BURLINGTON — Vermont’s prison for women should be closed, Department of Corrections Interim Commissioner James Baker said at an event Tuesday at the University of Vermont. And if the Legislature decided to replace it, he said, he would recommend an entirely new type of prison.
“The conditions that we ask folks not only to work in, but folks to live in in South Burlington, are not dignified, and it doesn’t give human dignity to the folks that are there,” he said. “And we need to do something about it.”
Baker joined a panel including Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George; Kathy Fox, an offender re-entry researcher; and Ashley Messier, an organizer for the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, in calling for changes to the criminal justice system in the state.
Janos Marton, a criminal justice reform advocate, Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, and Rep. Selene Colburn, P-Burlington, also spoke at the event, which was hosted by VTDigger, the Vermont ACLU, and UVM.
Seven Days reported late last year about serious misconduct by guards at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, including sexual assault and harrassment.
Baker’s position that CRCF should be closed was shared by fellow panelists.
“Over 80% of [inmates], their crimes were committed out of trauma, out of poverty, out of lack of resources, out of addiction, all of which are better served in the community,” Messier said. “There is no question.”
Fox said the prison system in the state needs to be reimagined.
“I think they should close it, but it’s not just a question of moving the women to a different facility, we need to do the entire enterprise differently and start from scratch,” Fox said.
Baker said the Legislature needs to decide if it wants to build a new facility. If it does, the state needs to focus on ensuring it is an environment conducive to providing services, he said.
“If it’s built, and the decision is made to build that, it needs to be built for programming,” he said. “It needs to be built for support, it needs to be built for making good inmates into good citizens.”
Messier said, based on her personal experience as a former inmate at CRCF, programming is best when it is delivered to those in the community, not in jail.
“If we invested that money in community-based alternatives to incarceration, in mental health, in housing, in public education and down the line, we would have better outcomes than we would have in the best programming in prison,” she said.
Baker was appointed to the interim commissioner position in late December following the resignation of former Commissioner Mike Touchette.
Messier said women who had been held at CRCF were not surprised by the Seven Days article detailing misconduct.
“Unfortunately, we were not shocked and appalled by the article as the general community, as some other advocates were,” she said. “We very much felt like, it’s about time.”
Baker acknowledged that the Department of Corrections has issues with its culture, but said that current conditions for employees have to be addressed first. He said that guards are working mandatory overtime and he had heard stories of staff working 18-hour shifts, sleeping in their cars and then returning for another 18-hour shift.
“We have to address that issue before we start trying to address the issues around culture,” he said.
George said prosecutors are part of the problem in the criminal justice system. The state needs to be arresting and charging fewer people, diverting more people, and detaining fewer people while their cases are pending.
“Generally speaking, prosecutors could do the opposite of every single thing they currently do, and that would help,” she said. “We are a major part of the problem.”
Janos Marton, a criminal justice reform advocate and a candidate for Manhattan district attorney, spoke about his efforts in the Close Rikers campaign in New York City during the keynote speech.
Marton, who said he had been stopped and frisked, arrested and put in jail as a young man, said that advocates around the country are calling for investments in mental health care, substance treatment for those with substance use disorders and getting young people jobs instead of incarcerating them.
“These are things every city and state can do better, and what it does is stop the cycle of harm from happening,” he said.
Marton said that while Vermont had one of the lowest incarceration rates in the country, it would still be in the bottom 10% of the world if it were taken alone as its own country.
“Think about that when you think about how much farther Vermont can push to create a system that actually puts people first, strengthens communities and reduces our dependence on jails and prisons,” he said.
