It’s no secret that alerts to crime victims in Vermont were full of flaws. This spring, attention from lawmakers put a spotlight on the issue — illuminating that gaps in alerts caused some victims life-altering harm.
So, lawmakers assembled a task force to make changes to the state notification system called VINE, which stands for Victim Information Notification Everyday.
Recently, employees at the Department of Corrections quietly made changes to VINE, which they claim will help victims and make the system more trauma-informed. But other task force members think the changes will have the opposite effect — and were left in the dark.
“I hope that they’re reconsidering it,” said Tim Lueders-Dumont, executive director of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs.
Crime victims in Vermont have the legal right to get timely notifications about the movement of those charged with or convicted of harming them. Once someone is behind bars, they’re entered into VINE. And victims can sign up to get VINE alerts on someone’s custody status or whereabouts via call, text or email.
Although victim advocates in Lueders-Dumont’s department interact with the system regularly, he had no input in the changes to the platform and wasn’t formally notified until after they went into effect.
That’s because VINE is paid for and managed by the Department of Corrections, which runs the state’s six prisons. The department’s victim specialists, along with state’s attorneys’ advocates, rely on the automated system to notify victims because they typically juggle very high case loads.
But Vermonters have suffered because of high-stakes errors in the VINE system.
Sometimes faulty alerts told victims that an offender was being released when they were actually being transferred to a different prison. Other times, an offender was released from prison with no notice to the victim until days later. That perpetrator sometimes came back and harmed the victim again, due to the delayed alert.
Many victims also resent the automated nature of the notifications — with phone calls containing potentially triggering information coming from a cold, robotic voice.
In the past, victims would get an alert if their offender was transferred from one prison to another, or if they were going to appear in court in person.
But this summer, the Department of Corrections decided it would no longer notify victims in those circumstances. The department didn’t consult with Lueders-Dumont about the changes or let him know upfront that it was changing the system, he said.
Jenn Poehlmann, executive director for the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services and chair of the task force, has long advocated for making the notifications customizable, so each victim can decide what types of info they want to receive.
“The point was that this task force was going to increase options and choice for victims,” she said. Eliminating more of the platform’s services only decreases those options, she said.
Poehlmann called it “concerning” that everyone else was left in the dark. Lueders-Dumont said he wishes he was clued in earlier, so that his advocates could be aware — and make victims aware — of the change in services.
The department justified its decision in a later memo, per Lueders-Dumont’s request.
Jon Murad, interim commissioner of the department, explained the VINE services scratched by his department “often led to unnecessary confusion, distress, or retraumatization.”
The notifications were “doing more harm than good,” said Ashley Fisk, a corrections Senior Victim Services Specialist, in an interview with VTDigger. “(Victims) would call us immediately and want to know specifics that we didn’t have,” she said.
But other members on the task force disagree.
Lueders-Dumont said his advocates are opposed to the change. “It’s not representative of the conversations we’ve had with victims,” he said.
Victims who enrolled for VINE were told they would get the alerts that have now been discontinued, Lueders-Dumont said. Victims want to receive those updates and should be able to get them, he said.
If a victim lives in the same town as a prison, they may not want their perpetrator living close by, he said. And he’s seen cases where victims have wanted the comfort of distance, he said.
In turn, Cassidy Renfrew, field operations manager for the department, said that victims who have that concern could use the department’s publicly accessible offender locator online to see where someone’s imprisoned.
Lueders-Dumont and Poehlmann also take issue with ending alerts that notify victims when an alleged offender is taken to court.
Many victims base their decision to appear in court on whether their offender will be present, Lueders-Dumont said. Crime suspects who are held in prison can tune into hearings virtually via WebEx. VINE offered a way for victims to find out ahead of time if their offender is appearing in-person in court, he said.
There’s already been at least one instance in which a victim went to court and was surprised to see their offender in the room, Poehlmann said.
“That should never happen,” she said.
Renfrew argued that even without the VINE notification, victims could find out if an alleged offender is appearing in-person or virtually because the court typically decides ahead of time whether an alleged offender will appear in-person, she said.
In the future, Lueders-Dumont hopes he finds out about any future changes ahead of time, even if he disagrees with them. “I request a formal notification so that I can distribute that information to our whole field so they’re at least not surprised,” he said.
Lueders-Dumont asked the Corrections Department to send formal memos about any future changes. He, Poehlmann and the Corrections Department are working on a formal memorandum of understanding to keep everyone on the same page.
True collaboration means transparency and better communication, Poehlmann said.
“That’s what the Legislature wanted us to do for victims and survivors, and that’s what we need to do,” she said.
