Garner Prison Gym Used For Inmate Housing

By Andrew Gorosko

Due to inmate overcrowding in the state prison system, the gymnasium at Garner Correctional Institution on Nunnawauk Road has once again been pressed into service as a makeshift dormitory, where lower-security inmates are being held as they await court appearances in their pending criminal cases.

Garner Warden James Dzurenda said on December 17, that the prison housed 623 male inmates that day. The warden spoke at the quarterly meeting of the Garner Correctional Institution Public Safety Committee, an ad hoc panel that monitors public safety issues stemming from the presence of Garner, a state high-security prison which opened in 1992.

Garner is the state prison specializing in the holding and treatment of inmates with serious chronic and acute mental health problems. The prison’s design and furnishings are specialized for that purpose.

At the public safety panel’s last quarterly meeting on September 4, the prison housed 570 inmates.

During a tour of the 245,000-square-foot prison, Warden Dzurenda showed visitors the gymnasium where impromptu lodgings were in place for the almost 40 inmates being held there. The prisoners’ mattresses are positioned on plastic platforms that elevate their sleeping surfaces above the gym floor.

Overcrowded conditions, especially at the state’s jails in Bridgeport and New Haven, have resulted in the gymnasium becoming a temporary dormitory for the prisoners. The prisoners being held in the gym are unsentenced inmates who are awaiting the disposition of their criminal cases in the courts, the warden said.

Prisoners have been housed in Garner’s gymnasium for about the past six weeks, Warden Dzurenda said. The prisoners being held there are considered low-risk inmates compared to the overall prisoner population in the institution, he said.

Garner is designed as “Level 4” prison in a prison system in which the highest security rating is “Level 5.” The inmates housed in the gym are categorized as “Level 3” inmates, the warden said.

It is unclear how long Garner’s gymnasium will be used as a makeshift prison dormitory, he said.

The state Department of Correction (DOC) has used the gym as a prisoner dormitory in the past during periods when the state prison system was overcrowded.

DOC spokeswoman Stacy Smith said that on December 19, Garner housed 631 inmates.

On that date, the prison system had 19,476 inmates incarcerated, she said. Ten of the DOC’s 18 prisons, including Garner, are now being used to alleviate prison system overcrowding, she said.

It is unclear how long Garner and other prisons will be used for that purpose, she said. The prison population tends to increase during the colder months, she noted.

The number of inmates which the DOC is required to house in its prisons is determined by the state court system, she said.