The Deeper Dig is a biweekly podcast from the VTDigger newsroom, hosted and produced by Sam Gale Rosen. Listen below, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
It’s not unusual for Vermont’s Department of Corrections to be at the center of debate. The department manages six prisons across Vermont, with more than 1,000 incarcerated people in the system.
The department is perpetually facing challenges, which only increased during the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic. There are perennial discussions over the ethics of sending people to out-of-state prisons, the conditions that incarcerated people face and what working conditions are like for the department’s employees.
Since January 2022, 16 incarcerated people have died — 12 at one prison, the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield. That has focused even more attention on the Department of Corrections as well as the health care and conditions in Vermont’s prisons.
In this episode, host Sam Gale Rosen talks about some of these issues with reporter Ethan Weinstein. He covers southeastern Vermont for VTDigger, and much of his recent journalism has focused on the Department of Corrections.
Below is a partial transcript, edited for length and clarity.
Ethan Weinstein: So in the years previous to 2022, there was something like an average of three deaths per year, and that was looking at the five years prior to 2022. And so to have 16 deaths in the last year and a half is certainly not par for the course.
Sam Gale Rosen: And what do we know about this? Can you talk about some of these deaths in particular, what we do and don’t know about how they happened?
Ethan: So we do know that the vast majority of these deaths are — the death certificates are listed as natural causes. That doesn’t tell us a lot. But it does mean that these are not homicides, for the most part. But natural causes doesn’t just mean that someone died of old age. It could be that they had a chronic health condition that led to their death, or even a more acute health situation can still get listed as natural causes. We do know that so far this year, there’s been one suicide, and in 2022, there were at least two suicides. And so those are playing a factor. There’s also been at least one overdose death. So that is another cause of death. But it’s hard for us to know a lot about what’s been going on. We hear from the Department of Corrections generally a couple paragraphs, or maybe from state police. But without really pressing to learn more, there’s oftentimes very little information immediately available.
Sam: And you’ve been pressing to learn more.
Ethan: I have been, particularly earlier this year with the death of a man named David Mitchell, who died back in April at Southern State in Springfield. That was an instance where our reporting has indicated that, you know, the initial bits of information released by the state did not reflect what we believe to have gone on.
Sam: Can you tell me about that case in particular?
Ethan: Yeah. So we’ve come to learn that David Mitchell was chronically ill. He had COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and struggled with breathing. He had an oxygen tank. He had spent time in the hospital in the prison infirmary. And on the day of his death, through a number of interviews with eyewitnesses, particularly people who were incarcerated near to David Mitchell, we came to learn that, allegedly, Mitchell was complaining about his struggles breathing in the morning of his death, that he had requested medical attention repeatedly. We believed that he was seen in a sort of cursory fashion by a nurse who dismissed his complaints that he couldn’t breathe. And as he continued to struggle, to beg, to even cry, some folks have said, a correctional officer threatened to send Mitchell to solitary confinement because he was sick of listening to him complain about his health problems.
Sam: After our discussion, Ethan sent me some audio of a conversation he had with Preston Lawson, who lived next to David Mitchell at Southern State Correctional Facility for about a month. Here’s Lawson describing an interaction he said he heard between Mitchell and a correctional officer before Mitchell’s death.
Preston Lawson: He said if you don’t stop being dramatic and causing a scene, he said you’re not going into the fucking infirmary, and you’re not going to the ICU at the hospital, he said. The only thing that’s going to be different is you’re gonna end up in an observation cell in segregation. He said you’re just gonna go right over there to segregation. That’s where I got a spot for you if you don’t stop. … We were joking again. We’re like he’s gonna end up dying.
Ethan: And soon thereafter, Mitchell was found unconscious. We believe that life-saving measures, CPR, that kind of thing took place for, you know, the immediate time after he was found, and he was pronounced dead soon thereafter.
Sam: And you said that story doesn’t match up with what you heard from the DOC, at least at the beginning. Is that right?
Ethan: Well, you know, we learned of the situation in minimal detail originally. And so, I believe it was state police who — when there is a death in Vermont’s prisons, typically state police are the first to release any information about it. They put out a typical press release with pretty minimal information. And they did indicate that this man, Mr. Mitchell, had complained that he was struggling to breathe the morning of his death. And so we did know that fact, but we didn’t know the extent of his complaints. Nor did we know the extent of his health history and health issues.
Sam: Has the DOC or the state police come out with more information about this now, after you found it out from other sources or in the course of an investigation?
Ethan: Really, there has still been pretty minimal information released. After we spoke to the first eyewitness, we were able to talk to Nick Deml, the commissioner of the Department of Corrections. He indicated that their investigation suggested David Mitchell had met with health staff that morning. And I believe the phrase Deml used was that Mitchell had a robust health history. So that’s far from indicating, you know, the specifics of his health issues. But, perhaps surprisingly to most people, that’s more than we typically get. So that was a little bit more information that was shared.
Sam: And when you look at this, and you look at other deaths that have occurred, are you seeing common threads? Are you seeing similar stories with other people to this?
Ethan: We’re not necessarily seeing this with deaths. But what we do know is that Springfield is home to the prison infirmary in Vermont. And so there are more medical resources at that specific facility than there are elsewhere. The Department of Corrections has used that as an explanation for why such a majority of the deaths are occurring in Springfield. But when we look at the people who have died, they don’t tend to be older folks, necessarily. You know, there are some that are in their 30s, 40s, 50s. Yes, there have been older folks who have died, but they don’t make up the majority. And so it’s hard to say from the outside with the information that we have that the reason Springfield is seeing so many deaths is necessarily because they have sicker individuals.
Sam: And just to clarify, does that mean if you’re at some other facility, and you’re particularly ill, you might be sent there? Because there’s an infirmary there?
Ethan: Yes. Or perhaps when you enter the prison system, you might begin your stay in Springfield because you need immediate medical attention.
Sam: And so obviously, a lot of what we’ve talked about so far has centered around health care and the health care being offered. I know there have been complaints around this case and more broadly in the system. Can you tell me about that?
Ethan: In the days and weeks, and at this point months, since I first reported on David Mitchell’s death, we’ve had a number of folks reach out to us with complaints about health care, specifically in Springfield. And so, I’ve talked to a number of incarcerated individuals who’ve experienced, you know, a full range of health care issues. In one instance, I’ve talked to the loved one of a person incarcerated in Springfield, and this man has diabetes. Although he came into the prison system with a continuous glucose monitor, that was taken away from him. He hasn’t been able to regulate his blood sugar, and as a result, this loved one says, he’s had a seizure. He’s had blackouts. His blood sugar is spiking to levels that it hadn’t before he was incarcerated. He had strategies to handle his diabetes. This wasn’t by any means a debilitating illness for him. I believe that he had Type 1 diabetes, so he lived with this for a long time, and he could manage his own care for the most part before he entered the facility.
And one thing that the conversations I had with this person have really indicated — you know, I’ve been able to see the communications between family members and Vermont’s health service prison provider, which is VitalCore, they provide health care in Vermont’s prisons, and to see the way that the buck is continuously passed: You might reach out to a DOC official who directs you to a VitalCore official who directs you to their supervisor, who’s based out of state. You schedule a meeting, the meeting gets rescheduled. By the time you talk to someone, it’s not a person that has any real intimate knowledge of your loved one’s health condition because you’re talking to a middle manager or maybe even, if you’re lucky, an executive who isn’t based in Vermont (and) doesn’t doesn’t really know what’s going on in Vermont’s prisons.
I’ve talked to many folks incarcerated in Springfield, and I haven’t necessarily had the time to check with DOC about their responses to allegations. And so these are the stories of a number of inmates, but you know, their version of events could be skewed. But for example, I spoke to a man named Eric Sardo, who is incarcerated at Southern State. And one thing that he has been personally very frustrated about is that he’s prescribed Suboxone for his opioid use disorder. He feels like that works for him. It helps his mood. It gives him energy.
Sam: Ethan refers a few times in the interview to Eric Sardo taking Suboxone. He told me after that the medication Sardo was taking was actually Subutex, which is a slightly different medication that also has buprenorphine as an active ingredient.
Ethan: And in two instances that he described to me, he had that medication either decreased or taken away. So to back up for a second. The way that reprimands work in Vermont’s prisons are you get something often referred to as a ticket, where basically a corrections officer might see you do something that they believe is against the rules. They write you up, and you have a hearing at a later date within the prison to hash that out. You could plead and get a lesser punishment. You could be found not guilty, but it’s basically a judicial process within the prison. And so what Eric Sardo has described to me is that in, in one, or perhaps both of these instances, he was accused by a correctional officer of diverting his medication. Basically, you have to take your Suboxone immediately when it’s given to you. You can’t carry it with you for the rest of the day because there’s a concern you might try to sell it or try to abuse it in some fashion. And so he was accused of diverting his Suboxone, and was immediately, at first his medication was cut in half. Or, in the second instance, he was taken off the medication completely.
And so first of all, he says that, you know, that shouldn’t occur until he’s had his judicial hearing and been found guilty or not guilty on the accusations. But what he says is that in both instances, he was found not guilty, and he still hasn’t been able to get back on his medication because that judicial system within the prison isn’t necessarily connected to the health contractor who’s in charge of administering the medication. And there’s really this disconnect between DOC staff and health care staff that’s prevented him from getting this medication that he says makes him just a more functional human being.
Sam: And for the people you’re talking to, do they have a theory of the case as to why, in their view, the medical care is so bad? Do they think it’s just sort of neglect? Or are there concerns about medical care being used as punishment or retribution?
Ethan: I think it’s hard to say. When you are one person who has been incarcerated, your story is really personal. And I think a lot of times, it does feel like retaliation when something like this occurs. And a lot of times folks have told me that, you know, complaining about the health care situation can make it even harder to receive the care that they need. And so they interpret that as retaliation.
But (what) we do know more generally, is that VitalCore signed their contract with the Department of Corrections in the very early days of the Covid pandemic. And so there’s been some suggestion from Department of Corrections officials that, when they created that contract with VitalCore, it really didn’t factor in some of the expenses that health care providers have had to deal with in the wake of Covid, whether that’s, you know, PPE or testing or just the additional infrastructure that comes with dealing with a pandemic. Those costs weren’t factored into the contract. And so the implication there is that in order to cut their losses and deal with a health care environment that’s more expensive than they anticipated, perhaps that could be one of the reasons why service has been so abysmal in the description of these people.
Sam: And has the DOC, or this company, in any way acknowledged or admitted that this health care is substandard, or even abysmal? Or is that something they just aren’t saying or addressing right now?
Ethan: Well, we have not heard much from VitalCore, but from the Department of Corrections, we do hear that they’re constantly striving for better service. They would never use those words, like abysmal. I think that they would hesitate to even critique the care that is being delivered in their facilities, but they’re willing to say that they want to do better. And that’s about as much as we’re able to get at this point.
Sam: Have they said anything about how they would try to do better or how they might address some of these issues?
Ethan: I think that they’re pretty vague on the specifics. What we do know is that in the latest health care contract that DOC has signed, which is set to take effect in July, it’s more than a 50% increase, I believe, in cost than the previous VitalCore contract. So I mean, what that shows to me Is that they’re willing to invest a lot more money into health services in their prisons. Does that mean that the care is necessarily going to be better? I don’t think we can be sure, but it will at least be better funded.
Sam: And I know that Commissioner Deml has quoted some statistics and said that, in fact, the people in the correction system are sicker than they’ve been before. Is that a part of this issue? Is that a deflection, or is it more complicated than that?
Ethan: Well, so, just to hash out a little bit about what the commissioner has said. He’s said previously that about 1,000 of the 1,300 people that are incarcerated in Vermont suffer from a chronic illness. And that’s a 47% increase since 2015. When we’re talking about chronic illness, you know, that could be a form of addiction. I think it includes things like asthma and diabetes and more typical chronic illnesses. But we do know that folks are coming into Vermont’s prisons more addicted to opioids than they have in the past. The commissioner has said that the average person in custody is prescribed five and a half medications. A lot of those are medically assisted treatment medications. A lot of inmates are prescribed Wellbutrin for mental illness, whether that’s anxiety or depression. Seventy percent of people, the commissioner says, are prescribed a psychotropic medication, so that’s something that might affect mood or behavior.
It’s hard, you know, advocates and family members of people incarcerated in Vermont, in my experience, really resent the commissioner for saying this. They feel like this is his way of passing the buck. It’s the department’s responsibility to take care of the people that are in its custody, and so to suggest that they can’t do so because of the physical state of incarcerated people, that’s angered a lot of people that I’ve talked to.
Sam: And have any of the people you’ve talked to, from incarcerated people to their loved ones, or advocates, do they have specific asks for the things that they want to see change? I mean, I’m sure they have many, but are there some common threads there?
Ethan: I think that folks would like to see more transparency. They would like to see more admission of wrongdoing, rather than, you know, an abdication of responsibility. So specifically with the case of David Mitchell, that’s really been a rallying moment for families of incarcerated people because they feel like this could happen to their loved one, and they want to see the people at the center of that incident held responsible for whatever it is that occurred.
But I think that overall, people would just like to see speedier medical care. It can take months to receive care once you’ve requested it. And oftentimes, you know, that initial instance of receiving some sort of medical care is really minute. You might only see a nurse for a couple of minutes, and it can be especially difficult to see specialists or to leave a facility to go to a hospital to see an expert. And so I think that folks would really just like to see the processes speed up. And, you know, feel like health services are a service that’s available and not some sort of privilege that’s out of their reach.
Sam: And something we’ve been hearing about in connection with the Department of Corrections and how things are going in general as well, is staffing concerns and pressures that the staff at the department are under. Commissioner Deml testified in front of a Vermont House committee back in February about some of this. There were moments when he was visibly emotional.
Commissioner Deml: These are unique jobs, and this is acutely painful for many of the people that work in the Department of Corrections, because they’re doing that same thing in a different environment. They’re there every night. It’s scary. It can be dark. It’s awfully loud. But you don’t know what that next moment is. And we need to be there for them. And we’re not doing a good enough job.
Sam: Can you talk about some of the things that he said he was concerned about?
Ethan: Yeah, so pretty much as long as I’ve been a reporter here, about the last two years, there’s been a lot of talk about staffing problems in Vermont’s prisons. It’s been a statewide issue in Vermont’s prisons. It’s been worse at the Springfield prison. It’s caused correctional officers to work 16-hour shifts regularly. There’s been mandatory overtime. A lot of times they’re working these 16-hour shifts back to back. And so I mean, we’ve heard, whether it’s from the commissioner, or oftentimes we hear from Steve Howard, the head of the Vermont State Employees Association, the union for state employees. We hear from him about, you know, folks falling asleep on their way home or folks, their family lives being torn apart because when they’re not working, all they really have the energy to do is sleep, and so they can’t go to their kids’ sports games. They can’t maintain their relationships with loved ones, and it’s clearly taking a toll on the rank-and-file staff inside Vermont’s prisons.
Sam: Do we know what’s causing that? Like does this have to do with Covid? Does this have to do with — I don’t know — pay and benefits? What’s being discussed in connection with these staffing issues?
Ethan: I think those are all factors. You know, we saw the way the pandemic created staffing challenges in pretty much every single field as folks moved to different careers or they left the workforce. They found better hours and better pay elsewhere. These are not high-paying positions. There have been efforts to increase signing bonuses and make being a correctional officer a more desirable career. I think one of the issues is the possibility of career advancement. You can be a CO. You can be a CO2, which is the next level, but folks want to find ways to rise within the department and take on more supervisory or managerial positions. And so that’s also been a focus of the department, is expanding those opportunities for people that might enter the prison workforce at the lowest level.
Sam: Does it seem like staff and unions and management are sort of on the same page in identifying these problems and looking for solutions for them? Or are they also at odds — have there been accusations of mismanagement, basically?
Ethan: Certainly the union and department leaders are and have been at odds. I think there’s a desire to reconcile those differences. But, you know, Steve Howard, in particular, who leads the union, he never shies away from a fight. But this is a fight that he’s been fighting for some time. You know, he said as much in the past that he feels like the commissioner is perhaps well intentioned, but it feels like lip service at this point, as far as making strides to take care of rank-and-file DOC employees. And so I would say that that fight has gotten ugly in the past. Corrections staff are some of the most vocal within the union. We’ve heard that from folks in other parts of state government. And oftentimes, it seems as though the battle that Steve Howard wants to fight is the corrections battle. This has been on the forefront of the union’s mind, and they haven’t minced words with Commissioner Deml.
Sam: What do they want to see management do differently?
Ethan: I think they would want significant raises. I believe it was Nebraska where there was a huge increase in salaries for corrections employees, and they saw recruitment, you know, go off the rails. And so that’s an instance that people point to to say, look, money really can solve this problem. But more than that, I think it’s finding a more sustainable work-life balance. There has been some effort — and I’m not sure the status of it currently — but to move to a shift schedule that saw people work longer hours and fewer days. Basically, you know, people could work four days in a row and then get a chunk of three or four days off. And that had been proposed by corrections officials as a possible solution to the challenges the rank-and-file are facing. But until there are enough correctional officers, it’s really hard to implement that system in a way that works for the people in it.
And incarcerated people really feel the effects of the staffing shortages in Vermont’s prisons. In conversations I’ve had, they even really appear empathetic to the problems facing correctional officers. In Springfield in particular, I’ve heard that a lack of officers has led to decreased rec. time. You know, in the past, I’ve heard people could go outside, you know, maybe three times a day for an hour each time. And that’s been cut back oftentimes to only an hour a day. Or in the most extreme instance that I’ve heard about — and this was a number of months ago, and it sounds like the staffing situation has gotten better since then — but there was so little staff that folks actually weren’t allowed out of their cells except for very, you know, very few instances, and they were essentially on lockdown for almost two days.
And so when I talk to incarcerated people about this, I mean, they’re angry with the department, but they’re not angry with the officers. They recognize the way that working 16-hour shifts, especially against the will of these correctional officers, is necessarily going to make them have a shorter temper. You know, your defense mechanisms are more easily triggered when you’re exhausted. And so they might be quicker to reprimand an incarcerated person. They might be quicker to start a fight or just, you’ll necessarily be less helpful if you haven’t been sleeping. And that’s something that seemingly the people I’ve talked to have really empathized with, despite the relationship that can at times be antagonistic, when everyone gets along, everyone has a better time. That’s something I hear again and again.
One thing that has guided my reporting or informed my reporting is a sense that as a state, or maybe even as a country, we’re OK with some level of problems within our prisons. There’s a belief that things are going to be messed up there, that you’re not going to be receiving adequate care. And so it has felt like, in order for something to be a story, someone has to die. You know, it’s not enough to hear that a person has a concussion, and they can’t see a doctor, or a person has been prescribed a medication their whole life and has been refused it once they’ve been incarcerated. It just seems as though our tolerance for issues within our prisons is so high that it can be hard to get people to care about this.
Sam: And does it seem to you like that’s true both of the general public and of people in power, who might have the ability to change some of these conditions?
Ethan: I think that it’s true for both. You know, I think we build prisons so that people can’t escape. And unfortunately, I think we also build them so that information can’t escape. I mean, you look at the communication resources available to incarcerated people in Vermont. They need to have phone numbers approved in order to contact people. They might need someone on the outside to add them (on a communication app called Getting Out). They can’t just necessarily reach out to random people. If they want to communicate via video chat with someone, it’s going to cost them 50 cents. And so the barriers and the incentives involved in keeping information about what goes on in our prisons away from public view, I think it makes it really hard to know what’s going on and just how bad it might be.
Sam: Does that siloing of information make it a particularly difficult thing to cover as a journalist?
Ethan: It does make it difficult, but I think that it also makes it exciting. And you know, when I’ve talked to incarcerated people, in some instances, they’ve reached out to journalists before and they’ve never had luck talking to someone, and for them to talk to someone who’s not their lawyer, not a DOC staff member, not a family member, it’s an experience that many of them haven’t had for a long time. And so just to have someone listen to the problems they’re having, you know, oftentimes they can’t get the ear of the Prisoners’ Rights Office. And so it’s a really unique experience to be able to talk to people about their daily lives and some of the issues they’re having.
