IN SUPPORT OF SECOND CHANCES Let’s move the Connecticut incarceration conversation forward now
April is second chance month. What does it take to forgive oneself ? And what does it take to forgive another? These are two of the biggest challenges of being human. I have worked with women at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic since 2005, and with men at the Cybulski Reintegration Center in Enfield since 2016, in multi-arts residencies. I have watched, time and again, people who have caused harm and are paying the price, struggling to become better than who they were when they arrived in prison — finding paths to learn from their mistakes, to sort out their errors and their lives, and to become constructive citizens within the huge challenges of prison and when they return to the community.
I have been dismayed by the conversations recently around commutations for those who were sentenced when they were under 25 as well as the unseating of Carlton Giles as the chair of the Board of Pardons and Parole. Connecticut has been in the forefront of prison reform. This has made me even more proud to be a Connecticut resident — it has given me and others who know prison from the inside a ray of hope in the possibility that we as a society can be more just — accepting that change and evolution happens all the time — and that we can surpass the harms caused and offer second chances when they are due.
I have witnessed and facilitated honest and courageous work being created and shared by these women and men — a true self-reckoning without excuses but with insight, planting seeds of change that take root and grow. These individuals are not the same as when they walked through prison doors — a place that is almost antithetical in its structure to such growth. But they grow, evolve, and insist within themselves on finding a better way to live and to be.
Such individuals in my considered opinion soundly deserve a second chance.
In Norway and Germany, prison sentences usually cap at 20 years and other sentences are apportioned accordingly.
We are not close to being there yet, but as individuals, as a community, as a state, let’s make room for the possibility of real and positive change in the most difficult of circumstances when we see it, when we know it, when a trusted board of officials determines it, and allow what was once a horrible choice to transform into a constructive and deeply considered life, a life that can contribute in positive ways to our community.
Please contact your legislators and support SB 952, the bill that would allow earlier parole eligibility for people serving lengthy sentences for a crime they committed in Connecticut before age 25. Let’s move this conversation forward now, and not revert to inaccurate and scary stereotypes that take us back in time. For more ways that you can help, go to www.jdpp. org.