The Hartford Courant
has ignored its own admittedly unscientific poll, which asks “Should inmates beable to earn early release with re-entry programs?”
Of the 508 responses
received by the paper, 89 percent of respondents answered that question “No.”
The number of those answering “Yes” was a slender 11 percent. On the basis of a
recent editorial,
“Give Inmates A Better Chance On The Outside,” one must assume the Courant
editorial page editors fall among the 11 percenters.
Had the editorial
department asked a somewhat different question – Should the hastily enacted Risk
Reduction Earned Credits program be reviewed and readjusted in the light of the recent murder
in Meriden allegedly committed by Frankie Resto, a prisoner who earned early
release credits under the program? – the percentage of respondents answering
“Yes” very likely would have been even higher.
In its most recent
editorial questioning the sound common sense of legislators who believe the
program should be reformed to disallow violent prisoners from earning early
release credits, Courant editors have swallowed, hook line and sinker, the line
fed them by extremely persuasive
Malloyalists, Governor Dannel Malloy’s undersecretary for criminal justice
policy at the Office of Policy and Management Michael Lawlor among them,
who are averse to beneficial reforms of the program.
As suggested by the
title of the editorial, the Courant asserts that the Risk Reduction Earned
Credits program, which provides early release credits that reduce by five days
a month the court ordered sentences of participating prisoners, aims to reduce
intolerably high recidivism rates “by providing classes and other activities to
prepare inmates for a crime-free life when they re-enter their communities.”
Rather
unfortunately, Frankie Resto was not improved by his classes – very likely
because the program is itself deficient and greatly in need of reform.
The Courant mentions
Mr. Resto, though not by name, in its editorial. Mr. Resto’s murderous activity
in Meriden – video shows him fatally shooting in the chest co-owner of an EZ
Mart store Ibraham Ghazal -- after Mr. Ghazal acceded to his demand to give him
cash from the register.
Mr. Resto has been
shown in various news reports to be a violent criminal. During a 2010 parole
hearing he was told by the chairman of the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles:
“You’ve got nine disciplinaries ... you set fire to a mattress, you’re a Latin
King, you’re not working when you’re on the outside, you’ve got no sponsor. I
don’t know, the future don’t look too bright outside for you. You’ve got to
change your lifestyle, Mr. Resto. You can’t keep robbing people, you’re robbing
people on the street.”
The quote above is
mentioned in a letter sent by Sen. Joe Markley to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy urging the
governor to temporarily suspend the state’s new poorly drafted early release program.
Republican critics of the program are asking that it be revised to
prevent violent criminals from participating in it. Very early in the passage
of the bill establishing the Risk Reduction Earned Credits program.
Republicans in the General Assembly voted against the bill precisely because it
allowed violent criminals access to early release. They felt, reasonably
enough, then and now, that incarcerated criminals serving time for rape, kidnapping,
arson, first-degree manslaughter, assault of a pregnant woman, first-degree
assault, second-degree strangulation, first-degree threatening, having sex with someone under the age of 13, assault of a blind or disabled person and animal
cruelty, often a predictor of violent behavior, should not participate in the program. The bill establishing the program was passed
on a party line vote at the tail end of a session usually devoted to budget
matters, as noted in several Courant stories.
Republicans, then and now, objected to the hastily constructed, poorly
thought out program because they feared it would inadvisably open a door of
opportunity to chronic violent criminals such as Mr. Resto, who was not likely
to be dissuaded from violence out of prison by the courses he might have taken while
incarcerated, as suggested by his arrest for murder in Meriden and several news
reports detailing his earlier crimes, all apparently unread by Courant
editorialists.
One murder is not convincing enough for the editorial writers at the Courant:
“It's too early in this
year-old program,” the paper avers, “to come to such a conclusion. One failure,
even one leading to a fatality, is no justification for scuttling the entire
program.”
No one has suggested
scuttling the entire program. There are dozens of Courant reports stating that senators
Len Suzio and Joe Markley, among other Republicans, merely want a temporary suspension
of the program until it can be reviewed and reformed by members of the General
Assembly who, unlike Courant editorial page editors, are not content to wait upon
the commission other violent crimes, perhaps in their own communities, before
they conjecture that the Risk Reduction Earned Credits program, as presently
constituted, exposes everyone in the state to risks not contemplated by the
architects of the bill, Governor Dannel Malloy or his undersecretary for criminal justice policy at the Office of Policy and Management Michael Lawlor,
both of whom have shamelessly suggested reform minded legislators are simply
posturing over pools of blood left by Mr. Resto in Meriden for campaign reasons.
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