As the first day of the 2025 legislative session kicked off, members of Stop Solitary CT held a meeting at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford to share some of the group’s demands, hopes, and legislative objectives for the session. Chief among them was the strengthening and enforcement of the PROTECT Act, a twice-passed and once-vetoed bill that was signed into law in 2022 with the intention of significantly reducing the use of solitary confinement in state prisons.
“We passed a law in 2022, they are still doing what they want to do, Department of Corrections is running a rogue organization,” said Barbara Fair, a founding member of Stop Solitary. “So I’d like to know from Representative Hughes, who do we go to, to make them enforce the law? Or is the law only supposed to govern civilians?”
Fair was joined by Ivelisse Correa, another Stop Solitary CT member and outspoken activist and prisoners’ rights advocate, as well as Rep. Anne Hughes (D-Redding), interim Corrections Ombudsman DeVaughn Ward, ACLU activist Terri Ricks, and former corrections psychiatrist Kevnesha Boyd. In addition to their demands of a strengthened PROTECT Act, the group spoke at length on their wish to curtail cavity searches, increase DOC transparency, and strengthen the Corrections Ombudsman’s Office, which was created after the PROTECT Act’s passage in 2022.
The PROTECT Act was originally introduced in the 2021 legislative session with the backing of Stop Solitary, and aimed to dramatically reduce the frequency at which the DOC can place inmates into solitary confinement, use in-cell restraints, and provide all inmates, even those placed in confinement, with the ability to leave their cells for 6.5 hours a day.
Although the bill passed, it was vetoed by Gov. Ned Lamont, who said at the time that he did so out of concern for the safety of inmates and corrections staff. In lieu of the bill’s passage, Lamont issued an executive order which made it so that prisoners could only be placed in solitary due to their disciplinary status, and which provided all inmates placed in solitary two hours a day of out of cell time.
The bill was passed and signed into law in 2022. Despite its passage, Fair said that many of the law’s provisions are being inadequately and unevenly enforced by prisons across the state, with there being no way to ensure DOC adherence. Fair said that DOC staff have been using prison lockdowns as a means to circumvent the limits placed on solitary confinement.
“We know that all these lockdowns appeared once the PROTECT Act was passed, which said you have to let people out for at least a minimum of five hours a day,” said Fair. “All of a sudden, every time you turn around, there’s a lockdown.”
She also said that prisoners placed in the DOC’s Security Risk Group (SRG) program, one which has long been mired with allegations of brutal abuse, infringements on inmates’ rights, and criticized for the haphazard way in which it classifies inmates as gang members, should receive the same protections outlined under the act.
“Let’s take a second look at who’s determined to be a gang inside of DOC, and who really is a gang,” said Fair. “Gang or not, they should get the same thing as the general population. They’re already separated, they still should have the six calls a day, five hours out of cell, and the mental health care and restricted use of isolation.”
The PROTECT Act, in addition to enshrining new rights and protections for inmates, also provided for the creation of an independent advisory board to appoint a correctional ombudsman charged with providing DOC oversight and monitoring. Ward, who was named the interim ombudsman by Lamont this August, shared many of the ways he hoped that the legislature could help strengthen his office’s ability to monitor the DOC this year’s session. Ward said that first and foremost, the legislature needed to give him the funding necessary to hire a staff.
“My biggest challenge this session, is securing funding necessary for the office to fulfill its mission effectively,” said Ward. “In order to be able to bring about change and policy recommendations, and to share that information in a comprehensive way with lawmakers, we really need to get this office up and running and get it fully staffed and I’m hoping everyone here can join me in that effort.”
Ward said that his office currently receives $400,000 a year in state funding, and gave New Jersey’s correctional ombudsman’s office, which receives $3 million a year, as an example of one which is more adequately funded. Ward also said that he hoped the legislature could work to further codify the rights and duties of his positions, to protect his office’s work from potential interference from the DOC or other state agencies in the future, and to explore methods to provide easy ombudsman access to inmates. He also said that he hopes the legislature funds infrastructural upgrades to various state prisons and set its sights on addressing issues to related to the DOC’s Security Risk Group (SRG) program and the inmate grievance process.
“So that’s just a little bit of the flavor of the stuff I want to tackle this session, in addition to that, I still got to go to the facilities and make sure the folks there are being taken care of,” said Ward.
Another protection that Stop Solitary hoped legislature would look into providing prisoners was a reduction in its use of cavity searches, which Fair referred to as “degrading” and “disgusting.” Both Correa and Ricks, who were incarcerated in the past, spoke of their experiences being strip searched while in jail and the impact it had on them mentally.
“I was raped by a CO,” said Ricks. “That strip search is not for safety, it’s for their personal pleasures, their enjoyment. It got so bad that I stopped visits, because I didn’t want to deal with being violated.”
Ricks said that she was often asked to be searched under circumstances in which it was obvious to her that she was not capable of having smuggled anything in, such as after leaving her cell for the first time all day. She said that searches should only occur when it’s absolutely necessary, and that staff “know for a fact that they’re bringing something illegal.”
“Strip the guards!,” said Ricks. “That’s how we get the phones, that’s how we get the cigarettes, that’s how we get anything we want.”
Correa said that she was first strip searched as a teenager when she was incarcerated. She said that her father was incarcerated at the same time, and that she wasn’t aware then that she had to be searched if she wanted to visit him, nor that he had to be searched whenever he visited her. She said it led to her feel guilty later on in life, when her husband was incarcerated, because she knew he would have to be searched every time she came to visit him.
Correa said that she was imprisoned for disorderly conduct and that her father was imprisoned for possessing cannabis while on parole. Fair also stressed that many of those incarcerated were merely there for their inability to pay bail.
“We need to remember that these people are humans,” said Correa. “They have people that love them.”
Hughes, who was present in a show of support, highlighted the conversations she had with various other legislators who supported the efforts of Stop Solitary, and intermittently pointed out the various legislators who poked their heads in during the meeting in support. She highlighted the presence of other legislators at the meeting, such as Rep. Kadeem Roberts (D-Norwalk), who briefly made an appearance, and the newly elected Reps. Laurie Sweet (D-Hamden) and Nick Gauthier (D-Waterford) who sat in support in the back of the conference room throughout the duration. She also mentioned Rep. Hubert Delaney (D-Stamford) and members of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus had indicated to her their intent to lobby for Stop Solitary’s initiatives.
“I was with probably 15 legislators yesterday at the Environmental Summit held at Bushnell across the street,” said Hughes. “One of the things the Keynote said is, ‘It’s not enough to meet people where they’re at, we have to meet people where they care.’ We’ve got to make them care, because the majority of legislators do not have a loved one that is being impacted.”
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Look, nobody goes to jail for Disorderly Conduct unless it’s combines with more serious charges like murder. Really. They are entitled to six phone calls a day!!! What’s the chance these advocates are dating these inmates? They should be lucky we don’t bring back the death penalty.