Dr. Delores Burroughs-Biron, the health services director for the Department of Corrections, agrees that therapeutic options “should be part of almost any state statute that people who have a mental illness should be afforded certain protections.”
The corrections community agrees, she said, that segregated prisoners need to be monitored closely “for the purpose of following their mental health. We know that people who have mental illness or other functional impairments who are then subjected to additional stress may do poorly in segregation…You need to monitor them closely. You need to reduce the amount of time they’re allowed to stay there without undergoing an evaluation at some what to determine what their state of mind is.”1
Prisoners on segregation status are followed by a mental health worker, she said, and a medical provider usually visits them every day.
Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito conceded that “we learned a lot through that period (2004) – what does self-harm look like, what’s a really serious suicide attempt.” As a result of an agreement with Vermont Protection and Advocacy, he said, a nationally known expert was brought in to train everyone in the department to recognize suicidal behavior. The training was made part of the curriculum for new corrections officers.
Now attempts at self-harm are reported in four categories – as incidents of low, medium or high lethality and suicide attempts, so as to distinguish people who are trying “to get something from us” from someone who is making a serious suicide attempt. This makes it possible to get mental health help to a person who is intent on serious self-harm, Pallito said. The number of reported incidents has shot up as a result of changes in the way data are collected,2 but there has not been a suicide in a Vermont prison since 2004.3
