired by the trip to Germany for young adults. And so that’s how TRUE was born.”

TRUE started as one unit in Cheshire but has since grown to encompass an entire floor. Incarcerated people who wish to join the unit must submit a letter of interest, which puts them in a lottery pool. When a space opens for a new participant, one is randomly selected from the pool. Per Aquart’s estimate, TRUE currently has 71 young adults, 23 mentors, and 30 corrections officers participating in the program. 

“One of the things that we really stressed, and have supported all of our states with, in terms of selection process, is ensuring that the young adults on the unit are a representative sample of the young adults within the state, so that you don’t end up with a disproportionate number either by gender or ethnicity or race,” said Aquart.

The average day for a TRUE participant begins with what Aquart called a “morning circle,” in which the unit’s young adults rate their moods on a scale of one to ten.

“It’s sort of meant to be a barometer for everybody that’s on the unit,” said Aquart. “So if you wake up and you’re at a three, that’s an indicator to both staff and mentors that you may need a little bit extra support throughout the day. If you wake up at a 10, that’s an indicator that you’re in a great place.”

Following the morning circle, TRUE participants and staff eat breakfast together. Each day, staff and TRUE participants alike eat all three meals together, a practice that Aquart said is “so important” because it helps build a sense of relationship and community. In between meals, participants attend whatever classes or programming they’re taking, and are provided down time to enjoy the unit’s recreational facilities.

At the end of the day, they have evening circles that follow the same concept as morning circles. Aquart said it’s “special,” given how difficult nights in prison can be on young adults, as it gives them “a lot of time to ruminate,” without any distractions.

“If someone’s at a three at the end of the day, it’s an opportunity for staff to know, ‘Maybe I need to do an extra round when I’m checking in on him at night to make sure he’s okay,’” said Aquart. “It’s an opportunity for the mentor to connect with them and find out if there’s a way to provide them with a little bit of support, or what’s going on, or what happened throughout the day.”

Aquart said that TRUE tries to provide residents with “structures that are similar to the outside world under the principle of normalcy.” One example of that is the unit’s currency system, which Aquart said “came about from the mentors as a way to hold each other accountable.” Essentially, residents are provided currency for doing chores around the unit and can have currency taken away if they neglect chores, arrive late to unit events, or engage in negative behaviors. 

“It’s really to teach the young adults about responsibility, so that when they get on the outside, they’re used to it,” said Aquart. “So that they’re prepared to pay rent, so that they’re prepared to pay for laundry, so that they understand if they break something, you have to buy a new one, right? [It’s to] get young adults to be able to be prepared to handle the soft skills in life.”

Another soft skill TRUE tries to impart upon its residents is conflict resolution. Aquart said the unit abides by restorative justice principles, and as such, disputes or grievances between residents are handled via “restorative justice” or “accountability” circles. Essentially, the unit gathers in a circle and the aggrieved party shares how they’ve been harmed. The offender then apologizes and takes accountability for their actions, and the rest of the unit gets a chance to verbalize any ways in which the offender’s actions might have harmed them.

The same rules apply to corrections staff as well. If an officer breaks a promise or injures the trust an incarcerated person has in them, Aquart said they, too, may find themselves as subjects of accountability circles. Aquart said it’s important because “the relationships that are built on the units aren’t just between incarcerated people with each other, they’re also staff and incarcerated people.”

“What I have heard from folks that have left our unit that have had to participate in accountability circles or restorative justice circles is that it taught them to realize that their actions don’t just impact one person, but it impacts everyone,” said Aquart. “And so it’s allowed them to really think about the global harm of an action, as opposed to just looking at an individual desire or want.”

Aquart said that Vera Institute has not conducted any studies into whether TRUE participants have lower recidivism rates, explaining that reducing recidivism is not the goal of the unit.

“We do not study recidivism for our work with our units, because what we’re trying to do is transform prison culture, which requires you to be in prison, and so if there is a lesser rate of recidivism after being on our unit, that is a cherry on top,” said Aquart. “We don’t strive for that change, because it doesn’t matter whether you are coming into prison once or coming in 10 times, 20 times, you deserve human dignity every single time you walk through those doors, and that’s for staff as well.”

While the impact on recidivism remains unknown, Aquart did note that a study conducted by Vera would indicate initial success regarding the initiative’s goal to “transform prison culture.” From 2019 to 2021, Vera researchers surveyed staff and participants for Restoring Promise Units in two South Carolina prisons, whose practices and methodologies are analogous to TRUE’s, to evaluate their experiences. The results of the surveys are included in a report produced by the Brennan Center for Justice.

The surveys found that 95% of young adult participants felt safe, 93% believed their time was productive, 88% believed they were getting the help they need, and 89% believe they were learning life-skills. 68% of young adult participants said the unit’s officers treated them with respect and 71% saw them as positive role models. 

The staff surveys reflected positively upon their experiences as well; 100% reported to enjoy working with the residents, 88% believed all the unit’s young adults had the potential to transition to life outside of prison, and 96% thought their time in the unit was preparing them to do so. Furthermore, 81% said they like their job, 78% said they enjoyed working in the unit, 97% said they felt safe, and 98% believed they were part of a community on the unit.

Researchers also conducted a study to compare the prevalence of violence or inmate misconduct among those housed in the general population with those housed in Restoring Promise units. The study found that young adults housed in the Restoring Promise units had a 73% lower chance of being written up for violence or misconduct compared with the general population control group. They also found an 83% reduction in restrictive housing stays during the first year of Restoring Promise unit participation.

The study also studied the youth who applied for the program and did not receive a spot, and youth who hadn’t applied, to compare the rates of violence, disciplinary write-ups and convictions, notes entered into prison files and restrictive housing unit stays. This was done to see whether the application process for the units imparted any meaningful selection bias, thus skewing the results of the study, or if it didn’t, thus indicating that the reductions in participant violence and misconduct could solely be attributed to the treatment provided by the unit.

The study found a comparable level of disciplinary cases opened for violence and disciplinary convictions of violence among the applicants and non-applicants.

“While further exploration is needed, this suggests that those who apply to be housed in Restoring Promise units, but do not participate, are similar and experience similar outcomes to those who do not apply,” reads the study. “This suggests that the differences in outcomes observed in the main RCT (control group) are due to the Restoring Promise housing units, and not to characteristics of who chooses to apply to participate. The results have positive implications for the scalability of making changes to prison culture.”

The road to TRUE’s implementation has been paved by nearly two decades of work by state lawmakers, agency officials, legislative staff, policy advisors, DOC administrators and prison rights advocates. Andrew Clark, the Director of UConn’s Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy (IMRP), which frequently collaborates with DOC to update programming and methodology, has helped since the very beginning.

Clark told Inside Investigator that his work regarding prison reform predated his work at IMRP, beginning with his job as a legislative clerk for the General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee in 1999. He worked closely with then-representative William Dyson (D-New Haven), who served several years as the committee’s co-chair. Clark said Dyson, “had two sons who were incarcerated, [and] represented part of New Haven that had a constituency that was really impacted by incarceration.”

“It also happened to be a time close to the zenith of the prison population in Connecticut, that not only was impacting people in exponential numbers relative to the previous 50 years, but was also impacting the state budget, which mattered on the Appropriations Committee,” said Clark. “We were in the middle of a billion-dollar budget deficit in the early 2000s, and we had just come out of the late 90s, spending a billion dollars on new prison beds with no end in sight, and actually sending prisoners out of state to Virginia. So, that’s where I entered the fray.”

Between 1980 and 2008, the state’s prison population grew 368%, from 4,147 prisoners to 19,413, per DOC statistics. Increased incarceration meant increased spending: A 2007 report by Connecticut Voices for Children found that, adjusted for inflation, Connecticut’s correctional spending increased from $193 million in 1987 to $661 million in 2007, a 242% increase. 

Clark said he ran “ad-hoc working sessions” with the Corrections Commissioner, head of Judicial Branch, Judiciary Chairs, as well as various other advocates and legal service groups to “really conceive of a different way of doing things relative to the past 30 years of the ‘tough on crime’ movement.” 

“What happened is we then convened in a conference at Central Connecticut State University, and we had over 400 people, including these out-of-state experts that had then had the opportunity to look at our prison population and make recommendations on this justice reinvestment framework,” said Clark. “It was like — How do we cut corrections, which is the most expensive thing that we do and disproportionately the most harmful, into a place that either maintains or increases public safety and then reinvest in neighborhoods that are most impacted to curb the cycle?” 

This ultimately culminated in the Justice Reinvestment Act, a bill passed in 2004 that created the state’s Board of Pardon and Paroles (BOPP), aiming to lower the state’s incarcerated population while stipulating the state’s creation of a “comprehensive offender re-entry strategy.” The conference Clark was a part of became the IMRP, and in 2005, Clark became its director, a role he’s held ever since.

“I saw it as a natural way of continuing our role as an intermediary, pulling these people together, [working on] best practices,” said Clark. “The various partners that we had developed since the late 90s and early 2000s saw the Institute as kind of a light and ready workforce that could pay particular attention to specific topics, and help develop best practices and move policy forward in ways that maybe agencies were a little bit more clunky and more potentially bureaucratic in doing.”

Since then, IMRP has overseen the creation of projects such as the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project, the Connecticut Sentencing Commission, the ReConnect CT program, and the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparity. Clark said IMRP has kept its tradition of holding annual conferences, calling them Re-Entry Roundtables, where IMRP brainstorms with DOC officials on how they can improve incarcerated people’s return to society. In 2014, when representatives of the Vera Institute presented its American-European Prison Project before the roundtable, Clark said: “a lightbulb went off for everyone in the room.”

This is what led to DOC officials visiting Germany in 2015 and TRUE’s implementation in 2017. The Germany trip was not a one-off; starting in 2022, IMRP has organized yearly trips to Norway to see how their prisons operate. Barbara Fair, co-founder of Stop Solitary CT, accompanied IMRP and DOC officials on one of these trips. Fair said there was “such a stark difference” between America’s prisons and Norway’s, so much so that when the bus they took dropped them off in front of a Norwegian prison, she didn’t even realize what she was looking at.

“I’m looking around, saying, ‘Well, where’s the prison?’, and I’m thinking, ‘Are we getting ready to have to do a lot of walking?’” said Fair. “And they said, ‘This is the prison right here.’ It looks more like a complex that people are living in, and it’s so completely different.”

Fair asked “a lot of questions” while she was there. She found that isolation was used sparingly, and said the Norwegians found long-term solitary confinement “insane.” Norwegian correctional officers are required to obtain college degrees and go through two years of training, while in Connecticut, corrections officers only need their GED and 16-weeks of DOC training. The nature of interactions between Norwegian officers and inmates is also different; they build close relationships with each other, partaking in activities together, like weekly dinners or yoga classes, and neither group abides by strict dress codes. 

“I had to ask them, ‘Are you staff or are you incarcerated?’” said Fair. “You couldn’t even tell the difference.”

One of the concepts integral to the Norwegian style of corrections, replicated by the TRUE Unit, is normalization. The Brennan Center for Justice defines normalization as “efforts to have life inside prisons resemble life outside as much as possible.” Norway’s prisons were built from the ground up with this philosophy in mind, “designed deliberatively” to facilitate rehabilitation, said Clark.

“If you provide environments that are more conducive to health and well-being, you lower the temperature of everything there,” said Clark, “and then you provide the avenue and the platform by which that rehabilitation can occur, the health and well-being is fostered.”

Clark said that Connecticut’s prisons were “designed in a period where retribution and punishment was the primary concern.” During conversations with corrections officers, one officer gave IMRP the idea of revitalizing Garner’s courtyard, which Clark described as having been “maligned and derelict.” Clark then called professors in UConn’s plant science and landscape architecture department to see if they would be interested in helping. That call culminated in staff and students taking it upon themselves to plant a garden in Garner’s courtyard, the beginning of a larger beautification project that has since spread to other DOC facilities.

“Just yesterday, they went on a site visit to York and brought some indoor plants,” said Clark. “The reaction that you get on bringing some greenery into a DOC environment is kind of amazing to see, because people are just so used to being devoid of feeling like anybody actually even cares about what’s happening inside there.”

Irvine Peck’s-Agaya, Director of IMRP’s Connecticut Children with Incarcerated Parents (CTCIP) initiative, has spearheaded another initiative to further the normalization of DOC’s facilities. Since joining IMRP in 2021, Peck’s-Agaya has become the director of CTCIP, a state-funded initiative that was started in 2008 to support the children of incarcerated parents. Under her direction, CTCIP helped fund a playground at York, where incarcerated parents can play with their children during visits, and has also renovated the visiting areas at seven DOC facilities.

“Part of what we have been doing working with the Department of Correction is making sure that the spaces are inviting,” said Peck’s-Agaya. “Inviting for children, as well as inviting caregivers when they’re coming in to visit to ensure that during that time, they can actually engage with their parents. That does help to actually foster a relationship with them, and help improve outcomes for their parents as well, because there’s something to look forward to and that parental identity is constantly nurtured.”

CTCIP has also helped repaint visiting and waiting rooms and purchase new furniture. The renovated waiting and visiting rooms at these facilities now offer toys, books, arts and crafts supplies and play structures for children. The idea is to give kids something to do while families wait to be admitted and give incarcerated parents something to do with their kids once they enter the visiting areas. Thus far, renovations have been completed at York, MacDougall-Walker and Cybulski Correctional, and are underway at Osborn, Carl Robinson and Corrigan Correctional, and Manson Youth Institution.

“A lot of the time, kids blame themselves or don’t necessarily know how to engage with their parents when you bring them into a correctional facility where everything is, I’m going to say, scary,” said Peck’s-Agaya. “It does make it a little bit harder for kids to actually try to engage and see their parents as their parents, given everything else that’s going on, as well as the distance.”

Peck’s-Agaya said that the changes benefit both children and parents. She said that “research consistently shows” that incarcerated people who maintain close relationships with their families while incarcerated have lower recidivism rates than those who don’t. Once the child of an incarcerated parent herself, Peck’s-Agaya said her own upbringing has influenced her work at CTCIP.

“The work CTCIP is doing would have benefited me tremendously as a child,” said Peck’s-Agaya. “I often think about whether I might have visited my father more if my first experience visiting a correctional facility had not been so intimidating. Children should have the choice to visit their parent, or not, based on what is best for them and their family. That decision should not be shaped by an environment that feels frightening or unwelcoming”

IMRP does not hope to bring normalization through physical infrastructure alone. Last Christmas, Peck’s-Agaya helped organize a holiday gift-opening event at York for incarcerated mothers and their children. Peck’s-Agaya said the gifts were “largely donated and crowdsourced,” and that she is working to secure sponsors for future events, and working to find community partners to support, “additional family-connection events at other facilities and at different times throughout the year.”

“Establishing recurring family engagement events is certainly a goal,” said Peck’s-Agaya. “We are also mindful that York is Connecticut’s only women’s facility, and we are thinking carefully about comparable opportunities that support children with incarcerated fathers as well.”

Dynamic security is the second element integral to Norway’s correctional philosophy being implemented in Connecticut. The Brennan Center for Justice said dynamic security is characterized by “humane interactions that enable staff to have a better sense of residents’ mental and emotional needs, allowing them to anticipate and prevent security risks rather than responding after an incident has occurred.” The closer, more casual nature of relationships between officer and inmate that Fair observed in Norway, or that Aquart said is practiced in TRUE, are examples of this.

While the TRUE Unit has brought these two philosophies to a select group of incarcerated young adults, on March 11, Vera Institute announced that it would be working with DOC to implement its Designed for Dignity initiative, implementing these philosophies across the board.

“Designed for Dignity scales our young adult housing unit approach to focus on the locus of sustainable change, which is the inter-connectivity between policies, practices and training, doing that work for everyone across an agency,” said Aquart. 

Vera representatives will be working alongside DOC officials for the next three years. The first six to eight months, Aquart said, will be a needs-assessment process, determining the DOC’s areas for improvement. The next 18-to-24 months will be spent implementing changes, followed by a six-to-eight month “sustainability period.” 

As the 2015 trip led to the creation of TRUE, the most recent Norway trip has culminated in the creation of what the DOC is calling “response teams” in Garner Correctional, the state’s facility most known for housing incarcerated men suffering from psychiatric illnesses, and at York Institute. These response teams are being assisted by IMRP staff and representatives from Amend, a prison reform organization based out of the University of California, San Francisco. Like the prison staff in Norway or in TRUE, response team staff are trained to socialize with the incarcerated to build a closer rapport and higher trust. The Office of the Child Advocate made note of these response teams in a report released last December, a bright spot in a report otherwise characterized by “grave concerns.”

“The goal of this effort is to provide individuals with a supportive relationship, give the individual an opportunity to talk, and prevent escalation into crisis,” reads the OCA report. “At the time of OCA’s visit, this effort was in the early stages and there was not yet outcome data. Nonetheless, these changes are promising.”

In addition to programs offered by DOC, there are also volunteers who offer programming or services to Connecticut’s incarcerated people, funded by non-profit organizations or individual donors. Managed through DOC’s Volunteers Interns and Professional Partners (VIPs) Unit, prospective volunteers must first fill out an application form in which they explain the nature of the programming they intend to provide, agree to DOC rules, and provide personal information. Applicants are required to pass background checks, undergo training, and familiarize themselves with the DOC’s VIP Handbook.

Among current programs are Freedom Reads, a program that donates books to prison libraries, and the Prison Arts Program, which provides incarcerated people the opportunity to work on art pieces to be featured in yearly exhibits. Ward said it is also common for churches to come in and offer religious services for the incarcerated population, or for speakers to come in and talk to them.

 “They had a speaker come in a couple of weeks ago to Corrigan, who was a former gang member, and he talked to the gang units there,” said Ward. “The officials and the leadership at that facility told me they saw a marked decrease in some of the tensions within the facility.”

Barbara Fair, co-founder of Stop Solitary CT, said she has volunteered in the past for DOC. Fair, with the assistance of one of the state’s most prominent civil rights and criminal defense attorneys, Alex Taubes, set up a debate club for women incarcerated at York.

“We used to go up to York every weekend and we would go in and do debates,” said Fair. “We divided them up, just teaching them how to listen critically to each other, how to think critically, and see each other’s side of the debate, and it was a lot of fun.”

Fair said the program, which she volunteered with pre-COVID, was a “skill builder,” showing people how to see both sides of a given situation and compromise, and was startled by some of DOC’s onboarding requirements. Fair said she’ll “never forget” the first time she entered York for a DOC tour, as part of her onboarding process as a VIP. 

“During that tour, we were coming out the door and the women all stopped in their tracks,” said Fair. “They all went up against the wall and stood and so I turned around — because it’s natural for me — I turned around and I was smiling, and I said, ‘Good morning, ladies, how are you doing?’ And they were looking at me like I was from Mars. I overheard one woman actually say, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s smiling. Did you see her smile?’”

Fair said it was “crazy” to see firsthand the level of separation between the incarcerated women and outsiders. 

In addition to the tour, VIPs are required to watch a presentation as part of their onboarding process. Fair criticized DOC officials for the way in which their volunteer training framed the incarcerated.

“Part of our training was to make sure that we don’t get close with anybody,” said Fair. “It’s almost like, keep a distance, they’re dangerous, don’t believe anything they tell you, because they can lie, all of that kind of stuff.”

After the presentation, Fair said she spoke up to tell officials she thought the training was “very manipulative.” She believes the framing just further reinforces the view that incarcerated people aren’t human beings, but merely criminals.

“I really thought they were going to say, ‘OK, cross her name off, she ain’t getting in,’ but I was able to get in,” said Fair. “As soon as we had a break, people were coming over to me saying, ‘Thank you for saying something, I was feeling the same way.’”

Another gripe Fair had with the VIP program was the DOC’s regarding what she could and could not do. Fair said she was limited by what color pens she could give out, that she was prevented from bringing in journals or stickers, and that officials discouraged her from listening to gospel music with the women. 

“A lot of the stuff just freaks me out,” said Fair. “The control issues are just insane. And so, I had to always keep in mind little things like what color pen did I use.”

Both Fair and Ward highlighted issues that still exist in the state’s provision of correctional programming. Ward said he was “unable to speak to the efficacy” of programs, sharing his opinion that the state’s recidivism rates “have room for improvement.” 

Both Ward and Fair highlighted the role that frequent lockdowns play in disrupting the provision of programming, and Ward noted that many of the classes offered by DOC can only enroll 15 people at a time. This has led to DOC prioritizing programming for those who are close to their release date. Ward said he “can understand the thinking” behind this prioritization, but that it can lead to some of those inmates serving the longest terms to receive the least attention.

“I get why, inherently, that seems like a good choice,” said Ward. “The other side of that is that if somebody is a longer-term resident, you want them to have some of these skills to be able to manage their time within the facility. Because if they don’t have, you know, anger management, if they don’t have substance abuse skills — they’re in the facility, causing more problems and more incidents for staff and for other folks who are there.”

Ward believes it should be a goal of DOC officials to try to “do a better job” of providing programming to more people. Like many of the DOC’s persistent problems, Ward said it can be attributed to insufficient staffing.

“We don’t have the level of staff that we need to be able to make these courses and this programming more widespread,” said Ward. 

There is also the issue of inmate transfers. 

“If folks are transferred out of the facility for different reasons — discipline or their security levels drop, or whatever may have you — It doesn’t allow for someone to pick up the course, you know, in week six or week seven,” said Ward. “And so, you start off with 15 folks, three or four transfer out throughout the course of the 12 or 13 weeks of the program, and you end up with only 10 or so completing [it], and so I think that that’s a bit of the challenge too.

Fair said she’s also heard complaints about the pertinence of programs that DOC’s Offender Accountability Program prescribes to inmates. Fair said she’s heard of people being placed in drug treatment programs despite being clean for years or being placed in domestic violence programs for threatening.

“When I talk to people about some of the programs and stuff today, what I hear a lot of times is, ‘That program was a waste of time, but I have to take it because they’re requiring it,’” said Fair. “They really didn’t teach me anything,’ or ‘They had nothing to do with what I was charged with.’”

Fair believes DOC decision-makers ought to adhere to results-based accountability. 

“Anybody can come in and say, ‘We need more money for this and that’,” said Fair. “But I said, does anybody seek accountability for anything? You have a budget of almost a billion dollars for DOC; tell me what accountability you have asked for, for any of that money?”

Fair believes the DOC could potentially net better returns if it provided a portion of its programming funds to volunteers with a proven track record of providing effective services. Ward didn’t give a stance one way or the other but noted that he wasn’t aware of any conversations among lawmakers or DOC administrators on the topic.

Despite the array of programs offered both by DOC and volunteers, Ward said there’s still demand for other programs among the incarcerated people he’s spoken to.

“At the women’s prison, I hear they’d love some yoga or meditation stuff,” said Ward. “At the men’s facilities, I hear that they want more opportunities for sports and physical activities. They do offer a number of physical activities, but I’m hearing that the opportunity to do them is limited.”

Gardening is another activity that Ward marked as a “big one” on the wish lists of Connecticut’s prison population. Ward said that incarcerated people place a premium on outdoor time, but that only a few facilities across the state, specifically York and Cheshire, are conducive to offering it, while the state’s county detention facilities, such as in New Haven or Harford, are limited by their location. 

“New Haven Correctional is right on Whaley Avenue, and in the heart of the city, right?” said Ward. “And so, there’s not a ton of recreation opportunities. Same thing for Bridgeport; Bridgeport is smack dab in the middle of a mixed-use neighborhood, sits close to a high school, so there’s not a lot of outdoor space.”

Regarding Vera Institute’s and IMRP’s initiatives with DOC, both Aquart and Clark were honest that transitioning Connecticut’s prisons to be more rehabilitative and less retributive will take time. 

“The truth of the matter is the needs assessment is going to come up with myriad reasons or policies and practices that need to be changed, and we can’t take all of that on at once,” “Some policies require small changes before you get to the larger one, and so if a larger one is a goal, we might have to do a few small, incremental changes before we can get to that one.” 

Clark acknowledged that a lot of what IMRP has done is “an experiment to some degree,” saying that transitioning Connecticut’s prisons to become more rehabilitative is “a journey” that takes time. 

“What the Institute does is meet whatever willing partners that we have where they’re at and do our best to support in the roles that we can, in the roles that they have, and the capacity they have to move forward,” said Clark. “In that regard, I have not seen any obstacles, I’ve only seen growth.”

Clark said that while many of the advocates, as well as the families of incarcerated people themselves, might disagree with him, he believes that going “full scale pedal to the metal” might do more harm than good in the long run.

“Look, I don’t think the reform could come soon enough for the people that are living and working there,” said Clark. “So, it’s tough for me and the families that are dealing with it to say it shouldn’t happen now, because we can see a path forward, and we know what we can do and what’s possible. But you know, I also recognize that that’s not for me to say.”

Fair believes an “us vs. them” mindset is still held by many corrections officers, and that change will have to come from the ground up. She shared her belief that while many administrators have their hearts in the right place, many officers on the ground are resistant to the change, and that it is reflected in the recalcitrance of the Correction Officers’ Union.

“Everything that they do wrong is always about safety and security,” said Fair. “To me, some of it is valid — some of it. A lot of it is about control. You can’t talk on the phone, you can’t write an email, you can’t get a letter, you can’t send the letter out — I can’t believe that’s all about safety, security. That’s about controlling every aspect of incarcerated people’s lives.”

Clark shared the belief that Connecticut’s prisons have been operating in a “crisis mode,” which makes it difficult to think ahead or plan deliberately. He, too, noted that for true change to occur, it needs to happen in a way where it’s not “just being imposed” upon officers on the ground. Clark, Aquart, and Fair all indicated that they’ve found the most success in convincing DOC officials to change by reframing their initiatives as not only beneficial to the incarcerated but also to the corrections officers who spend most of their days overseeing them. 

Fair said that when she first met Angel Quiros, the DOC’s Commissioner, he had “a nasty attitude,” and told her, “I can’t work with you.”

“I said, ‘Well, tell me why?’” said Fair. “We had a one-on-one, and I told him, ‘I don’t want us to be adversarial, because I’m not your enemy. I think whatever I support, you should want as well, because you’ll have a better experience for incarcerated people and staff if we treat people more humanely. All these people are coming home, and the damage that’s being done to them is damage that we’re going to collect in our communities.’”

Despite their initial meeting, Fair said that “little by little,” they turned their relationship around to the point that when Quiros announced his retirement in February, she “didn’t feel good.” Regardless, Fair still has faith that many of DOC’s highest officials have their hearts in the right place.

“I think people like [Eulalia] Garcia (DOC’s Programs and Treatments Director), they really have the heart to change a lot of things,” said Fair. “I think our Assistant Commissioner (Sharonda Carlos), I know she has the heart to change a lot of these things. There are some administrators that I know, if they were given the opportunity, they would change things.”

Clark said that ultimately, building trust among administrators and officers alike is the only path forward, and that he’s learned through his career that “process is paramount.” Clark said implementing any change in policy requires a process that is transparent, inclusive and deliberate.

“I mean, change in and of itself is always disconcerting,” said Clark. “When we first went into both facilities, it was met with a ton of resistance in terms of what was going to be the value here. ‘Who are you people? Why are you doing that?’ And over time, I think we’ve developed some trust and some awareness that, you know, we’re going to go on this journey together, and throughout that, we’re going to assist in creating better environments for everyone, which means they’ll also be more efficient.”

“It’s a journey,” said Clark. “It takes time, but I would say that it’s been positive, and it’s on a good trajectory.”

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