The Center for American Progress says Connecticut leads the nation in helping people with criminal records get jobs, find housing and re-enter society.
On Monday the organization hosted a conference in Washington, D.C., on rehabilitation. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy kicked it off with a discussion on efforts to reform the criminal justice system at the state level.
Malloy told a crowd of state corrections officials and lawyers from across the nation that people with prison records face too many barriers.
“You can’t get a job. You can’t get an education. You don’t qualify for housing. You can’t get a student loan. And we need to change that.”
Malloy says his so-called “second chance society” policies for criminal justice have made the state more efficient and have helped people get their lives back.
He told the crowd that in his years of public service, he’s been troubled by the role race plays in the criminal justice system.
“[There’s a] racial aspect of the criminal justice system that has led us to be very comfortable with five percent of the population in the world having 25 percent of the prison population of the world. So I made it part of my mission to undo some of the damage…If white communities living in New York City were subjected to the degradations that were heaped upon black and brown communities in New York, then we would’ve changed the criminal justice system and our policing method a lot sooner.”
Malloy says that at the high point of “tough-on-crime” policies, Connecticut had 20,000 people in jail. That number has since dropped to 14,000.
Malloy decriminalized small amounts of drugs to misdemeanors and led several initiatives to connect ex-felons with job placement programs. He’s also implemented reintegration programs within some state prisons to prepare inmates to re-enter society.
“Somewhere in the country, a new prison was opening every 10 days. We became absolutely convinced that mass incarceration was the best way to handle crime, when in fact, it was probably one of the worst ways to handle crime.”