Thomas Breen photos
Paul Ciccarelli, newly freed from Whalley jail.
Protesters rallying down Hudson Street.
Paul Ciccarelli walked out of the Whalley Avenue jail and into freedom— to find himself greeted by three dozen protesters rallying for the release of more inmates during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We love you, stay strong!” the protesters sang. “We love you, stay strong!”
That was the scene Monday afternoon on Hudson Street outside of the western entrance to the New Haven Correctional Center at 245 Whalley Ave.
Roughly 40 people from New Haven, Bridgeport, New London, and Hamden marched from County Street to Goffe Street and over to Hudson as part of a “Free Them All” demonstration organized by the Connecticut Bail Fund and New London Building It Together along with formerly incarcerated people and their families.
As they marched on foot, another dozen people drove in a car caravan around the state jail, honking and cheering to let those on the inside know that the protesters were outside and rallying on their behalf.
Ciccarelli, a 51-year-old North Haven resident, didn’t know that the protest would be taking place at the same time that he happened to be released from the state jail after more than two years on the inside.
Holding a brown paper bag filled with his belongings and wearing a light blue surgical mask wrapped around his mouth and nose, Ciccarelli was in shock.
“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “To be greeted the way I was just greeted. It feels really good.”
The protesters didn’t come to Hudson Street Monday to celebrate the release of Ciccarelli.
Instead, they were there as part of the CT Bail Fund’s months-long campaign to pressure the state to reduce Connecticut’s prison population and enact a host of reforms designed to protect inmates during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Monday’s protest organizers called for the state to release at least half of the the state Department of Correction’s (DOC) current incarcerated population because of the near impossibility of practicing social distancing, improve hygiene at existing facilities, enforce mask wearing among correctional staff, and establish new independent review bodies for everything from sentence modifications to sexual assault complaint investigations. (A complete list of their demands appears later in this article.)
“Just because they’re behind these walls doesn’t mean that we’re throwing their lives away and that their lives are worthless,” CT Bail Fund organizer Jewu Richardson (pictured) said while standing in front of the state jail’s barbed wire-topped concrete fence on Hudson Street. “Their lives are worth something, and we care about them, and we’re looking forward to them coming out of these facilities.”
Richardson said that the Bail Fund’s demands weren’t pulled from thin air. Rather, they are based on comments and concerns that Bail Fund prison hotline volunteers have heard directly from inmates over the past four months as they’ve called to check in on conditions in prisons and jails throughout the state.
A DOC spokesperson defended the department’s workers as doing “extraordinary job” during the pandemic, both in regards to protecting inmates as well reducing the state’s prison population by more than 2,500 people in the last few months. See more below.
“Conditions Need To Be Better”
Ciccarelli showing off state prison-provided face masks.
Ciccarelli exited the jail onto Hudson Street at around 5:30 p.m. Monday. He wore a plain white T‑shirt and a blue surgical mask that hid part of his white goatee.
When asked about conditions on the inside, he chuckled to himself.
“I’d rather eat off this street than some of the stuff inside there,” he said.
Food complaints aside, Ciccarelli said that the prison staff did a mixed job in protecting inmates like himself from Covid.
He said that he received a care package with shampoo, soap, deodorant, and toothpaste every two weeks. (He said he believed that package came from a donation from Yale, though he wasn’t sure.)
Prison staff would hand out one new, washable cloth face covering to each inmate every two weeks. Earlier in the pandemic, he said, staff handed masks out just once a month.
Ciccarelli said he knew 12 fellow inmates among the 51 detained in his cell block who contracted Covid-19. He said they were all sent to a quarantine unit, some at the state’s supermax Northern Correctional Institution and some at the Whalley jail itself. “They’re not really using Northern anymore because it’s inhumane,” he said.
The Hudson Street side of the correctional center.
He said he had a cell to himself, and never contracted Covid-19. (“Thank God. I got my results, and I’m negative,” he said.)
“Conditions need to be better, he said. “The air conditioning needs to be on more. And they need to give us hand sanitizer.”
He said that the medical care overall was sufficient at the jail. “The majority of the nurses down there are spot on,” he said. “But, like anywhere, you always have a few that aren’t.”
And he said that, after “a little debacle” of failure to keep Covid-symptomatic inmates separated from the rest of the population towards the beginning of the pandemic, the prison staff ultimately did a good job at moving Covid-positive people into a quarantine unit and only reintegrating them into the general population when they were no longer sick.
“Things are supposed to be starting to change,” he said about the prison taking more safety measures and releasing more inmates in response to the state’s settlement of a recent class action lawsuit with the ACLU regarding how best to protect older inmates and those with preexisting conditions who are most vulnerable to suffering adverse consequences from Covid.
But he won’t get to see those firsthand, Ciccarelli said, because he’s now a free man. His initial plan was to go home to North Haven, and then see if he can find someone to give him a ride so he can visit his late father’s burial spot in town.
According to state judicial records, Ciccarelli was arrested and detained in 2018 for possessing child pornography.
“The System Is Flawed”
Shortly before, during, and after Ciccarelli’s release, the prison protesters rallied outside of the New Haven Correctional Center’s barbed wire-topped walls, waving “Free Them All” signs and singing “Black Lives Matter!” and “Which side are you on, my people, which side are you on?”
Shetavia Smith (pictured) said she traveled from Bridgeport to New Haven for the afternoon protest “because the system is flawed. And if we don’t make a stand to make a change, this will continue.”
She called for the abolition of the existing prison system, the police, and even the public education system as it currently exists. “They all systematically oppress Black people,” she said, and need to be fundamentally reconfigured.
Hamden resident Greta Johnson (pictured) said that her son is currently locked up at the state prison in Cheshire.
She said he describes the conditions there as “horrible,” and that she worries about him every day because he has asthma and is therefore uniquely vulnerable to suffering serious health consequences if he contracts Covid.
She said she feels buoyed by knowing that she’s not alone in thinking about, worrying about, and advocating for her son while he’s behind bars.
“Something like this gives me hope,” she said about Monday’s protest.
New London resident Reuben Santiago (pictured at right) agreed.
He said he spent 12-and-a-half years locked up in Corrigan and MacDougall state prisons. And he said he still has friends who are behind bars in Connecticut.
Santiago said that, based on his experience and his friends’ experience, state prisons are not safe places to be during a pandemic. He said he showed up Monday to show his support for those still on the inside, and stand in solidarity with other prison reformers and abolitionists.
DOC Response
Below is a response from DOC Director of External Affairs Karen Martucci to Monday’s protest and to the CT Bail Fund’s allegations about conditions at the Whalley jail.
When faced with challenges associated with COVID-19, the first responders from the Connecticut Department of Correction did an extraordinary job.
A preparedness plan was quickly established which included enhanced cleaning efforts, the separation of new intakes for 14 days, screening protocols for both the incarcerated population and employees, and the establishment of both quarantine and medical isolation units.
In addition to the safeguards put into place at the onset of the pandemic, the agency focused on the safe release of eligible offenders, while prioritizing offenders that were considered high risk if exposed to the virus based on CDC guidelines.
As a result of these efforts, Connecticut witnessed a significant drop in the incarcerated population which ranked the state as a national leader in these efforts. Since March, the agency has reduced the population by more than 2,500 people.
Allegations that offenders were not seen until they were vomiting blood and that the agency placed positive and negative cases in the same cell are not only false, they are insulting to the dedicated correctional professionals that answered the call to duty and reported to work day in and day out of the crisis.
We continue to collaborate with the Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure we are taking measures to best protect our selfless employees and the incarcerated population.
Connecticut Bail Fund’s Demands
Below is a list of the 10 demands put forth by Bail Fund organizers during Monday’s protest.
1) Initiate large-scale decarceration, coupled with public divestment from the prison industrial complex and reinvestment in Black communities. Social distancing is impossible in every facility in CT. Because of DOC negligence and abuse, thousands have been infected and many have even died. The state must create a comprehensive plan to immediately release at least 50% of its incarcerated population.
2) Establish a new body and a new process, independent of the Office of the State’s Attorney, to review Sentence Modifications and other similar motions. This body should be accountable to communities, not law enforcement. Presently, the same individuals who have imposed excessive sentences on our community members are the ones reviewing them.
3) Create a legal resource center in every facility. Due to the fact that the courts are severely backed up with cases, incarcerated people should have legal resources to help them understand their defense options and prepare their legal advocacy. Presently, no such resources exist, and the vast majority of prisoners have, in practice, no legal rights available to them through a court of law.
4) Restore visits. This can be accomplished in a safe way, especially with conducting visits in outside spaces and ensuring the ample availability of PPE.
5) DOC should ensure the provision of medical after-care for anyone who contracted COVID-19 while incarcerated.
6) Immediately stop denying people parole, Transitional Supervision, halfway house eligibility, and other forms of release from incarceration.
7) Provide personal hygiene supplies on a weekly basis to everyone incarcerated. Stop lying to the public about the provision of these supplies inside facilities.
8) Mandate that everyone incarcerated is able to clean their living area whenever they want. Presently, cleaning is not possible, and disinfectant supplies have been severely watered down to the point of uselessness.
9) Mandate that all DOC staff keep their masks on while in the facility. If they are found to be breaking this rule, they should be immediately sent home from their shift and fined.
10) DOC should have an independent body investigate all allegations of sexual and physical abuse against incarcerated people. The State of CT has yet to acknowledge the wide-spread brutality being visited upon its incarcerated residents.
Think there is any correlation between the massive uptick in shootings, violence, theft, and arson and prisoner release in Democrat controlled cities? [NYC, LA, CHICAGO, new haven, etc..]
Why, also, if masks work, don't they outfit inmates with masks, maybe even N95s, to "slow the spread?"