Leeper: Where Does Connecticut Criminal Justice Go From Here?

Last summer and fall, Connecticut, like much of the nation, saw an uptick in property crimes. Thankfully, CT continues to have the fourth-lowest rate of violent crime; however, recent events have left all of us a bit more unsettled. Working with the governor's office, Judicial Branch, law enforcement, and other state agencies, we identified and implemented some immediate solutions. These include providing judges additional information when evaluating whether to approve a police officer's request to detain a child suspected of crime; implementing next-business-day arraignments for offenses involving a gun and car thefts; and funding regional car theft task forces across the state. In the lead-up to the legislative session, one of my priorities is working to identify the root causes of this uptick and propose solutions that will prevent crime long-term while also continuing to listen to the nearer-term needs of our law enforcement.

In December, state Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey and I hosted a panel on the state of CT’s criminal justice system. I was grateful to bring together Fairfield Police Detectives Beth Leetch and George Buckmir, CT crime expert Ken Barone, juvenile justice advocates Iliana Pujols and Brittany LaMarr, and Fairfield’s own John Santa, who chairs the state’s Sentencing Commission for what was an engaging, informative, and — at times — passionate dialogue.

It was a wonderful opportunity to get people who work along the full continuum of the criminal justice system together and to speak with each other instead of past each other. Through the discussion there were areas of unanimous agreement — we need more early interventions to identify at-risk youth, we need more services to treat the root causes of crime, and we need to ensure that all children have a high-quality education and after-school programs available to them.

There were also areas of disagreement — and it was important to be able to identify those areas, too, so that we can continue to work through them, together. We recognized areas where there are disconnects between what the law allows and how things are operating on the ground. In order to better understand these disconnects, we are co-hosting a follow-up event on Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. to dig deeper into where law enforcement is experiencing breakdowns in the system. This understanding is essential to ensure that any future legislation is not just feel-good policy but actually addresses needs of both law enforcement and our at-risk youth.

Lastly, we encountered a really interesting truth, which is that statistically crime is down — near historic lows — however, law enforcement feels like it has never been worse. As Rep. McCarthy Vahey stated, both can be true. Our officers are encountering many severe and intense events. In the context of COVID, we have witnessed the pandemic's impact on the mental health of our children and know that our most vulnerable have been impacted most dramatically. Even before the pandemic, juveniles’ needs had become more acute and complex. The pandemic has only exasperated the needs of our youth, making our law enforcement’s reality much more challenging.

Criminal justice reforms have a long track record of bipartisanship here in Connecticut, a fact our state can be proud of. All of the major reforms have been broadly bipartisan. We must resist attempts to make the current challenges partisan, particularly as campaign season ramps up. Politicizing the police is dangerous and cannot be tolerated. When the issues are this important, and both sides of the aisle agree on many of the solutions, there is no need for the discourse to be partisan.

After many, many hours of discussion with law enforcement, community members, and experts from across the criminal justice system, I have found unanimous agreement on the following three principles: 1. Everyone deserves to feel safe in their community, 2. Our law enforcement should not need to accept unnecessary risk in the line of duty, and 3. We must expand the upstream work to prevent kids turning to crime. As the ongoing conversation about next steps and how to best move forward heats up, as is inevitable when discussing issues that so centrally impact people’s lives, I hope we can remember these three principles and center our work around them.

State Rep. Jennifer Leeper

District 132 of Fairfield and Southport

This article originally appeared on the Fairfield Patch