Final Reading: Advocates urge an ‘empathetic’ approach to public safety

Meg McCarthy doesn’t mince words when talking about her husband. He took someone’s life.

But in the years since he was handed a sentence of 20 years-to-life in prison, McCarthy said at a press conference Thursday, it’s become clear to her that he is no longer the person he used to be. Instead, her husband has “wanted to make amends as best he could,” she said.

At the same time, McCarthy noted, her husband has faced debilitating health issues that have made his life difficult and required significant state resources to help care for him. She wonders what the benefit is of keeping him incarcerated until, possibly, he dies in prison.

McCarthy was one of three women with family members in Vermont prisons who urged lawmakers on Thursday not to overlook “empathetic” criminal justice legislation. The press conference was part of a national reform movement called “Day of Empathy.”

That includes the proposals in S.155, they said. Sponsored by Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, the bill would allow an incarcerated person to petition a court for a reduced sentence after a set amount of time based on criteria such as their behavior while in prison, rehabilitation programs they’ve completed and the age at which they offended. It hasn’t had a committee hearing yet this session — so it’s all but certain to stay on the wall.

The measure is known as “second look” legislation. S.155 also includes a measure that would eliminate life without parole as a possible sentence for first- or second-degree murder.

Vyhovsky and a group of advocates from local and national organizations framed the bill as a road-not-taken compared with more punitive measures that lawmakers are pursuing instead this year. Many of those policies have been pushed by Gov. Phil Scott’s administration.

“In a fog of cries about public safety, instead of looking to transformative change, community investment and following the data, we are going backwards (to) proven-to-fail, War on Crime-era policies. Locking more people up,” Vyhovsky said at the event, adding lawmakers should be “investing in the upstream economic, social and human factors that would actually make us all safer.”

Of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vyhovsky has been perhaps the most vocal critic of S.58, an omnibus crime bill that the committee could vote out tomorrow. The bill would make it easier to prosecute certain drug crimes and again delay the next stage of a Vermont law, known as “raise the age,” that’s meant to keep more young people out of the criminal justice system. It also would add new crimes to the list of those that are automatically charged in adult court.

Another speaker, Alexandra Bailey, senior campaign strategist at the national nonprofit The Sentencing Project, called Vermont’s corrections department a de facto “hospital” providing critical health care for many older adults. She pointed to Department of Corrections data showing that while Vermont imprisons fewer people today than it did a decade ago, more today have chronic medical conditions.

She also pointed to racial disparities between Vermont’s incarcerated population and the state’s population at large, saying that policies that put people in prison could only make that worse.

Indi Schoenherr, a policy advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, then pointed to research showing that long prison sentences don’t provide the deterrent effect many people think they do.

“I truly believe we cannot arrest our way out of the challenges that we are facing in our communities,” Schoenherr said.

— Shaun Robinson

IN THE KNOW

Vermont Legal Aid plans to seek a temporary restraining order in state court Friday morning in a last-minute attempt to prevent hundreds of Vermonters from losing their shelter through the state’s motel program that same day.

The Department for Children and Families told lawmakers on Wednesday that around 500 individuals could lose their vouchers Friday, when winter-weather eligibility for the motel program is slated to shift. After that, people must reapply for a room on a night-by-night basis, based on strict weather-dependent criteria.

Legal Aid is seeking this pause to give the state adequate time to assess whether program participants may be eligible to remain in their rooms, attorney Rebecca Plummer confirmed to VTDigger/Vermont Public on Thursday afternoon.

ON THE MOVE

An effort afoot in the Vermont Senate would make Juneteenth a legal holiday — but not a day off. Two committees have given their support to S.206, which would add June 19 to a dozen other dates already in statute, and the bill could hit the floor in that chamber for a vote as soon as Friday.

A federal holiday since 2021, Juneteenth — an amalgam of the month and the date — marks the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Texas and told enslaved African Americans of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

June 19 is also celebrated as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and Black Independence Day across the country. In Vermont, the country’s second whitest state, several communities have hosted celebrations in recent years ranging from historical exhibitions and panel discussions to picnics and music festivals.

In 2007, Vermont designated the third Saturday in June as “Juneteenth National Freedom Day.” If approved, the bill under consideration in the Senate would set the date on June 19. At least 28 states recognize Juneteenth as an official public holiday, according to Pew Research Center, and a majority mark it as a paid day off.