The Vermont Department for Children and Families plans to lease space in Brattleboro from the Windham County Sheriff’s Office to create three to four beds in a “staff-secure” juvenile facility, agency officials told members of the Senate Institutions Committee last week.
One of those beds would be for children picked up after hours and awaiting placement in a residential program, while two or three of the beds could be used for longer stays, DCF Commissioner Sean Brown said.
Brown and Aryka Radke, deputy commissioner of DCF’s family services division, told committee members that the site would be a “staff-secure facility” with time-delay locks — meaning if someone unlocks the door, there’s a lag before it will open.
The department is negotiating a contract with a private provider to staff the Brattleboro beds, Brown said. He declined to name the provider.
Brown and Radke also declined to name the exact location of the proposed site, but Windham County Sheriff Mark Anderson confirmed they were discussing 185 Old Ferry Road in Brattleboro, which his department purchased in February. The building is the former information center for the now-defunct Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which was located just to the south in Vernon.
The building was too large for just the sheriff’s office, so Anderson reached out to other government entities to see if they’d be interested in using part of the space, he said. The Vermont Judiciary plans to use part of the property for civil cases while the Newfane County Courthouse gets a new air filtration system, according to a sheriff’s department press release.
In an interview, Brown said the Brattleboro site would not replace a secure facility the state is seeking to open in Newbury. The state has planned since November 2020 to open a six-bed site for youth in a former bed-and-breakfast, but the local development review board denied a permit in November 2021. The state is now challenging that decision in court.
Vermont has had no secure facility for justice-involved youth since October 2020, when the state shuttered Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Facility in Essex. The Scott administration cited a dwindling headcount as one reason to shutter the facility. The state also faced multiple lawsuits alleging abuse, dangerous conditions and improper use of restraints at Woodside.
Brown said the Brattleboro site could be used to house youths for longer periods, beyond just a stopgap overnight stay. The state has used hotel rooms and apartments to supervise youths overnight while awaiting placement.
“We don’t necessarily see it as just a one- or two-day stay facility,” Brown said in an interview.
But Brown said the Brattleboro site would not be a detention center, and instead described it as a “treatment facility.” He also described the proposed Newbury site as a treatment facility, or “therapeutic environment.”
Anderson noted that different people may use different terminology in how they describe a secure facility.
“This might be where we get to nuance, because there’s a variety of rules around detention facilities, which might be lost in code, if you will, when you talk to a criminal justice person versus a social worker person,” Anderson said.
But whether a site is a detention center or a treatment center carries significant financial consequences for the state.
While the state described Woodside as providing “residential treatment,” federal regulators disagreed. In October 2016, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ruled that youths in the facility were technically “inmates of a public institution,” and declared Woodside ineligible for Medicaid funding.
Brown doesn’t see the Newbury proposal as a replacement for Woodside, he said, but rather as a different approach in how the department cares for justice-involved youth.
“We’re really trying to shift and go to a community-based, residential-like group home setting,” Brown said. “It’ll be secure — architecturally secure, as we refer to it — but it would be a community-run facility by a community partner, not state-run.”
Plans for the Newbury site called for detention-grade windows, electronically controlled doors, a video monitoring system and a wire mesh fence around the outdoor recreation space, according to the Valley News.
The sheriff’s department would not be involved in how DCF decided to use the Brattleboro property, Anderson said, with one condition: “I’ve been clear that I’m not sponsoring a detention facility in Brattleboro.”
To Anderson, “staff-secure” means that policy, not infrastructure, keeps youth in. Under this framework, a high school classroom could also be described as staff-secure, he said.
“For me, a detention facility is ‘I have the key and you don’t, and you don’t get to choose when you leave,’” Anderson said.
Testifying before the committee last Thursday, Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, urged DCF and lawmakers to move quickly. Howard has stressed that Vermont needs a secure facility, and soon, to protect DCF workers.
“We’ve had members of this department come to the union and say, ‘Should we request bulletproof vests?’ because they’ve been asked to sit with youth who are allegedly involved with firearms,” Howard testified.
In an interview, Howard said he had expected the Brattleboro beds to be available by now.
Anderson said he doesn’t know what the timeline is for DCF to start using the facility, and that they are still in a “conceptual phase.” The department has not yet signed a lease.
Since Woodside closed, Vermont has sent a small number of justice-involved youths to the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, New Hampshire, Brown said.