Public defender program draws praise from all sides
Advocates, prison officials cite parole process impact
A new Connecticut program that offers public defender services to people accused of violating parole is earning the praise of both advocates and correction officials for the impact it’s made on the parole system in just 18 months.
Advocates note the representation from public defenders helps those accused of violating parole navigate a convoluted process, reduces the number of people returned to jail on minor violations and has already shown it can sharply reduce how much more time some people will be under state supervision for violations.
But correction and parole officials also have found the program helped “professionalize” the hearing process from start to finish, making it easier and fairer for everyone involved, they said.
“My expectations were exceeded,” Chief Public Defender Christine Rapillo said. “They were able to get up and running pretty fast and right away they were making an impact on those preliminary hearings. Just our public defenders’ ability to coordinate with the courts ... you immediately saw better outcomes for people right away.”
The idea came to life after a Yale study of dozens of parole violation cases noted
none were represented by appointed counsel in their hearings and every one subsequently returned to prison for months. The discussions that followed spawned a series of small reforms to permit appointed counsel in parole hearings and the public defender parole revocation unit was created in 2019.
With $250,000 in funding and the closure of the Bristol courthouse, the public defenders’ office dispatched two longtime public defenders, a clerk and a social worker to Waterbury to start the new unit and help as many accused as they could muster with their small team, Rapillo said.
The service now has handled 545 cases for 428 clients, 40 of whom have been charged more than once, and found it was able to help more than 120 clients avoid returning to prison by either winning their case at hearings or entering diversionary programs, according to data the team shared with the Criminal Justice Police Advisory Commission last week. Many others did return but for fewer months than without counsel and 186 of the cases are still pending, the data show.
“It does make a difference to have an attorney present because in my experience watching the unrepresented, inmates go in and apologize and admit everything that’s been alleged — they don’t understand that it’s an adversarial process,” said Elisa Villa, a longtime public defender who supervises the new unit. “It’s been my experience that our existence, having an attorney, is very helpful for clients understanding the process and their rights.”
The program has not only helped the defendants in these cases, though, it also has helped parole officers and hearing examiners to identify weaknesses in and streamline their own processes, said Eric Ellison, director of parole and community services for the Department of Correction.
Going up against experienced public defenders also has forced them to make stronger cases, improving the quality of the entire system, he said.
“Having public defenders involved in the process, I believe, brings integrity and fairness to the process,” Ellison said. “I think fairness and credibility are so important for the population that we supervise. It made our staff better parole officers as well.”
The newprogram has revealed some technical issues in the parole hearing system, including some scheduling and paperwork delays that still need to be fixed, but the ongoing COVID19 pandemic also has made it unclear exactly how much demand for the services will rise as the country reopens.
The small staff is essentially already operating at maximum capacity and likely could use another lawyer and clerk to increase its services, but Rapillo said the office plans to spend another year collecting data on the program before deciding how best to expand.
“Hopefully as wedothis longer we see good outcomes for people who come through the process on a parole violation,” she said. “And if they feel like they got good treatment as they move through, from the attorney and from the office, they have better outcomes.”
The early results already show it’s been a successful program, especially in terms of lengths of sentences and automatic remands to prison, said Fiona Doherty, one of the Yale Law School professors who authored the original report.
“It was not uncommon at all for people to get a year for a technical violation, so we saw in the numbers just how dramatic that shift has been,” she said.
“That’s one area we really saw there was opportunity,” Doherty continued. “This idea that everyone on a parole violation was being brought to prison for at least three months even if the court was ordering bail was just another window of opportunity to really push through meaningful reforms. It’s a pleasure to see how much is being done.”