Editor’s note: The Underground Workshop is an open platform for student journalism from across Vermont. We accept submissions from high school and college students on an ongoing basis. For more information, please email Ben Heintz, the workshop’s editor, at ben@vtdigger.org.
by Aspen Dobbins, Champlain College
Heather Newcomb began her journey to recovery eighteen years ago. Prompted by a close encounter with the law and fear of serving time, she left her two-year-old son in her mother’s care to enroll herself in rehab. “I was completely gone in the depths of my addiction,” she said.
Newcomb was raised in Burlington. She graduated from Essex High School and went to UVM, where she studied elementary education before shifting her focus to becoming a licensed nurse in Vermont through Fanny Allen.
At the time of her addiction, there were no medication-assisted treatment centers in Vermont. Leaving the state to seek recovery meant not only leaving her son but also leaving the networks that kept her in check. A methadone clinic opened up in Vermont when her son was six. They didn’t have room for her, but it meant she could come up and see him on the weekends. By the time he was eight, she was in stable recovery and was finally reunited with her son for good.
Today Newcomb is the Women’s Program Manager for Vermont Works for Women (VWW), where she has worked for seven years. The primary focus of her work is preparing incarcerated women and gender non-conforming individuals for a successful transition back to the community when they are released from prison.
Newcomb now recognizes how fortunate she was that DCF didn’t get involved, and her mom was able to take custody of her son. She calls it “another privilege that being white and middle class afforded me.”
Newcomb said that many other Vermonters who grow up in poverty don’t have those networks.
“With the clients I work with, it’s challenging when DCF is involved,” she said. “They’re worried about losing their child. That puts a lot of pressure on someone. It’s a difficult dynamic to maintain recovery in.”
When Newcomb started her career serving incarcerated women, she believed in criminal justice reform. She thought the system was broken. Working with VWW showed Newcomb how racially and economically prejudiced the prison system is in Vermont. According to a recent ACLU report, Vermont has some of the highest incarceration rates for Black people in the US.
She realized that the system is not broken. “It is working the way it was intended to as far as the positions of power and control,” she said. “Now I consider myself more of a prison abolitionist,” she added with a laugh.
Newcomb wants the former prisoners to succeed, but she knows the tides are against them. A 2018 US Department of Justice Report on prisoner recidivism showed that almost 45 percent of former prisoners were arrested within one year of release and 83 percent were arrested within nine years.Â
Newcomb attributes prisoner recidivism to the unhealthy conditions and lack of services available in prison. She provides career services through VWW to female and gender nonconforming prisoners at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility (CRCF).
Lack of resources is an obstacle. Although the men’s prison has a full shop to learn skills, the women’s prison does not have space for a shop, and most tools that are not built-in are deemed unsafe and are not allowed on premises at CRCF.
Occasionally, Newcomb is connected with people working on concrete solutions to these challenges. Under the leadership of Professor Duane Dunston, a few Champlain College students have teamed up with VWW students to build tools through Augmented Reality (AR) that can teach beyond what someone can learn from a manual.
“We need better rehabilitation programs in prison,” Dunston said, “so that when people re-enter society they can get back on their feet.”
Leah Peterson is one of the students working on the project. They are a junior majoring in game art and animation, interested in helping women fill the growing demand for niche trade skills. “The cool thing about AR is that it’s easy to pick up because it’s common sense,” Peterson said.
Last year, Peterson was involved in creating completely augmented construction sites, from foundations to electrical boxes. This year they have been working on a variety of augmented carpentry tools, most recently a MIG welder and a miter saw. Peterson designs the 3-D models, then passes them on to Silvia Albertus, who is majoring in computer science at Champlain.
Albertus works on the project’s interface and programming. Part of what she does is take Peterson’s designs and place them into a scene for interaction with the tools. Albertus explained that the purpose of the app is to review the safety features of how to use certain tools in an AR experience, “meaning you point your camera at objects and it puts 3-D objects in the real world.”
AR utilizes the camera on a tablet or phone to represent the real setting, then the app creates an overlay to augment reality by adding digital animation. Albertus explained that in the physical world prisoners would be working with cardboard reproductions printed with QR codes that the app recognizes and translates to the coordinating tool or safety device.
The tools are surprisingly realistic and the app not only teaches how to use them, but it also creates sound and gives safety warnings such as when to put on ear protection. The sound component is particularly helpful for the miter saw because it is incredibly loud, so people can learn what to expect before actually using the tools.
When the app is ready for use, Newcomb plans to incorporate it into the career services that Vermont Works for Women offered at CRCF. She is enthusiastic about the possibilities and thinks the app will go a long way in bridging some of the skills currently unavailable to those incarcerated.Â
While Newcomb sees there are a number of small solutions in progress, major systemic challenges remain. Statistics suggest an interconnected set of challenges. According to a Vermont legislative report, 82 percent of incarcerated women had a history of childhood physical and sexual abuse. Imprisonment only adds to the problem, such violence is widespread by correctional officers in United States prisons including CRCF.
Prisoners’ history of abuse also contributes to the high rate of illicit drug use. According to a study published in 2019, more than 80 percent of prisoners in the U.S. reported using illicit substances in their lifetimes and the majority had Substance Use Disorder (SUD). Yet, of those with SUDs, less than 20 percent receive formal treatment.Â
Newcomb learned firsthand that these statistics are only a glimpse of the imbalance in a system catered toward privilege.
“Being raised middle class, I knew eventually I would end up ahead,” she said. “If you don’t have the context, there is nothing in place to compare it to. How do you stay motivated if the system is set up to knock you back?”