Legislation

Injustice thrives in the dark. The ability to shed sunlight on government action through open records requests is essential to holding police accountable and to preventing state-sanctioned discrimination, abuse, and mismanagement. As an organization that values government transparency and accessibility, the ACLU-CT deeply believes in making and keeping governmental records open and available to all people in the widest possible range of circumstances. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a key tool for ensuring that government is open for, and thus accountable to, the public.

Connecticut is the only state where the Department of Correction (DOC) oversees and operates its own system. From the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ACLU-CT has fought to get vulnerable incarcerated people access to medical care and released from DOC jails and prisons.[1] The ACLU-CT strongly supports measures that improve access to quality healthcare for people incarcerated in Connecticut’s prisons. Given the DOC’s failure to provide adequate care, both during and before the pandemic, Senate Bill 1394 is vital in this effort. [1] See, e.g., ACLU of Connecticut Urges State Officials to Use Existing Powers to Release People Awaiting Trial, Certain Other Incarcerated People During COVID-19 Pandemic, ACLU Conn. (Mar. 12, 2020), available at https://www.acluct.org/en/press-releases/aclu-connecticut-urges-state-officials-use-existing-powers-release-people-awaiting.

The ACLU-CT is an organization dedicated to ending mass incarceration, eliminating racial disparities in the criminal legal system, and reducing harm to justice-impacted people. We cannot jail our way into real public safety. Increasing incarceration in the United States for more than two decades did not reduce violent crime. Real public safety requires investing in programs and services that make us safe, not violent systems like incarceration, including pre-trial detention. Across the country, after an arrest, a person’s ability to leave jail and return home to fight their case almost entirely depends on that person’s access to money. People must pay cash bail to secure their freedom in a system that perpetuates wealth-based incarceration. Pretrial incarceration due to unaffordable bail is the primary driver of convictions, and is responsible for the exponential growth in mass incarceration.

The ACLU-CT believes in a society where all people, including those who have been convicted or accused of a crime, have equal opportunity to contribute to their communities and build successful and fulfilling lives. Everybody needs a safe, sanitary, and stable place to live, which builds prosperous communities. But especially since the pandemic, rent has skyrocketed across the country and across the state, increasing by 20 percent on average over the last two years. At the same time, wages have not kept up with inflation, and the frequency of no-fault evictions has also increased, meaning that tenants are losing their homes even when a landlord did not claim they did anything wrong.

The ACLU-CT is an organization dedicated to ending mass incarceration, eliminating racial disparities in the criminal legal system, and reducing harms to justice-impacted people. The United States incarcerates people at an unprecedented rate— denying people of their freedom, separating families, and draining communities and governments of their resources. At the same time, the private prison industry expanded rapidly since 1984 and is now a $5 billion industry built on the backs of people who are incarcerated, who are overwhelmingly Black people and people of color. Connecticut already budgets more money for its prison and jail system than its public health department, DMV, anti-discrimination agency, and more. This money should be spent building up, not further harming, people who are incarcerated and their communities. Investment, not incarceration, is how we set people up for success and improve safety. As such, the ACLU-CT strongly supports Senate Bill 1328, and encourages this Committee to do the same.

The ACLU-CT is committed to ending mass incarceration and racism in policing in all forms. We cannot jail our way into real public safety. We believe in a society where all people, including those who have been convicted of a crime, have equal opportunity to contribute to society and build successful and fulfilling lives. Second look sentence modification reforms, like Senate Bill 1327, are essential to reducing extreme and disproportionate lengthy prison sentences.

The ACLU-CT is dedicated to protecting the constitutional rights of young people and opposes censorship in all its forms. We believe in a society where ideas are openly disseminated, discussed, and debated. Across the country and here in Connecticut, we have seen attempts to censor libraries into removing books by and about people of color, LGBTQ people, and other marginalized people. The First Amendment protects the right to receive and share information and ideas. This holds true in schools and especially in libraries, which exist to enable people to encounter and explore different ideas, topics, and viewpoints.

People in Connecticut cannot have a future here if they cannot afford a place to live. When housing becomes unaffordable, there are cascading effects—like displacement from beloved homes, neighborhoods, and schools. When working people can afford to pay their rent, they can take better care of their families. Rent hikes and no-fault evictions are displacing people from their homes and communities, fueling gentrification, and increasing evictions and homelessness, which, because of systemic racism, disproportionately harms Black and brown working-class renters and immigrants. Fair rent commissions are volunteer boards at the municipal level with powers to stop unconscionable rent increases, to set phase-in rent increases, and to delay a rent increase until housing code violations are fixed. Fair rent commissions are often the only avenue for people to challenge significant rent increases, but these commissions are completely unavailable to renters in 145 towns with populations under 25,000 people. The ACLU-CT supports bills that expand the scope, authority, and accessibility of fair rent commissions in this state.

The ACLU-CT believes in a world where all children are free from food insecurity. We support programs that seek to close the racial wealth gap and break the cycle of poverty. Federal child nutrition waivers that arose during the pandemic allowed all students to have access to free school meals, which reduced childhood hunger and poverty. Now that those programs are ending at the federal level, Connecticut has the chance to be a leader in the fight to end food insecurity by filling the gap because all children, regardless of their family’s income, deserve access to food.