Vermont Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito faces a difficult decision after just five months on the job. Pallito may need to cut more than 50 jobs in his department to save the state money, according to WCAX.
“The only way the Department of Corrections can cut that many positions is to close a work site,” he said. And right now the Northeast Regional Correctional Facility is on the chopping block. Its closure would save the state about $2.5 million …
The commissioner says the St. Johnsbury prison is the most logical choice because of its proximity to the state prison in Newport, about 45 minutes north. The closure would not affect the work camp in St. Johnsbury which is next door to the prison. “Of all of the bad options that we have this is the least bad option,” Pallito said.
What would happen in the future with the facility in St. Johnsbury remains unclear. But Corrections would have to quickly figure out what to do with the 150 inmates there. “Still cheaper to send inmates out of state,” Pallito said. With an already overcrowded prison system, the Commissioner says the department would likely pick 150 additional inmates to move out of state– possibly to Kentucky and Tennessee– where 700 Vermont prisoners are currently jailed. The cost of incarceration out of state is about half the cost it is in Vermont– $24,600 versus a little over $51,000.
Vermont inmates who use utensils to throw bodily waste or food can’t be placed on a special diet without first going through a disciplinary process, a divided Vermont Supreme Court ruled Friday. This report from the Burlington Free Press.
The court ruled that before inmates can be fed only water and Nutraloaf, a nutritionally complete but unappetizing concoction, they must be given due process of law … Vermont Human Services Secretary Rob Hofmann, who oversees the Department of Corrections, said prison staff would abide by the Supreme Court ruling, but he was disappointed. “It effectively will require us to wait 24 hours and then hold a hearing,” said Hofmann, who until November was the state’s Corrections commissioner. “It will afford offenders a minimum of three more occasions to use waste, food or utensils to assault our colleagues” …
Nutraloaf and its variations have been used across the country for decades. It is designed to be a complete meal served without utensils. It is made of whole wheat bread, nondairy cheese, carrots, canned spinach, raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and potato flakes, mashed together and baked in a loaf pan. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an equivalent food used in Arkansas might be tolerable for a few days, but “intolerably cruel for weeks or months.” In 1988, a federal judge ruled the Michigan Department of Corrections’ use of Nutraloaf was punishment …
In a dissent, Chief Justice Paul Reiber said the majority decision undermined the department’s ability to manage the state’s prisons because some inmates might prefer sandwiches to prison food. “The department faces a Hobson’s choice of either providing misbehaving inmates with their choice of foods that are likely more appetizing than standard prison fare, thereby encouraging the very behavior that it needs to prevent, or simply doing nothing,” said Reiber’s dissent.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released the 2005 Census of Federal and State Correctional Facilities. The document has a wealth of data across all States, including the numbers of privately-operated facilities.
The document can be accessed from the Basic Stats list at the top right sidebar.
A municipal law that severely restricts the ability of sex offenders to live in Barre, VT, will be challenged.
The ordinance, expected to go into effect 20 days after its adoption, was proposed because of concerns about the number of sex offenders that are living in the city. It would prohibit those convicted of most sex crimes from moving to within 1,000 feet of schools, parks and playgrounds. That would effectively restrict those convicted of such crimes from living in most of the city. Allen Gilbert, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, said Wednesday the city will likely be forced to defend the ordinance in court … “There’s absolutely no evidence that these residency laws work,” he said. “Most crimes against children are based on relationship, not geography, and most offenders are family members not strangers.”
… [Mayor Thomas] Lauzon said the council is well aware of legal challenges involving some of those ordinances and noted Barre’s version was specifically crafted to avoid problems encountered elsewhere. We’re not telling people: ‘You can’t live anywhere in Barre City,’ and as far as the constitutional ramifications, I don’t think there are going to be any,” he said. According to Lauzon, the proposed ordinance would impose reasonable restrictions on sex offenders in an effort to protect Barre’s youngest residents.
This is just the latest in a series of similar regulations and similar lawsuits across the country. Many parole and probation officers have criticized strict ordinances that force their clients underground. For more on this local situation, read the full article in the Rutland Herald.
State lawmakers and corrections officials are hoping that the Second Chance Act signed this week will help Vermont’s struggling prison system.
Vermont’s director of planning in the corrections department, John Perry, said the federal law will hopefully bring much needed dollars to the state corrections system which is struggling to pay for many of the creative and successful reentry programs. “We are desperate for this money,” Perry said. “The bill as it is written is very supportive of the sort of restorative justice and community justice programs we have here in Vermont.
The Second Chance Act marks a sharp change in how the federal government considers prisoners and funds rehabilitation.
“We’re very pleased with this bill,” said Perry. “In the past the federal government has been unwilling to fund these programs unless they were in jail. With about 2.3 million people in jail in America that is a lot of people coming home and it is in the best interests of all of us that they come out better than when they went in.”
Vermont Department of Corrections Commissioner Robert Hofmann urged members of two Vermont House committees to approve a major prison reorganization plan, which many hope will stem the growing cost of running the state prisons.
Waterbury’s Dale Correctional Facility could be closed as early as January 2009, the corrections commissioner told lawmakers Wednesday … Hofmann said the department could begin moving male prisoners out of St. Albans’ Northwest State Correctional Facility and begin renovations there to accommodate more female inmates this summer if the plan is approved.
Hofmann noted that the changes would be difficult but necessary.
“This is complex,” Hofmann told lawmakers. “It’s not a slam dunk. It involves dozens of jobs, hundreds of inmates and thousands of little decisions” … The plan calls for a major reorganization of the prison system, including closing Dale, transforming the St. Albans facility into a women-only building and converting the Southeast State Correctional Facility in Windsor into a male work camp … Cost savings from the changes will be funneled toward increased mental health and substance abuse services for inmates to reduce recidivism, along with an increased focus on monitoring nonviolent offenders in communities.
Major changes to the focus of the Vermont correctional system are being debated currently in the State legislature. A House bill just sent to the Senate
takes aim at the causes for the mushrooming prison population and high recidivism — both of which have led to Vermont’s spending more on corrections than higher education. The bill sets new expectations that the Department of Corrections will identify substance-abuse problems early, will expand treatment options especially in the community and will develop housing to help inmates transition from prison to life on the outside. “We want to make offenders much more likely to succeed,” said House Institutions Chairwoman Alice Emmons, D-Springfield. “We will have offenders who will be productive members of the community, who give back to the community instead of being a drain on the community” …
The Senate will take up another facet of correction reform when the Legislature returns from its town meeting break — a bill that would change probation policies concerning alcohol to focus on treatment rather than punishment. Unless an offender’s crime involved substance abuse, probation conditions would no longer include bans on drinking. Also, public drunks would no longer be put in jail for their safety if they hadn’t committed a crime. The bill also authorized statewide use of electronic monitoring equipment — another alternative to help alleviate the need to imprison so many people.
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About Corrections Reporter
Syscon Justice Systems produces Corrections Reporter in order to collect and share stories of interest for the corrections community around the world, for national, state and county corrections facilities and for our own in-house corrections professionals. The articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Syscon Justice Systems.
Vermont inmates who use utensils to throw bodily waste or food can’t be placed on a special diet without first going through a disciplinary process, a divided Vermont Supreme Court ruled Friday.