Mike Lawlor is, in the precise meaning of the term, a
lawbreaker. And unfortunately, he cannot plead ignorance of the law.
In January 2011, Mr. Lawlor was appointed by newly installed
Governor Dannel Malloy as Connecticut’s Under Secretary for Criminal Justice
Policy and Planning, a newly created position whipped up by Mr. Malloy because
the energetic governor wanted to put his mark on Connecticut’s penological
system. Mr. Lawlor seemed the obvious choice: he had served in the state’s
House of Representatives for twelve terms, 24 years, 16 years of which were
spent as the co-chair of the Judiciary Committee along with State Senator
Andrew McDonald, later appointed to Connecticut’s Supreme Court by Mr. Malloy.
Mr. Lawlor was at the time of his appointment – and is now –
intimately familiar with the sometimes byzantine law-making processes of the
General Assembly.
Installed as Mr. Malloy’s prison guru, Mr. Lawlor
immediately set about reforming what he regarded as Connecticut’s outmoded
penological system. Somewhat like the goddess Athena popping fully-formed out
of the brain of Zeus, Mr. Lawlor’s signal achievement as the state’s prison
guru, the controversial Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program, was inserted
fully-formed in what has been called derisively the state’s omnibus implementer
bill. The implementer bill is a Pandora’s Box of questionable legislation,
portions of which have been inserted into the end of the fiscal year legislation
to avoid legislative scrutiny by clever politicians such as Mr. Lawlor.
The birth of Mr. Lawlor’s ingeniously named “Risk Reduction
Earned Credit Program” was attended with many awkward difficulties. The
benefits of Mr. Lawlor’s get-out-of-jail-early program, to mention just one of
many wrinkles, were awarded to every prisoner in Connecticut retrospectively;
that is to say, the putative curative effects of the program were not applied
to many retrospective awardees. The favored prisoners simply had the good
fortune to be incarcerated at the time Mr. Lawlor smuggled the program past the
noses of his former comrades in the General Assembly, whose ordinary work-a-day
business it was to review and oversee the program, and so all Connecticut
prisoners were awarded “get out of jail early” credits without earning the
credits. Nice – if the object you have in view is to artificially reduce the
prison population.
The murder of a convenience store clerk in Meridan by
Frankie “The Razor” Resto – so called because the notorious gang member was in
the habit of using a razor to shake down drug dealers – called attention to the
program’s obvious deficiencies, one of which involved the awarding of
get-out-of-jail-early credits to rapists; rape is considered by most penologists
to be a violent crime against women, a voting group the Democratic Party has
been aggressively courting this election year. Among her other accomplishments,
Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is a woman.
Some watchful members of the General Assembly, among them
former State Senator Len Suzio and others in the General Assembly, began early
on to ask pertinent questions. Since rape is a violent crime,
and since the program was designed to exclude violent criminals from
participating, why were rapists being given credits that would shorten their
sentences? Mr. Lawlor adroitly dodged many of the balls thrown at him by
members of the General Assembly, washed the blood from his hands,
participated in the firing of Michelle Cruz, Connecticut’s most competent
Victims Advocate, and emerged from these ordeals with a whole skin.
As originally passed, Mr. Lawlor’s project did not allow
prisoners convicted of some serious crimes -- murder, murder with special
circumstances, felony murder, arson murder, 1st degree
aggravated sexual assault, or home invasion – to participate in his program.
But convicts convicted on most types of rape, including aggravated sexual assault
of a minor and persistent dangerous sex offenders, were admitted to the
program. It was not until FIVE YEARS AFTER the launch of Mr. Lawlor’s program –
mostly owing to persistent pressure brought to bear by concerned legislators –
that prisoners who had committed the above offenses were finally denied
admittance to Mr. Lawlor’s Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program.
A fully awakened legislature has now instructed Mr. Lawlor
to provide to it data that would allow the legislature to test the
effectiveness of Mr. Lawlor’s program with respect to recidivism rates. And so
last June, 2015 the General Assembly unanimously passed a bi-partisan bill, PA
15-216, that, Mr. Suzio said, “requires the quarterly disclosure of violent
crimes committed by criminals discharged from prison early because of the
‘Early Release' law.” This and other data required by the General Assembly in
PA 15-216 is necessary to determine the effectiveness of the program that Mr.
Lawlor previously had smuggled past legislative noses in an insufficiently
vetted implementer bill.
The new law has impelled Mr. Lawlor to assume the usual and
tiresomely pugnacious lawyerly crouch position – make me! Arrogantly – and you
thought former Governor John Rowland was arrogant? – Mr. Lawlor is now, through
the office of George Jepsen, the state’s attorney general, resisting a suit brought by Mr. Suzio that would compel the lawbreaker to obey the law.
Because the law repeatedly broken by Mr. Lawlor was unanimously adopted
by the General Assembly -- no one voted “no” on the bill – all
legislators who approved the bill should formally sign on to Mr. Suzio’s suit.
And Attorney General George Jepsen, once a state legislator, should be ashamed
to represent the interests of lawbreakers such as Mr. Lawlor and his accomplice
in lawbreaking, Mr. Malloy, who ironically was once a prosecutor before
becoming Connecticut’s least popular governor.
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