Women to remain at federal prison in Danbury

11-4-2013 Connecticut:

DANBURY -- Following an outcry over the plan to move female prisoners from the only federal women's lockup in the Northeast, the Bureau of Prisons is now considering keeping some female prisoners housed at the Federal Corrections Institute in Danbury, officials said.

"I don't care how they do it. That's great news. That's wonderful news," said Beatrice Codianni, who completed a 15-year sentence on a racketeering charge at the prison and its satellite camp in 2008. "It's very difficult to be separated from your family for a mistake you made but to further penalize a woman by sending her 1,000 miles away to Alabama ¦ it is very, very heartbreaking."

Under the new plan, the bureau of prisons will build a new facility for female inmates that will be located near the prison on Pembroke Road, and maintain a satellite camp for women, Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal said in a joint announcement.

The prison, which has been all-female for about two decades, was slated to become a men's facility in order to ease overcrowding among men in the federal prison system. The move came under criticism from the state's congressional delegation and prison advocates after the Bureau of Prisons announced it in July.

First, officials put a hold on the transfer of the prison's inmates until the fall. Then, the partial government shutdown put a de facto hold on the change while a delegation of Northeast senators implored U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to find a different solution to the men's overcrowding problem.

Much of the outcry against the mission change pointed to the bureau's plans to transfer many of the prison's inmates to a new facility in Aliceville, Ala., putting more than a thousand miles between some inmates from the Northeast and their families. ..Continued.. by Denis J. O'Malley