Editor’s note: This commentary is by Timothy R. Burgess, of Waterville, a former inmate of the Vermont Department of Corrections in a Corrections Corporation of America facility. He is a prisoner advocate and the vice president of the United States Prisoners Rights Defense League.
[I] fail to see how any state agency or entity can consider engaging in a contract with a for-profit prison entity, even for a moment. The very premise that in Vermont we have utilized the services of these money-hungry slave traders is beyond my comprehension. We have, but I thought we had put it in the past. Wrong. The leeches have found a new host to attach themselves too, and this time, they seem to be good and stuck.
Members of the Scott administration met with members of CoreCivic in 2017, well before the proposal for a 900-bed facility “partnership.” The plan was received with less then open arms. It should be noted that the private prison industry gave $1,000 to Gov. Phil Scott’s campaign back in 2016, and the same group gave $350 million to the Trump campaign. Seems to me that someone is making a large investment in locking people up.
Vermont’s last foray into the private prison industry was a wildly successful disaster. Vermonters were shipped away from their families across the country to Arizona, Oklahoma and Kentucky, not being able to have contact with family, friends, loved ones or support networks. Vermonters were treated so well in these facilities that they rioted to stand up for themselves. Now this is going to be in our backyard, and Vermont will keep a closer eye on what is going on. Right.
The truth is that Vermont took our inmates out of for-profit prisons in order to save money and to make things better for the inmates. Now Vermont inmates suffer in another state prison, with little to no oversight from the Vermont Department of Corrections. Inmates are dying for lack of care, being chained to the floor, being verbally threatened, and apparently have their constitutional rights treaded on daily. How is our governor is going to protect them? By closing a couple of prisons and building one mega prison? Gov. Scott is entering this mega prison plan with the same organization that was so unbearable and intolerant that the Vermont inmates rioted out of sheer frustration.
This plan gets better all the time … not. How do I know? One, I respect Con Hogan, who has come out against the idea. When a former commissioner thinks it is a bad plan, it deserves us to ask why. Two, TJ Donovan, our attorney general, is opposed to the plan, as it is contrary to the criminal justice reform plans for Vermont. Three, the Vermont State Employees Association oppose the plan because of the impact on union and state jobs. And, last and most importantly, because I have been one of the many people who have experienced being locked up in a private prison. I know how badly the inmates are treated, the lack of supervision, the poor construction of the facilities in the name of expediency to serve greed and the bottom corporate line.
This is a bad idea for Vermont. We need to work on reducing the number of inmates being held for nonviolent crimes. Focus on re-entry programs to promote keeping our citizens out of the prison system. Let’s work on alternatives to mass incarceration, not on promotion of corporate greed. Why should we invest the proposed $141 million to $165 million on a prison when our infrastructure is failing? Let’s forget about those teachers. The working poor, too, and the elderly who can barely feed themselves. They’ll all be all right, because we are going to have a bright new semi-private mega prison … Priorities?
