Before Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was elected nobody in authority in Connecticut cared much about the failure of what the state still calls its "correctional" system, wherein most prisoners are released at the end of their sentences only to commit more crimes and to return to prison, a spectacularly expensive make-work project for police, prosecutors, judges, public defenders, prison guards, parole officers, bail bondsmen, and social workers.

With the governor's "second-chance society" initiatives, Connecticut is easing away from drug criminalization, increasing education and job training for prisoners, and stressing their integration into society. Extra attention is being paid to military veterans in prison, who have gotten their own wing at the prison in Enfield.

 It will be some time before the results can be evaluated. But state government must try to break the cycle of imprisonment. For while criminals in Connecticut really have to work their way into prison — most already get many "second chances" through various probations before getting locked up — once someone has been imprisoned, his productive life may be over. The psychological damage of prison is overwhelming and few employers will take a chance on hiring former convicts for anything more than menial work.

The governor's new criminal-justice proposals aim at the difficulty in employment. He would raise from 17 to 20 the age of majority in the criminal-justice system so that, for lesser offenses, more young people would qualify for the secrecy of juvenile court. He also would provide what he euphemistically calls "confidential" trials for lesser offenses for defendants 21 to 25. Thus most arrest and criminal records for offenders 25 or younger would be concealed.

While Malloy means well he dresses his proposals in psychobabble about the immaturity of youthful brains, even as the country lets those brains join the military and vote at age 18. (Connecticut lets some vote even at 17.) Worse than this contradiction, the governor's proposals are actually retrograde, dangerous, and unfair.

Retrograde because enlightened opinion has been moving toward repealing juvenile court secrecy, since it nurtures failure and abuse in criminal justice and puts it beyond evaluation and accountability.

Dangerous because no matter how they are meant and dressed, secret trials and judgments are totalitarian.

And unfair because the aim is to deceive employers and rob the law-abiding of the advantage they should have over lawbreakers.

Besides, preventing employers from learning the criminal backgrounds of job applicants won't diminish criminality itself. It will merely conceal a problem even bigger than the one the governor is addressing and transfer to employers a liability that should remain government's own.

A murder case from Middlebury impugned the governor's proposals a few days before he made them. When the defendant was presented in Waterbury Superior Court, the prosecution disclosed that he already had 27 convictions and a history of drug abuse. But he was free at the time of the murder because Connecticut long has been far more than a "second-chance society" — in the Middlebury case, a 27th-chance society. Tens of thousands of those extra chances are already concealed by juvenile court and judicial mechanisms like "youthful offender status" and "accelerated rehabilitation."

The big underlying problem here, as with other expensive things in state government, is the neglectful and abusive parenting resulting from welfare policy, which has caused 40 percent of Connecticut's children — close to 90 percent in the cities — to be raised without a father in their home or their life. Concealing more criminality as the governor proposes would only distract from this problem, which needs attention even more than the cycle of imprisonment does.

More effective rehabilitation? Of course. More secrecy, unaccountability, and deception in criminal justice? No way.