As lawmakers consider whether to commit millions of dollars toward replacing Vermont’s long-troubled women’s prison, they face renewed calls to reconsider — particularly from the Vermont ACLU.
In his funding proposal for the state’s capital bill — the biannual spending bill that funds infrastructure construction and maintenance — Gov. Phil Scott has requested $15.5 million to go toward replacing Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility with a new prison and re-entry facility, at a to-be-determined location. Scott’s proposal would put $1.5 million in cash funds toward the next step in plans. It would also commit $14 million in state bonding capacity toward future construction.
Neither the administration nor lawmakers expect construction would actually begin within the two-year cycle of this capital bill.
But because the state has limited borrowing capacity in each two-year cycle, the proposal would set aside funding for costs down the road, said Sean Brown, chief operating officer of the Agency of Administration, in an interview Thursday. The administration has estimated construction would cost $71.5 million. Brown noted that the administration’s estimates are rough and could be altered by inflation and other economic forces.
This is the first time the governor has recommended funding for its construction, Brown said.
While Scott’s recommendation signals some momentum for the long-contemplated project, the Vermont ACLU penned an open letter, hosted a press conference and testified to lawmakers this week, urging them to hit the brakes.
“The plans are out of line with the priorities and values of Vermont communities and perpetuate a reliance on mass incarceration that has failed our state and our communities for far too long,” wrote Advocacy Director Falko Schilling in the letter, sent to lawmakers Wednesday. “For all of these reasons, the administration’s funding request should be rejected.”
In testimony before the House Corrections & Institutions Committee Thursday morning, Schilling argued the latest plans, by the design firm HOK, recommended a facility far too large.
The firm’s 2021 proposal suggested the new women’s facility should have 194 beds, an increase from the prison’s current 177-bed capacity. As of Thursday, 107 people were held at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington.
Schilling urged lawmakers to pause the current plan — for a co-located prison and re-entry facility — until the Legislature studied alternatives, particularly smaller, lower-security facilities scattered throughout the state.
In the meantime, Schilling said, the state should look for ways to release as many women as possible from the South Burlington facility into lower-security settings or community-based programming, while improving quality of life for those who remain imprisoned on long-term sentences. Schilling suggested the committee expedite improvements to the grievance system, better mental health care and higher pay for prison labor.
Past investigations by Seven Days and VTDigger have documented unsanitary conditions at the women’s prison. The facility, which was built in the 1970s, received a “poor” condition rating in 2016, according to HOK documents, and has since deteriorated further. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice found several ADA violations that require fixing. The building is estimated to need at least $5 million in deferred maintenance.
For years, at various steps in the planning process, the Vermont ACLU and other advocates have opposed new, large-scale prison construction, at times causing dust-ups in the Statehouse.
“These points are not new,” Schilling told the committee early in his testimony Thursday morning.
Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, the committee chair, urged Schilling and her fellow lawmakers not to focus on the proposed bed count, something she has argued in many past meetings.
“People get so focused on a bed count, that they lose track of, really, what those beds are designed to do,” Emmons said. She argued the overall number of beds belied the true size of the facility, which would likely include specialized beds for different needs, such as mental health crises. Emmons also cautioned her fellow lawmakers that the plans remained subject to change, and they could adjust the capacity later.
But Schilling pushed back on her argument, and said lawmakers should, already, be concerned that the planned bed count is far too high.
With a wave of turnover from the last election cycle, the ACLU is making its case to many new lawmakers this year. Some committee members have expressed doubts in HOK’s proposal.
“Fifty years from now, right, there are gonna be people in this room, reflecting on the decisions we’re about to make, and I don’t want it to suck,” said Rep. Troy Headrick, P/D-Burlington, said in a Feb. 22 meeting with representatives from both the design firm and the Department of Corrections. “Where does your confidence come from, that you’re gonna do it right this time?”
Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun, D-Westminster, told the committee Thursday that she visited Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility last week, and was concerned by what she saw. (She was “alarmed by the stark appearance inside the facility,” Bos-Lun elaborated in a text message later Thursday, writing that while the women’s prison had valuable programming, “The facility is not an optimum space to provide supportive rehabilitation.”)
Despite these concerns, she’d like to see the committee explore other options besides a large, single-site facility, she said.
“Before we would go full-swing with the $71 million centralized location, we really haven’t spent time looking at alternatives in terms of community facilities,” she told the committee.
During her visit, Bos-Lun said, she was told 10 people were sentenced to seven years or longer at the facility, with three of those people being held on life sentences.
While she wanted the committee to explore alternative models, she acknowledged that would create further delays, possibly leaving incarcerated women in a poor facility for longer.
“For the people that are there for 10 years, I don’t want those women in that facility indefinitely,” Bos-Lun told the committee. “And so it’s tricky. How can we make better conditions for the people who have long sentences, without limiting ourselves to the model that we have now and just kind of making some improvements around the edges?”
Clarification: This story has been edited to more clearly convey how many people are serving life sentences or sentences of at least seven years.