More than 250 Vermont prison inmates who have spent a troubled year in a Pennsylvania state prison appear likely to be moved to either Rhode Island or Mississippi by fall, according to a letter signed by Vermont Corrections Commissioner Lisa Menard.
Neither Menard nor Deputy Corrections Commissioner Mike Touchette responded to phone messages seeking comment Wednesday on a letter forwarded to VTDigger by Barry Kade, a private lawyer based in Enosburg Falls.
Kade has been among the most outspoken advocates about what he and others have seen as poor conditions for Vermonters housed at Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institute at Camp Hill, just west of the state capital of Harrisburg.
The Vermont Corrections Department first denied Kade’s request for the names of the bidders, made under Vermont’s public records law, Kade said. He then appealed the decision to the head of the agency, Menard.
“I believe there are circumstances where having the bidder(s) names revealed could be detrimental to the negotiation process,” Menard wrote in a letter to Kade dated Tuesday.
“However, in further researching this issue I have determined that the state prescribes a free and open bidding process and to this end the names of the entities that have submitted bids to house inmates out of state and the facilities they are offering are as follows:”
Menard then listed the two as:
CoreCivic of Nashville, Tennessee, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America. That private prison firm is offering housing to the Vermonters at its Tallahatchie County Correction Facility in northwest Mississippi.
Central Falls Detention Facility Corp., a private, nonprofit firm set up to run the publicly owned Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Vermont officials announced in February their intent to end the state’s contractual relationship with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections under which more than 260 Vermont inmates serving long sentences had been housed since last June. Pennsylvania uses the facility for intake of new inmates before they are given permanent placements in that state’s 25-prison system.
Pennsylvania apparently beat Vermont to the punch, however. In April, Touchette said it was the Keystone State that had formally given the required six months’ notice that the contract would be terminated.
Asked in an email Wednesday why Pennsylvania decided to end the arrangement with Vermont, Pennsylvania DOC spokeswoman Amy Worden replied that her department, “felt it was an appropriate time, as we evaluate our operations, that we review the contract and conclude our relationship” with Vermont.
The move came after months of complaints from Vermont inmates, prisoners’ rights advocates and inmates’ families about conditions at Camp Hill, which, with a capacity of 3,400 inmates, is larger than Vermont’s entire prison system.
VTDigger reported in November on the death of Vermont inmate Roger Brown, 68, of Newfane, whose medical complaints went untreated until he was diagnosed with state 4 metastatic lung cancer just days before his death in October.
Two other inmates who had been housed at Camp Hill died within the next several weeks, and several inmates wrote to VTDigger to complain of abusive conduct by prison staff.
Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, the union representing state workers including corrections staff, said Wednesday evening he was not impressed with the two bidders looking to house Vermont’s out-of-state inmates.
Neither the for-profit Core Civic facility in Mississippi nor the publicly owned but privately run facility in Rhode Island would be the best placement for Vermont prisoners, Howard said.
“We should be bringing prisoners close to home” in Vermont, Howard said, “in facilities that are run according to our values.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Two privately run prisons in running to replace Camp Hill.