Updated at 5:34 p.m.
The Department of Corrections on Thursday announced two new departures in the second shakeup to Vermont’s prison system this week.
Norah Quinn, the commissioner of Northeast Correctional Complex in St. Johnsbury, will retire next month, the department said in a press release.
“This news is bittersweet for the team at Corrections,” Commissioner Nicholas Deml said in the release.
Deml also announced that Matt D’Agostino, interim deputy commissioner at the department’s central office, will step away from state government.
Department spokesperson Rachel Feldman declined to specify D’Agostino’s future plans.
On Tuesday, Deml announced that Scott Martin, the superintendent of the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, had been placed on paid administrative leave following an investigation into concerns about his management.
Quinn’s retirement comes after 29 years of working in corrections. Mike Koehler, acting superintendent of Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, will step in as interim superintendent in St. Johnsbury.
According to the Department of Corrections, the new leadership will “focus on staff wellness and morale, recruitment and retention, and the provision of human services to those in the Department’s care and custody.”
There’s reason to believe the department needs to change.
A study released in January painted a grim portrait of the experiences staff and incarcerated people faced at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield. About half of the staff reported experiencing anxiety and depression since starting their work, and 10% said they had seriously considered suicide.
On Wednesday, corrections staff detailed their issues with the current work environment, particularly staffing shortages, in testimony before a joint meeting of the House Committee on Government Operations and the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions.
Michael Groner, a caseworker at the Springfield prison, described what he called a “toxic and abusive work environment.”
He described working overtime every week for the last 15 years, and said that scandals in Vermont’s prisons lowered staff morale.
“There was a period of time where I wouldn’t even tell people I work in the Department of Corrections (because) I was so embarrassed about what was out there,” Groner said. “But it had nothing to do with me.”
Groner said that the department has recently seemed to improve at listening to the needs of its staff.
Shawanda Hill, a correctional officer in Springfield, described the severity of the staffing crisis in her testimony to legislators. She said many facilities operate with only one officer who can respond to an emergency inside a prison, known as a “float.”
“You want to go to the bathroom — you can’t even go,” she said.
Hill said she is one of few women currently working in Springfield. Changes must be made in order to recruit and retain more women in the field, she said.
“A lot of women can’t make it in this environment unless they’re mentored,” she said.
Deml began outlining his plans to facilitate cultural change in the department while testifying before the same group of legislators on Thursday.
While he detailed wide-spanning ideas for the future of corrections, much of the changes boiled down to listening to the needs and ideas of staff.
For example, he said a “vast majority” of staff at the St. Johnsbury prison petitioned to permanently adopt a schedule of two 12-hour shifts rather than three eight-hour shifts.
Deml said he supports that change and others like it because “they were staff-supported, they were staff-generated.”
Deml’s efforts have also included updating simple prison policies to increase the quality of the work experience, including allowing staff to bring in outside beverages like coffee, and revising the department’s facial hair policy.
“Every policy that’s older than 10 years is going to be reviewed this year, and either revised, rescinded or updated,” Deml said.
The commissioner also described a need to make career advancement easier and more transparent.
“People don’t trust the promotion process,” Deml said. “We need to break that immediately.”
Although he did not directly address the two recent superintendent departures at the Newport and St. Johnsbury prisons, Deml spoke to how superintendents help define staff culture and morale.
“The two maybe most important jobs in the Department of Corrections are the facility’s superintendent and the first line supervisor,” he said. “Those two positions have outsized impact on staff, so we need to be getting it right in those two positions.”
Although Deml offered compelling testimony on how he imagines the future of corrections, Steve Howard, who represents corrections staff as the executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, was not convinced.
“I think if you listen to what the commissioner said, I think there’s a lot of potential there,” Howard said. “But what we have been trying to convey to the Legislature, to the administration, is that we have a five-alarm fire here in the Department of Corrections with the understaffing.”
Without a crisis management plan, Howard likened the commissioner’s efforts to saying “we’re gonna re-wallpaper the living room while the building’s burning down.”
According to Howard, correctional officers recorded a 44% turnover rate in fiscal year 2021. Overtime hours doubled from 2017 to 2021, he said.
Howard and corrections staff spoke in favor of a 20-year retirement for corrections staff, but Deml did not specifically advocate for it in his testimony.
Despite his frustrations, Howard made clear that he likes some of the new direction from the department and is willing to work with Deml going forward.
“To be fair to him, he inherited a complete disaster,” Howard said.
