For years, incarcerated Vermonters have made furniture, street signs, and paper products for state and local governmental entities — at a fraction of the state’s minimum wage.
Among other products, Vermont Correctional Industries has made desks for government buildings, manuals for the Department of Motor Vehicles, and a variety of aluminum signs that appear around the state.
Now those programs are shutting down, amid what corrections officials say is a larger shift toward vocational training.
“We’re trying to redesign the system to be more responsive to the incarcerated individuals we’re serving, so that they’re successful when they get out,” Nicholas Deml, Vermont’s corrections commissioner, said in an interview. “And we’re filling some economic gaps for the state.”
Vermont Correctional Industries is made up of four “shops” where incarcerated people produce the goods at wages that run from 25 cents an hour to a maximum of $1.35 an hour, according to a wage scale provided by a spokesperson. Prisons will also match a person’s savings upon their release.
Vermont’s prisons also employ incarcerated people in other areas, such as kitchens and laundry facilities. Others work on crews outside of prisons as part of their sentences, performing tasks like mowing lawns in public spaces. Those programs will not be affected by the shift.
Vermont Correctional Industries’ license plate shop, which is located at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, will also continue to operate.
But the furniture, sign and print shops, all of which are at Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, are shutting down, as outlined in a recent report to the Legislature. Vermont has already stopped producing furniture from the wood shop and plans to close the print and sign shop later this year.
Those programs have operated in the red for years, officials said. At the end of fiscal year 2022, Vermont Correctional Industries was running a deficit of nearly $2.6 million, according to Isaac Dayno, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections.
Deml attributed the deficit to a dwindling demand for paper products as many public services shift online, and changing trends in office furniture.
The wood shop makes “really high quality wood furniture,” Deml said. “But it just isn’t necessarily in alignment with the types of furniture that’s in high demand now. And especially in an office setting, where offices have gotten smaller, desks are more modular, office furniture is more modular.”
But he said the main reason for the change was a larger policy shift toward practical vocational training. Learning to make furniture, street signs and paper products did not necessarily give people marketable skills they could use after their release, officials said. And because the shops are located at only two prisons in the state, not all incarcerated people have access to them.
The change has been in the works for over a year, according to Deml.
It’s not yet clear what kinds of vocational skills will — or can — be taught in Vermont prisons. Officials have proposed vocational programs in construction, HVAC, commercial driver’s licenses and graphic arts. (Incarcerated people already do some graphic design work in the print shop.)
The Department of Corrections currently has a culinary training program at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, Vermont’s only women’s prison. Deml said the first new vocational program could be operational this summer, though it’s not clear where or what will be taught.
Emily Tredeau, supervising attorney at the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office, said that her office was not involved in plans to close the shops.
“We’ve had vague clues that VCI was changing or shutting down but no real intel,” she said in an email.
“I will say that for our clients involved in VCI, their work has been a tremendous source of pride and meaning in their lives,” she said, adding, “two things hard to come by in prison.”