[I]nmates at the Newport prison are sleeping in the facility’s gymnasium because of a lack of living units as construction at the state’s largest prison is estimated to continue for a year.
At a Justice Oversight Committee in Montpelier on Friday, Department of Corrections officials told legislators that they currently have 58 inmates displaced from their living quarters and only have room for 50 beds in the gymnasium — per fire code regulations — but do not want to send more inmates out of state during the construction at the Northern State Correctional Facility.
“It’s not as comfortable a living situation, or as private a living situation, as in a normal living unit,” Michael Touchette, the department’s deputy commissioner, said. “An old office does have a TV and a gaming system, so there are some comforts that balance some of what they’ve lost.”
Touchette said that the locking mechanisms and electrical conduits are failing in Newport’s 25-year-old correctional facility. There are currently 58 inmates who are not able to be in their normal living quarters, but there will be over 70 inmates in need of beds during a later phase of the construction process.
Lisa Menard, Department of Corrections commissioner, said the gymnasium will be at full capacity during the year-long renovation. She said prisoners would be rotated in and out of the gym on a case-by-case basis until next October.
“Some people will be in the gym that long. It may not be the same people, but the gym will be occupied for that period of time. Our alternative would be to send people out of state. We would rather not do that and if it can work in the gym and if the inmates are not unduly burdened by that, we want to try that approach,” Menard said.
Though the committee members said they had been aware of the construction, they said they had not been aware of how long it would take.
The committee chair, Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, asked Menard if there was any available space at other state facilities. Menard said there were no extra beds available at other facilities.
“So is there any option for any space in the old work camp in St. J?” Emmons asked.
The 56-bed work camp is part of the St. Johnsbury Northeast Correctional Complex that includes a 135-bed prison as well as the separate work camp and another 50-bed facility for people transitioning from prison to the community.
Menard said there are empty beds at the work camp. The department plans on meeting with the town of St. Johnsbury to discuss how to best utilize the beds in a way that both the state and the town are happy with.
Emmons also asked about the possibility of housing some of the state’s detainees being held elsewhere in the state in a “place similar to the gym” while they await their court dates to open up more beds for longer-term Newport inmates.
The meeting was left without a clear solution to the bed shortage, but both Emmons and Menard said they would continue to work to find bed space for the displaced inmates and check back in in the first week of November.
“We are going to have to figure it out. Hopefully by then we will have had some success with the work camp,” Menard said. “It’s our goal to get it done, not increase the out-of-state numbers.”
