Tag Archives: CoreCivic

We Ought to Be Beyond Ashamed About Our Women’s Prison

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This, friends and neighbors, proud Vermonters, is the former gymnasium at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, a.k.a. the state’s only prison for women.

It was the gym until the prison got so overcrowded (130% capacity) that they had to convert it to a temporary shelter where (at last count) 24 inmates are sleeping on the floor in this appalling setting. Although I will admit the jigsaw puzzle is a nice touch, providing the thinnest veneer of hominess to this shitshow.

All of this is according to testimony delivered Monday to the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee by Isaac Dayno, executive director of policy at the state Department of Corrections. (Dayno’s slide deck can be downloaded here.) And this is only the newest outrage at CRCF, which has kept inmates in unsafe, unsanitary conditions for the better part of a decade. (For a dose of unfresh outrage, see Paul Heintz’ CRCF exposé, published by Seven Days in 2019. Or check out Heintz’ 2020 report on the facility’s showers providng a home to maggots and leeches and reeking of human waste.)

Dayno began his appearance by reporting his imminent departure from DOC, about which more below. In this light, his testimony can be interpreted as a not-so-subtle single-finger salute to the Phil Scott administration, which has failed to produce a solid proposal for upgrading or replacing the prison for, yes, the better part of a decade.

“We can do better,” Dayno told lawmakers. “The costs of inaction and apathy are quite high.” Hmm, remind me who’s been in charge of the situation since 2017? Phil Scott, that’s who.

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For the Second Time in Two Days, Our In-State Media Have Been Scooped on a Vermont Story by a National Media Outlet

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Yesterday, it was Politico stirring up a hornets’ nest in Vermont with its story about a trove of Young Republican Telegram messages that amounted to a dick-swinging contest over who could be the most offensive — including Vermont Sen. (for now) Sam Douglass. (Speaking of which, he is so far resisting universal calls for his resignation with what I can only describe as a “No one was driving, officer, we were all in the back seat singing” defense. Goddamn weasel.)

And today comes Grist.com with a story about wasteful spending by the state of Vermont in subcontracting part of its flood-response efforts. A story that might have been uncovered by one or more of our respected media operations, but oh well.

The story, entitled “How Vermont Lost Track of Millions in FEMA Flood Recovery Funds,” recounts how the state was apparently fleeced by its subcontractor. The consequences: federal aid didn’t go as far as it could have, and the feds might demand clawbacks from the state because of the apparent waste.

At a time when we don’t need to be giving the Trump administration any excuses to cut federal funding to a deep blue state.

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Do We Really Want to Be in Bed with CoreCivic?

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The Democratic Legislature is looking at ways to limit, or end, an agreement allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (and other federal agencies) to house detainees at Vermont prisons. There’s a real itch for action because, well, Donald Trump’s enforcement regime is so thoroughly toxic, from the masks and the unmarked cars to the rank unconstitutionality of it all.

No argument there. But if you object to our complicity in Trump’s crackdown, what about our ongoing relationship with CoreCivic, the for-profit prison operator that’s making a fortune off Trump’s regime*? If we don’t want to be part of an arbitrary and punitive immigration enforcement system, well, isn’t CoreCivic an enthusiastic participant? Haven’t the company’s fortunes shot through the roof because of Trump?

*CoreCivic’s stock price basically doubled right after Trump’s election and has held its value since then. In spite of the Trump-triggered stock market swoon.

For those just tuning in, Vermont contracts with CoreCivic to house some of our inmates in a private prison in Mississippi. We’ve been doing this for years, with one for-profit operator or another. We’ve been told that we just don’t have enough space in our own prisons.

That may have been true in the past, but now? The numbers simply don’t add up.

So let’s end the contract, stop sending our inmates 1,400 miles from everything and everyone they know, and stop enriching an evil corporation.

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If They Were Trying to Devise the Worst Possible Shelter Plan, Then Congratulations Are in Order

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Well, we suspected that the Scott administration’s plan to create new shelter space would be cheap and bad. But they have outperformed expectations, and that’s not a good thing.

The full plan will be unveiled Tuesday morning before the House Appropriations Committee, but the outlines have now been reported by Vermont Public and VTDigger — oh wait, they each published the same report by the same reporter. Sigh. Our press pool isn’t shallow enough, and now our two leading nonprofit news organizations can’t even produce their own original work? Gaah.

But I digress. The plan, as outlined in the identical stories with identical titles, is just a horrific mess. Inadequate in all respects. It’s of a piece with the administration’s — and the Legislature’s — approach to homelessness: It seems to be aimed at covering official asses than in actually addressing the problem. And covering them with a teeny-tiny fig leaf at that.

It is to be hoped that the Democratic majority in the Legislature rejects this plan outright and devises a robust alternative. Housing advocacy groups are working on their own plan, which may be out by the time you read this.

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Sending Inmates to an Out-of-State, For-Profit Prison Is a Choice, Not a Necessity

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Last month, the Vermont Department of Corrections signed a two-year contract to continue sending inmates to a for-profit prison conveniently located in Mississippi (a mere 21-hour, 1,400-mile drive from Montpelier. Great for family visitation, no?

The news filled my head with numbers and questions. The biggest is revealed in the above chart, provided by the Corrections Department: Vermont’s inmate population has plunged by nearly half since 2009, from a high around 2,400 to 1,331 (population average since January 2019 per DOC).

So if the prison census has dropped so dramatically, why can’t we keep all our inmates right here in Vermont?

Well, the short answer is, we probably could. Especially if we enacted some basic criminal justice reforms. But the Scott administration doesn’t take kindly to such ideas, and our Democratic Legislature tends to be extremely skittish about them. So, contract extension with everyone’s favorite prison profiteer, CoreCivic. Yay?

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Everybody’s Breaking Down the Door of the Emergency Housing Hall of Shame

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It’s been a bizarre week or so in Vermont politics, as Our Esteemed Leaders have just been falling all over each other trying not to address the imminent unsheltering of hundreds of Vermonters. (Which will happen on Thursday for those keeping track of such things.) They’re far more interested in positioning themselves and shifting blame than in crafting a humane and eminently doable way out of this mess.

Thursday is the day when some 800 households will lose eligibility for the motel voucher program that’s being allowed to expire for no good reason except, well, as Gov. Phil Scott likes to say, “It’s time.” Another 1,000 or so households will lose their places on July 1 or 29, depending.

The uncertainty stems from the governor’s deft sidestepping of the Democrats’ obvious ploy to trick him into signing the budget (spoiler alert: he vetoed the thing). In so doing, he managed to position himself to the left of the Democrats by allowing a ridiculous 28-day extension for some voucher clients. But not the ones about to lose their accommodations next week, no sirree Bob. The governor’s shift, which flies in the face of his previous insistence that the voucher program just absolutely had to end on schedule, was so hastily put together that this was how VTDigger summarized its impact:

It’s unclear how many people will receive the extra month of shelter. An actual breakdown was not available from state officials on Friday…

To put it another way, it’s just the latest Phil Scott clusterfuck on emergency housing. And yet, he’s in position to look like a hero — relatively speaking — not only for this inadequate extension, but also for the administration’s apparently precipitous issuance of an RFP for creation and staffing of up to 1,000 emergency shelter beds. The Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for their predicament.

Which leads us to the sad figure pictured above: former deputy secretary of state Chris Winters, seen here realizing that his soul is in a sealed jar on Jason Gibbs’ desk.

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Through a Monitor, Darkly

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More happy tidings concerning the much-ballyhooed “culture change” in the Vermont Department of Corrections in a VTDigger story about how state prisons are being reopened to visitors. The answer is slowly and incompletely, with strings attached. Unlike, say, the Scott administration’s policy toward the reopening of Vermont otherwise, which is to immediately remove all restraints.

The story also contains other tidbits that underscore the administration’s broader attitude toward inmates: that they don’t really deserve to be treated with dignity. There’s an undercurrent of “Inmates did something wrong and must be punished.” You see this over and over again in administration policy.

The DOC refused to prioritize inmates for vaccination, despite multiple outbreaks of Covid-19 inside our prisons. (Human Services Secretary made an absolute hash out of trying to explain that policy.) It put Covid-positive inmates into solitary confinement, which meant cruelly restrictive conditions normally reserved for the worst miscreants.

Now, the DOC is taking a go-slow approach to allowing visitors. “We want to make sure everybody is safe when we do this,” said Al Cormier, DOC director of operations. Gee, too bad that wasn’t the policy when inmates were made to wait their turn for vaccination even though they were demonstrably at high risk, and they could have been easily served because they’re all gathered in a handful of locations.

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