Updated at 5:54 p.m.
All Vermont prisons were locked down Wednesday, a scheduled event to allow correctional staff to check units for weapons or illegal substances, a state Department of Corrections spokesperson said.
The wide-ranging procedure — the first statewide lockdown since the Covid-19 pandemic era — means that incarcerated Vermonters were confined to their cells while corrections staff searched all cells across the state, according to Haley Sommer, the department’s spokesperson.
The lockdown began at 8:30 a.m. and lasted until the late afternoon. As of roughly 5:30 p.m., normal operations at the facilities had resumed, according to Sommer.
“This was a pre-planned event, essentially just to do a facility sweep and ensure that staff and the folks in our care and custody are safe,” Sommer said.
Sommer said she did not know how long Wednesday’s lockdown had been on the calendar. The procedure was not in response to any specific incident, she said, but noted several staff members in prisons in upstate New York had recently been hospitalized after being exposed to an unknown substance. Corrections staff are trying to prevent such incidents in Vermont, she said.
Steve Howard, the executive director of the Vermont State Employees Association, said in an interview that several correctional officers at Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility were also hospitalized after coming into contact with an unknown substance within the past few weeks.
“They were doing some kind of a check in a cell,” Howard said. “They were exposed to some kind of a white powdery substance.”
Howard said lockdowns in individual facilities are increasingly frequent as prisons contend with a staffing shortage.
Sommer, the Department of Corrections spokesperson, said Wednesday that lockdowns at individual facilities are not rare — but such procedures are “not often statewide.”
“It’s not uncommon at times for facilities to go under periods of restricted movement, and that could be for a variety of reasons, whether it’s planned building maintenance or things of that sort,” Sommer said.
Vermont Defender General Matt Valerio could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.
