Connecticut leads the country in imprisoning African-American and Latino boys. This incarceration policy doesn't help anyone. It merely manifests rampant institutional racism.

And it seems that this condition of state-sanctioned hatred makes life at the $57-million Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown hell not just for inmates, but also for some staff members, too.

For example, last Saturday night, Freddy Ramirez, 27, of Bridgeport took a gunshot to the torso and died. On Sunday, police arrested Jermaine Buster, 17, in connection with the killing, according to Channel 3 news.

Less than 24 hours before the crime, Buster had been released from CJTS, where he spent two years. What could have moved Buster to resort to violence less than a day after finishing a two-year bid? Is it the behavior modeled to him at CJTS?

This past Friday, April 11, 2008 at the Federal District Court in Hartford, a civil rights lawsuit (.pdf h/t Ctnewsjunkie ) alleged that in Dec. 2006, when Buster would have been an inmate, Brian Bendig, a white male CJTS supervisor punched in the head Joan Goodwine, a black female instructional assistant.

Following the assualt, the suit contends that a concerted management team protected the attacker and retaliated against Goodwine, who has worked at DCF since 1995, and Joseph Cardillo, her union rep and the Vice President of AFSCME Local 318, for complaining of the unjust trespass.

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If black workers at a prison sue because of a racially hostile atmosphere, how bad is it for the black inmates?

Unfortunately, that's not a rhetorical question. A lawsuit filed by four African-American employees of the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in federal court in Hartford April 2 alleges a long-standing pattern and practice of discrimination based on skin color, and it names the current Deputy Secretary of the State as a defendant.

Lesley Mara, who currently serves as Deputy Secretary of the State under Susan Bysiewicz, was formerly the superintendent of the troubled prison for almost 100 teenaged boys, mostly African-American and Latino.

The plaintiffs - Trinene Davis, Shirley Weaver, Regina Moore and Michael Ayers - claim that defendant state officers Mara, Lisa Flowers-Murphy, Jeannette Perez, Brett Rayford and Jeane Gavey promoted an atmosphere of racial intolerance and harsh punishment against black workers.

While Governor M. Jodi Rell has said she wants the Department of Children and Families to close Middletown's CJTS by 2008, problems have always plagued the facility.

But the complaint of racial employment discrimination is not unique to DCF. This is the second lawsuit in three months to allege a racially hostile environment in a state agency. In February, several black women filed a suit painting a similar picture in the Department of Transportation.

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The 15-year-old African-American prisoner sat outside his cell reading intently, taking advantage of quiet time, as he was the only prisoner in the cell block of building three at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown.

The guard at the security console in the sterile main hall of the cell block sat quietly, too, but the 14 of us Quinnipiac University School of Law students taking a tour on Friday, February 23, with our two guides, were noisy, talking through the educational experience of visiting such a facility.

We were alone in the living quarters, which almost felt like a dorm but for the prison accoutrements. The other prisoners who lived there were playing basketball or hanging out over at the Boys Club on campus.

While some law students mingled in front of the guard station, and others tried to comprehend teenaged life in the tiny cells, I wandered over and said hello to the prisoner.

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Anger is an energy, Johnny Lydon howls. Your anger, is a gift, screams Zach de la Rocha. Anger is clarity, the therapist says.

Back on Dec. 14, my anger boiled over after watching a movie made by New Haven-based Youth Rights Media, called "CJTS: At What Cost?"

YRM documentarians took a tour of the $57 million prison camp boondoggle known as the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown and made a film.

The film features security camera footage of February 2004 beatings CJTS guards administered to young prisoners into solitary holding cells (posted above). Child advocate Jeanne Milstein obtained the footage through pre-trial discovery in a lawsuit to hold DCF accountable for living conditions.

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