[I]t’s official. Vermont has inked a deal to send its out-of-state prisoners to a privately run correctional facility in Mississippi.
VTDigger reported more than a week ago that Vermont would be sending out-of-state prisoners to the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in northwest Mississippi. Corrections officials refused to confirm the deal at that time, saying it had not been finalized.
On Wednesday morning, Vermont’s Department of Corrections issued a statement announcing the agreement with CoreCivic, the largest private prison contractor in the United States, which runs the Mississippi facility.
The deal between the state of Vermont and CoreCivic runs two years with the option of a two-year extension, according the statement, and the contract allows “for Vermont to include adherence to our laws, rules and policies as part of the agreement.”
In a statement issued Wednesday by CoreCivic, the company stated it expected the new contract to generate about $6.5 million of annual revenue.
The terms of the deal establish that 350 beds will be made available to Vermont. The Mississippi facility has capacity for more than 2,600 inmates.
Currently, 228 of Vermont’s inmates are held out of state due to lack of space.
“While there are no current plans to increase the out of state population, the additional bed capacity in the contract allows for flexibility if housing cannot be accommodated in a Vermont Facility,” according to the DOC statement.
“Given the age and condition of some of Vermont’s correctional facilities, there are repairs that would cause disruption in the general population space,” the statement added. “Should that occur, this contract would allow for the relocation of some inmates during any such construction, and only if those needs were to arise.”
According to the DOC statement, the per diem prisoner cost, including health care and transportation, rates are as follows:
– Year one: $71
– Year two: $72
– Year three (if contract is extended): $75.04
– Year four (if contract is extended): $77.15
Vermont currently houses its out-of-state prisoners to Camp Hill State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania. That contract ended early after concerns raised by state officials over the treatment of inmates at the facility.
Vermont prisoners have also complained about their ability to communicate with people outside the prison, their amount of time outside their cell, and health care. For example, a prisoner suffering from terminal lung cancer was not provided with palliative care, and at least three inmates have died there since last fall.
Amy Worden, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, defended that state’s treatment of Vermont’s inmates in an email to VTDigger last week, and offered another view on the situation.
“The real story here is that Vermont has turned its inmates (its residents) into nomads shipping them across at least six states over 20 years, instead of finding a way to accommodate them in their state,” Worden wrote. “Now they face yet another move to a new prison system that will take them even further from their families.”
Vermont is expected to start housing its out-of-state prisoners at the Mississippi facility starting this fall.
Another prison had also submitted a bid to house Vermont’s out-of-state prisoners: The Central Falls Detention Facility Corp. in Rhode Island.
The Central Falls’ proposal, according to the Vermont Department of Corrections, had an average per diem rate of $112.87 and “used a sliding scale” based on the number of inmates housed at the facility.
That rate, according to Vermont DOC, did not include transportation costs, billed at an overtime premium rate; in-patient health care services, chronic condition health care services, and prosthetic devices.
Lisa Menard, Vermont Department of Corrections commissioner, said the main reason for selecting the Mississippi proposal over the Rhode Island one did not come to cost.
Instead, she said, the Rhode Island facility is primarily a detention facility, meant to house inmates for shorter time periods and did not currently provide the recreational and programming options the state was looking for, though the proposal called for adding them.
Menard also said that state corrections officials did take into account the much greater distance it is to travel to Mississippi compared to Rhode Island.
“It was definitely a consideration,” she said. “Unfortunately, there were other differences that overshadowed the proximity.”
The average per diem rate to house an inmate in Vermont is $183, according to state corrections officials.
A big reason why that number is so much higher than the out-of-state figures, Menard said, is that the out-of-the state numbers do not include Vermont staff that are assigned to the out-of-state inmates and the staff travel.
The in-state $183 per diem rate is inclusive of staff costs, she added.
In Pennsylvania, the per diem cost was $72 a day, with a minimum of 250 inmates, Menard said. The Mississippi agreement does not set a minimum number of inmates.
For comparison, according to Vermont DOC, the cost of housing 250 inmates in Pennsylvania annually is $6,570,000. The cost for 228 inmates with the new contract (again, bed costs only) in the Mississippi facility is $5,908,620, state corrections officials said.
Civil rights organizations, including the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, have expressed concerns about shipping prisoners to an out-of-state prison run by a for-profit entity, especially one so far away from Vermont.
They worried that profit margins will outweigh inmates needs.
CoreCivic Public Affairs Manager Rodney King declined to comment Wednesday on the deal with Vermont, referring questions to the company statement and state officials.
James Duff Lyall, executive director of the Vermont ACLU, said Wednesday afternoon that while he hasn’t yet had time to review the contract between the state and CoreCivic with a “fine-tooth comb,” he did have some concerns based on information in DOC’s announcement of the deal.
“It’s very easy for a private prison company to say that it’s going to provide promised services, that it’s going to adhere to standards, and it’s going to comply with the state law,” Lyall said. “CoreCivic has shown that it doesn’t do any of those things, and it’s because it has a financial incentive to not do those things.”
He added the Vermont ACLU is going to be “closely monitoring the situation” at the Mississippi facility to see if the “rhetoric matches the reality.”
Last week, the ACLU issued a release stating that it “condemns” the state DOC’s decision to send Vermont inmates to the Mississippi, contending the private prison company has a history of civil rights abuses and financial fraud.
“Sending Vermont prisoners to out-of-state prisons is inhuman, irresponsible and unnecessary,” Lyall said Wednesday. “We need to get really serious about really reducing our prison population so we don’t have to rely on out-of-state prisons.”
Defender General Matthew Valerio said Wednesday that while he would prefer that no inmates were sent out of state, he’s at least pleased to see them moved out of the facility in Pennsylvania.
And, said Valerio, who oversees the attorneys in the prisoner’s rights office, Vermont had previously housed inmates at facilities run by Corrections Corporation of America, which has since become CoreCivic.
He described inmate experiences at such facilities, including one in Kentucky, as a “reasonably calm environment.”
“I think that most of the inmates are looking forward to getting out of Pennsylvania, not even most, I don’t know of any that are not,” Valerio said. “The negative, of course, is we have to go out of state at all.”