Advocates call for closure of Northern Correctional, reinvestment in community supports
Northern Correctional Institution in Somers.
About a decade ago, Sen. Gary Winfield went on a tour of Northern Correctional Institution, the most secure prison in the state. As he walked through the windowless, gray hallways, Winfield’s tour guide seemed “gleeful” at the “marvel of engineering” that was the Somers prison.
What made it such an architectural feat, the guide seemed to think, was the prison’s ability “to break people,” Winfield recalled on a Tuesday afternoon Zoom call.
“Everything that we’ve done, all of the things that we have done, are choices we’ve made. They’re policy choices,” said Winfield, a New Haven Democrat. “We should be doing something about the fact that those are the choices we’ve made and never make those choices again.”
Yehyun Kim / CTMirror.org
The two nursing aides were supposed to start work at the Manchester Manor nursing home in early December, a welcome addition to a staff that has put in long hours under risky conditions and now faces a new wave of coronavirus cases.
But the week they were supposed to begin, both would-be employees informed management that they had instead taken jobs with Amazon in Connecticut, a safer prospect as COVID-19 cases among nursing home staff and residents are again on the rise.
“They just said they were more comfortable working at Amazon than they felt working in a nursing home,” said Paul Liistro, who owns the Manchester Manor and Vernon Manor facilities. “The turnover is pretty high, even if you get employees who think they want to work with people. They don’t really know how closely they’re going to be working with people until they get here.”
The two nursing aides were supposed to start work at the Manchester Manor nursing home in early December, a welcome addition to a staff that has put in long hours under risky conditions and now faces a new wave of coronavirus cases.
But the week they were supposed to begin, both would-be employees informed management that they had instead taken jobs with Amazon in Connecticut, a safer prospect as COVID-19 cases among nursing home staff and residents are again on the rise.
“They just said they were more comfortable working at Amazon than they felt working in a nursing home,” said Paul Liistro, who owns the Manchester Manor and Vernon Manor facilities. “The turnover is pretty high, even if you get employees who think they want to work with people. They don’t really know how closely they’re going to be working with people until they get here.”
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