Dear Ms. Barbara Fair and Attorney Devaugn Ward,
I write to you with deep respect and moral urgency after reading the powerful testimony and investigative reporting on the failures of the Connecticut General Assembly to address systemic neglect within the state’s correctional facilities.
Your continued advocacy—rooted in justice, truth, and humanity—speaks for those who are most invisible: the incarcerated people who suffer and die in silence behind prison walls. The recent revelations, particularly the stories of Glenn London and Robert Bracey, are not isolated tragedies. They are symptoms of a state-sanctioned pattern of cruelty, one that is sustained by legislative inertia and political convenience.
I stand in complete agreement with your statement, Ms. Fair: “It’s time for real change, not symbolic gestures.” Indeed, symbolic reform and staged progressivism are no substitute for action when human lives are on the line. The moral center of our government has been shaken, not by the resistance of the opposition, but by the passivity of those in power.
To Attorney Ward, as Ombudsman and representative of oversight and accountability, I urge your office to use its full authority to ensure that transparency is not just a word in policy, but a lived reality for families like the Braceys, and patients like Mr. London who were denied the most basic human right—medical care.
And to the Connecticut General Assembly, let it be clear: possessing a supermajority and refusing to act is not just a political failure. It is a moral one. You cannot claim to champion human rights while allowing bills like SB 1541 and SB 1543 to languish in silence, and you cannot denounce systemic racism while ignoring its clearest manifestation—institutional abuse of incarcerated people, many of whom are Black and Brown.
I join you both in calling not for patience, but for transformation. The time for apologies has passed. The time for accountability is now.
With solidarity and shared purpose,
Dr. Carlos Troconis
Miami, FL