The state has received one bid to house incarcerated people in another state, but top corrections officials are not saying who submitted it.
Vermont has contracted with CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison operators in the country, to house incarcerated people out of state since October 2018.
The Department of Corrections has sent incarcerated individuals for whom it doesn’t have space — currently about 125 people — to CoreCivic’s Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in northwest Mississippi.
The department extended what was originally a two-year contract, but it has now expired.
The state went out to bid earlier this year seeking a new contract to house up to 300 people in custody and received only one bid by the mid-March deadline.
Isaac Danyo, a spokesperson for the corrections department, declined to identify the bidder, saying the department would do so once negotiations concluded — a position reiterated by Commissioner Nicholas Deml.
VTDigger filed a public records request seeking the identity of the bidder last week. On Monday, the corrections department denied the request citing an exemption to the Vermont Public Records Act for “records relating specifically to negotiation of contracts.” According to its response, the corrections department will name the bidder once negotiations conclude.
VTDigger plans to appeal the denial to Deml.
Back in 2018, then-corrections Commissioner Lisa Menard initially balked at publicly providing the identity of the two bidders for that contract. Following the appeal of a public records request, Menard released their identities prior to inking a contract with CoreCivic.
“I believe there are circumstances where having the bidder(s) names revealed could be detrimental to the negotiation process,” Menard wrote.
“However,” Menard added, “in further researching this issue I have determined that the state prescribes a free and open bidding process.”
She then named the CoreCivic facility in Mississippi and a separate bid by a prison operator in Rhode Island.
CoreCivic has been equally tightlipped about whether it bid on the contract this time around, replying in an email to questions, “Out of respect to our government partner, it’s our policy to not comment on any active procurement processes.”
A follow-up email to CoreCivic on Monday seeking information about whether CoreCivic bid on the contract was not immediately returned.
Prior to using the Mississippi prison, the Vermont Department of Corrections sent some incarcerated individuals to Camp Hill State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania. That contract ended early after state officials raised concerns about the treatment of people at the facility.
Civil rights organizations, including the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, have long opposed sending incarcerated people to an out-of-state prison run by a for-profit entity, especially one so far away from Vermont. The groups have argued that profit margins will outweigh incarcerated people’s needs.
The Vermont Department of Corrections has been sending a portion of those it incarcerates out of state due to lack of capacity since 1998, at times years ago sending as many as nearly 700 people to those facilities.
A total of 13 different prisons around the country have housed incarcerated individuals from Vermont — from as far away as Arizona to as close as Massachusetts.
The different facilities have been run by various entities, from county and state governments to privately operated prisons.
