A report released on Tuesday details startling conditions at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, where Vermont’s female offenders are confined. The “white paper,” written by seven local nonprofit groups, evoked strong responses from legislators at a Statehouse press conference Wednesday. Several lawmakers said the aging Chittenden facility, which has seen heavy use and has had deficiencies for years, should be replaced.
The Chittenden facility, built in 1976, has chronic sewer problems, including sewer flies and larvae in the shower drains. The heating system has broken down on some of the coldest days this winter, according to the report. One unit has only three toilets for 40 women. The facility has no air conditioning and few windows can be opened. The wiring is inadequate: Some cells have a single electric outlet for four women – a fan’s breeze cannot touch all of them.
The report, “Reclaiming Lost Ground for Vermont’s Incarcerated Women: The Disturbing Conditions at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility,” cites deficiencies in two main areas, facilities and programming. The authors assert that “there are disturbing signs that we’re … on track to erode a decade’s worth of progress in our work with incarcerated women.”
On the day the report was released, David Turner, the superintendent of Chittenden, resigned his position. “I’m stepping back into classified service,” he explained. “As an exempt employee, it’s not a long-term, career-building type of position. I did what I committed to doing when I became superintendent, and part of that was to help with that transition of the women to the Chittenden facility. … We’re very proud of the work that we’ve done.”
The report comes six months after the female inmates were moved from Northwest State Correctional Facility in Swanton to the much smaller Chittenden facility at the initiative of Gov. Peter Shumlin.
In his 2011 budget address, Shumlin framed the decision to move the women, and take advantage of unused space at the Swanton facility, as a way to save money and reduce recidivism. The executive summary of his budget address states, “By relocating the women to Chittenden Regional, they will have better access to work release opportunities … By reducing out-of-state beds and the new collaborative work between the State and its many partners (sic), the recidivism rate can be reduced.”
Work opportunities are greatly reduced at Chittenden, according to the report. At “Northwest,” as the Swanton facility is called, there were roughly 80 full-time jobs in the facility and another 31 training positions, which enabled inmates to earn money. But before the women were transferred, Chittenden had fewer than half that number of full-time jobs. Full-time positions in the facility have been broken up to allow more women to work, the report says, but the short shifts leave many women with “limited opportunities to … build marketable skills.”
Unlike the work crew jobs at Northwest, which developed skills in fields for which there are jobs, the opportunities at Chittenden are “too brief or infrequent to be considered job training,” the report states. Many of the women have weak work histories and their plight is exacerbated by the fact that fact the number of case managers, who help women negotiate the process of making the transition into the community, has been reduced from seven at Northwest to five at Chittenden.
Lawmakers expressed dismay with the conditions at the women’s prison. Chittenden County Sen. Ginny Lyons, a Democrat, said it was important that women have the skills they need to get something other than low-paying retail jobs when they are released from prison.
Rep. Johannah Donovan, D-Burlington, said “This decision to move the women came last year with a promise that work would be done before the women even entered that facility. That did not happen, and then we had the tragic experience of Irene. But I think if we are going to continue public policy that is intended to rehabilitate these women, bring them back to their children, to their communities, and make them contributing members of that community, then we need to address certain physical issues that are confronting them and most importantly the program aspects.”
Job programs for women who want to learn how to do electrical, plumbing and carpentry work have disappeared, according Rep. Alison Clarkson, D-Woodstock. “These are programs that they have now lost in the transition to Chittenden and it’s essential that they get them back if we expect them to earn money for their families back in the community,” Clarkson said.
Sen. Robert Hartwell, a Democrat from Bennington County who chairs the Senate Committee on Institutions, said that last year his committee passed a $1.4 million appropriation to pay for physical plant improvements at Northwest and Chittenden. The bill’s language contained requirements about programming and community training for the women at Chittenden, “all of them to the hope and goal of returning women to society.” He said his committee would “take a look to ensure that the conditions that were set forth are being met and that the work that was supposed to be done to the facilities is undertaken in a reasonable time and fashion.”
Hartwell said in his view the Chittenden facility “may not be a suitable facility in the long term in the corrections system.”
In an emailed response to the report, Department of Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito spelled out the steps that have been taken or are planned to address the Chittenden facility’s physical shortcomings. He disputed assertions about the lack of jobs in the facility, citing a different set of statistics from the report. He acknowledged that it had been difficult to find jobs placements outside the facility. The commissioner did not return a telephone request for additional comments.
Marybeth Redmond, who is in weekly contact with women in Chittenden, through her program, writinginsideVT said women aren’t getting the support they need after they leave prison and they often feel unprepared for employment.
“There’s innovative, evidence-based case management that needs to happen in the facility to … provide them with tangible skills, with the skills that are going to allow them to make the connection with the jobs in Chittenden Country,” Redmond said.
Susan Onderwyzer of the Lund Family Center said in an interview that one of the difficulties women face in trying to access programming outside the facility is that very few have the security classification they need to go into the community.
“Most of the women are not allowed to come out,” Onderwyzer said. “We have the programs available. I don’t know what’s possible in terms of the department being able to create a status for women to come out to programming, but we at Lund stand ready to provide programing for women during the day – parenting education, substance abuse treatment for pregnant and parenting women. We’re ready to take them.”
