Experts eye long-term forecasts for CT prisons
For the past 15 years, criminal justice experts have produced a report forecasting the size of Connecticut’s incarcerated population. Most of the time, their projections were within five percentage points of reality.
Then the pandemic hit. One month before COVID-19 arrived in Connecticut, officials predicted there would be 11,800 people in prisons and jails by January 2021, a roughly 4.5% decline over that year.
Instead, there were 9,094 individuals incarcerated on Jan. 1 — a contraction of 27 percent.
There are almost 3,500 fewer people in prisons and jails today than there were on March 1, 2020. On March 19, Connecticut’s prison and jail population dipped below 9,000 for the first time since 1989, a 55% decline from its peak of 19,984 in February 2008.
But with the good news is some bad: Racial disparities have widened since the pandemic’s onset, even as the prison population has shrunk. Black and Hispanic people made up almost 70% of people in correctional facilities on March 1, 2020. A year later, they made up 72 percent of those behind bars.
Experts predict that the low prison population is here to stay, thanks to criminal justice reforms passed over the last decade. The historically low number of people in correctional facilities, coupled with a heightened public interest in addressing racial inequities highlighted by the pandemic and opportunities at the federal level for better access to education and jobs, could lead to an even larger a shift in the state’s future criminal justice reform efforts.
Past and present state leaders are proud of Connecticut’s record on criminal justice reform, which
began in earnest during the administration of former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. But although the number of people in correctional facilities has shrunk, demands for equity and more humane post-incarceration policies have grown louder as racial disparities have widened.
This month, the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at Central Connecticut State University and the University Network for Human Rights released a report titled, “Connecticut at the Crossroads,” which calls on the state to continue reducing the number of people in prisons and jails while improving conditions for those who remain incarcerated, and strengthening reentry programs to ensure those who leave prison don’t wind up going back.
“We created this black box that, frankly, nobody in society wanted to deal with, and now we’re trying to say, ‘What do you do next?’” said Andrew Clark, director of the IMRP. “Part of our argument is, ‘You’ve got to dismantle all of it.’”
A ‘transformation’
Much of the population decline is due to courts being shut down for a year; very few people have been added to the sentenced population since COVID-19’s onset. At the same time, officials have stepped up their use of discretionary
releases, letting people out of prison before the end of their sentence while continuing to supervise them in the community. The court shut down and the uptick in discretionary releases, coupled with the continual release of incarcerated people who reach the end of their sentences, have led to the historic decline in the number of people in state prisons and jails.
Marc Pelka, under secretary for criminal justice policy and planning at the Office of Policy and Management, the agency that produces the annual prison population forecasts, said reforms passed by the legislature in prior years have put the state in a good position to keep its incarcerated population low. Those reforms help keep the system’s many moving parts in constant communication, which has led to lower crime, fewer arrests and a smaller incarcerated population.
For instance, collaboration between the Department of Correction and the Judicial Branch’s Court Support Services Division prioritizes individuals suitable for pretrial supervision so they don’t await the outcome of their case from a jail cell, and diverts people from court to behavioral health facilities if they are in need of treatment.
The DOC’s Community Release Unit is yet another example, Pelka said. As part of its process to review the incarcerated for discretionary release, the unit looks at a packet that contains an array of information, including police reports, disciplinary records while they were locked up and a detailed criminal history. They also review letters of support from the community.
In other words, the historic decline could be here to stay, and won’t shoot back up once more people are vaccinated.
“Connecticut is wellpositioned to maintain a level in its correction population because of the work done over the last decade or so to implement effective policies and practices across the criminal justice system,” Pelka said. “The trajectory that we reach for the state is due not to any singular or, you know, a handful of policies, it’s really been a transformation.”
This year’s prison population forecast predicts the number of people in prison and jail will hover around 9,000 people through February 2022.
“As the deviation was externally driven and not structural, the system will, as it has in the past, return to the prevailing historical trend, which is driven by consistent, steady and conservative reductions in crime, arrests and admissions to prison,” the report reads.
Crime rose modestly across the state last year, but it also spiked nationally , in states that did not have as sharp of a decline in the correction populations.
“Although crime is higher and increased from 2019 to 2020, it’s still lower than rates were 25 years ago in the mid-90s,” said Pelka.
The drop in the incarcerated population has rippled across the system. The Department of Correction is planning on closing three prisons by the end the budget cycle. OPM’s correction population forecast is central to their decision on prison closures. DOC Commissioner Angel Quiros said the decreased population not only allows him to close prisons, but also reevaluate existing programs and shift resources around by better tailoring them to people’s needs.
Quiros said he was “very comfortable” with OPM’s forecast, but he outlined two caveats he thinks could lead to an uptick in the incarcerated population later in the year. One, a spike in arrests in the summer months — crime tends to rise during warmer weather — and two, what happens to the backlog of pending cases, the people who were arrested during 2020 and either posted bond or were given a promise to appear in court.
“How many of them will be sentenced to some incarceration? I don’t know,” said Quiros.
No more ‘cream puffs’
The number of people in prison or jail isn’t all that has changed during the pandemic. There has also been a shift in the reasons people are imprisoned.
Between 2018 and 2020, people who violated probation made up the majority of the prison population. But by March 1, 2021, murder was the most common offense for which people were serving time. Violation of probation was the second-most common controlling offense — the most serious offense for which a person is incarcerated — but the frequency of that charge decreased by almost 60% from the previous year.
“The individuals that we have in our custody are some hardcore individuals, hardcore crimes,” Quiros said. “The cream puffs are out.”
The shift could be because of efforts to keep people out of prison and jail for low-level crimes, said Karen Martucci, the department’s director of external affairs.
“We don’t want people incarcerated that don’t need to be, that could be safely managed in the community,” she said. “I think that’s what we all want to see with reform. You don’t want someone incarcerated on a low level crime.”
The department’s reentry efforts become more difficult with a population convicted of more serious crimes, who have been incarcerated multiple times, or who have mental health conditions or substance use issues. The department tries to send those serving decades-long sentences to halfway houses before the end of their sentence so they can transition to life outside a prison cell.
“The vast majority of incarcerated people will go home. So whether they’re doing a 20-year sentence or a four-year sentence, you know, we’ve got to do our best to give them the tools to be successful,” Martucci said.
A recent study from OPM found that roughly half of the participants in the pool who were released from prison in 2017 were back in prison on new charges within three years. The more prior sentences a person had served, the more likely they were to be locked up again.
“Re-entry work has always been a risk-taking business,” Quiros said, adding that when authorities decide to put someone on community supervision, they’re hoping that person is successful and doesn’t continuing victimizing people. Granting discretionary release to someone on a misdemeanor charge is lower risk, Quiros said.
Despite the drop in the number of people in correctional facilities, advocates remain frustrated that racial disparities have grown during the pandemic, perhaps reflecting racial inequities in access to housing — necessary for certain forms of discretionary releases — or due to longer prison sentences meted out to Black people.