In the late 1990s Connecticut addressed its prison overcrowding issues by transferring inmates to prisons in Virginia. Rep. Lawlor strongly opposed this effort. In 2000 he told "The Hartford Courant" "this policy is more trouble than it's worth," and that he wanted to "bring them back as soon as possible." In 2003 the "New York Times" reported Lawlor favored replacing the Virginia facilities with "alternative ways of combating overcrowding, like making it harder to put people back in prison for technical violations of their parole, and argued that transfers should be a last resort."