Attorney Devaughn Ward, in his first year as ombuds for Department of Correction, has tried to find out what services and benefits exactly the Inmate Legal Assistance Program — at a cost of nearly a million dollars — provides to the state’s incarcerated population.
The request by Ward wasn’t out of bounds.
In fact, the current contract requires the the state’s contractor, Bansley Law Firm LLC which has been led by Attorney Walter C. Bansley IV since 2015, to provide data about its activities when requested by any state agency.
But when Ward asked for information, Bansley wouldn’t provide it.
Ward then sent a letter to Angel Quiros, the Commissioner of Department of Correction, requesting the suspension of the contract with Bansley Law Firm until the company provided the data. He also sued the firm in an attempt to secure a court order that would force it to divulge the information, given that Bansley hadn’t even responded to his subpoena.
That case remains pending in Superior Court in Hartford.
Quiros responded on Nov. 17, without refusing Ward’s request or taking action in the case.
Instead, Quiros reported that he met with Attorney Walter C. Bansley IV and they agreed the firm would provide more data points, including how long it takes for ILAP attorneys to respond to requests for assistance.
Quiros didn’t answer Ward’s main question: What ILAP is doing to deserve over $800,000 per year for legal services? So, Ward reiterated the question in a second letter dated Nov. 19. That letter was copied to the Office of Gov. Ned Lamont, which has not responded.
Records tell the story
But Ward’s broader point — that we need to know more about what ILAP does — is only partially correct. Much of the program’s evolution — or devolution — is apparent through year-over-year comparison of the program’s annual reports. That analysis reveals that the incarcerated population in Connecticut is receiving far fewer services than it once did, back when ILAP started in 1995, without a corresponding reduction in compensation from the state.
The program is required to file yearly reports. And analyzing annual reports from 2004 shows a marked decrease in services provided. Reports for years prior to 2004 are unavailable.
The most dramatic finding is the transformation of the program from a more high-volume direct service to a lower-volume supplier of self-help materials. In other words, ILAP is now mostly a research and form clearinghouse, not legal assistance the way many people envision it.
The best indication that the program remains hands-off to prisoners’ legal problems is the number of court appearances.
Court appearances by ILAP attorneys dropped to zero in 2010, back when the Law Office of Sydney T. Schulman still held the contract. That number has remained at zero since, suggesting a fundamental change in how the program fulfills its contract with the state.
The contract for the Inmate Legal Assistance Program doesn’t require representation of an incarcerated person in an action or in family law situations like divorce, or termination of parental rights. But it’s not just the lack of appearances that is troubling. What’s notable is the near-complete collapse of litigation, lawsuits that would necessarily target the Department of Correction or the state for failures to provide proper medical care, to protect people in state custody from violence, or even just supply them reading glasses.
ILAP also changed the definition during 2017-2018 fiscal year of what it means to initiate a case. Prior to FY 2017, “cases initiated” meant ILAP had filed paperwork on behalf of an inmate as that person’s attorney of record. Since 2017, ILAP defines initiating a case as assisting with forms but not necessarily filing them. ILAP doesn’t track whether the prisoners file the forms it provides to start a case.
As a result, the data collected under “cases initiated” does not mean that ILAP initiated anything — or that anything was initiated by anyone at all. Continuing to report these interactions as “cases initiated” is disingenuous in the best case, fraudulent in the worst.
Even if the definition hadn’t changed, the decline in cases initiated is remarkable.
ILAP reports that it initiated 124 court cases in 2017-2018 — the year the definition changed. In the 2023-24 FY, only two cases were initiated. In 2024-25 FY, there was one, constituting a 99% reduction — 100% if the prisoner never filed the papers — in litigation since 2017.
Did Bansley Law Firm contemplate representing prisoners?
At least with the earlier contract with Schulman’s office, the firm contemplated needing to represent an incarcerated person.
Schulman’s firm applied for and received a juris number — an internal identification number used by the Connecticut Judicial Branch for attorneys and firms — for its legal services work back when the firm was the chosen contractor for ILAP.
Any case filed using Schulman’s ILAP juris number is a case that came to the firm through ILAP. In Superior Court records, Schulman’s ILAP juris number is currently associated with only three closed cases — two are divorces, one from 2010 and one from 2012, and the third seems to be an appellate family matter involving a minor child (records are sealed and identities removed). This isn’t dispositive of all the cases Schulman’s ILAP could have initiated; it’s possible other cases ILAP filed were purged or ILAP represented people in other courts like probate or an out-of-state court.
But three seems like a small number given the number of inquiries Schulman’s ILAP received between 1995 and 2015; according to charts filed by the firm with the department, the firm received around 10,000 inquiries per year from inmates from 2004 to 2014. That’s about 100,000 requests for only half of Schulman’s office’s tenure as ILAP contractor.
Federal courts don’t track attorneys’ cases by state juris numbers but Schulman appeared in four federal cases filed against former Department of Correction Commissioner Theresa Lantz between 2003 to 2008. Lantz retired in 2009.
Closer inspection reveals Schulman’s firm was a defendant in those actions and ILAP did not initiate them.
But Bansley Law Firm never applied for or received a separate ILAP juris number.
Bansley Law Firm’s regular juris number appears in two cases, and it doesn’t represent prisoners in either of them. The firm is a defendant in one where Inmate Jose Ramos accuses ILAP of conspiring to take Ramos’ property; Superior Court Judge Steven Jacobs dismissed the case on June 2. The other case is the one filed by Ward asking ILAP to prove what it’s doing.
The Nov. 17 letter from Quiros to Ward noted that the Supreme Court decisions that constitute the law don’t require ILAP to represent prisoners. Many courts have agreed with that assessment. Not every inquiry from an inmate should result in litigation.
But that’s not really the question anymore, especially given that ILAP hasn’t been representing an incarcerated person for about 15 years. The question remains whether the Bansley Law Firm’s contract for over a quarter of a million dollars is prudent given what the state is receiving in return.
Based on a few metrics from ILAP’s annual reports, the program — which is the state’s current method of protecting one of the incarcerated population’s constitutional rights — isn’t worth it.