Connecticut Plans Prisons for Younger Inmates

WETHERSFIELD, Conn. — Connecticut officials are planning a prison that would exclusively house inmates between the ages of 18 and 25. The state would dedicate one of its 18 existing prisons to male inmates in that age group.

The first-of-its-kind facility for the country would train staff to know how to specifically deal with younger inmates, especially since research has shown that the brain is not fully developed until the age of 25, Michael Lawlor, Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s chief criminal justice adviser told the Hartford Courant. Currently, there are 3,092 inmates between the ages of 18 and 25 in the prison system out of a population of 15,807. Of those, 635 are 25 years old.

Lawlor told the Hartford Courant that crime has been dropping steadily in Connecticut in recent years, and the steepest drop within the state has been among young criminals. The 18 to 21 age group has dropped by 52 percent in the last six years, he said.

The prison would be modeled after a prison that Gov. Malloy saw in Germany, according to the Associated Press. Currently, in the German system, inmates arrested at 21 are considered juveniles to avoid mixing them with professional criminals, according to the Hardford Courant. Not only would it help segregate the younger population that is often involved in more assaults, it would help protect younger inmates from abuse and manipulation of older inmates, the Connecticut Department of Correction’s Commissioner Scott Semple told the Associated Press.

While New York City moved more than 1,000 inmates ages 18 to 21 to a new unit at Rikers Island and other states such as Florida, Maine, Colorado and Massachusetts have facilities for young adults, the Connecticut facility would be the first full prison in the country to focus specifically on youth brain development. As such, the department is seeking input from educational experts and is looking at a behavior-modification curriculum used by the Department of Children and Families for work with youthful offenders to determine if a similar concept would be successful in the prison.

The transition would not require legislative approval, Semple told the Associated Press. Officials will look at the prison system’s own budget for funds before asking for additional funding and devising plans to use one of the state’s 18 existing prisons. The prison for men in the 18 to 25 age group would open by January 2017; however, officials have yet to decide which facility to convert. The state already has specialized prisons, including the super-max Northern Correctional Institution in Somers and the John R. Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire that deals with offenders up to about 22 years old, reported the Hartford Courant.

The state also plans to create a separate program for women in that age range within York women’s prison in Niantic.