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Spokesman
Misses Point Of Rehabilitation
Letters To The Editor:
In his response to Andy Thibault's column titled “A call for justice
for Bonnie Foreshaw,” published Dec. 11, Department of Correction
external affairs director Brian Garnett chides Mr. Thibault for making
“agenda-driven, reckless, and irresponsible” statements.
This criticism is bitterly ironic. When the York Correctional Institution
students I instruct published their memoirs, and later when one won an
international First Amendment award for having done so, Mr. Garnett, as
Department of Correction spokesperson, made statements to the media about
York writers, our program and me that were irresponsible, agenda-driven
and false. These false statements engaged the interest of “60 Minutes”
producers who later broadcast the story of Connecticut's vindictive
reaction to the rehabilitative work of its inmates.
I am disturbed by Mr. Garnett's dismissive and attitude-revealing
reference to inmate Bonnie Foreshaw as “the murderer of a pregnant
woman.” In 1986, following a trial that ignored the extenuating
circumstances of Joyce Amos' death and was rife with institutional racism,
Bonnie Foreshaw was handed a 45-year sentence, at the time the lengthiest
in the Niantic prison's history.
For the past 20 years, Ms. Foreshaw has led an exemplary life as an
inmate, taking advantage of educational, vocational and rehabilitative
programming. She has served as a surrogate mother and grandmother to many
troubled women and teen-age girls at York and has been active in Literacy
Volunteers, Alternatives to Violence and York's hospice program.
If ever a woman rehabilitated herself at York, Bonnie Foreshaw is that
woman. For Mr. Garnett to define her solely in terms of her conviction is
to subvert Department of Correction Commissioner Theresa Lantz's mission
to rehabilitate the state's prisoners. When Ms. Lantz speaks of this
mission, she seems to mean it. Her spokesperson seems not to have gotten
the message.
Wally Lamb, Willimantic
Published on December 21, 2005
© The Day Publishing Co., 2005