By Ken Dixon
Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Conn.
HARTFORD, Conn. — The state’s prison chief on Tuesday said staff overtime continues to be a major budgetary headache a year after lawmakers had hoped to stem the problem in the 13 correction institutions and 30 halfway houses that operate around the clock.
During the first day of its review of Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget proposals, members of the Appropriations Committee – including state Sen. Cathy Osten, D- Sprague, and Rep. Toni Walker, D- New Haven, the co-chairwomen – kept Department of Correction Commissioner Angel Quiros answering questions for over an hour. The queries focused on prison deaths, staff suicides, health care procedures, mental health needs in the prison populace and overtime.
That overtime figure has increased 8% when lawmakers thought it would decrease this year among the 6,000 DOC personnel who care for about 10,960 inmates. The full department payroll was $567.7 million during the last calendar year, according to a recent CT Insider review. That made it the highest payroll of any executive branch agency.
“We have not been able to save any overtime,” Quiros told the committee in the Legislative Office Building. “Right about now compared to last year, we’ve utilized 130,000 hours or more of overtime. There’s many contributing factors. Anytime correctional staff is off-duty, whether it’s vacation time, sick time, training, whatever the reason is, it’s going to generate overtime.”
“The overtime thing is really disappointing,” said Sen. Gary Winfield, D- New Haven, a committee member who is also co-chairman of the law-writing Judiciary Committee.
“I’m disappointed, too, that we’re not able to reduce the overtime,” Quiros replied, noting the agency’s proposed $757 million budget, which would take effect July 1 , includes an extra $3 million for salaries. “We did reduce the overtime in 2019. There’s many contributing factors.”
According to budget documents, in the past 10 fiscal years, the DOC has averaged 1.75 million hours of overtime annually at a cost of $77.6 million. In the 2023-2024 fiscal year, DOC employees clocked 1.9 million hours of overtime at a cost of $92.7 million. While Lamont planned for a savings of $2.3 million in the current fiscal year, Quiros said overtime increased again.
Walker, noting the three recent deaths of inmates in state prisons in less than a week, said, “It is not a job that people understand, I think, in any degree. I understand it’s a difficult job. The state has responsibilities for people, and when we don’t do that and we lose a life, then we fail. All of the classrooms, I have been told, are not filled. The quality of life is what we should be looking at. We are responsible for them during the time they are there.What are we doing wrong?”
“I take these deaths very seriously,” Quiros said. “This is a father, this is a son, this is an uncle. Some of these deaths ... I can’t prevent.”
Later in the day, a year-and-a-half into his job as Connecticut’s first prison ombudsman, DeVaughn Ward said he needs a nearly $780,000 budget increase to get more staff to represent and serve the incarcerated population, while keeping track of conditions in the facilities.
Ward said inmates face “a bottleneck of care” that results in some inmates waiting two years or longer for medical procedures such as knee surgeries. While his small staff handled 1,000 complaints last year, Ward needs more administrators, including someone to inspect halfway houses, a medical consultant, data scientist and communications manager, he said.
Ward also noted regular prison lockdowns, including those resulting from the recent inmate deaths, have interfered with educational programming.
Osten, a former 21-year correction officer, said studies indicate people in that stressful job have a life expectancy of about 60 years.
“We also have one of the highest suicide rates among staff in the Department of Correction – that’s well-documented – because of the environment they’re working in,” Osten said
“It’s alarming, the numbers in 2025,” said Quiros, who worked his way up from guard to commissioner.
The department reported 60 staff with suicidal thoughts that resulted in the employee assistance unit reaching out to them.
Osten said she is concerned correction officers might be uninformed about inmates’ mental health issues, including the chronically mentally ill.
Quiros said medical records usually indicate an incarcerated person’s mental status.
“Are they given training on how to deal with folks with mental health issues?” Osten asked.
“In my opinion, there needs to be more,” Quiros replied.
“I don’t see us really giving the opportunity to staff to handle the grave responsibilities they have right now,” Osten said, citing a report that indicated 28% of 567 male inmates at Garner Correction Institution in Newtown and 80% of the 846 females at York Correctional Institution in East Lyme are chronically mentally ill, without histories of substance abuse.
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