Agreed! There is NO reason inmates can't WORK in prison, and CONTRIBUTE "Free" high tax dollar Labor back into the State.

At least:

-tie bottom fishing rigs
-pour soft plastics
-low risk inmates can pour lead jig heads, bank sinkers, etc....
-perform reel maintenance
-spool reels
-process DMV transactions (with personal info redacted)
-high risk inmates can farm and pack a dozen crawlers into tubs, use the food waste as crawler compost....sell topsoil from the crawler compost soil
-etc......

This isn't rocket science State of CT !!! WE Are Paying For These Criminals To Live More Comfortably Than Many Of OUR CT Free Walking Residents!!!......PUT INMATES TO WORK!!!....plenty of lemonade to be made here! Very little CT System ingenuity apparent to this CT high taxpayer.

Also agree that penalties NEED to deter the criminal benefit.....pretty simple concept. Once crime pays, as it does now, crimes will proliferate, as they do now. Cases thrown out of court, hand slap "penalties", etc Do Not deter crime....they advertise for doing more crime. You wonder why courts and prisons are "overcrowded".....it's because there is no teeth in the system, even dumb criminals realize it, and crime pays in our current "system" which is a defunct "system."