For attorney DeVaughn Ward, the experience of incarcerated individuals during their time in the Department of Correction should be three things: humane, dignified and focused on rehabilitation.
Making sure that happens, he said, is the responsibility of the correction ombudsman.
“ The other responsibility is to look at these systematic and systemic issues, and try to work with the Department of Correction, with you all as lawmakers, to try to create a criminal justice system and a carceral system that is really rehabilitation focused,” Ward told lawmakers on Tuesday.
Ward, who began his tenure as interim ombuds in September, is now under consideration to fill that role for another two years. On Tuesday, the legislature’s Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee voted to refer Ward’s name to the General Assembly for full approval, which will need to happen before the legislature adjourns in June.
The process of approving a permanent ombudsman has been long and filled with roadblocks. After the position was established in a 2022 bill called the PROTECT Act, Gov. Ned Lamont convened the Correction Advisory Committee, which selected three potential candidates in early 2024: Civil rights attorney Ken Krayeske, activist and executive director of Stop Solitary Barbara Fair, and public defender Hilary Carpenter.
But after Lamont selected Carpenter, skipping over the top two choices of the committee, lawmakers pushed back against Lamont’s decision, and the legislative session ended without Carpenter being approved.
In August, Lamont approved DeVaughn Ward, a civil rights attorney who has litigated multiple cases alongside Krayeske, including a class action suit regarding the Department of Correction failure to treat incarcerated people for Hepatitis C. The case ended in a multimillion dollar settlement. They also won $1.3 million in the 2018 case of Wayne World, who claimed he had not gotten proper treatment from the Department of Correction for a diagnosis of cancer.
Ward told the committee that even with his successful litigation, it was difficult for one person to have a significant effect on systemic problems.
“It’s really fighting against the brick wall and hoping you knock down one brick. This role allows me to look at things more systemic and from a more collaborative standpoint,” said Ward.
But he also said he believed that if he didn’t take on the position, no one would.
“That was my interest in doing this — is to try to really get this office set up and off the ground so the folks who are incarcerated can have an advocate and have someone who’s working collaboratively with the department and the administration to try to improve their conditions,” he said.
Ward told the Correction Advisory Committee in February that the budget that Lamont allocated for his office — $400,000 annually — wasn’t nearly enough to allow him to investigate all the complaints he was receiving. He told lawmakers on Tuesday that he’d received about 500 complaints from incarcerated individuals, and that he’d only been able to respond to about 100 of those.
The major complaints he’d received, Ward said, related to allegations of assaults by staff, delayed medical care and conditions in the facilities.
Lamont listed the same amount in his budget proposal for the next two years, but Ward told lawmakers that he had requested that the state’s budget committee increase that amount by $800,000, bringing the total to $1.2 million annually. With that amount, Ward said, he could hire about nine people.
Ward said he planned to split the office into two “districts” that would correspond to the districts that the Department of Correction uses. In each district, there would be an office assistant, an investigator to look into complaints and systemic problems, associate ombuds who would spend the majority of their time inside the correctional facilities and a medical consultant.
Ward said that medical care was a particular priority for him, noting that it was a massive cost to the Department of Correction.
“We spend $130 million annually… to try to provide health care for [10,000] to 11,000 people. And frankly, we are producing really bad outcomes,” said Ward.
Ward said some of the problems could be addressed through lifestyle changes. For instance, he said, the high-salt and low-protein diet in correctional facilities contributed to health problems among incarcerated individuals.
“You have high instances of diabetes. High instances of hypertension, cholesterol — those things all contribute to bad health care outcomes. And we, as taxpayers, pay for it,” he said.
Additionally, Ward said, incarcerated people confined to their housing units for long periods of time wind up seeing orthopedic surgeons or having problems with herniated discs.
The Department of Correction told The Connecticut Mirror in a statement that their menus follow the USDA dietary guidelines for Americans and “meet or exceed” various dietary guidelines, including the USDA dietary reference intakes.
Ward said the disciplinary procedure was also a problem. Incarcerated individuals receive “tickets” for infractions, and are ostensibly given the opportunity to contest that ticket. But Ward said that in practice, this didn’t always happen.
“Sometimes you have the officers who were involved in that incident sitting on the adjudication panel. Sometimes you have the same officers involved with the individual after and coercing that individual to plead guilty or face harsher punishment. And so it doesn’t really provide a system for justly adjudicating some of the incidences that are happening in facilities,” Ward told the committee.
He also said there were problems with facility infrastructure across the state. He mentioned a “significant black mold problem” in multiple institutions that made it nearly impossible to breathe. At MacDougall-Walker, he said, dust and debris cover the vents. At York, 25 women have to share a single shower. Parts of Osborn were shuttered when PCBs and asbestos were discovered.
Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, D-New Haven, asked Ward to comment on Lamont’s proposal to eliminate free electronic messaging for incarcerated people, which has received severe pushback from lawmakers.
“It seems to me always that prisoners who have the best and most consistent ongoing contact with family and friends in the community are then less isolated during their time of incarceration and are best likely to reintegrate successfully when they come out,” Looney said.
Ward agreed with Looney, but said that he also received complaints about visitations, which could be shut down if the facility went into lockdown, leaving the families in the dark about what was going on.
“Maintaining those bonds, I know, speaking just personally from folks in my family who have been incarcerated, it really does make all the difference when they know that they have loved ones and family members on the outside who are rooting them on,” he said.
In a statement to the CT Mirror, the Department of Correction said they had supported Ward’s work at all levels.
“Each complaint brought to the attention of the Ombudsman by the incarcerated population is investigated, and whenever possible the agency will work to remedy the situation to the best of its ability,” the statement read.
Ward said the Department of Correction had been a “collaborative and active partner” since he started as ombudsman in September. Ward said the department gave him access to cameras and he is able to review files and electronic health records and meet with any incarcerated person in the facilities. He said he is currently proposing a bill that would give the ombuds office even more access, including the ability to subpoena evidence.
Rep. David Yaccarino, R-North Haven, said the idea made sense.
“It really protects everybody,” he said, adding that he hoped Ward would be able to bring “unity or calmness to a tough situation.”
Multiple lawmakers asked about the educational and vocational programs available at various facilities. Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, said he saw generational poverty as a driver of incarceration, and asked what programs were available that would help these people change course.
“I’m absolutely certain that a very high percentage, of those who were incarcerated came from communities where poverty was concentrated,” said Fonfara. “It’s a cycle … and so I prefer that we do the work from birth on, but we fail at that in some communities in the state. The vast majority we do a great job with. But not everywhere.”
Ward noted that some facilities did have programs — he pointed to a manufacturing program at Osborn and York Correctional Institutes and a program at Cybulski Correctional Institution where incarcerated individuals work with the car company Enterprise. He said the Department of Correction also runs a large print shop. But other facilities, he said, like New Haven Correctional, have very little programming.
Ward said he saw part of his role as ombuds as advocating for additional programming, but pointed out that those programs were dependent on funding from the legislature.
Fair, of Stop Solitary, and Marisol Garcia, co-chair of the Correction Advisory Committee, both said they wanted to see the ombuds position be effective. Fair said in written testimony that she was disappointed that the office remained unstaffed.
“ I’m hoping that … at some point we can strengthen [the ombuds office] so it’s more than just another person giving the [Department of Correction] a recommendation. Because a recommendation doesn’t make anyone do anything,” Fair said.
Garcia warned the committee that Ward was not going to be able to handle everything by himself; that he would need support and the necessary infrastructure to be able to make the office work.
“Actually providing a budget and resources for this work to happen is a must, but it has to be a community concern. There has to be genuine concern,” she said.