Gov. Phil Scott is again pitching legislators a plan to build a correctional facility in Swanton that would serve as a replacement for two state prisons and allow the return of roughly 230 inmates held in Mississippi back to Vermont.
Under the governor’s plan, which he first posed to the Legislature in 2018, the state would build an 850-bed multi-use prison facility to replace the women’s prison in Chittenden County and the Northwest Correctional Facility in Swanton.
Al Gobeille, the secretary of the Vermont Agency of Human Services, said Wednesday that building the new complex would accommodate several of the state’s correctional needs by creating space for its out-of-state prison population and an opportunity to leave behind old facilities that are aging and in need of maintenance.
“We currently have really old facilities that aren’t really appropriate for the people that they serve,” Gobeille said.
“We have an adult male out-of-state prison population that folks have very strong feelings about, but we also have a women’s facility that was never intended to have women that are serving very long sentences,” he said.
The Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, which houses about 150 female inmates, was originally built to temporarily house detainees.
Last year, lawmakers rejected Scott’s proposal to build a new facility — which under the administration’s 2018 plan would have housed 950 inmates.
In 2018, the state was in talks with CoreCivic, a private prison corporation, about the possibility of the company building the facility and leasing it to the state.
Many in the Statehouse have been cool to the idea of building a new prison facility at a time when Democrats hope to reduce prison population by enacting criminal justice reforms.
Democrats have signaled they will continue to take this approach this session.
This week, Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P Chittenden, called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to propose reforms that would reduce Vermont’s prison population by 250 inmates by 2022, eliminating the need to house offenders out of state.
He recommended senators look at furlough and detention policies, sentencing laws and invest in transitional housing, to lower the number of inmates.
On Wednesday, Rep. Nader Hashim, D-Dummerston, presented legislation to prohibit the state from contracting with private prisons to house inmates or to build correctional facilities.
Vermont’s out-of-state prisoners are being held at a facility in Tutwiler, Mississippi, owned by CoreCivic.
Speaking to the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions, Hashim argued that private prisons are “inherently undemocratic,” provide poorly trained, limited staff, and lead to increased recidivism rates among inmates.
“Exposing these vulnerable individuals to violent or poorly maintained facilities is not how we reduce crime and recidivism,” Hashim said. Hashim is a Vermont State Police trooper.
Hashim also recommended reducing the state’s inmate population, in particular, by investing more in the state’s electronic monitoring program.
The Scott administration is open to continuing to reduce Vermont’s prison population, but hopes to see specific proposals from legislators about how they intend to do it and who they intend to release.
While Democrats, including Hashim, have said they don’t want to see the state increase its capacity to incarcerate Vermonters by building a new facility, Gobeille said the new prison complex would not lead to a larger inmate population, but help the state meet its current correctional needs.
“We’re not building new beds, we’re just bringing the people home,” he said.
The Agency of Human Services estimates that building the facility would cost about $239 million, and the Scott administration hopes lawmakers will let the state move forward to design the building and find a way to fund it over time.
