A CT woman fights for prisoners’ rights. ‘She will never back down and people know that.’

Barbara Fair has decades of experience fighting for the people behind bars, letting their voices be heard.

She isn’t about to slow down.

Her persistence and tenacity helped get Northern Correctional Institution, known as Connecticut’s supermax prison, shut down in 2021. More recently, Fair, lead organizer for Stop Solitary CT, pushed to have the PROTECT Act passed in 2022. It severely limits isolated confinement, giving prisoners five hours a day outside their cells.

Her next fights: to make sure the PROTECT Act is enforced — she says it is being ignored too often — and to end arbitrary strip searches, which she says are pointless, demeaning and dehumanizing.

And while she doesn’t expect to be appointed, Fair, 69, reluctantly applied for the ombudsperson position called for in the PROTECT Act. PROTECT stands for Promoting Responsible Oversight, Treatment and Effective Transparency.

“I actually got talked into it,” Fair said. “Reality — he’ll never pick me,” she said of Gov. Ned Lamont, because she believes he’ll ask Corrections Commissioner Angel Quiros for his opinion.

“What we normally see with a lot of this stuff is that they usually put people in place that will maintain the system,” she said. “So even though I know I’m an excellent candidate, I don’t expect the governor to choose me.”

Quiros, who declined an interview, said in an emailed statement, “Barbara Fair has consistently demonstrated unwavering dedication as an advocate for incarcerated individuals.

“In light of her expressed concerns pertaining to the Department of Correction, I acknowledge and respect Ms. Fair’s aspiration to assume the position of Ombudsman,” Quiros said in the statement. “Nonetheless, it is crucial to emphasize that the role of an Ombudsman necessitates the utmost commitment to fairness, objectivity, and impartiality, transcending personal inclinations.”

‘Transforming these prisons’

Fair, a licensed clinical social worker, has been working in prison reform for decades, since her son, whom she asked not to be named to protect his privacy, was psychologically damaged as a teenager when he was put in solitary confinement before he was even convicted.

“I’m not playing games about transforming these prisons,” she said. “I’ve seen too much harm that they have done. My own son is one of those people who was irreparably harmed at (17), being put inside of Northern. He’s never been the same again. I feel like they stole my son. And so that’s another reason this fire in me is not going to go out until I see people getting treated in a humane manner inside of Department of Corrections.”

Her son is now 42. “They put him in there … and it’s just been a life of psych drugs, psych hospitalizations, up and down, he’s just been going through ever since that happened. …  There’s been years when he’s doing well, and then there’s those years like now where he’s really, really struggling. I think he’s doing a lot of struggling since the pandemic too.” 

Her son’s experience — he’s one of 11 children — began her fight.

“The first time I ever saw him to visit him, that was the last. I couldn’t bear it again,” she said. “They brought him out. He was chained, shackled, leg irons, all of that, as though he was some wild animal. That’s how they brought him out for me to visit. And it took everything in me not to just break down crying, seeing my son being treated like that. But that’s when my battle within me started to have that place shut down. I said I was not going to rest until that place was shut down.” 

In 2020, a U.N. official said Connecticut’s prison system, where inmates were kept in a cell for 22 hours a day for more than 15 consecutive days, amounted to torture. The PROTECT Act was meant to eliminate the last vestiges of that system.

“We have had people in solitary for years,” Fair said. “People don’t want to acknowledge it. But the truth is the truth, no matter how many times you try to sweeten it up with nicer words. We put people in cages and we shackle them just like they did in slavery: shackles, chains, all that stuff.”

Hope Metcalf, executive director of the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, worked with Fair on the PROTECT Act and said Fair was “essential” to its passing.

“She had the vision and leadership and she also had the political skills to not only educate people within our own (Democratic) Party, but made some critical outreach and connections with people from the Republicans, people who might not normally think about this as an issue that they care about, and just because of her passion and heart and her lived experience.”  

Metcalf said while the PROTECT Act limits the time people spend in isolation, “The part that was equally important, or maybe even more important, was the fact that we also were able to get independent oversight that is participatory and transparent and representative.”

It includes the ombudsperson and an advisory committee, “that includes two people who were formerly incarcerated or have loved ones who are incarcerated,” Metcalf said. “And that’s really very different. Connecticut’s never had that before.”

The bill passed in 2022 on its second try, a compromise.

“Originally it got passed with bipartisan (support) the year before, but the governor vetoed it, so we came back,” Fair said. “That’s one thing about us, we’re persistent. So we came back, and then last year he signed off on it.”

She said she believes Lamont signed it because it was an election year. She said she told him, “The same people that you’re trying to ignore are the people who put you in office, so you need to remember that. And so I think he kind of got the message.” 

In an email, Adam Joseph, Lamont’s communications director, said, “The original version of this bill was vetoed after it became clear that there were serious issues in the legislation that would make it impossible to implement. That is why Governor Lamont asked the legislature to fix those errors and send him a new bill that he could sign into law, and he did. The governor takes his job seriously and he is not going to sign legislation with flaws in it.”

Fair believes corrections officers have resented the law and have pushed back on it. The five hours outside the cell is supposed to be accompanied by social programming.

“You can’t just let them out with nothing to do, because that’s a recipe for disaster,” Fair said. “We don’t want this to fail. So we said you have to have some kind of program and that’s what they fail to do.”

‘Many more hills to climb’

Fair, who has lived most of her life in New Haven, has plenty of other reasons to keep fighting to reform the prisons: piles of letters from inmates alleging corrections officers goad them into fights in order to lock down the prison, violating the intent of the new law, or about poor conditions.

A Corrections Department spokeswoman said in an email, “Recent unprovoked assaults on our staff underscore the critical importance of correction officers refraining from any actions that could potentially incite the incarcerated population. Ensuring the safety and well-being of our correctional staff remains our foremost priority.”

“According to the people on the inside, they do what they want to do,” Fair said. “There’s still a lot of lockdowns going on. … I’m hearing from the inside they have an intentional plan to make sure there’s not enough staff so they can use that excuse for not letting people out of their cells. And so that’s pretty much what I’ve been up against.”

Fair said a family member reported that MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison, has been on lockdown for more than a week with no showers. Fair said she asked the family member for an email so she can forward it to Quiros.

The department spokeswoman said the prison went on lockdown Sept. 11 “for a routine annual search. Showers are being provided to the incarcerated individuals who have been impacted.” 

She always lets Quiros know what she’s hearing, Fair said, but nothing changes. “I bring these situations to the commissioner, and he always says, ‘Well, I’m going to forward to this one’, to that person, then nothing gets changed,” she said. “So that’s why it’s so aggravating because I feel like I was very honest and transparent about what I wanted to do. He knew every step of the way.”

Fair said she tells Quiros about any protest she’s planning. “I don’t want it to be adversarial. But I just feel like I didn’t get the same thing back.”

The department spokesman said in an email, “Our agency is legally bound to uphold and enforce the Protect Act. It’s important to highlight that Commissioner Quiros played a pivotal role in shaping the Protect Act’s parameters, ensuring that it wouldn’t compromise the safety of both staff and the incarcerated population.”

Fair lives by something Nelson Mandela said, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”

“This is discouraging, because it takes so long for us to get anything done in this state,” she said. “And I attribute that to us being so deeply segregated in this state that it takes forever to get anything done. They’re always telling us, incremental changes. And those incremental changes may take you about seven years to get to and then when you get to them, nobody holds them accountable.”

Fair said she knows she’s fighting for people whom many have no sympathy for, largely because of their race.

“When they’re mostly Black and brown, people just say, ‘Well, they did something. They deserve to be there,’” she said.

“But you know what, they don’t have that same attitude when someone like the legislator who recently stole money from COVID and he’s still not in prison because he got an extension twice to be home with his child. When did the system ever care about you being home with your child?” she said.

Michael DiMassa, a former state representative from West Haven and city staffer, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for stealing $1.2 million in pandemic relief money from the city.

Another practice Fair is working to stop is routine strip searches, “not strip-searching period but routine just stripping people several times a day, just because they could, and they claim it was about safety and security. I wanted to stop that because I’ve heard too many stories.”

She said routine strip searches are “a tool of dehumanizing, degrading people, letting them know that you have power over them when they are in your custody, and they can’t do anything about it. And we call that sexual violence because they tell you to strip and bend over and want to look up your rectum and you have to do it. You have no choice.” 

The searches “they claim are all about keeping drugs out of the system, but yet we know COs are bringing in most of the drugs that come in the system. Several have been arrested throughout the years,” Fair said. Inmates have told her the corrections officers allegedly bring in drugs as a side hustle to sell to inmates, she said.

The Corrections Department spokesman’s email said, “Addressing the issue of unnecessary strip searches, I can personally attest that no staff member takes pleasure in conducting them. These searches are carried out in strict accordance with our established policies and procedures, with the primary goal of limiting contraband within our facilities.”

The email continued, “our staff work tirelessly to prevent contraband (including drugs) from entering our facilities. As part of the Agency’s strategy to limit contraband, we plan to purchase body-scanning equipment, which can noninvasively scan a person’s body for the presence of foreign matter.  The benefits of this type of equipment are many — least of which is the reduction in the need for strip searches.”

Fair wonders at how some corrections officers can treat inmates with inhumanity. “There’s a culture within and people tend to just adapt to it because if you don’t you have a hard time in there,” she said.

“To me it takes a certain type of person that can do that kind of stuff, and the reason I say that is because when I think of the institution of slavery, all the stuff that they did to African people, it takes a certain something to be able to do that to another human being. … I can’t explain it any other way,” she said.

‘Good trouble’

Fair said her work has made her pessimistic about Connecticut politics. “I did the protests. I did the marches. I did all that,” she said. “I said this is the way to do it, because I’m recognizing that a lot of this stuff, including racism, is written into law. So how about I get involved with politics and be a part of changing those laws? But now that I’m doing that work, I realized … almost always, what you put in that bill is not what you’re going to get back out.”

The prison system also has changed for the worse, she said. When she started work as a teenager, Connecticut had one prison for men and a farm for women. Her group, Citizens for Humanizing Criminal Justice, was able to get a trailer put on the prison grounds so inmates could spend time with their families.  

“It’s a business now. There’s no way we could ever do that now,” Fair said. “It’s mass incarceration of Black and brown people across this nation.”

The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, has an exception for those convicted of a crime. “So now we can work people all day for $1 a day, and it’s legal as long as they’re in prison,” Fair said. “You just follow the trails of all the money that gets made within the systems and you know why there’s so much resistance about changing anything.”

While Fair once ran for alder in New Haven, she feels more comfortable working as an outsider, pushing for what she sees as what is needed. She won’t be running for the General Assembly.

“I feel like I can be heard,” she said. “If I was part of that legislature, I would have to always water things down, try to compromise, try to get along with everybody, be afraid to speak truth to the power structure, and I’m free to do all that on the outside. On the outside, I can try to push the people that are in power to do the right thing.”

That attitude has brought Fair criticism, but that’s fine with her.

“That’s been like that since I started doing this work. That doesn’t bother me,” she said. “You know what I say? If they see me as a troublemaker, that means I’m doing stuff that I’m supposed to be doing. Because when you just go along to get along, nobody has a problem with you. It’s when you’re pushing the limits to say no, that we need to change things, you’re a troublemaker, but I’ve been hearing that for decades. So that doesn’t bother me.”

She quotes the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, saying she’s making “good trouble.”

As for her relationship with Quiros, Fair said, “I was able to work with him. I was better able to work with the previous one (Scott Semple).

“There’s not any commissioner, pretty much, that came through that I wasn’t able to build a relationship with,” Fair said.

Metcalf said, “What’s so transformative and important about Barb is, because she’s willing to take such a public stand and because she’s so persistent, she will never back down and people know that, her opponents know that and the people who are on the inside … they hear Barbara talk and they feel emboldened to talk and to take action.”

She said when she speaks to people in prison, Fair’s name often comes up.

She is to them really an inspiration for what they themselves can do also,” Metcalf said. “This term ‘voice for the voiceless’ often comes up. And I think Barb is absolutely the opposite. She helps people find their own voice and that’s what really matters for this work.”

She added, “She always makes the point to put front and center people who have experienced directly. “She will talk, for example, based on letters that she’s receiving, but it’s not about her, but I think to the extent possible, encouraging people to speak for themselves.”

Pastor John Lewis of Christ New Testament Church in Hamden, a member of Stop Solitary CT’s steering committee, said of Fair, “She’s been able to articulate and to express to … the officials that need to hear it for those inmates that are inside because she has connections with them, and with those that are coming out into the public, they let her know what’s going on inside.

“She’s always felt that, once a person does the crime, then they’re not to be brutalized or mistreated, but they’re there to do the time, to pay for the crime that they’ve done,” he said. “At the same time, it’s supposed to be a place of reform, not torture, not abuse.”

“I would follow her anywhere,” said Ann Massaro, another steering committee member. “She’s an incredible human being with so much compassion and so much humility and dedication to this work, it’s incredible. When she calls me to do something I’m there. I have amazing respect for her.”

Massaro, who still works with Fair though she lives in North Carolina, said, “she’ very transparent when she works and you know what she’s about right up front. And the commissioner, initially, would seem to be working with us. And then those negotiations broke down because of a lack of trust on our part.” 

Kevnesha Boyd worked as a mental health counselor at the New Haven Correctional Center from 2015 to 2019, leaving after the death of Carl “Robbie” Boyd, who went into cardiac arrest after being pepper-sprayed and put into five-point restraints in his cell.

“I was diagnosed with PTSD relative to the vicarious trauma from the facility,” Boyd said. “I was extremely distraught and made the decision that I didn’t want to work for that system anymore because of the pervasive dehumanizing practices that weren’t being changed.”

It was then that she met Fair and joined Stop Solitary CT.

“I think she is one of the most powerful women I’ve ever met,” Boyd said. “Watching her organize and build close relationships with legislators is admirable. I cannot think of anybody more influential with regard to reforming the prison system than her, and that goes on in terms of her work with police accountability, but specifically the Department of Corrections.”

Boyd said Fair has been able to build relationships with Republicans and the commissioner. “She’s been able to share stories and build authentic, genuine relationships where they now come to the other side and they’ve grown empathy and compassion for a population that a lot of people don’t have,” she said.

“I believe she sacrificed her life for this movement, so we really like to honor her as the mother of the movement,” she said.

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.