We, the members of Unit 1012, are truly well aware that once the death
penalty is abolished, the Marxist-ACLU Demons will want to end LWOP.
We, DO NOT TRUST them at all and we know that they are nothing but liars who value the lives of murderers and evildoers, with the plan on putting innocent people’s lives at risk of getting murdered.
Northern Correctional Institution (NCI) is a high-security state prison in Somers, in the northern part of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The prison houses the state's male convicts serving long sentences for violent crimes and it housed the death row for inmates before the abolition of the death penalty in Connecticut.
We will post some news sources before giving our comments.
Northern Correctional
Institution in Somers.
Connecticut Prisoner Rights Advocates Push For Closure Of 'Supermax' Prison
By Davis Dunavin • Jan 19, 2021
Lawmakers and advocates want the state of Connecticut to close its only super-maximum-security "Supermax" prison.
Northern Correctional Institution has been criticized for its use of solitary confinement, including by a U.N. torture expert. The prison served as an isolation unit for inmates with COVID-19 from March to September of last year.
Barbara Fair is with Stop Solitary CT.
“Northern is a place primarily filled with young men of color. They’re sent there to break their spirit, to shatter their minds and to reduce them to broken men who face a lifetime of scars from that torture,” Fair said.
State Senator Gary Winfield of New Haven is the co-chair of the State Judiciary Committee.
“If we have chosen to create a system in which we break people, when those people come back out of the system, we should be doing something about the fact that those are the choices we’ve made, and never make those choices again,” Winfield said.
Northern costs the state about $19 million a year to operate. Advocates say they’d like to see that money go to programs and services that support the health, shelter, and reentry of formerly incarcerated people.
About 81 people are incarcerated at Northern Correctional Institution.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.wshu.org/post/connecticut-prisoner-rights-advocates-push-closure-supermax-prison#stream/0
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Life without parole should not
be a default in this process. All other less punitive sentencing options should
be thoroughly explored. A blanket move from death to life without parole would
ignore the facts of each case and the redemption that each person is capable of
achieving. 2:12 PM ·
Jan 13, 2021·Twitter for iPhone [PHOTO SOURCE: https://twitter.com/helenprejean/status/1349237867478859783] |
Connecticut Legislators Announce Bill To Close 'Supermax' Prison
By Davis Dunavin • Feb 1, 2021
A group of Connecticut lawmakers are again trying to close a controversial Supermax prison and put other criminal justice reform measures in place.
The bill would shut down and demolish Northern Correctional Institute by the end of the year.
Northern has been criticized for its use of
solitary confinement, including by a U.N. torture expert. The prison served as
an isolation unit for inmates with COVID-19 from March to September of last
year.
State Senator Gary Winfield is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“We don’t want to put people into these conditions of isolation and segregation without having rules in place. Are we doing what we should be doing when we take on the responsibility of incarcerating people?” Winfield said.
State Representative Steve Stafstrom, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, agreed.
“Northern is basically the antithesis of all the progress we’ve made in this state over the past decade or so. It’s past time to close it,” Stafstrom said.
Winfield and other lawmakers pushed the bill unsuccessfully last year — even as Winfield’s police accountability bill passed amid protests around the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The bill would also establish an independent oversight committee for the Department of Corrections. Lawmakers are working on the bill with Stop Solitary CT, a criminal justice reform advocacy group.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.wshu.org/post/connecticut-legislators-announce-bill-close-supermax-prison#stream/0
State to close only ‘supermax’ prison, Northern Correctional Institution
by Kelan Lyons
Northern Correctional Institution, the state’s controversial “supermax” prison located in Somers, will close by July 1, the Department of Correction announced to its staff on Monday.
The closure is the first since Enfield Correctional Institution was shuttered on Jan. 23, 2018.
There are 5,000 fewer people in state correctional facilities since then. The most precipitous decline has been since the onset of the pandemic; there are 3,377 fewer people in prison or jail today than on March 1.
“I have been transparent about my intentions to close facilities, ever since [Gov. Ned] Lamont announced that I was his choice to be the next commissioner,” Commissioner Designate Angel Quiros told DOC employees in a memo Monday. “The decision to close Northern can be largely attributed to the significant drop in the incarcerated population, as well as my obligation to the tax payers of Connecticut to identify cost savings measures. The operational costs associated with Northern Correctional exceed most other locations, and the overall census has not surpassed one hundred inmates in the last six months.”
Closing the Somers prison will save the state approximately $12.6 million in annual operating costs. At his COVID-19 press briefing Monday afternoon, Lamont said the savings will go toward closing Connecticut’s deficit.
“Look, I’m gonna make sure the T.R.U.E. unit at Cheshire and other rehabilitative services are there,” Lamont said. “But this money is going to go to fix our deficit.”
In a statement, Lamont said in a statement prison admissions have declined significantly over the past 10 years. The incarcerated population is the lowest it has been in 32 years.
“This is even as violent, high-risk inmates are serving more of their original sentences than ever before,” Lamont said. “Spending millions of dollars annually to operate facilities for a population that continues to get smaller and smaller is not a good use of resources, especially as we work to reduce the cost structure of state government.”
“New prison admissions in Connecticut have declined significantly over the last decade, and the incarcerated population is currently at a 32-year low. This is even as violent, high-risk inmates are serving more of their original sentences than ever before,” Lamont said in a statement. “Spending millions of dollars annually to operate facilities for a population that continues to get smaller and smaller is not a good use of resources, especially as we work to reduce the cost structure of state government.
Northern was opened in 1995, when the state’s prison population was much greater and officials were having a hard time managing behavioral infractions occurring throughout the prison system.
Advocates have called for its closure for years, citing its declining population and status as a relic of a bygone tough-on-crime era. There were only 55 people incarcerated at Northern as of Feb. 1, 40 of whom were Black and 11 of whom were Hispanic. The facility was built to hold at least 500 prisoners.
“Northern is a monument to cruelty and systemic racism. In sum, it is a symbol of everything that is wrong with incarceration,” said David McGuire, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. “It is critical that the state close Northern in a way that ensures it will never be opened again, and that the money saved from its closure goes toward programs and services to help people most harmed by mass incarceration.”
Northern was the subject of a lawsuit filed last week aimed at preventing prisoners with mental illnesses from being sent there. The lawsuit alleges inmates with mental illnesses were shackled and isolated in cold concrete cells, forced to eat food off the floor, for exhibiting behavior consistent with psychiatric symptoms — symptoms exacerbated by the loneliness and isolation that is a function of life at Northern. One man was given a disciplinary ticket for attempting to commit suicide. Another violated DOC policy by putting his hand through the trap of his cell door, desperate for human interaction.
In a previous interview, Quiros, who served as warden at Northern from 2009 to 2011, said the prison had “served its purpose. With the criminal justice reform that’s going on, the agency will have to take a look at what additional changes we need to make, as far as the programs that are housed at Northern, and then we’re still keeping staff safety, and offender safety, in mind.”
Quiros said during his confirmation hearing that he anticipated closing two correctional facilities due to declining prison and jail populations during the pandemic. Northern is the first; he said that the only facilities not on the table for closure were the city jails — located in Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven — and York Correctional Institution, the state’s sole prison for women.
Approximately 175 corrections staff work at Northern. They will not be laid off as a result of the closure. The DOC will work with the employees and their unions to send them to other correctional facilities, helping reduce overtime expenses and mitigate the need to hire new staff to take the place of retirees.
At least one corrections union was displeased with the news. AFSCME Local 391 President Collin Provost said in a statement that, “Front-line corrections staff are concerned that closing state prisons will prove to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Shoe-horning inmates into other facilities will undermine safety and security in the prisons and create more difficult conditions for offenders and staff. We’re concerned that closing Northern will cause overcrowding, lead to more positives test results and limit the Agency’s ability to quarantine. The State and the DOC should think about repurposing Northern instead of shuttering it.”
In his internal memo, Quiros pledged that the “challenging populations” at Northern will be safely transferred to other correctional facilities.
“These populations have been managed at other locations in years past, and I am confident we can do so now,” Quiros told DOC employees. “As always, safety and security will remain a top priority as we navigate through this process.”
CT Mirror reporter Dave Altimari contributed to this story.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://ctmirror.org/2021/02/08/state-to-close-only-supermax-prison-northern-correctional-institution/
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The
same ideology that was responsible for the Armenian Genocide now continues
through the Neo-Ottoman leadership of Aliyev and Erdogan. Now more than ever,
it is important for us to remember the victims of the Armenian Genocide and
demand justice.
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[PHOTO
SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/ancaustralia/photos/a.176603202393861/3792634487457363/]
Ilham Heydar oglu Aliyev (Azerbaijani: İlham Heydər oğlu Əliyev, [ilham hejˈdæɾ oɣˈɫu æˈlijɪf]; born 24
December 1961) is the fourth and current president of Azerbaijan, serving in the
post since 31 October 2003. The son and second child of former Azeri leader Heydar
Aliyev, Ilham Aliyev was elected president of Azerbaijan in 2003 following
his father's death, in an election considered fraudulent
and unfair by foreign outlets. Azerbaijani foreign
relations under Aliyev included strengthened cooperation with the European
Union (EU), using caviar diplomacy, with Russia, with NATO via the
NATO–Azerbaijan Individual Partnership Action Plan,
and with the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC). The New York Times described Aliyev's
foreign policy as being pro-Western, selling oil and gas to Europe and Israel,
promoting a moderate form of Islam, and hosting "lavish international
events".[8] During Aliyev's presidency, news have surfaced of various human rights violations in Azerbaijan,
which included torture,
arbitrary arrests, as well as
harassment of journalists and non-governmental organizations. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict continued
sporadically during Aliyev's presidency, culminating into a full-scale war in 2020, which ended with
a ceasefire agreement, by
which most of the territory lost during the First Nagorno-Karabakh war were returned
to Azerbaijan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilham_Aliyev
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OUR STATEMENT:
As friends and family members of murder victims, we are disappointed by the decision to shut down Northern Correctional Institution (NCI). We have always warned the public that the moment capital punishment gets abolished, the abolitionists will target LWOP and prison sentences too.
If you notice that the same arguments, they have used to abolish capital punishment are the same ones, they are now using to end prison sentences too. They broke their promises to replace the death penalty with LWOP, by shutting down the NCI this coming July. As usual, their excuses are prisons are expensive, racist and cruel and unusual as well.
We notice, that not a single criminal rights activist showed their outrage by protesting the shutting down of the prison, they remain silent.
See this article from Shari Silberstein: Ending the Death Penalty Is One Step Toward Ending Mass Incarceration
To be clear, I’m not talking about merely replacing the death penalty with life without parole sentences, which fail on nearly the same scale. Like executions, they also target the most vulnerable (a full two-thirds of people currently serving life without parole are people of color) without delivering public safety gains. There is mounting evidence that people age out of crime, leaving life-without-parole sentences without any purpose other than to inflict suffering until death.
Whenever an Anti-Death
Penalty campaigner claim that capital punishment is more expensive than LWOP,
please keep in mind, they are the reason why the death penalty system is expensive.
If they claim that the money saved can be used for victims’ services, why not
help fight for the end of the inhumane parole. Truth is ‘expensive’ is a word
use to manipulate the public in order to leave criminals unpunished. Do not be surprise,
as they are also complaining that mass incarceration and victims’ rights
services are also expensive and need to be abolished too. The coming of the July 2021
shutting down of NCI proves what we mean.
RELATED LINKS:
6 infamous convicted killers who served time at CT's
soon-to-be-closed supermax prison
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=117155480500450&id=101692122046786
https://www.facebook.com/ctpost/posts/10158637038849702
https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/6-infamous-convicted-killers-who-served-time-at-16086179.php
Drug dealer jailed for 60 years for his role in the killing of an 8-year-old murder trial witness and the boy's mother in 1999 could be free next year if he wins appeal to reduce sentence after serving just 25 years
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157339117066537&id=65972021536
OTHER LINKS:
Solitary confinement is torture. It should never be used to
treat a medical condition.
https://www.facebook.com/aclu/posts/10157422142781813
https://prospect.org/justice/prisons-coronavirus-pandemic-response-solitary-confinement/
https://prospect.org/justice/prisons-coronavirus-pandemic-response-solitary-confinement/
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