Article in New Canaan Advertiser, Sept. 8, 2017
Op-Ed: Prison inmate applauds New Canaan’s Moran and Yanicelli
By Mark S. Dallaire
Osborn Correctional Institution
(Somers, Conn.)–As an inmate and a Connecticut citizen, I am now fully prepared to make my way back into polite society. I was heartened by two articles currently placed in the Advertiser. The first by Lance Minor (7/27/17) about his struggles with his wife’s mental illness turned tragic. And Nancy Halle’s front-page piece that ran on (8/3/17) the Justice Imperative.
Today, I belong to a small but focused group of men who are building wealth here “behind-the-wire.” Not financial wealth mind you, but cognitive and intellectual currency that will be carried out into our respective communities.
And before I continue, I have to take a moment to recognize Editor Greg Reilly and of course, the Hersam Family for sending a free copy of New Canaan’s fine newspaper to our small library. Ya see, we live in a uniquely data-poor eco-system and are so starved for actionable information. We think nothing about dumpster-diving into a correction officer’s garbage can to retrieve what local news we can. To date, no other Connecticut news source does this, and we all collectively stand humbled by this generous gesture.
Brian Moran and Nick Yanicelli are well known to us guys who are working tirelessly on our personal growth, be it morally, psycho-socially or intellectually. That said, it will come as no surprise that the most critical challenge we all face in post-release is what their initiative works towards — full-time employment. We, as a group, would also like your readers to know that while dysfunctional, maladaptive behaviors are literally “on parade” here at Osborn, you’d be shocked to learn of the extraordinary lack of violence from one day to the next.