Despite a drop in the state’s prisoner population, corrections officials say they are negotiating to extend a contract with the company that operates a prison facility in Mississippi to incarcerate inmates the state doesn’t have the capacity to house in Vermont.
Al Cormier, facility executive for the Vermont Department of Corrections, said Monday that recent drops in the state’s inmate population from about 1,700 at the beginning of the year to 1,409 currently, may have allowed for all the out-of-state prisoners to return to Vermont and be housed in-state.
But, he added, with the precautions inside the correctional facilities needed to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, it doesn’t seem a likely, or safe, scenario to bring back the current 225 inmates housed out-of-state, at least for some time.
“Without Covid, could we? Yes, we probably could,” Cormier said of returning all the current out-of-state inmates to Vermont. “It wouldn’t be the best possible circumstances, but we could.”
Vermont signed a two-year contract in September 2018 with Nashville-based CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison companies in the country and also the operator of the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in the northwest Mississippi community of Tutwiler.
That contract provides for a one-year extension. Cormier said the state and CoreCivic are currently negotiating to do just that.
The Vermont corrections department is looking to make some changes to that contract, Cormier said, including one to have CoreCivic provide the same Medication Assisted Treatment program, or MAT, for the prisoners held at that out-of-state as those inmates in state can access.
The MAT program provides access to medications, such as Suboxone to prisoners, aimed at treating substance abuse disorder. The corrections department wants CoreCivic, through its health services, to administer the program through its health care services to Vermont prisoners at the Mississippi prison.
“One of the things we are looking at is the MAT medication program being implemented in Mississippi,” Cormier said. “We’ve had individuals down there who have been asking for it.”
According to the contract signed two years ago, the per diem prisoner cost, including health care and transportation is about $70. If the MAT program is included in the new contract, Cormier said, that daily fee would likely be higher, though how much higher hasn’t yet been determined.
Amanda Gilchrist, a CoreCivic spokesperson, declined comment when reached Monday.
“In deference to our government partner,” Gilchrist wrote in an email, “all questions regarding contract negotiations should be directed to VTDOC.”
Tom Dalton, executive director of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, said Monday that he hoped that the drop in the inmate population in the state would have allowed the contract to simply expire.
“If it is getting renewed, including the MAT program is a really important enhancement,” Dalton said.
However, he said, with the drop in the inmate population as well as initiatives underway to further reduce it, Covid-19 shouldn’t be the reason to keep Vermont prisoners housed out of state.
“I think that they could bring people back from Mississippi and still make sure there’s appropriate social distancing,” he said. “The social distancing is limited as it is, it’s not the kind of social distancing that’s available in the community.”
The inmate population has fallen due to several factors, including fewer people getting arrested or held on bail, particularly during the early stages of pandemic in late March and April, resulting in fewer people coming into the facility.
The inmate population fell significantly over that early period and has been holding steady more recently at a little more than 1,400 prisoners.
Also, S.388, a bill recently passed by the Legislature signed by Gov. Phil Scott and known as “Justice Reinvestment,” makes additional reforms to the criminal justice system aimed at keeping people out of prison.
Those reforms include allowing for inmates facing the revocation of their furlough by the corrections department to challenge that action through the courts.
In tracking furlough violations in 2019 a group working on the justice reinvestment initiative found that 77% of the people readmitted to prison committed technical violations, such as the loss of housing, use of drugs and alcohol, violation of curfews, or “program or work failures.”
Emily Tredeau, supervising attorney of the state’s Prisoners’ Rights Office, said Monday she wasn’t surprised to hear that the corrections department was looking to renew its contract with CoreCivic,
‘I think this contract, at least from DOC’s perspective, is working better than the previous two,” she said, adding of provisions she would like to see included in a renewed contract, “I think anything that incorporates more of the legal protections that Vermonters have in in-state facilities is a good thing, including terms about the MAT program.”
James Lyall, executive director of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an email in response to questions about what he would like in a contract that “a good starting point” would be to provide a “constitutional level of care and basic dignity and respect” for the prisoners.
He wrote that corrections had already failed to provide that care, whether through not releasing more inmates during the pandemic or the “stubborn refusal to provide hundreds of incarcerated Vemonter” with hepatitis C treatments. The ACLU is currently engaged in a federal lawsuit with the corrections department over the denial of hepatitis C treatments for inmates.
“The staggering cruelty of our correctional system is unlikely to be remedied via contract with a notorious private prison corporation,” Lyall added.
The Vermont Department of Corrections has been sending a portion of its prisoners out of state due to lack of capacity since 1998, at times years ago sending as many as nearly 700 inmates to those facilities.
Over the years those facilities have been located in Michigan, Kentucky, Virginia and Arizona.
Prior to reaching a contract with CoreCivic at the Mississippi facility, Vermont’s out-of-state inmates had been housed at the Camp Hill State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania. That contract ended after Vermont officials raised concerns over the treatment of prisoners at that state-run facility.
The complaints included difficulty communicating with people outside the prison, little time outside cells, and inadequate medical treatment.
While many inmates have expressed satisfaction with the conditions at the Mississippi family, there have been some problems.
A lawsuit brought on behalf of a Vermont inmate resulted earlier this year in additional Covid-19 precautions to prevent the spread of the virus at the Mississippi facility.
Also, in September 2019, a Northeast Kingdom man convicted of murder became the first Vermont inmate to die by suicide at an out-of-state prison, hanging himself using a bedsheet and electrical cord.
Seven inmates are slated to return to Vermont from the Mississippi prison in the next few days, Cormier said, which would further lower the total number of out-of-state prisoners to 218.
