Editor’s note: This commentary is by Joshua T. Martin, Esq., president of the Franklin and Grand Isle Bar Association. The commentary is that group’s position on Gov. Phil Scott’s prison proposal.
[T]he Franklin-Grand Isle Counties Bar Association at its Jan. 31 meeting unanimously adopted a resolution vigorously opposing Gov. Phil Scott and Human Services Secretary Al Gobeille’s proposal to construct a 925-bed “mixed use” prison campus in St. Albans. Numerous reasons were cited including:
• Combining expanded prison, mental health, and juvenile facilities into one centralized gulag creates numerous logistical problems, and runs counter to prevailing modern penal philosophies and strategic goals. After two decades of more than doubling our national prison population, law enforcement and fiscal hawks on both sides of the aisle acknowledge that incarcerating non-violent offenders is not an effective use of taxpayer money, and increases the likelihood of reoffending and the severity of crimes committed after release.
• Various law enforcement, corrections, and fiscal responsibility advocates, including the Vermont Attorney General, and the Defender General, contend that the state’s prison population should substantially decrease over the next decade. The current proposal, if implemented, is counter intuitive and will generate huge deficits and lock us into payments to a private corporation to lease back a resource that we would donate to them. We should be planning and investing in a future of prosperity, not mass incarceration.
• The Scott proposal envisions a state partnership with a private prison contractor, Corecivic. Corecivic was formerly known as Corrections Company of America (CCA). CCA changed its name because it has a reputation as a corporation that profits from human misery, and has been sued repeatedly for human rights abuses, and cutting corners at its facilities to maximize profits while placing inmates and staff in danger. Corecivic/CCA has attempted to influence local policies to increase the number of inmates, thereby improving its bottom line.
• The current proposal attempts to address objections to Corecivic’s poor management and human rights record by packaging a proposal where Corecivic will own and develop the property, and Vermont will pay rent and provide staffing for the prison. The prospect of Vermont donating valuable real estate to a private company, paying it to develop a mega prison and leasing the property back flies in the face of fiscal and moral responsibility. That Gov. Scott or Secretary Gobeille would have any conversation at all with Corecivic or its lobbyists is deeply concerning.
• Despite the illusion of short-term savings, getting entangled with private prison contractors has never saved us money. In the past, Vermont’s private prison contracts with Corecivic/CCA allowed them to cherry-pick the low risk, “cheap” prisoners while Vermont continued to care for our expensive higher-needs inmates. Our leaders have historically allowed private contractors to take all the profits while our taxpayers take all the risk. There is no reason to believe it would be different this time, and history has taught us to be skeptical of the numbers used to justify massive transfers of public resources to a questionable venture. Even if we take the Scott administration’s numbers at face value, constructing this mega prison in St. Albans would have negligible savings that will be offset by the increased costs of reintegration of prisoners upon release.
• Once constructed, and particularly in partnership with a for-profit prison corporation, there will be pressure to keep the prison full. This will manifest itself by either increasing the number of Vermonters in prison, or by allowing Corecivic to import prisoners from out of state to take up residence in Vermont.
— Restorative Justice would be undermined by relocating inmates into a single mega facility that would be situated at the extreme northwestern corner of the state. Studies and practical experience have shown that housing inmates near their support networks and families furthers the interests of rehabilitation and successful reintegration into the community, and lowers the likelihood of reoffending.
• Anybody concerned about their property values should look at what happens to other communities that have hosted large prisons. Over the past decade, St. Albans has gone to great lengths to improve its economic, social and cultural profile, spending millions of dollars on downtown revitalization and recruiting quality industries located on both sides of the border. In effect we have become the poster site for Vermont’s economic and cultural renaissance. This favorable image will be severely tarnished by the placement of a 925-bed penal colony in our midst. Undoubtedly our community would be known years hence as “the prison capital of Vermont.” Why we would want to transform any Vermont town into the functional equivalent of Dannamora, New York, is beyond comprehension.
For the above reasons, among many, we are absolutely opposed to the Scott administration’s prison expansion plan and especially its proposed partnership with Corecivic. We urge all citizens to voice their concerns about this and any other proposal that sends our state’s agenda backwards while enriching an out-of-state corporation at Vermont taxpayer expense.
