The entrance to the Southern State Correctional Facility. VTD/Josh Larkin
MONTPELIER — The state of Vermont is making progress in reducing growth in the number of inmates in the corrections system, says the Vermont commissioner of Corrections.
Commissioner Andrew Pallito also says the state is in negotiations for a new contract to house Vermont prisoners out-of-state and is working hard to reduce the number of women incarcerated in the state system.
“We really have an eye to bringing that population down further,” Pallito told a legislative panel on corrections oversight comprising members of both the Vermont House and Senate.
Pallito said 2,095 males are currently incarcerated, and that number has been as low as 2,050.
The number of women in jail is around 148, a 15 percent reduction from an average of around 170, and he said he was optimistic that incarceration number could be lowered further with efforts to address re-entry housing and employment for women prisoners.
“I think there’s an opportunity to really drive the (female) population down further,” he said. One need is to find “bring online some kind of re-entry unit down south,” he said to help female inmates move back into society, find housing and jobs.
Considering that state projections were that Vermont would be housing a total of well over 2,500 inmates, the current figure under 2,250 is a “sign of some success” in reducing the prison count, Pallito said.
The declining numbers is the result of the state’s effort to address the causes of recidivism that lead released prisoners to end up back in jail, Pallito said.
The panel, which has five members from each chamber in the Legislature, reviewed a wide range of issues Monday whose breadth and complexity reflect the many moving parts that corrections issues touch on, from public safety and the judiciary’s role in sentencing to corrections staffing and salaries, transitional prisoner housing, community concerns over parolees, and the high cost to the state to maintain six state prisons and two prison work camps, as well as providing inmates’ medical care.
To that daunting mix, Rep. William Lippert, D-Hinesburg, added the Legislature itself, where jurisdiction over corrections is spread among several House and Senate panels. “We really also influence that system,” he said, noting the goal for all is to reduce “excessive use of precious, very expensive use of resources in corrections facilities.”
Vermont’s $132 million corrections budget for this fiscal year is one of the largest chunks of money the state appropriates. Unlike many other programs which have a large federal contribution, Vermont picks up 98 percent of the tab, noted Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, who was voted chairman of the panel, replacing Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, under an agreement that the committee chairmanship be alternated between the two bodies.
The last two years, the Legislature and administration, faced with a recession and tight budgets, took numerous steps to try and curb growth in corrections spending with a wide array of administrative, legal, budgetary and policy changes. Among them was the so-called Challenges for Change initiative seeking savings through government efficiency.
On Monday Sears, who has a long history in corrections issues as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee and has been a senator since 1993, noted it has been a “difficult year” for corrections but said he sees some progress.
“We move forward and sometimes we take a step backward, but mostly we move forwards,” he said.
Vermont now houses about a quarter of its prisoners out-of-state, 105 just across the border in Greenfield, Mass., and 472 in Kentucky, down considerably from the high of 700, Pallito told the panel. An additional four with mental health issues are in Arizona.
The state is negotiating for a new out-of-state contract and Pallito said the state has been approached about housing Vermont prisoners in a brand new facility in Keene, N.H., as well as by Corrections Corporation of America.
“We’re investigating all of these,” he said.
Complaints about health care and hardship for families of out-of-state prisoners, as well as concerns about money flowing out-of-state for prisoners housed beyond Vermont borders, has prompted corrections to try and reduce those inmate counts.
A related issue is prison staffing, where Pallito reported both some progress and some difficulties. He said three important superintendent vacancies have been filled, but the state has not been able for eight months to hire a medical director to oversee inmate health, despite a salary offered as high as $125,000.
Pallito said his department is exploring whether some innovative arrangement could be set up with the University of Vermont and Fletcher Allen Medical Center to fill that need.
In response to a question from the committee, Pallito said salaries are proving an obstacle in hiring Vermont prison superintendents because they are below those in other states where salaries are $90-$125,000 or more. The recent hires were at around $62,000 to $66,000, and the post can actually amount to a cut in pay if the employee is moving up from a shift supervisor eligible for overtime. Pallito said the department is working to adjust those salary scales.
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Its absurd the amount of money this state waste on corrections and court cost. Instead of housing prisoners for small periods of time which is costing tax payers more money, look for something more productive, like.. cutting wood, and rotten trees, in the woods and by the roadways, stacking it and giving it to people for fuel assistance ( their you have solved two problems)or camp wood, Painting town buildings ( or state) inside and out. Cleaning the parks, helping at library’s,nursing homes in the laundry, on farms helping farmers, the list is endless. Hard work is the best treatment, not sitting in a jail cell. Yet, we load these minor crimes into courtrooms, and correctional facilities, and cost tax payers more money. Its time to revamp a failed system and start using our heads. Its also time to go over laws which are absurd to begin with.Here’s a good example, “a passenger in a car was found with a small amount of marijuana”.She is now going to court, where you spend taxpayers money on lawyers, judges, court cost and a slap on the hand will result, this couldn’t of been handled by the police with just a fine to pay? You would of just saved hundreds in tax payers cost and the state still profited. This abuse of our tax dollars is way out of hand, and needs to be resolved. We do not need to send people outta state, that is just another abuse of tax dollars. This whole situation disgust me and many others as well. Not to mention the intelligence of the hard working men and women of this state footing the bill.
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Ԥ 64. [PUNISHMENT AT HARD LABOR, WHEN]
To deter more effectually from the commission of crimes, by continued visible punishments of long duration, and to make sanguinary punishments less necessary, means ought to be provided for punishing by hard labor, those who shall be convicted of crimes not capital, whereby the criminal shall be employed for the benefit of the public, or for the reparation of injuries done to private persons: and all persons at proper times ought to be permitted to see them at their labor.’
Vermont state constitution … http://www.leg.state.vt.us/statutes/const2.htm
Of course we need to be hyper vigilant to assure any such measures don’t become a defacto reason to create crimes and convict people .. but still .. the concept is there to work with.
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I’m glad we’re comparing VT Corrections salaries with other states. I’m certain prison superintendents are paid more in other states. Superintendents should not be the first concern however. ALL CORRECTIONS employees in Vermont earn much less than their peers in other states. Rhode Island is hiring correctional officers at $45,506. Vermont is the only state in the United States that maintains the ridiculous practice of hiring almost every new correctional officer as temporary help. NO HEALTHCARE, NO SICK LEAVE, NO VACATION. Let’s worry about this first. Vermont spends millions on inmate healthcare yet doesn’t provide any health insurance to most new correctional officers. We have an outstanding commissioner that I fully support. The Shumlin Administration inherited the situation. It needs to be fixed and addressed as a higher priority than management pay.
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Vermont superintendants are not worth what other state pay thier superintendants. Plain and simple.
I had to self publish a book about the former superintendant of the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility just to go public with it. I can’t even believe he was a superintendant. Such detriments to our peaceful communities shouldn’t be paid what others make. Fortunately, he is no longer a superintendant.
Its interesting to see how we corrolate reducing our inmate population with sending them out of state to serve their sentances. Law enforcement is like the fawcett for our prison population. You can’t talk about corrections unless you talk about local law enforcement as well.
Vermont’s inmate population has risen so dramatically in the past fifteen years, its hard to consider a reduction by only fifty or one hundred inmates as a whoping success.
The more the inmate population rises, the more we fail.
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The prison population isn’t growing because they are out n the streets instead–becoming a growing problem for the local police, VSP, and the general public.
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you said, they are “becoming a growing problem for the local police, VSP, and the general public”
how serious is the problem?
please provide evidence
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Wendy,
The state of Vermont’s own annual report shows what the inmate population is for our state every year.
The inmate population has more than doubled in the past eight years.
Local law enforcement aren’t the angels you might think they are. We’ve had to purchase multiple video survaillance cameras to deal with an on going problem which appears to be a pattern of repeat behavior.
Police are here to protect us. They’re not here to harrass, intimidate or bully us in any way. They’ve started to engage in flat out character assasination in what appears to be a Klu Klux Klan hickabilly phenomenon demonstrating presicely how our little state aquired the highest police misconduct rate in the nation per capita of officers.
The majority of our first responders, albeit; police, fire or ambulatory are good people working hard to make our neighborhoods safe and it is sad to see just a few “Bad Apples” bring down the moral integrity of an entire department.
C.Noll
BS/MS criminal justice