The Vermont Department of Corrections is asking lawmakers for an additional $1.3 million to cover expenses for 48 inmates it didn’t expect it would have to house at a private prison in Mississippi this year.
In the current state budget, corrections officials only asked to pay for 225 beds at the facility in Tutwiler, Mississippi, where DOC began housing inmates in January.
But as DOC has worked to renovate some of its prisons this year, particularly Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, it has had to take dozens of beds offline, and hasn’t been able to find space to keep all of the inmates in Vermont.
Scott administration officials told the House Appropriations Committee this week that the department now needs funding for 273 beds at the Mississippi facility, which is owned by CoreCivic, a company that operates private prisons across the country.
Lawmakers on the committee are working on this year’s budget adjustment, which will be finalized in January.
Reducing the number of prisoners Vermont houses out-of-state has been a goal for lawmakers and state officials for years. But the number of inmates being held in Mississippi is now higher than it was when DOC moved them there about a year ago. At the time there were 234 in the prison.
Matthew D’Agostino, DOC’s chief financial officer, said that this year, the department had been hoping to use a facility known as the work camp in St. Johnsbury, which can house up to 106 inmates, to hold some of the inmates who had been displaced by recent construction.
The facility regularly has dozens of unoccupied beds, including about 35 this week. But using them has been more difficult for the department than expected.
About half of the beds in the work camp are reserved for low-level offenders who serve on work crews in the community to reduce their sentences.
However, because there are fewer low-level offenders in the prison system — largely because of programs to divert offenders from serving time behind bars — those beds can’t be filled.
The other beds in the facility can be used by inmates who are eligible for release, but lack adequate housing. There are about 130 inmates in Vermont’s prison system who lack approved housing, but could otherwise be released from prison.
But the town of St. Johnsbury has a contract with the department that limits who can be held in the work camp facility. Unless sex offenders are from Caledonia County, for example, they can’t be housed in the building.
“I think that the larger change here is our inability to use the work camp,” D’Agostino told lawmakers Tuesday. “That’s been a large part of the shift of not being able to house the out-of-state-population.”
In September, the department asked the St. Johnsbury Selectboard to allow more sex offenders to stay in the facility.
DOC Commissioner Mike Touchette told town officials that allowing more offenders in the building could help the state bring more of its inmates back from Mississippi and save taxpayer dollars.
He noted that the state pays almost double to hold an inmate out-of-state compared to in-state. In October, rates for housing inmates in Mississippi went up slightly, from $71 per day to $72.99, according to D’Agostino.
St. Johnsbury officials rejected the request, citing lack of transparency from the agency, which hadn’t sent reports to the town about its compliance with the work camp contract.
Rep. Mary Hooper, D-Montpelier, a member of the appropriations committee, said it was “deeply concerning” that Vermont continues to send inmates out of state, and that many inmates in Vermont are being held past their minimum sentences because they don’t have housing options.
“There are many levers that we could be pulling to be reducing the corrections population. We all need to agree on them and be willing to pull the lever,” Hooper said.
Rep. Chip Conquest, D-Wells River, a member of the appropriations committee said he would like the state to establish more transitional housing, so that the prison system could have more capacity to house those being held in Mississippi.
“I just wish there was a way for us to use the land we have, some of the resources we have to create something that’s not part of the prison system to help those people transition, and save the beds, those incarcerative beds, to bring those people back from out of state,” Conquest said.
Last year, Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, asked senators to come up with reforms to cut the state’s prison population by 250 by 2022, which would eliminate the need for the state to hold inmates out-of-state.
No major reforms were passed in 2019, but lawmakers in both chambers are expected to look at new strategies to cut the prison population in 2020.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Corrections officials seek $1.3 million to hold 48 more inmates out-of-state.