Bad Move? Relocating the Women’s Prison – The Impact on Vermont’s Incarcerated Women, and State Taxpayers

By Cindy Ellen Hill

Vermont’s sole women’s prison facility is moving – again. A decade ago, women inmates were housed at the Dale Women’s State Prison in the former state mental-health facility in Waterbury, and in overflow housing at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington. In 2003, they were moved to the homey Windsor Women’s Prison. In 2008, they were transferred to the capacious, if desolate, Northwest State Correctional Facility in Swanton. This summer, they’re headed back to the Chittenden facility.

The upside is that the move provides the Shumlin administration an opportunity to advance its new vision of a fundamentally different corrections system that purportedly does not spend taxpayer dollars to unnecessarily warehouse non-violent offenders.

The downside is that Chittenden doesn’t have enough beds to house the number of presently incarcerated women – currently about 135. And it has much less room for programs and vocational training than Northwest.

Will the move save money? Will it help or hurt the inmates’ chances of returning to society as productive, employable citizens? On both questions, the jury is still out.

The Numbers

On any given day, about 1 in 60 Vermonters – nearly 12,000 – is in Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC) custody. Of these, about 2,200 are incarcerated; the rest are on probation, parole, or intermediate sanctions. About 1,400 incarcerated individuals are housed in-state, and 600 out of state. Vermont’s incarceration rate is 42^nd in the country, half the national average, although we are 49^th for violent crime, according to the 2010 DOC Facts and Figures report. While the Vermont incarceration rate has climbed since 1972, it has done so significantly more slowly than the rest of the country.

Women make up less than 20 percent of the total DOC population, and only about five percent of the incarcerated population. On any given day in 2010, according to the DOC, there were 2,017 incarcerated men in Vermont and 135 incarcerated women.

That last number is a moving target, of course. According to DOC Program Services Director Kim Bushey, “This year and last year we hit a peak in May and now are dropping. Today [it’s] around 150. I actually don’t know why, [but] there seems to be a pattern: it goes up in May then comes down,” Bushey says.

According to Tiffany Bluemle, Executive Director of Vermont Works for Women, a key vocational training service provider at Northwest, the numbers are coming down, but from a high of “around 170.”

Wendy Love, Executive Director of the Vermont Commission on Women – an independent state entity which has thoughtfully followed and spoken out on behalf of incarcerated women in Vermont since 1999 – thinks the numbers could be more detailed. “Any time I talk to anyone about the numbers, they can’t say, for instance, how many inmates have children,” she notes. “They can give you the birdseye of how many women are incarcerated on any given day but the database is so antiquated that if you ask them for more detailed information, they literally start shuffling stacks of paper.”

Meanwhile, the number of beds at Chittenden is equally elusive. Officially, it’s 197. But, according to Bluemle, “That’s with 30 beds that are presently occupying the gym. Remove those, then 16 for the male detentioners, then [set aside] about 30 more for women with physical or mental-health special needs.”

In the end, she says, “I’ve been told there are effectively 131 beds at Chittenden. So it’s going to be difficult to house the present number of women in this facility.”

Reducing the Numbers

In Governor Shumlin’s vision, DOC’s new quest is to facilitate the education, treatment, housing, and vocational training support necessary to reduce recidivism and free up beds.

Elizabeth Ready, Executive Director of the John Graham homeless shelter in Vergennes, says Shumlin “has a great understanding that when people have suffered trauma and homelessness and abuse, there is a higher propensity to offend and re-offend. So if we can help people rebuild their lives and have a decent life for themselves and their children, there is great faith that people can move forward.”

Ready has been tasked with finding community housing for the “many, many” women who “are incarcerated because they have no other place to be released to. There are a lot of people who are eligible to be back in the community – that’s where the potential lies,” she continues. “I’m just basically trying to help figure out the training and the housing.”

Another proposal is to increase the number of women on furlough. New furlough legislation envisions home detention and an open category of furlough at the discretion of the DOC.

“If, through combined strategies, we can reduce the number of women who have to stay at the facility, that’s where there is potential here,” Bluemle says. “But it will take a lot of hard work. No one is blind to that.”

The Programs

The DOC is upbeat regarding the transition of programming to Chittenden. One advantage of this move over the Windsor-to-Northwest move is that most programs, as well as their personnel, will move with the inmates. According to Bushey, these include a substance-abuse program run by Phoenix House, a parenting program affiliated with the Lund Family Center, and the Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

Vocational training, however, will undergo greater change. Vermont Works for Women’s nationally recognized modular home program won’t move with the women because of space limitations. Bushey says, “We might be trying to make that work off-site at some other facility,” adding that the DOC has been “working diligently and closely with VWW to figure out what other programs we could do for the women.”

One VWW program won’t be eliminated: Fresh Food, which is already based at Winooski’s O’Brien Community Center. Among other accomplishments, the program makes the dumplings served at A Single Pebble in Burlington.

The DOC also runs successful training programs through its own Community High School of Vermont. The campus at Chittenden, notes Bushey, is “tied in to probation and parole, so there are some opportunities for employment training through that.” One class, the Harley Time workshop, gives inmate students an opportunity to refurbish a Harley motorcycle that is then raffled off for charity. However, the popular auto mechanics class will not continue at Chittenden, again because of lack of space.

The Community High School also offers ProStart, the highly acclaimed national certification program in culinary arts. “We have been offering this at Southern [State Correctional Facility in Springfield]; now we’ll offer it at Chittenden,” Bushey says. “This will give women a chance to learn some high skills in the culinary arts. When we’ve hosted meetings at Southern,” she adds, “the ProStart crew has made the lunches and appetizers and desserts, and they’ve been fabulous.”

A Master Gardener program will be offered, and the DOC is exploring an Urban Gardener program through the University of Vermont, focusing on gardening in small spaces. The department is also considering running a garments industry producing uniforms, linens, and mattresses out of the gym – though that would require removing its 30 beds.

Site Limitations

Chittenden was built as a relatively small detention facility, not a prison. Outside and recreational space, programming space, and community space are almost non-existent, according to Love at the Vermont Commission on Women.

“A small room with one metal picnic bench and one old TV on the wall is not conducive to much of anything,” Love notes. “Northwest had one large room where people could come together. Here there is no room, not even a day room. And if the plan is to send the women out of the facility during the day on work furloughs, then any programming or education would have to be at night.”

“I think there are a lot of challenges that are posed by the limitations of the Chittenden facility,” Bluemle concurs. But she is optimistic. “The advantages include having the women closer to social services that DOC can partner with,” she points out. And space limitations have galvanized the department to look at “facilities in the community for programming for women who can leave during the day.”

Says Bluemle, “I don’t think [off-site] vocational programming at Chittenden can be equivalent to the vocational programming at [Northwest].” Nevertheless, the situation “enables us to look anew at programming – where is there overlap and where are there gaps. We have an opportunity to really push ourselves to adopt a different vision.”

Meanwhile, VWW is vowing to find some way to continue using construction as a vehicle for learning. “We were not just teaching women to build modular houses,” Bluemle declares. “We were teaching them to build communication skills, problem solving ability, attention to detail, and an expectation of high-quality work.”

Women Offenders and Vocational Training

According to Bushey, “the bulk of the female [inmate] population turns over pretty rapidly”; only a handful of women serve long sentences. Vocational training is most useful to the latter group, because the women can carry their extended training back into their communities on release.

One such inmate, Lantonia Congress – who’s serving a 20-year second-degree murder sentence that is under appeal – has found the auto mechanic program highly fulfilling. The problem is that she, and others like her, are unlikely to qualify for daily work release to off-site programming.

“That’s a real shame, especially for the women: there are so few avenues for them to pursue after they are released,” comments Margaret Jansch, managing attorney at the Chittenden Public Defender’s Office.

“Women with the long sentences – there is nothing for them to do,” says a worried Love. “It’s difficult to see how they are going to provide them with anything.”

Bluemle is optimistic that the dedication of community providers such as VWW will prevail. “As a partner with DOC, we are going to work very hard to make the move as successful as we can,” Bluemle declares. “We are not just expecting the department to do all the work; we are prepared to work hard with all our colleagues. There is a community-wide commitment to making this work as well as possible, now that it is a fait accompli.”

Love is less sanguine. “You have finite space that can’t be expanded. You have too many women. There are not enough jobs for women. Their idea of women going out during the day and doing something is great, but they don’t know what that would be. For the first month at least, they are going to just keep everyone there. There aren’t jobs or programs in place for them. They will not have access to computers at Chittenden, and those are skills people need in the workforce today. You won’t get a job without those skills,” she says.

“I think they mean well,” she adds cautiously. “It might be seen as a time for creative thinking.”

The Staff and Structures

The Superintendents of Chittenden and Northwest have swapped places, and the DOC has opened the door to any guards who may be interested in trading slots. Staff at both facilities are taking turns shadowing their counterparts to get a sense of the similarities and differences between working with male and female prison populations. Correctional-officer basic training is gender-specific, so the DOC is re-delivering that training to all staff, including modules on communication, restraint, and trauma.

The DOC also has a number of female staff at Chittenden who have prior experience working with women, including several who were present when women were housed there ten years ago.

While the staff will be well-prepared, the buildings will not. “There will be some construction at both facilities that will disrupt some housing,” Bushey says. Plans include normally scheduled window replacement at Northwest, converting the bathrooms at Northwest back to male mode, and building a separate booking facility for the male detainee unit at Chittenden. “We may need to depopulate some units temporarily,” Bushey says.

“The plumbing is dreadful [in Chittenden],” Love opines. A DOC facilities report references sewage backing up in the showers. “They told me they weren’t even going to re-do that for at least a year. I don’t know why that is.”

Yet the cozier facility might have its advantages, Love allows. “[Northwest] is more of a maximum security prison-type facility, what I call a swish-swish – swish, the door opens and you walk through, and, swish, it clangs shut behind you and you’re gone. Windsor was more of a campus, more like a home.” Chittenden’s smaller environs and more central location might echo the warmer feel of Windsor.

It’s All About the Money

“The purpose of the move is to use as many in-state beds that are available to us as possible,” Bushey says. “It’s the will of the administration and the department and the Legislature to reduce out-of-state bed use. Northwest has capacity – we had mothballed two units when we moved the women there. By moving the women to Chittenden, we are able to un-mothball those two units, and there’s another unit that needs some work to be habitable and then we will have an additional 40 beds.”

Some will be rented out to the federal government, which pays $125 a day per bed for the space. Others will be used for some of the more than 500 prisoners presently housed out of state at a cost of about $25,000 per prisoner per year, according to DOC statistics.

Love says she realized “from the beginning” that, “once you did the math on the vacant spaces at [Northwest] and what the feds would pay for them, it was clear the women would be moved. The women are a pawn that had to be moved. There is great hope that it will wind up as a very positive move. DOC and Medicaid are the two biggest cost drivers in the state. This new administration is taking a whole new look at things.”

The switch of Northwest’s inmate population with Chittenden’s may incur additional costs in time and money. Public defenders based in the Burlington area who serve the male pre-trial detentioner population at Chittenden, for example, will need to travel a half-hour to 45 minutes to see their clients in Franklin County, instead of a few minutes.

“The concern I have more directly is the ability for us to interview our clients and the cost to the state of us driving back and forth,” says Jansch of the Chittenden Public Defender’s Office. “This limits the time we can spend with them. On an average someone from our office is at the South Burlington jail daily, sometimes twice. [Traveling to St. Albans] limits our ability to meet with and interview the clients and also vastly diminishes our ability to work on other cases.”

Talking with clients on the phone, especially at the beginning of a case, is not a viable option.  “Even though the attorney line is secure and confidential, the inmates are talking in a public place, there is so much yelling and background noise, they don’t feel secure and we can’t hear them. It’s impractical to have a confidential conversation,” Jansch says. Defense attorneys are held to high standards of effective representation, which include making personal contact with the clients, not just phone contact.

There will also be added costs to the state of transporting the male inmates down to Chittenden for court hearings. With more men at Northwest, and most of the pre-trial detainees who are in court frequently, it remains to be seen how those costs and the added strain on the Defender budget will weigh out against the federal rent money.

While Vermont taxpayers watch the impact on the bottom line, the Vermont Commission on Women, Vermont’s women legislators, and other advocacy groups will keep a weather eye on the future of Vermont’s female inmates.

“It is important for women’s organizations to monitor this all closely,” Love declares. “We will keep our ear to the ground and work hard with the community providers and if necessary be the voice that says this isn’t right.”

Love adds that the Vermont Commission on Women is not a service provider and is a state entity not responsible to any agency, which means “we don’t have to be careful of what we say out of fear of losing a contract or having to agree with the administration.

“If someone has to say the emperor has no clothes, we’re happy to do it.”