Legislation

For people who are incarcerated, maintaining familial and community bonds is crucial to mental health, physical health, community health, and community safety.

The goal of our justice system is meant to be rehabilitation, not punishment.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread inside the Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC), Connecticut’s prisons and jails were not healthy places.

Due process is the minimum standard of procedural fairness; it requires, at a minimum, notice and an opportunity to be heard by a neutral decisionmaker.

The ACLU-CT believes that all people, including people living with criminal records and incarcerated people, are entitled to the opportunity to access employment and dignity in the workplace.

In the U.S., serving on a jury is a basic function of citizenship. By excluding people with certain records from jury service, Connecticut is also denying criminal defendants their constitutional right to a jury of their peers drawn from a fair cross-section of the community.

Our support for full decriminalization is strengthened by the racist history of enforcement of cannabis offenses in Connecticut.

Black Connecticut residents were three times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than whites,6 despite similar rates of cannabis use to white residents.

Highly militarized police units, like SWAT teams, turn communities into war zones. Neighborhoods are not battlegrounds and no arm of the government should be treating us like wartime enemies.