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When her son Michael told her in June that he was being transferred to the Osborn Correctional Institution from a prison in Newtown, Dorothea Ferrigon thought his two-year ordeal was almost over.
Osborn’s location in Somers was much closer to the family’s Bloomfield home, which meant it would be easier to visit him. Even better, he’d been placed on a waiting list for a halfway house that would likely be in the Hartford area. His release, it appeared, was imminent.
But then COVID struck the prisons, the state Department of Correction halted visitations, and the family worried about “Big Mike,” who had both diabetes and asthma.
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.”