A Meriden Republican has continued his public attacks against crime under Gov. Dannel Malloy's administration a week after Malloy said the state’s crime rate was at a 51-year low.
Malloy cited FBI data that shows overall crime was at its lowest in Connecticut since 1967 and that violent crime had dropped 20 percent since he took office.
State Sen. Len Suzio’s attack centered on an initiative to rehabilitate prison inmates. Through good behavior, inmates can become eligible for risk reduction earned credits that lead to an early release. Suzio said that lets violent criminals back onto the streets and they then commit more crimes.
“He ought to suspend the program immediately and he ought to order an investigation of the program and why it’s failing so often and why so many men, women, and children are suffering the consequences,” Suzio said.
He said he’s got data from the department, through a Freedom of Information Act request, that shows that of 40,800 inmates receiving credits since the beginning of the program, 14,008 committed violent crimes after they were released.
Karen Martucci, the director of external affairs for the Department of Corrections, said those numbers lack context.
“Some of these inmates came in and got one day. Some may have got 10. Some may have got 300 days, but he’s calling all of these individuals ‘graduates.’” Martucci said. “He spoke about [how] they failed. They went through the program that was supposed to rehabilitate and it failed.”
Data released by Malloy's office shows that the rate of overall recidivism dropped by a third from 2005 to 2014. There were 1,286 fewer events of recidivism from 2011-2014 – Malloy’s first three years in office.
Martucci said that the closing of correctional facilities and recent FBI crime data prove that the credit system is working.
She said the initiative offers offenders an incentive to be well-behaved and actively work on bettering themselves.
“We have no authority to make them do that but this program incentivizes them – encourages them to do that because if you do what you’re supposed to do, you follow the rules, you behave, you do the programs you need to do, we’re going to give you pieces of time off on your sentence, otherwise, they don’t have to do anything,” Martucci said.
Time credits can also be taken away for poor behavior.
Malloy’s office has responded but hasn’t directly refuted the numbers. It took aim instead at Suzio’s presentation of them during a recent news conference.
“It’s not a coincidence that a senator desperately clinging onto his seat holds the same press conference, replete with his own alternative facts, every election year,” said Leigh Appleby, a Malloy spokesperson, in a statement issued Tuesday.
Suzio has targeted the reduction credits since 2012. Last legislative session, a bill that would have change the law supporting risk reduction earned credits passed through the state Senate, but it never made it to the House of Representatives.
