After being sentenced to 10 years in prison at the age of 18, Jordy Ojedis has become an advocate for the rights of children in the prison system. This past legislative session, he had been lobbying for a bill that would have raised the age of arrest in Connecticut from 10 to 14 by 2028.
That language was removed April 10 from Senate Bill 1542, but the measure will still limit police from using handcuffs when arresting youths under 14.
The revised bill was approved by the Senate and the House in June and was signed by Governor Ned Lamont earlier this month.
Ojedis, a justice advisor for the Connecticut Justice Alliance who spent eight years in prison for assault and robbery, said imprisonment has a huge effect on children.
“The brain is not fully developed until age 25, so these young kids are just out here misinfluenced,” Ojedis, 31, said. “I feel like there’s no proper guidance, and for the most part, there’s a lack of knowing your next move.”
Though handcuffs would be banned in most arrests of children under 14, the bill allows exceptions if the child poses a threat to public safety or if the child uses or threatens to use physical force against an officer. The bill also calls for the presumption in all juvenile court appearances that children should not be restrained unless it is court-ordered.
It would also update the word “child” when talking about court policies on restraints as opposed to using the word “juvenile.”
In 2023, about 5,800 minors were referred to state criminal courts and about 481 juveniles were placed in detention, according to Connecticut’s Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee.
The committee also reported that a disproportionately higher number of children of color were referred to juvenile detention than white children. Specifically, in 2023 only about 10 in 1,000 white youth were referred while in the same year, Black children had a referral rate of about 49 in 1,000. The numbers for white and Latino/a youth stay relatively consistent over five years and the changes for Black youth are more drastic per year.
The Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee data includes information on juvenile detention rates, which is consistent with youth of color being detained at much higher rates than white youth. In 2019, Black youth were 175% more likely and Latino youth were 309% more likely than white juveniles to receive detention following a referral for any charges. According to the same data as of 2024, Black youth were 162% more likely and Latino youth were 236% more likely to be detained than white juveniles for any charges.
Ojedis said he felt like he made the most of his time in prison, thanks to his participation in the T.R.U.E (Truthfulness, Respectfulness, Understanding, Elevating) rehabilitation program at Cheshire Correctional Institute where he served a portion of his sentence.
“They were trying to establish a community in there where everybody’s accountable for each other, you know, and trying to create that change,” Ojedis said.
Through this program, he said he was able to spend time outside and learn to handle conflicts without violence through a community-based approach. The program inspired him to take classes after being released from prison and learn from his time serving, as opposed to just staying locked up, Ojedis said.
The bill is sponsored by State Rep. Travis Simms, D-Norwalk, State Rep. Maryam Khan, D-Hartford, and State Rep. Kadeem Roberts, D-Norwalk. Advocacy groups like the alliance worked to gain support for the bill and continue to advocate to keep youth out of legal systems.
Layan Jahaf, another justice advisor with the Alliance, said that working with incarcerated youth has increased her interest in the cause.
“Talking to youth, you’re really put in a position where you understand what they’re going through and it’s not just black and white in terms of the situations or why people are imprisoned,” Jahaf said.
Jahaf said the original wording in the bill focused on keeping youth out of prison and offered them rehabilitation options.
“It’s kind of telling the youth what to do rather than just incarcerating them and have them not really have the tools for success, in order to not go back into the system again,” Jahaf said.
The Alliance is one of many advocacy groups with this common goal. Human Rights for Kids is an international organization working to end mass incarceration of children in the United States.
Teresa Kominos, the policy counsel for Human Rights for Kids, said that prison is not the answer for children and they would benefit from alternate methods.
“Children under a certain age just don’t have the developmental capacity to form criminal intent, and they shouldn’t be criminally prosecuted,” Kominos said. “Children of such young age should be treated in trauma-informed kind of community services that can address the needs of behavioral concerns that are there.”
Kominos said her group still supports the bill even though the age of arrest is no longer called for.
Human Rights for Kids conducts an annual state rating report. Compared to other states, Connecticut is considered one of the best human rights protectors, according to the 2024 State Ratings Report.
At a meeting of the Connecticut Joint Committee on Judiciary on April 10, the bill, with the substitute language, was approved by a 33-6 vote. The concerns that prompted the language change, from State Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, centered around police officers and a potential lack of knowledge of a child’s age at in the moment.
State Rep. Tom O’Dea, R-New Canaan asked if officers could continue to use zip ties if this bill were to pass. Co-chair of the committee, Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven said that the use of zip ties was not specified, and that the bill still needs work.
Maral Tarpinian is double majoring in journalism and political science at the University of Connecticut.
Bill in CT legislature bars police from handcuffing youths in most cases was originally published by CT Community News and is republished with permission. CTLN proudly supports and amplifies reporting from the Connecticut Student Journalism Collaborative.
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