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.

Click here to read the full article.

Poli Sci Grad Tackles Real Life In The Hill

March 1, 2018 - 

Alejandro Pabon-Rey started attending community management team meetings after his college advisor told him that the monthly meetings were a good place to learn about local politics and issues.

One year later, the lifelong Hill resident and Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) graduate is working as the team’s community liaison for a new experimental, pre-arrest diversion initiative designed to keep his neighbors who struggle with addiction out of jail and on the path to recovery, employment and stable housing.

Click here to read the full article.

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.

Click here to read the full article...

APT Enlists Cops To Quiet Clinic Corner

Chris Peak photo

Wednesday, February 14, 2018 - 

A controversial methadone clinic in the Hill is paying the city for extra police presence in an attempt to deter potential illegal activity from happening outside of its doors.

According to the neighborhood’s top cop, that strategy is working out well.

At Tuesday night’s regular monthly meeting of the Hill North Community Management Team at Career High School on Legion Avenue, Lt. Jason Minardi told neighbors that the APT Foundation has been paying for an off-duty New Haven police officer to be stationed outside of its primary methadone dispensary at 435 Congress Ave. from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Monday through Friday.

Click here for the full article...

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.”

Click here to read the full article...

New Program Couldn’t Keep Him Alive

Liaison Jesus Garzon Ospina describes death of first LEAD participant.

Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2018 - 

Two New Haven police officers found Mark Cochran, 55 — the first person targeted for help in an experimental program to keep nonviolent offenders out of jail — slumped over and intoxicated behind Trinity Church on the Green.

It was a Thursday in mid-December. The police called an ambulance, and, when it arrived, Cochran picked himself up and walked over to the car of his own strength.

As the ambulance ferried him to Yale-New Haven Hospital, Cochran, who had struggled for years with homelessness and substance abuse, coded. Medical personnel on board were not able to resuscitate him.

Cochran was pronounced dead at the hospital soon after the ambulance arrived.

Click here to read the full article...

Former Refugee Takes LEAD Downtown

Jesus Garzon Ospina

Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - 

A Gateway Community College student who first came to New Haven over 15 years ago as a refugee fleeing violence in Colombia has been tapped to help low-level, non-violent drug offenders on the New Haven Green avoid arrest and receive stable housing, employment and medical rehabilitation.

At Tuesday night’s regular monthly meeting of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCMT) on the second floor of City Hall, the 20-year-old political science student at Gateway Community College, Jesus Garzon Ospina, introduced himself as the neighborhood’s new community liaison for the city’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program.

LEAD is an experimental pre-arrest diversion initiative that the city launched at the end of November in the Hill and Downtown neighborhoods. The program, which was founded in Seattle and has been adopted in Albany, Baltimore, and Bangor, Maine, seeks to provide case management and rehabilitative social services instead of arrests and incarceration for low-level offenders engaged in drug abuse, prostitution and other non-violent street crimes.

Click here to read the full article...

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.”

Click here to read the full article...

LEAD Launches

Lt. O’Neill at Tuesday night’s meeting.

Friday, Nov. 24, 2017 - 

The city’s new prospective start date for a pilot program that diverts prostitutes and low-level drug offenders from the criminal justice system and towards social services is this coming Wednesday, Nov. 29.

At Tuesday night’s Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCMT) meeting on the second floor of City Hall, Lt. Mark O’Neill, who is the district commander for the neighborhood, updated residents on the latest schedule for the city’s new Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program.

The city is preparing to begin a two-year, federally-funded pilot next week in the Hill and Downtown neighborhoods.

Click here to read the full article...

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.

Click here to read the full article...