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Republican lieutenant governor candidate Heather Somers on Tuesday wrote to Democratic Governor Dannel P. Malloy asking him to immediately suspend Connecticut's prison early release program for violent and serious offenders and to release statistics on the number of convicted violent criminals scheduled to be released in the next month.

Somers, who is running for statewide office alongside Greenwich businessman Tom Foley, also called for the resignation of Malloy's criminal justice undersecretary Mike Lawlor - "for his design of the new RREC program, his misrepresentations of the program's failures as successes...and his willingness to endanger Connecticut families and residents to protect the program he has helped to develop."

The Risk Reduction Earned Credits program offers leniency to offenders who enroll in classes, work a job, or fulfill a drug treatment course.

"According to statistics offered by Undersecretary Lawlor, roughly two-thirds of released prisoners are expected to commit another crime within three years of their release," Somers said in her letter. "There is a dual implication in the failure of the early release program. The criminal justice system in Connecticut under Governor Malloy is not rehabilitating convicted criminals."

Somers also cited figures that show over half of the early released criminals are either violent offenders or "serious offenders" (large scale drug dealers).

The governor's office, however, responded with statistics of their own - and pointed to figures that show early releases in the first three years of Malloy's administration dropped 10 percent from the number of early releases in the last three years of former governor Jodi Rell's administration. The total number of prisoners released during Malloy's first three years was down 16 percent from the total in Rell's last three years. In 2013, violent crime was down 11 percent from the previous year and murders were at a 40-year-low.

In response to previous Republican criticisms of the program, Malloy has pointed to those statistics and accused his opponents of using scare tactics "to win an election." He has said a drop in the recidivism rate - which measures how many prisoners re-enter the corrections system after they are released - since he became governor indicates a successful and rehabilitative corrections policy.

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Somers Demands Statistics, Asks Governor To Halt Early Release Program