Legislation

People in Connecticut cannot have a future here if they cannot afford a place to live. Everybody needs a safe, sanitary, and stable place to live, which builds prosperous communities.

Connecticut held 43 witchcraft trials, resulting in the execution of sixteen innocent people in the mid-1600s. Many of the people targeted as witches were poor, women, and often single mothers.

This bill seeks to ban the use of police deceptive interrogation tactics on children. No one, including children, should be imprisoned because police coerced them into a false confession.

Connecticut needs to invest in housing programs and reentry services specifically for people who are disabled and leaving incarceration.

The ACLU-CT is dedicated to ending mass incarceration. That effort includes examining all aspects of the criminal and civil legal systems, including fees and fines. Fines and fees in the criminal justice system are a practice that traps people into cycles of debt.

No animal should be abused or harmed for human entertainment. But rather than create a new misdemeanor, members of the Enviroment Committee should consider enforcement mechanisms that focus on penalizing the corporations and businesses behind the traveling animal acts.

The ACLU-CT believes that everyone should be paid a fair wage for their labor, including people who are incarcerated. Justice-impacted families are bled dry by the criminal legal system.

One of the biggest injustices faced by people living with a criminal record are the myriad of collateral consequences flowing from that criminal record. By mandating background checks for security officer licenses, SB 968 creates another collateral consequence.

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 957 is vital in this effort.