Editor’s note: This commentary is by Offie C. Wortham, Ph.D., a retired college professor who last taught at Johnson State College. Prior to that he taught at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
[M]any of us Vermonters are confused why there are more than 380 detainees in the Vermont prison system who are being treated the same as convicted criminals. Why are these individuals who have not been found guilty of any crime taking beds needed for the prisoners sent to Mississippi?
Legally, there is a world of a difference between a detainee and a prisoner. A detainee is someone detained for purposes of avoiding flight during the period of litigation. The constitutional presumption of innocence is still there. Their confinement is not supposed to be a form of punishment. Until the court has pronounced guilt, detainees should only be secured and never treated the same as convicted criminals. When they do get to trial, many will be found innocent.
Detaining persons prior to trial is prejudicial to the person’s ability to afford a defense attorney. The accused loses their job, possibly their housing and belongings. Their car might be impounded and sold at auction to cover storage fees. And their reputation is irreversibly damaged even if found innocent.
In the past in Vermont we had jails, usually county or city facilities that housed prisoners from arraignment through conviction, and for sentences usually no longer than one year. Today, sheriff’s detention facilities in Vermont primarily consist of a one-room lockup to hold a person for a few hours until they are moved to a prison. Pre-trial inmates in Vermont are detained for years before they are tried and sentenced, meaning they can go for a long time without seeing their friends, family or children. When did this arrangement begin?
As Washington County State’s Attorney Rory Thibault recently said, “I think it’s not consistent with Vermont values to hold somebody just on the simple reason they can’t make bail payment or secure a bond.”
We need to to seriously examine the practice of keeping innocent people in prison in Vermont and treating them as hardened criminals. If most of these individuals were released on bail, or on their own recognizance, there would still be 150 beds available after the 230 are brought back from the private prisons in Mississippi.
