Roughly 24 hours before lawmakers convened for a special legislative session earlier this fall, the unions representing correctional officers were upset that the state did not plan to take action in response to a series of assaults on prison staff.

“We have worked with Democratic and Republican legislative leadership. We have met with the chairs of the Judiciary Committee and the governor and his staff,” said Robert Beamon, vice president of AFSCME Local 391, at a press conference. “We’ve been pushing the department to make more changes. But we need help from our elected officials to help us reduce the increase in the staff assaults that’s been happening.”

In the most recent fiscal year, the Department of Correction documented 214 staff assaults — the highest in the last five years. Union representatives said the morale of the workforce was diminished because of it and that correctional officers were struggling to maintain safety.

Seated at a conference room table that day, they presented increased staffing as one solution to the violence they believed was spurred by a law requiring more out-of-cell time for prisoners. It was the legislature’s duty to allocate the funding to meet the needs of the rank-and-file, union officials said.

But as their messaging about out-of-control prison violence circulated, the people locked behind bars felt unheard.

In interviews conducted by The Connecticut Mirror through letters with incarcerated people at Cheshire Correctional Institution in Enfield, one of the facilities with documented staff assaults, they said the current narrative has unfairly portrayed prison violence as widespread, failed to address the causes of the recent attacks and attempted to undercut the increase in out-of-cell time.

Recent publicized assaults, they say, have mostly involved people with serious mental illness, a perspective backed by statistics provided by the DOC. Of the staff assaults since 2021, 69% included people with either mild, moderate or severe “mental health issues.”

There’s a belief among incarcerated people that some officers are attempting to push prisoners to violence as a way of furthering their agenda.

“There has been a shift in here lately … I can see some c/o’s trying to upset us,” said Anthony Garofalo, who’s serving a 25-year sentence for manslaughter. The 49-year-old resides in Cheshire’s H.O.N.O.R. unit, a specialized housing program created to provide expanded educational opportunities for rehabilitation. The letters stand for Honest, Ownership, Nobility, Obligation and Respect.

Recently, three correctional officers at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown were charged with third-degree assault for allegedly beating an incarcerated person who they claimed threatened them and refused to follow their orders.

Connecticut State Police concluded that the guards used excessive force in the incident captured on camera, which fell on the same day that union officials urged lawmakers to allocate more funding in response to staff assaults. The officers, including one of the union heads who spoke at the press conference, were placed on administrative leave by the DOC two days later.

Incarcerated people say that events like what occurred at Garner are exactly why the PROTECT Act was necessary. The DOC was previously condemned in investigations, court rulings, and testimony for practices — particularly the use of solitary confinement — deemed inhumane.

“There is absolutely no justification for anyone to assault another person. However, I strongly believe the assaults are related to the never-ending stress of being dehumanized,” said Joe Vega, 56, a paralegal housed in the H.O.N.O.R. unit who’s serving a 60-year sentence for first-degree assault. He has been a member of Cheshire’s mentor group since 2015.

Prisoners, advocates and correctional experts say that instead of focusing solely on increasing staffing and criticizing recent laws, unions and state officials should also strive to provide a safe and humane environment for everyone.

“Corrections unions are correct that every person who lives and works in prison should be safe,” said Hope Metcalf, a law professor at Yale University who co-teaches the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. “But where we might differ is that there is not more need for babysitters or for people to be pushing buttons for gates to open.”

The legislation at the center of this debate, Senate Bill 459, comprised three major components: increasing the number of mandated hours that prisoners can spend outside of their cells, limiting the DOC’s use of solitary confinement and establishing independent oversight of the agency.

Referred to as the PROTECT Act, shorthand for Promoting Responsible Oversight, Treatment, and Effective Correctional Transparency, the bill followed years of testimony from incarcerated people and court rulings that exposed the agency’s “cruel and unusual” practices. A representative from the United Nations testified before the law’s passage that Connecticut’s use of solitary confinement likely amounted to torture.

But as the legislation traveled through the hands of state lawmakers for two years — it was vetoed by Gov. Ned Lamont in 2021 — it crashed into intense opposition from union officials.

“Of course out-of-cell time is going to contribute to more opportunities for assaults to occur,” said Beamon, who also works in the DOC’s Employee Assistance Unit, which provides peer support to staff, in a recent interview. “But the lack of consequences for the inmate population also contributes to it.”

Most of the bill went into effect in July 2022, and it required that all incarcerated people receive at least four hours per day outside of their cells, with an increase to five hours starting in April 2023.

Correctional officers were frustrated with their lack of involvement in drafting the legislation. They felt as if the state was attempting to strip away essential tools for keeping prisons safe.

“I don’t like the fact that people that don’t know our job or do our job are telling us how to do it,” said Sean Howard, a recently retired Cheshire correctional officer and former president of AFSCME Local 387. “To me, those are the major contributions that have led to the more assaults.”

The DOC defines a staff assault as “any inmate assault on a Department employee resulting in a non-serious or serious injury.” The 214 staff assaults in FY2023 were an increase from 184 in the previous year and 126 in FY2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

A “careful review” of the incidents showed that 9% of the assaults were attributed to the increase in out-of-cell time, said Ashley McCarthy, the DOC’s director of external affairs.

However, the numbers provided by the agency show that the significant rise in staff assaults began before the law was passed. The most drastic year-to-year increase over the last five fiscal years, from 100 assaults to 168, took place between 2020 and 2021.

And the number of staff assaults alone doesn’t provide much, if any, context about the people involved in them.

“There’s an ebb and flow to the numbers,” said Scott Semple, a correctional consultant who served as DOC commissioner under the Gov. Dannel P. Malloy administration. “As far as incidents are concerned, less than 10% of the population are responsible for 90% of the incidents.”

Forty-three percent of the staff assaults since 2021 involved prisoners considered by the agency to have mild or moderate “mental health issues,” and 26% included people whose mental health needs were considered severe, according to the DOC.

During the same time frame, McCarthy added, there was a “corresponding jump of 178% in the incarceration” of unsentenced people accused of violent crimes. Research shows that increased exposure to a jail environment could have adverse implications for social order, in part because of the strain and trauma associated with incarceration.

The DOC views the surge in people behind bars who are awaiting trial as a “possible contributing factor to the increase in assaults.”

While the staff assault numbers hold significance to the department, correctional officers and the unions representing them, many of the PROTECT Act’s proponents believe that full implementation of and buy-in to the law could aid in curtailing some of the violence.

To correspond with the out-of-cell time mandated by the PROTECT Act, the agency said it “continues to offer a wide range of programs and services focused on assisting incarcerated individuals.”

But many say they have yet to see things change in dramatic fashion.

“The reality is the PROTECT Act says that instead of leaving people in a cage 23 hours a day, you now have to let them out for five; we said with social programming,” said Barbara Fair, the leading organizer for Stop Solitary CT, who co-wrote and advocated for the legislation. “They haven’t put the social programming in place. And so, for me, it’s a recipe for disaster.”

When the top officials from local correctional unions assembled for the press conference in late September, their message was clear: the legislature needed to distribute more funding for staffing posts so prison workers could fully comply with the law.

“Enough is enough. We need help. We need change, and we need it now,” said Patrick McGoldrick, the local chief steward for AFSCME Local 1565 and one of the three Garner officers facing criminal charges for allegedly assaulting an incarcerated person. “We need more action taken to curb this trend of violent assaults before it gets worse. Without action, it will get worse.”

Some of the officers said in later interviews that outside of specialized counselors at Garner, the DOC’s mental health facility, they were unaware of mental health training that might allow them to improve their communication with incarcerated people.

“You have failed miserably in training the staff on how to deal with this inmate population,” said Howard, the retired Cheshire correctional officer. “We are not trained properly on how to do our job. We are not trained on how to handle situations.”

They also said that Connecticut prisons don’t have the infrastructure to keep all incarcerated people out of their cells at the same time. With the passage of the PROTECT Act and recent prison closures, they expressed frustration with not having many places to send those who act out.

The Department of Correction is falling short with the PROTECT Act, say advocates.

“I believe that the issue is that people just want to go home safely, and that’s it,” Beamon said. “I am confident to say that if there were adequate tools for us to keep the inmate population and ourselves safe … I don’t think the officers and DOC would have any issue with that.”

But the union’s calls for more staffing haven’t traveled far with Sen. Gary Winfield, co-chair of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee. The New Haven Democrat helps oversee the correctional budget for the Appropriations Committee.

“If you can demonstrate that there’s an actual need for more posts, and that will actually make the job of the people there be able to be done better, more efficiently,” Winfield said, “or even it might allow them to actually do their job the way it’s supposed to be done, then we’re having a conversation, a real conversation. But it’s not just saying you need more posts.”

Winfield said he would instead like to see the DOC try to expand initiatives like the T.R.U.E. unit at Cheshire, a mentorship program that drew national applause for its transformative approach to prison reform. The DOC said the costs of staffing and running the small unit make it difficult to replicate. But the judiciary’s top senator said he has yet to see the agency make a request for the funds.

The CT Mirror asked for the DOC’s most recent budget proposal through the Freedom of Information Act, but it was denied by the Office of Policy and Management on grounds that the Lamont administration considers it a draft document.

“You look at something like the T.R.U.E. unit that sits inside of a prison … the rest of the prison functions in a traditional way, and nobody says, ‘This doesn’t make any damn sense,’” Winfield said. “Who has vision on this? We’re just going to keep doing the same crazy stuff we’ve been doing and then complaining when people are tired of being treated a certain way, like they’re not human beings.”

Metcalf, the law professor at Yale University, worked closely with Fair and Stop Solitary to draft the PROTECT Act. She said the law always intended that the DOC would hold the responsibility of providing programming and support to both incarcerated people and staff.

“What there is an urgent need for is staff who are trained up to engage with people, to do programming, to find ways to make prison a place that is less of a warehouse and more of, actually, an environment where a person can actually become rehabilitated,” Metcalf said.

Incarcerated people and advocates are also awaiting the appointment of a correctional ombudsperson in the state’s Office of Governmental Accountability, another critical component of the PROTECT Act. Grouped with other responsibilities, the independent authority will hold the power to conduct site visits, communicate with prisoners and review agency records.

At some point in the coming weeks, the committee responsible for helping appoint the ombudsperson is expected to hold a public hearing for the position’s three finalists, one of whom is Fair from Stop Solitary. The hearing presumably will be followed by a final decision from the governor.

“This transition moment just underscores why independent oversight is so critical for the system,” Metcalf said. “We should not have to be depending on rumors or anecdotes from corrections unions about assaults or the causes for such assaults.”

The men housed in Cheshire’s H.O.N.O.R. unit say recent events at the prison are representative of where the DOC is falling short with the PROTECT Act. The unit has not offered programming since it was launched, they said. They’re missing out on activities like creative writing, embracing fatherhood and building a positive self-concept.

“You come here to correct your past and be a better person to integrate back into society,” said Ganesh Bharrat, 42, nearly two decades into a 75-year murder sentence. “If you were to sit down for two hours in the morning and two hours at night for recreation and just play cards, you’re not improving your ability or your skills. … We need programs, and that’s what this unit was created for.”

Vega, the paralegal, said that some correctional officers are speaking to prisoners in a menacing, confrontational and disrespectful manner. People who complain about the conditions are being denied privileges. And, as evidenced by the lack of programming in his unit, those with significant time left are being refused opportunities for rehabilitation.

“The work and progress have been derailed. I have witnessed it, experienced it, and have been affected by it,” Vega said. “It has made me wonder, ‘What is the real agenda?’”

Jayden Edison is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (https://ctmirror.org/ ). Copyright 2023 © The Connecticut Mirror.