This Friday at 10 am the Judiciary Committee will hear public testimony on the draft of a police reform bill that will be considered during the special session. 

Our perspective is that the police reform bill MUST include:

Correctional Reform. Provisions of the bill aimed at holding police accountable MUST extend to correctional officers. Just as policing disproportionately damages black and brown communities, prisons disproportionately lock up black and brown people. In Connecticut, 71% of the people in prison are black and brown. In Northern Correctional, the State’s supermax facility, 82% of people are black and brown. 

Independent Oversight. The bill’s draft language calls for the creation of an Inspector General appointed by the Chief State’s Attorney. First, this is not independent oversight as prosecutors work closely with police officers and cannot be considered reliably independent. Second, the Inspector General would not be charged with monitoring and investigating correctional staff performance and institutional policy. The bill’s draft language only covers correctional oversight when investigating a death in the Department of Correction (D.O.C) custody, an absolute bare minimum that should not be considered substantive oversight. Notably, Connecticut is one of the only states that lacks external oversight of the D.O.C.

A Shift in Funding from Corrections to Communities. The bill’s focus on demilitarization does not go far enough. The bill must explicitly shift funding from policing into communities of color. Likewise, the bill must include a shift in funding from militarizing and overpopulating the D.O.C. to investing in resources for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. Now that the state has drastically reduced the prison population, it is time to have a serious conversation about when and how to begin closing costly prisons, starting with Northern Correctional, a facility recently cited by the United Nations for human rights violations due to the excessive use of solitary confinement. 

Banning routine practices that inflict long-term trauma. The bills focus on banning practices that inflict wanton and unnecessary violence during police stops is well warranted. Banning these practices is long overdue, but tactics such as chokeholds must also be banned in the Department of Correction. Similarly, the bill should focus on banning solitary confinement, an ineffective practice often understood to be torture, which can inflict life long trauma. The bill must also ban the use of prone and in-cell restraints. 

Qualified Immunity. The use of qualified immunity to shield police from civil action is an essential component of this legislation; the abolition of qualified immunity must be extended to correctional officers. 
For more updates during the special session, you can follow us on Twitter or on Facebook @stopsolitaryct. Feel free to tag us in a post about why police reform MUST include correctional reform as well!