Inside Southern State Correctional Facility, where a pilot program to match support dogs with incarcerated veterans was tested in 2014. File photo by Phoebe Sheehan/VTDigger
Efforts are underway to restart a program that used to bring dogs into Vermont prisons as emotional support animals.
About five years ago, the Blue Star Mothers of Vermont opened applications for incarcerated veterans to interview for a program that sought to place emotional support dogs with inmates, staying with them full-time while they were behind bars to offer some support.
The plan was for professional trainers to come in twice a week to help the inmates learn how to handle the dogs. There was also regularly scheduled time for the animals to go outside and play.
In 2014, two inmates got dogs, one at the facility in Springfield and another in South Burlington. But after only a few weeks, the program was shut down after a few inmates suffered mild bites and one officer’s hand was “severely bitten.”
However, organizer Terri Sabens, who says the bites were avoidable, believes the program brings value to incarcerated Vermonters and is hoping that the state will resume it.
The idea of matching dogs with prisoners had considerable support, and there is interest from others in restarting it, including from Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“We all know that for certain offenders, 99% of whom are coming back out into the community, learning how to take care of an animal is really helpful,” Sears said last week of the program.
“It’s a win-win and it’s unfortunate that we don’t have it here,” he added. “We should be able to start it back up.”
But despite interest, which Sabens says she has heard from many inmates, restarting the program has been complicated, involving negotiations between the Department of Corrections, the Department of Human Resources and the union that represents state employees.
Mike Touchette, commissioner of the Department of Corrections, said the department is “open” to” the program’s return.
Touchette noted that the Department of Labor Relations, Department of Human Resources and the Vermont State Employees’ Association must go through a process called impact bargaining, where the involved parties sit down to discuss the risks and benefits of the program, as per VSEA request, before it can proceed. The DOC has put in the formal call asking for that process to begin.
According to Touchette, the union felt it should have been involved with the decision to begin the program before it was implemented the first time.
“The VSEA felt that the program should have been bargained before the initial implementation,” Touchette said. “With any future program, we have agreed to bargain this with the union.”
The VSEA declined to comment on the program in detail, but said it is involved in “ongoing work to represent its members.”
“The union is ready to work with management to promptly address health and safety issues or any other issues that may arise from this initiative,” Steve Howard, executive director of the VSEA, said in a statement.
In Sabens’ view, the obstacle to implementation of the program is the union.
“The problem is the union,” Sabens said. “The union won’t approve it.”
Sabens acknowledged that there were issues last time the program was implemented. But she said the problem with biting could have been avoided with better training — not just for the dogs’ handlers, but for all the people working in the prison.
“The problem wasn’t the inmates,” she said. “It was training the employees.”
She said one of the inmates who received a dog was clearly not a good candidate, after it was revealed that he’d “never even owned a cat before.”
But she said much more avoidable was the dog that bit the guard. She said a little training for that kind of situation could have stopped that from happening.
“He reached into the crate at 5 a.m., of course the dog was going to bite him,” said Sabens.
But since the program’s pilot, Sabens said they’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t.
Blue Star, which offers emotional support dogs to veterans around the state, was originally interested in providing service dogs instead, but they found that there were too many “fake” service dogs, which hadn’t gone through the full training. Instead, they opted for emotional support animals, which have lower training requirements.
Sabens said since most veterans have PTSD, it’s something that a lot of them can really use, especially when they’re behind bars. These dogs are also more able to interact with the other inmates than service dogs would be, because the rules for emotional support animals aren’t as strict as for their service animal counterparts, she said.
As far as who the good handlers were, Sabens said that the program ended up mostly interviewing people who had been convicted of murder.
“They were actually the best handlers,” she said.
Sabens said she’s been calling her DOC contact every few months to see if there’s any progress, though she said she’s almost given up hope. She’s most interested in seeing the program return to Newport, the facility that she said made the most sense because of the amount of space at the facility. But so far, she hasn’t had any luck.
“I even went as far as meeting with the governor,” she said. “But the responses I get are just, same old, same old.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Supporters seek to restart program that matches dogs with inmates.