Nine juveniles have spent over 100 cumulative days in Vermont’s adult prisons since 2020, Department of Corrections data shows, highlighting the state’s ongoing struggle to securely house young people accused of violence.
Meanwhile, a plan to open more beds that state officials shared with lawmakers on Tuesday is still light on details.
The minors, whose ages range from 15 to 17, spent a total of 112 days detained in correctional facilities for adults, according to data obtained through a public records request.
The data counts a partial day of detainment as one day. For example, in one case a 17-year-old was admitted to and released from the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland on the same day in August 2021.
Six of those nine juveniles each spent between one and five days in adult prisons. But three spent a combined total of 96 days in adult facilities — an average of 32 days each.
Since October 2020, when the state closed the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, Vermont has struggled to find housing for juveniles charged with serious crimes.
By the time it closed, the Essex facility was often using only a fraction of its 30-person capacity, but was still costing the state roughly $6 million a year.
The state has embarked on a yearslong initiative to move most juvenile cases out of the adult criminal justice system and into family court. But over the past two years, there’s been a rise in violent behaviors among young people, according to state and local officials.
“We’re all being exposed to this different level of violence in youth that we haven’t seen before,” Erica Marthage, the Bennington County state’s attorney, told lawmakers last month. “We didn’t plan for it, but it’s here.”
The nine juveniles who spent time in adult prisons were all charged with aggravated assault or attempted aggravated assault, some involving weapons.
When a minor is charged with a serious crime, Vermont corrections officials often attempt to send them to the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, New Hampshire. In six instances, juveniles detained in Vermont’s adult facilities were turned away from Sununu because it was at capacity, according to the data.
Sununu is also currently scheduled to close next spring, amid multiple allegations of abuse by former residents.
In an interview in June, Sean Brown, then the commissioner of the Vermont Department for Children and Families, told VTDigger that four juveniles had been housed in adult correctional facilities since the closure of Woodside.
That figure actually double-counted one individual who was detained on two separate occasions, according to Rachel Feldman, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections.
And Brown was only counting those juveniles who were turned away from the Sununu facility for lack of space, and not including minors who spent only a handful of days in adult facilities before being released.
Two other juveniles have been detained in adult prisons since Brown’s comments in June.
“Of course, Vermont (Department of Corrections) would always prefer to not have juveniles in our care and custody,” Feldman said in an interview. “Because, as we all agree, an adult correctional facility is not an ideal therapeutic or rehabilitative environment for a young person.”
The juveniles are sequestered from adult detainees and require 24-hour-surveillance, Feldman said.
In September, lawmakers on the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee tasked the state’s Agency of Human Services with devising a solution to the state’s shortage of beds for youths.
On Tuesday, Jenney Samuelson, Vermont’s secretary of human services, laid out the broad strokes of a plan to combat the problem.
That plan involves the creation of several new facilities. One of those, a six-bed residential treatment center planned for Newbury, recently got a shot of momentum when a Superior Court judge overturned the local Development Review Board’s decision to deny a permit for the project.
But those beds will be open only to boys and young men. And as a treatment center, “unlike a detention center, the provider makes the decisions about who is admitted,” Samuelson told lawmakers Tuesday.
The state also plans to open a temporary facility in the coming months, which, Samuelson said, will be replaced in the future with a permanent institution. Officials plan to hire private, non-state providers to run the facilities, which are currently expected to have capacity for six to eight juveniles, both male and female, Samuelson said.
But hard details — such as where those facilities will be, who will run them, and when exactly they will open — are still scarce.
In an interview Wednesday, Samuelson said the state is looking at multiple properties for a temporary facility and is in talks with a provider to operate it.
Samuelson told lawmakers Tuesday that the facility would likely be on state-owned property. But on Wednesday, she declined to provide any details about potential sites or the provider in question.
“Until I know with confidence who the provider is for that facility, which is also determined by where that facility is, I’m reluctant to provide that information,” she said.
State officials expect to choose a location within weeks, and plan to open the temporary facility “in the next few months,” Samuelson said. She declined to provide an estimated opening date for the future permanent facility.
“There are unknown challenges that we face as we look at siting a permanent facility,” she said. “So I don’t at this point have a specific timeline on that.”
Both new facilities will be secure, with what Samuelson described as a “no eject, no reject policy” — meaning that, unlike Newbury, staff there would not have the ability to turn anyone away, even youths who have committed violent crimes.
But she emphasized the future facilities would not be juvenile detention centers, due to their “focus on treatment and support.”
Agency of Human Services officials are working on a more detailed report that is expected before the end of the year.
Lawmakers and state officials have expressed frustration with the state’s handling of the crisis. In testimony to lawmakers Tuesday, Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees Association, blamed the shortage of facilities on Gov. Phil Scott’s administration’s decision to close the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center.
“Since the closure of Woodside, this has been an unmitigated disaster,” Howard said. “This is a huge management failure.”
The union leader also added that “we’ll always disagree that private providers are better than state providers, and that the state can’t train employees to do the work that needs to be done.”