By Kenyatta Muzzanni
Despite years of documented torture, abuse, and inhumane conditions in Department of Correction (DOC) facilities, Connecticut officials are still pouring billions of dollars annually into incarceration rather than investing in our communities that desperately need support. For those who find themselves imprisoned in our state—and for those with loved ones who are behind bars—we know that the DOC cannot protect our people. In reality, the department causes more harm than good.
Two weeks ago, Katal members and allies gathered outside of the DOC headquarters in Wethersfield to demand that Governor Lamont and the department develop a comprehensive, transparent public health response plan for its facilities. COVID-19 has been a critical issue for more than two and a half years, yet the governor has no plan to keep people safe. This inaction means that incarcerated people, their loved ones, and the department’s own staff suffer. While COVID-19 is one of the more pressing public health concerns, it’s not the only one to worry about. Monkeypox has been detected in Connecticut, and the poliovirus has been found nearby in the wastewater of New York City. Given the insidious nature of criminalization and incarceration, it’s only a matter of time before the DOC will have to confront another type of outbreak.
The DOC is no stranger to public health crises festering behind its walls. In 2018, a person who was then incarcerated in Connecticut filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the DOC failed to provide him adequate treatment for Hepatitis C. In his lawsuit, he maintained that 16 to 41 percent of all people imprisoned in state facilities at the time “may be infected with the virus.” That lawsuit led to more than 1,000 people in DOC facilities being treated for Hepatitis C virus— many of them treated this year—only after the lawsuit was filed. Unfortunately, one person lost their life to a treatable virus, and the DOC then spent more than $9 million on testing and treatment because of its inability to protect people.
Public health crises remain a constant in DOC facilities, and it’s ultimately the community (read: taxpayers) that pays for it—financially, socially, and emotionally. It’s clear that the DOC cannot prevent the spread of contagion or keep people safe once they have an infectious condition.
Connecticut spends more than $62,000 per year to incarcerate someone. While behind bars, incarcerated people must pay for their own commissary and medical appointments, often with the help of family. Most people who are incarcerated in our state are Black, brown, and/or poor, and it puts a strain on those who help support them. When families struggle to assist their loved ones who are incarcerated, the entire community suffers. Meanwhile, Connecticut schools are routinely defunded and underfunded, afterschool programs are all but gone in many neighborhoods, public transportation continues to degrade, and we still lack an adequate public health infrastructure to help people when they need care. But the DOC’s budget has increased every year for decades, while the number of incarcerated people have continued to decline statewide.
Connecticut spends millions every year to arrest and lock people up—disproportionately people of color—while failing to invest enough in the basic needs of every community in our state. The amount of money that could be saved and invested in the communities that need it most— communities that have historically been impacted by systemic racism, mass criminalization, and mass incarceration—is hundreds of millions of dollars. From an economic standpoint alone, this would be enough to get us to stop relying on the carceral system. From a humanistic standpoint, it’s imperative that we stop using jails and prisons as Band-Aids. People are coming out of prison worse than they went in, and we pay for that in more ways than one.
We cannot wait any longer: it’s time to cut, shut, and invest. This means cutting the number of people held in jails and prisons across the state, cutting the number of people on probation and parole, and cutting the funding for policing and incarceration statewide. It means shutting prisons down. It means investing in communities most harmed by systemic racism and mass incarceration and securing real community safety through housing, health care, education, jobs, and other critical supports and services. We’ve waited too long.
Kenyatta Muzzanni is the director of organizing with the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. For more information on Katal, reach out to Kenyatta at kenyatta@katalcenter.org, or at katalcenter.org.
