Tag Archives: Isaac Dayno

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

3 Replies

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.

Continue reading →

Was Nicholas Deml the Worst-Ever Hire by the Scott Administration?

1 Reply

I put the title in the form of a question, but based on what I’ve learned in recent days, there really isn’t much doubt about it: Nicholas Deml’s tenure as corrections commissioner was a complete disaster, and he leaves the department in a perilously weakened position going forward.

To recap, Deml was an outlier from the very beginning. The Scott administration normally promotes from within, and the Department of Corrections usually places a high value on seniority. Deml’s three predecessors*, Nicholas Michael Touchette, Lisa Menard, and Andrew Pallito, had each served many years in DOC. (Menard and Touchette began their corrections careers as prison guards and worked their respective ways to the top of the chain.)

*Not counting James Baker, who served as interim commish between Touchette and Deml. Baker didn’t have corrections experience, but he did bring a lengthy background in law enforcement leadership.

And then Deml was hired in November 2021 from a post with the Central Intelligence Agency. There was hope that as an outsider, he would instill a long-overdue culture change to the department. Despite his lack of corrections background, he must have had some great ideas, right?

Well, his four-and-a-half year tenure was marked by the sadly customary kinds of missteps and scandals. And then he quit in July, in a Friday afternoon newsdump, with less than three weeks’ notice and without any sort of immediate job prospects aside from a vague nod toward launching “an advisory practice to continue the work I care about most.” (More on that later.)

At the time, I wrote about the strangeness of his departure — and the complete lack of curiosity about it from our Pillars of the Fourth Estate. Knowing what I know now, I see nothing strange at all about his sudden bugout, and I’m even more perplexed at our media’s quick dismissal of the story. There is evidence aplenty that Deml’s tenure was disastrous. You don’t have to dig very far to uncover it, and you don’t have to work very hard to find former department officials willing to spill the beans.

Continue reading →