[T]he Department of Corrections will soon implement a policy to allow random searches of correctional officers and other staff at Vermont’s prisons.
A panel of lawmakers reviewed the rule Thursday, which was created to cut down on the amount of contraband that makes it inside the walls of Vermont’s seven prisons.
Under the new rule, which will take effect in a few weeks with a DOC directive, staff will be subject to random searches for items that are prohibited inside prisons, including drugs, alcohol, cellphones, tools, weapons and more.
The policy was approved by the Legislative Committee for Administrative Rules, which makes rules in accordance with legislative intent.
The searches could be inspections, pat downs or could involve the use of metal detectors. The rule specifically bars the use of strip searches on anybody who is not a prisoner.
The Joint Legislative Corrections Oversight Committee, comprising members of the House and Senate, meets several times outside of the legislative session to consider ongoing issues with the corrections system.
Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who chairs the committee, called for searches of corrections employees during the 2014 session, at a time when he said there was a high amount of contraband in prisons. Suboxone, a drug used to treat heroin addiction, was being used at a particularly high rate, he said.
The language for the new rule originally did not preclude strip searches, he said. The language the committee adopted Thursday allows for searches similar to airport security.
DOC Deputy Commissioner Lisa Menard said that the DOC has been more concerned about reducing the amount of contraband that comes into prisons through visitations with family, mail to prisoners, or packages that get thrown over the fence into prisons.
Sometimes inmates bring in illicit items when they first enter a facility, Menard said.
Menard said she didn’t suspect there was a big effort among staff to smuggle in contraband items for inmates.
She expects that more commonly, corrections officers or other staff bring in forbidden items accidentally, like forgetting to take their car keys or cellphone out of their pocket.
Gordon Bock, director of the Vermont chapter of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, says that the policy addresses an “elephant that’s been sitting around in the living room for years” that corrections officials tend to ignore.
“It isn’t just the loved ones of prisoners who are bringing in drugs and weapons and cellphones and you name it,” Bock said.
Bock said that the DOC needs to turn its scrutiny on itself.
“Underpaid correctional staff just like in Dannemora, NY, choose to… earn some illicit multiple of their salary by being corrupt and unlawful and smuggling things into facilities,” Bock said, referencing the recent prison break of two convicted murders from a Clinton County maximum-security prison just one hour’s drive from Vermont. Two prison workers have been arrested for supplying the prisoners with tools to aid the escape, which took place overnight between June 5 and 6.
The state will still need to bargain with the Vermont State Employees’ Association about impact, according to Ben Palkowski, legislative director for the union.
Note: This article originally did not state that the state will have to bargain impact about the new rule with the VSEA.
