Despite the inherent challenges of the job, the Vermont Department of Corrections has cut staff vacancy rates within the state’s prisons by almost half in the last year.
Last summer, Vermont’s prisons experienced acute staffing shortages, with union leadership highlighting an exhausting and untenable situation for rank-and-file staff.
But compared to last August, vacancies in prison staff positions are down, from about 30% to less than 16%, according to department data.
Corrections officials attributed the improvements to a range of factors — including salary increases, a new work schedule and changes to staff training.
An agreement known as a “side letter” reached in April with the Vermont State’s Employees Union led to increased pay for rank and file staff, as well as hiring bonuses for new staff.
The agreement injected $13 million into staffing, according to Haley Sommer, a department spokesperson. “The financial benefits of the job right now would attract a wider group of folks than they would have,” she said.
Steve Howard, executive director of the state employee union, which represents prison staff, said the agreement had “clearly had an effect” but called the success “not universal.”
“It’s not rocket science,” Howard said. “When you invest more in the pay and benefits of staff, you attract more people and you retain people.”
According to the corrections department, base pay for a correctional officer is $20.40, not including the $4 per hour extra approved through the temporary union agreement.
The department has also worked to change the experience of new staff, with some success, said Sommer. The correctional academy in Lyndon, which lasts six weeks, provides training to all new correctional officers before they head off to their local facilities for further on-site, supervised training.
Whereas new hires used to have to wait for a new academy session to start working, corrections implemented a “gap hire process” that allows workers to shadow staff inside a prison before they start at the academy.
“We find that really helpful,” Sommer said. “(New staff) have a greater understanding of what exactly they’ve been hired to do.”
Four of the state’s six facilities have begun new schedules too, according to Sommer. The department’s “2-2-3” schedule has officers working two, two-day stints with two days off in between, and one three-day stint followed by three days off every pay period. In effect, staff work seven 12-hour shifts every 14 days, which Sommer said has been a successful change.
Previously, emergency-level staffing shortages had led prison employees to work five 12-hour shifts per week, sometimes with additional overtime.
In an effort to attract staff, the Department of Corrections has also purchased TV advertisements on WCAX, and is currently seeking requests for proposals for a new media campaign, according to Sommer. The television buys are part of more than $61,000 the department has spent on advertising since the beginning of July 2022, she said.
Despite decreased vacancies, Howard said the department was still relying on probation and parole staff to fulfill some duties typically covered by prison workers, including accompanying incarcerated people to hospitals.
As for the new schedule system, he noted its “potential” before adding that its success will rely on retaining enough security staff or incentivizing enough overtime.
Going forward, the success of the corrections department — measured in terms of staff wellbeing and the achievements of criminal justice reform — will depend on adequate compensation, Howard argued.
“There’s nothing inexpensive about getting an effective corrections department,” he said.
‘These jobs are enormously difficult’
The dangers of working in Vermont’s prisons add to recruitment challenges, corrections officials say. Department data shows that, on average, assaults on prison staff members occur multiple times a week.
But the number of assaults on staff has declined since 2019, when there were 171 such incidents. The department recorded 105 staff assaults in 2020, 128 in 2021, and 135 in 2022. This year’s total is on pace to be less than last year’s, with 81 assaults on staff as of Aug. 29.
Last week, the department highlighted one such instance, issuing a press release about an assault on a nurse during medication disbursal at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield.
Cory Munger, 28, the incarcerated person who allegedly assaulted the nurse, put a nurse in a chokehold and held a pen to her throat, according to a Vermont State Police press release. The nurse sustained a concussion from the assault, police said.
The nurse whom Munger allegedly assaulted last week is an employee of Wellpath, a private contractor that provides health services in Vermont’s prisons. Wellpath, which did not respond to questions about assaults on its staff, took over the health contract in Vermont’s prisons on July 1.
In an email, Isaac Dayno, a corrections spokesperson, said the department has “seen a major spike in the complex medical and behavioral issues presented by detainees coming to DOC, particularly in the first days of their confinement.”
Jobs in Vermont’s prisons, Dayno wrote, “are enormously difficult, and are becoming increasingly so.”
According to a University of Vermont survey released last year, 39% of staff at Southern State said they had developed post-traumatic stress disorder since beginning work in corrections.
Corrections officials believe active drug use and withdrawal of those entering prison contributes to violent incidents in state facilities, according to Dayno. He pointed to the recent death of Shawn Gardner — who overdosed in prison custody from a mixture of fentanyl, cocaine and xylazine — as an example of the increasing frequency of polysubstance use by people entering corrections custody.
In Vermont and nationwide, medical staff have faced increasing violence in hospital emergency rooms, a trend Dayno said mirrors the experience in Vermont’s prisons.
But violent incidents are also connected to who is — and who isn’t — behind bars, he said. Dayno suggested that the state’s efforts to reduce incarceration mean that “the individuals who remain incarcerated present higher risk scores and are more likely to engage in violent behavior.”
“We think it’s important the public understand the very challenging circumstances DOC staff and those in state custody face at this moment,” Dayno said.
