Kevin arrives in handcuffs and a baggy yellow jumpsuit that announces to anyone familiar with the current fashions of Garner Correctional Institution that he is a problem child, a disruptor in a closed community of 46 mental health providers, 264 correction officers and 540 incarcerated men.
His eyes dart right and left as he is escorted into a brightly lit, sparsely furnished classroom. There are strangers waiting, observers in plain clothes, not the dark blue uniforms of correction officers. They are a novelty in a place where anything new is noticed. Kevin smiles, his mood hard to read. He is medicated.
He is barely half way through a five-year sentence, but his file at Garner is five inches thick. It includes an assault and tickets for disciplinary infractions of all manner, including “gassing,” prison jargon for the act of flinging feces or spraying urine. Kevin is on the penal version of a time out. He is 26-years-old.
Handcuffs are removed, and he slides into a chair with an attached desk, an impediment to sudden moves. Impulse control is a problem for Kevin. One officer stands in the door, another leans on a table. Three others sit on plastic chairs spaced in a semi-circle around Kevin, his back to a wall.
The arrangement is not casual. Kevin is surrounded.
Something radical is about to happen, at least by the culture and rules of a high-security American prison. The officers are going to have an unstructured and uninterrupted conversation with a troublesome man in their custody, the first of many planned for benefit of jailers and jailed.
Their conversation is a training exercise for a new “resource team,” a blandly named reform that is the culmination of extended planning and reflection, focus groups with officers and senior staff, and trips to Norwegian prisons widely seen as models of penal reform built around the broad notion of “normalization.”
In Garner, a prison in Newtown where the vast majority of the incarcerated carry a diagnosis of mental illness, the team’s mission is to establish rapport that allows them to see trouble before it starts. They hope to draw out the fighters and fire-starters, those who withdraw in silent self-isolation or chronically mule-kick cell doors, their rage echoing off the steel and concrete.
Their plan is deceptively simple: The staff will engage the incarcerated in activities. They might play cards or dominoes, a touch of therapy disguised as recreation. One of the radical pieces is the degree of autonomy granted to the officers on the resource team. They not only are shaping the program but choosing with whom they will work.
Kevin, whose full name cannot be used under prison privacy rules, is among the first. He was not chosen as a reward for adhering to Garner’s rules of conduct. That is a departure in an institution built around positive reinforcement for good behavior and negative reinforcement for bad.
“He’s a complete nuisance for staff,” an officer said.
Similar programs are under way in California, Oregon and Washington, all employing Norwegian principles taught by trainers from Amend, a public health and human rights program based at the University of California-San Francisco. Amend is leading the training in Connecticut.
Amend is a combination of an academic think tank and a boots-on-the-ground service provider with the long-range mission of “changing correctional culture” and immediate mission of making prisons less debilitating to the physical and mental health of those who live and work in them.
History of reforms
There is a long history of prison reforms, such as mandates on time out of cells and limits on isolation as a disciplinary measure, coming by decrees of courts or legislatures. A lawsuit filed in 2003 complained that “inmates in certain mental health units at Garner are subject to nearly constant cell confinement and enforced idleness, conditions that exacerbate their mental illness.”
The case was settled in 2007, but the Connecticut Department was sued again in 2021 over its use of in-cell restraints and a practice of keeping the mentally ill confined for up to 22 hours a day. The same year, the General Assembly passed “The Protect Act,” a law placing statutory limits on time in isolation. It was vetoed by Gov. Ned Lamont as too restrictive, but a revised version passed a year later. Officials say the norm is now five hours out of cells daily.
“Not surprisingly, when these changes and reforms are driven through a kind of confrontational process, like litigation or legislation is sometimes experienced, it tends to put staff and correctional leaders on a back foot and maybe oppositional to the change,” said Cyrus Ahalt, the chief program officer at Amend.
Amend tries to work from within, a strategy that first requires finding allies in the top ranks of a prison system then willing partners in the men and women who work the cell blocks. At Garner, Amend has found both.
“The way we’ve been doing it isn’t working,” Capt. Andrew Tolmie told the officers in one of three recent all-day training sessions at Garner. No one disagreed, including Warden Jeanette Maldonado, who had dropped by to observe. She made a trip to Norway last fall.
A Garner correction officer was stabbed in the neck last summer, and deploying a caustic pepper spray on recalcitrant prisoners is not unusual, even when the target is mentally ill. Unless it settles, a lawsuit is coming to trial this year, arising from the death eight years ago of a mentally ill prisoner forcibly restrained and pepper-sprayed after resisting a strip search at Garner.
Systemwide, assaults on staff have more than doubled over five years, from 95 in the 2020 fiscal year to 250 in the current one. One in every five assaults on staff last year came at Garner, where mental health services are consolidated in a system with 13 active prisons. Five others are closed, a reaction to a prison population falling by about half since peaking at nearly 20,000 in 2008.
A recent study found a dispirited staff. With 522 vacancies system-wide, mandatory overtime is frequent — one of the issues behind a wildcat strike in its third week at prisons in New York. Focus groups last fall found only one employee at Garner who would recommend a loved one take a job at the Department of Correction.
“For a lot of complicated reasons, these prison systems have created a kind of environment, a set of policies and procedures, that have turned correctional officer work back in time, actually to much more of a turnkey guard role,” Ahalt said. “I mean, how many officers have we spoken to who have said, ‘Look, my my job is to count and hand out toilet paper,’ and that is a deeply unfulfilling job, if that’s what it is.”
Pilot programs
The Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at the University of Connecticut is a partner in the project. Its director, Andrew Clark, has been a catalyst, inducing a widening circle of stakeholders, including correction officers and their bosses, to make visits to Norway’s prisons and, more recently, to see the results of Amend’s work at Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad, Calif.
By Norwegian standards, these are modest steps.
No one is suggesting that those who work and live in U.S. prisons shed uniforms for civilian clothes, as is the case in Norway. Or that prisons be reimagined as something akin to college dorms, where the residents study, shop, prepare their meals and wash dishes. Or that prison staff train for two years, as in Norway, and not the 12 weeks required to become a correction officer in Connecticut.
William Mulligan, the deputy correction commissioner, was introduced to Ahalt and Amend’s founder, Dr. Brie Williams, a professor of medicine the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, on a Norway trip arranged by UConn in September 2023. Mulligan initially advocated for a resource team pilot at York, the state’s only prison for women.
“The stabbing at Garner was the impetus to expand it to two facilities,” Mulligan said.
Mulligan said the custody staff responds to incidents, where the resource team might prevent them. “This is the opportunity to develop a rapport and a level of trust with staff before they get to the point of being impulsive,” he said.
An outside review of discipline practices in Connecticut prisons, where the incarcerated are categorized on mental-health and security scales, found “little individualization” in dealing with residents and no evidence of a culture in which staff are encouraged to prevent problems.
“In fact, the concept of preventing offenses and DRs [disciplinary reports] seemed quite foreign to facility staff at the mid-management and line staff levels,” concluded a report commissioned by DOC and performed by a consulting firm, Falcon, Inc. The report finalized in November pointed to the resource-team project, then in the planning stage, as a possible solution.
The pilot programs at Garner and York come as the Lamont administration has proposed what reform advocates say is a step backward: To save $3.5 million, the administration has proposed ending the free e-messaging to an approved list recipients.
“For the state to limit that funding, it’s just a mistake. The commissioner says it’s a mistake,” said Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, a retired correction officer who now is co-chair of the Appropriations Committee. “It’s a mistake, creating a bad environment for a small amount of money.”
Osten has pushed for greater mental health care in the prisons. A study she sought concluded two years ago that one-third of the men and women incarcerated in Connecticut have mental health disorders requiring active treatment. She also wants the state to buy body scanners that obviate the need for strip searches, a common source of conflict in prisons.
When he arrives in the Garner classroom, Kevin knows nothing of all that led to the creation of the resource team — or the hostility in some corners of Garner toward the idea of officers sitting down with someone like him, asking about his goals, probing what sets him off, and explaining they will be doing this regularly.
Any time out of cell for someone on disciplinary status in restrictive housing is a privilege. And the notion of the resource team working with troublemakers doesn’t sit well with some officers not involved in the pilots at Garner and York. A supervisor at York had warned the team to expect grief.
Kevin has a nodding acquaintance with most of the officers in the room. Their last names are stitched in capital letters on uniforms: BIELLO, BOUCHER, DARBY, MIRANDA. First names are never brought inside the walls, part of a culture that demands a distance from the incarcerated. Even among themselves, it’s only last names.
The habit never struck Jay Lawrie as odd until the day he and his wife encountered an old colleague, a man he had come to know well before retiring in 2013 after 20 years in corrections. He knew the names of the man’s wife and kids. Yet when it came time to introduce him, Lawrie found himself saying, “What is your first name?”
Now in a second career as chairman of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Lawrie is one of the embedded outside observers of the project at Garner, working with Clark at UConn. Lawrie teaches graduate courses including the History of American Corrections and Future of American Corrections.
Lawrie is a big man, bearded, with a shaved head and gravelly voice. If he told you he was a retired WWE wrestler, you’d believe him. He jokes that when he began his career in 1993, DOC hired by the pound, the bigger the better.
“It’s different now. We need individuals that are more empathetic, that are more introspective, that are more likely to engage in these types of practices,” Lawrie says.
Biello, the officer sitting closest to Kevin, is one of Lawrie’s former students. He has five years on the job. He leans toward Kevin and talks about how the resource team might help him. The conversation is somewhat stilted, as they expected. It will get easier with repetition, they were told by Joel Gonzalez, who runs a resource team in Salinas Valley. Gonzalez hosted their visit in October and is part of the training at Garner.
“It’s not rocket science,” he had told them in the training room.
With Kevin, they talk lightly about his habit of doing “stupid things” when he is bored. Kevin nods and says boredom is one of his triggers.
“You have to help us help you,” Biello says. “Get you back in the tan.”
Tan is the standard uniform color for the incarcerated, one designating a lower risk and more privileges. Kevin nods again.
Darby, who has worked the restrictive housing unit where Kevin is confined, mentions Kevin’s habit of urinating through the narrow gap between his cell door and the door jamb. Kevin grows defensive.
“They finally got me on the right meds,” he says.
Boucher changes the subject, tells Kevin they are feeling their way about the timing, frequency and nature of future activities.
“Nothing is in stone yet,” he says.
“All right,” Kevin says. “That sounds good.”
Back in handcuffs, he plaintively asks about getting back his tablet, a device that plays his Christian rap music and allows him to send monitored e-messages to an approved list of recipients. It was taken away when he was placed in restrictive housing for a disciplinary violation.
No, he is told. Working with the team does not erase disciplinary measures in place. Kevin lets it go. He tried, as the officers expected.
‘I’ve been out of trouble before’
“Manipulation methods” is one of the dozen bullet points on a proposed intelligence gathering form on participants being considered for the program. Others include discipline history, mental health diagnoses and medications that affect their behavior, and “hooks” — a reference to people and things that can be calming.
One of the other early participants is Keith Strothers, who is described as bright and problematic, violent when insulted. He is identified in this story because he agreed to an on-the-record interview with The Connecticut Mirror and signed a waiver of his privacy rights.
An offer of a handshake is not a common courtesy inside. He smiles.
“Oh, a handshake,” he says.
His admitted weakness is fights and fires. One officer estimated Strothers has had about 65 fights at Garner, winning most. On a January day three years ago, he managed to torch his cell, igniting a fire with a spark he coaxed from an electric outlet with bits of lead from a pencil. It got him another 30 months on top of his time for a string of robberies.
“I’ve been here 10 years,” he says. He is 28.
Strothers was eager to participate with the resource team.
“What will be different is I don’t have coping skills, to be honest with you. And they are willing to help me,” Strothers says. “I’m comfortable with them, so I know they are not going to lead me down the wrong road. And they know me, too. I’m an honest person. If it’s not working out for me, I’m going to tell them.”
Coping skills are survival skills in prison, he says.
“And I don’t have them. And that’s the reason why I get in trouble, and that’s the reason why they chose me,” he says. He pauses and adds, “They know I have the potential to stay out of trouble, because I’ve been out of trouble before.”
What does he know about the program?
“I’ve heard a little bit about it. I’ve heard enough. It’s for inmates who have relationships with the COs, to be able to talk to them, and to be able to talk to them without feeling you’re just talking to a CO,” Strothers says. “Do you know what I mean?”
His release date is 2031, but he tries not to mark time, note dates or holidays. He takes medication but has not always been compliant about taking the pills. He says he is trying.
“I have issues sometimes. I take them, because I know I need them, even though sometimes I’m like I don’t wanna,” he says. “It’s like masking who you are. But I need them. I know what I’m like without it.”
He smiles and says he can get annoyed, and that can mean doing something stupid, like fighting or staring a fire.
Another element of the Norway experiment in Connecticut is a plan to make aesthetic improvements to Garner, which has the bland architecture of a middle school, albeit one surrounded by two rows of fences that carry multiple coils of razor wire.
UConn landscapers are working on plans for gardens in the prison’s outdoor courtyards. One of the Oregon prisons has a Zen garden. Inside, the team eventually will outfit one of the classrooms into an activities area. At Salinas Valley, there is a foosball table.
One of younger officers on the team, Angel Diaz, deadpans, “What is the best feng shui?”
Boucher gripes that a Zen garden might be a step too far, that Garner should feel like a prison, not “a five-star resort.”
A nicer place to work
Kevin Reeder, a senior program manager at Amend who has been leading the training, is neither surprised nor bothered by that sentiment, which eventually is expressed in every prison where Amend works. Boucher has been constructive throughout the planning and training, and Reeder sees him as someone who can be among the best advocates for change at Garner.
But Reeder pushes back. What’s wrong with working in a nicer environment? Reeder, an Army veteran of Iraq with a master’s degree in public health, reminds the officers that they, too, do time at Garner. When asked, each one knows precisely how many years until they reach 20 years, or 25 years for the newest officers, and a pension.
Lawrie, who spent his career as an officer and unit manager at MacDougall Correctional in Suffield, speaks up about the cost of his 20 years as a correction officer, something that takes time to unwind long after retirement.
“You can ask both my ex-wives,” he says. “You don’t realize the impact until you’re out.”
Most of them know the statistics: Correction officers have higher rates of PTSD, depression and suicide. Their life expectancy is 59.
On the multiday trip to Salinas Valley State Prison in California, Lawrie had noticed not only the high morale on the resource team but the impact on the officers’ lives outside the walls. Spouses and a few older children joined them for after-work drinks one night. They talked about how their partners and parents came home with a sense of mission, not stress.
Lawrie envied them. He says, “My 20 years working at MacDougall, I never walked out of there feeling good about a single day.”
“You’re doing this for the incarcerated, but you’re also doing this for your colleagues,” Reeder tells the officers on the last training day. He asks, “Where do you see yourselves in six months?”
“I’d like us to be seen as an asset,” Diaz replies.
The others nod.
Another says she hoped they would set a standard emulated throughout the system.
Capt. Ramon Gordils, whose experiences at Garner include yanking Strothers from a burning cell, likes the answers.
He’s been thinking about what is the essence of being a correction officer, what is the essential skill for success. He had recently fielded a phone call from his 27-year-old daughter, a member of the Air National Guard in New York.
She was on a bus to Attica, mobilized to staff the prison during the strike. She wanted pointers, a few quick lessons.
She put her father on speaker so others could hear his thoughts on handling the incarcerated. Gordils had to be succinct.
Finally, he told them. “Treat them with respect. You’ll be OK.”