Connecticut has made remarkable progress in curbing crime and incarceration – cutting the number of people incarcerated in half and posting the lowest crime rate in 40 years, SLATE reports.
In the late 1990s there were so many people incarcerated in the state of Connecticut, officials ended up paying another state to house 500 people. Now a quarter of a century later, they have to cut their prison population in half, all the while closing 10 prisons, according to the July 27, 2023 story.
The push to reform its criminal justice system began in the early 2000s, the process sped up in 2011 under the then-Gov. Dannel Malloy. The reform was hurried as Democrats became the majority in the state Legislature.
Under this new shift in political power, Connecticut made many changes. Repealing the death penalty, changing the age from 16 to 18 on juveniles who could be tried as adults, and getting rid of a few sentencing guidelines that were geared towards people of color, reported the article.
“We’ve shown over a 15-year period how to do [criminal justice reform] right. I actually wish other states spent more time looking to Connecticut,” said Rep. Steve Stafstrom, a Democrat from Bridgeport, Conn.
The work to reduce the prison population coincided with the decline in crimes being committed between 2012 and 2021. In the state violent crimes were down 43 percent, and property crime was down 29 percent.
Although these declines in the incarcerated individuals are important and significant, Melvin Medina, the vice president of policy and advocacy for the Connecticut Project, feels that the state has not made a dent in racial differences, noted the story.
Connecticut’s Black residents makeup only 12.9% of the state’s population, but 42% of its incarcerated population. This percentage is the same as it was when the state held 20,000 incarcerated people.
Black residents in Connecticut are 9.4 times more likely to be incarcerated then their White counterparts. This is almost twice the national average and ranked fifth-highest of all states, reported Slate
