The Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn. — Higher-risk inmates have been sent to community release programs over the past two years in an effort to ease prison crowding, a Hartford Courant review of state records has found.
Attention has been focused on the state’s parole system and early-release programs since July 23, when Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, were killed in a burglary and arson at their Cheshire home. The suspects are two paroled burglars who met in a halfway house.
The legislature’s judiciary committee will begin an inquiry Tuesday, and Gov. M. Jodi Rell has also appointed a panel to look into the issue.
A year before the Cheshire incident, Department of Corrections officials started pushing wardens to determine whether more prisoners could be furloughed.
“Please be advised that our facility population statewide is at a high of 18,554. I am directing you to conduct an immediate review of all inmates eligible for 30-day re-entry furloughs,” DOC Deputy Commissioner Brian K. Murphy wrote in a June 2006 memo to all wardens.
The rules for the furloughs had recently been changed, making it easier for more dangerous convicts to be considered. The number of prisoners released on the furloughs jumped 50 percent in the second half of 2006, according to a state report.
A re-entry furlough allows an inmate who has demonstrated appropriate behavior to be placed with a sponsor in the community 30 days before the end of his or her sentence, according to Department of Correction spokesman Brian Garnett. He said the idea is to provide support to inmates when they first get out of jail and return to society.
“First, let me make very clear that no administrator is going to approve the release of an offender who would clearly pose a risk to the public’s safety,” he said.
But state Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams and state victim advocate James Papillo question whether such programs provide enough supervision.
They say the public has a right to be concerned about light supervision -- consisting mainly of phone calls — during the 30-day furloughs. In the case of paroled prisoners, the furloughs are less strict than the more intense supervision by parole officers that follows them.
Despite assurances that violent prisoners are not sent to such programs, The Courant’s review found that three convicted murderers are in community release programs, as are three inmates convicted of first-degree robbery, two convicted of first-degree assault and three serving sentences greater than five years for other felony charges such as possessing a pistol and selling drugs.
Two months after Murphy’s memo encouraging wardens to review which inmates were eligible for re-entry furloughs, they got a follow-up note from Maj. Joseph O’Keefe, who works in the Department of Correction commissioner’s office. In September, he wrote to wardens again.
“As you are all well aware, our incarcerated population continues to rise,” he wrote. “This memorandum is being issued as a reminder of the need to continue our vigilant effort to release as many offenders as possible on Re-Entry Furlough. ... While our efforts over the past few months have resulted in a significant increase in the number of Re-Entry Furloughs granted, there has been a gradual decline in those numbers in the past three weeks.”
Garnett said statistics show that the re-entry furlough program has the highest success rate of any community release program.