Ganim Describes Path Back From Prison

March 7, 2018 - 

Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim is running for governor not despite his past felony convictions —  but, he said, in part because he wants to share with Connecticut residents the lessons he learned while behind bars.

He also thinks his story of personal and political perseverance is an inspiring example of the redemptive possibilities afforded by a “second-chance society” state.

So Ganim said on the most recent episode of WNHH Radio’s “Criminal Justice Insider with Babz-Rawls Ivy and Jeff Grant” during a wide-ranging conversation about the current mayor’s past criminal history and rapid return to political prominence.

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Transition Time For Teens In Trouble

Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018 - 

Decreasing youth crime and squeezed state budgets have precipitated a transitional period for how Connecticut handles juvenile delinquents.

Even though the state is moving to reduce its incarcerated youth population, legislators, academics and criminal justice reform advocates still need to be vocal about investing state resources in diversionary measures that keep people under the age of 18 out of the criminal justice system in the first place.

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Parole Holds A Key To Reentry Puzzle

Cynthia Farrar (left) with Criminal Justice Insider hosts Jeff Grant and Babz Rawls Ivy.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - 

Cynthia Farrar and her colleagues at the documentary production company Purple States knew that they wanted to make a movie about prison reentry.

What she and her colleagues did not know until they started putting the movie together was that any documentary about the challenges of leaving prison, reintegrating into society, and avoiding recidivism inevitably needed to focus on the day-to-day realities of life on parole.

“Most people leaving prison now are on parole,” Farrar said on the latest episode of WNHH FM’s “Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls-Ivy and Jeff Grant.” “And the public doesn’t know anything about what happens on parole, and that story needed to be told. The single most frequent reason why people end up back in jail is parole violations.”

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Organizer Takes “Sawdust-On-Floor” Tack

Lorenzo Jones (Katal Website photo)

Monday, December 18, 2017 - 

For Lorenzo Jones, co-founder of the criminal-justice reform Katal Center, there is a big difference between being an advocate and being an organizer.

One strives for progress, the other for revolution.

“You measure community organizing in changing systems,” Jones said on the latest edition of WNHH radio’s “Criminal Justice Insider” program with Babz Rawls-Ivy and Jeff Grant. “You measure advocacy in reforms that you succeed at securing. As an organizer, you can get reforms, but that’s not organizing. You’ve got to go to the next step, where the system is operating differently as a result of you engaging with it.”

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Female Ex-Cons Band Together

Jackie Lucibello (Paul Bass photo)

Friday, December 8, 2017 - 

Jackie Lucibello was serving a three-year sentence at the York Correctional Institution when she found out that her mother was dying from complications related to AIDS.

If Lucibello wanted to visit her mother in the hospital, she first had to be “blackboxed.”

A high-strength plastic box was placed over the key hole to her handcuffs to keep her from trying to pick the lock.

Chains running from her ankles to her waist to her wrists all intersected in that black box, rendering her practically immobile.

At the hospital, she was pushed in a wheelchair through the corridors, was not allowed to see any other visiting family members, and was watched by two guards with the hospital bedroom door open as she spent her final moments with her mother.

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German-Inspired Reform Calms Prison

Scott Semple (Yale Law School photo)

Monday, November 20, 2017 - 

Young inmates are getting direction — not just detention — in one corner of Connecticut’s prison system, and they’re straightening out as a result.

State Department of Correction Commissioner Scott Semple created the experiment called the TRUE program (which stands for Truthfulness, Respectfulness, Understanding and Elevating) — to help 18-to-25-year-old inmates mature into responsible adults behind bars, and prepare for successful and productive lives after they have been released from prison.

The program, inspired by a fact-finding visit Semple took to Germany with the governor in June 2015, is currently in place in one 70-bed unit at the Cheshire Correctional Institution. Because of its early success, Semple is looking to expand it to other units at Cheshire, as well as to the York Correctional Institution for Women.

Through the TRUE program, the young inmates are paired up with mentors who are older, fellow inmates serving life sentences for crimes that they committed while they were young.

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Son’s Arrest Helped Shape Porter’s Politics

Robyn Porter (Markeshia Ricks photo)

Monday, November 7, 2017 - 

Robyn Porter was cleaning out a cluttered back room in her home when she first learned that her son had been arrested.

She was listening to gospel music, dancing, and chatting on the phone with a girlfriend when her mom walked into the kitchen. Tears streaming down her face, she told Porter that Porter’s 20-year-old son, who had had no previous criminal record, was being held at the police station.

“It’s that call that no mother, especially a black woman in America, wants to get,” Porter recalled on an interview on WNHH FM’s “Criminal Justice Insider” program. “I was devastated. But I was also rooted and grounded in my relationship with God.”

Ten years after the experience, Porter now helps make laws governing when people get arrested and how the criminal justice system handles them, as a Democratic state representative from Newhallville’s 94th General Assembly District.

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