The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
T.R.U.E. aims to break cycle of reoffending
CHESIRE — Twentythree-year-old Shyquinn Dix is being recruited to the University of Maine at Presque Isle to play men’s basketball.
He is also an inmate, imprisoned at Cheshire Correctional Institution in Connecticut.
These two distinctly different realities highlight what T.R.U.E., a prison program in which Dix spends his days, is all about: moving inmates from incarceration to a better future through rehabilitation.
“People are here to help us,” Dix said.
The T.R.U.E. unit at Cheshire Correctional opened in March and is modeled after German prisons.
Designed to support the needs of 18- to 25-year-old offenders, whose brains are still developing, the program pairs young adult male offenders with older mentor inmates.
Those accepted into the small program live in a separate unit and take classes in topics like conflict resolution and embracing fatherhood, or business and the stock market. They can learn welding, graphic design, wheelchair repair and cooking.
They also spend more time outside their cells than the general prison population.
The goal is to provide them with skills so they do not become career criminals.
State officials say it is the only program of its kind in the nation.
The T.R.U.E. unit was the centerpiece of a criminal justice conference organized by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and first lady Cathy Malloy Wednesday — the first such conference ever to be held inside a prison, according to the governor’s office.
Called “Reimagining Justice,” the summit brought 150 lawmakers, judges, prosecutors and other stakeholders for tours of the prison, panels on rehabilitation and speeches from experts. Participants also visited the T.R.U.E. unit and spoke to inmates.
“Long gone are the days when the mentality of lock ’em up and throw away the keys can be tolerated,” said Cathy Malloy, who organized the event. “It’s not working now, and it has not been working for a very long time.”
Updating incarceration
Improving the way inmates are treated in prison will influence their success when they return to society, said John E. Wetzel, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the conference’s keynote speaker.
“Accountability does not mean oppression,” Wetzel said. “It doesn’t have to mean creating horrible conditions that further damage and traumatize people, when part of the reason why they are in here is because they are damaged and traumatized.”
Providing inmates with education, training, addiction services and other resources is expensive, but Gov. Malloy said it’s money well spent.
“We’re giving a lot less people degrees in criminal behavior, which is what you (typically) get in prison,” he said. “We’re saving money.”
Connecticut’s prison population has shrunk by 30 percent in the last 10 years, which Mike Lawlor, undersecretary of the Department of Corrections, attributed to fewer arrests and prison admissions.
Other states now look to Connecticut as a “great demonstration ground” for criminal justice, said Michael Smith, executive director of the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, an initiative of former President Barack Obama that aims to close opportunity gaps for boys of color, who are disproportionately incarcerated.
“You see this is such a disruptive model that is breaking the status quo,” Smith said of T.R.U.E. “But you also walk away thinking, ‘This is common sense. Treat people with hope. Treat people with dignity.’ ”
Inmate to college athlete
The state plans to open a T.R.U.E. unit at the women’s York Correctional Institution in the coming weeks and to expand the program at Cheshire.
College basketball hopeful Dix, who was convicted of a conspiracy charge in 2016, knew the T.R.U.E. unit was going to be a better experience the moment he arrived from MacDougall Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield.
When he walked up to the T.R.U.E. unit, “The officers said ‘Good morning,” Dix remembered. “That’s different.”
Since that time, Dix has built supportive relationships with his inmate mentors, whom he views as the big brothers or father figures that were absent in his neighborhood growing up, he said.
He plays cards with the correctional officers. And they play basketball — T.R.U.E. unit inmates and correctional officers together.
It was one of the T.R.U.E. officers who connected Dix, who played college basketball in Nebraska before his arrest, with University of Maine. Dix plans on joining the UMaine team in the fall, after his anticipated release, he said.