Vermont officials cope with surging prison population

(WCAX)
Published: Jul. 5, 2019 at 4:56 PM EDT
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Ongoing efforts to reduce Vermont's prison population and avoid sending inmates out-of-state have fallen flat. The current overcrowding is coming at the same time as officials have reported an uptick in serious felonies.

"This was a little odd for us and this doesn't match historical data trends we have seen in the past," said Vermont Department of Corrections Commissioner Mike Touchette.

He's talking about the increase in Vermont's prison population in 2019. There were just over 1,700 inmates in Vermont facilities at the start of the year. By the beginning of June that number had increased to 1,750.

But it was the eight percent increase in inmates charged or convicted of a serious felony that raised red flags.

"An aggravated assault, aggravated murder, murder, aggravated sexual assault, those type of offenses," Touchette said.

And a 14 percent increase in how long inmates are staying. The highest percent change were those staying for 31 to 90 days. "That puts some real challenges on our ability to house people here in Vermont." Touchette said.

Just a few weeks ago over 20 inmates were sent to the facility in Mississippi, bringing the number of Vermont inmates there to 276. But Touchette says 66 men still don't have a bed in their facility.

"I still believe there are those who do not need to be incarcerated," said Senator Dick Sears, D-Bennington County.

The Senate Judiciary Committee chair says Vermont will be conducting phase two of a justice reinvestment program that happened about 10 years ago. That report helped reduce the state's prison population significantly.

Sears says he believes there are many nonviolent offenders who are in jail. "We certainly want to target that group. We also want to target the detention group, those numbers throughout all of our reforms have not changed at all," Sears said.

Earlier this year the Scott administration asked lawmakers to consider building a new, larger prison. Sears says doesn't think that's the answer. "We've seen that states who have overbuilt, and it's states like New York and Texas that are closing prisons," he said.

But Touchette says it will take more than just his department to fix the problem. "This is not just the Department of Corrections that really needs to focus on reducing the prison population, this is a statewide initiative," he said.

Senator Sears says if the state receives the federal funding, he expects Governor Phil Scott to sign an executive order this summer creating a working group to take a look at prison population numbers, including those held in detention. He says that number has hovered around 400 despite the state's efforts to reduce the prison population overall.