The House Corrections and Institutions Committee is seeking to make it a crime for Vermont Department of Corrections employees to have sexual contact with people under the department’s supervision, including those on probation, parole and furlough.
Department rules already forbid such conduct and state law prohibits the sexual exploitation of inmates and those under the direct supervision of an employee. But following a series of reports by Seven Days in December 2019 — including allegations that Corrections staffers had taken advantage of those within the system — Secretary of Human Services Mike Smith and an outside law firm recommended expanding the law.
The proposed change is part of a bill approved Friday by the corrections committee, H.435. It’s the first significant legislation to address the allegations surfaced by Seven Days, which centered on reports of sexual misconduct, drug abuse and retaliation at South Burlington’s Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, the state’s only prison for women.
The bill addresses — to a certain degree — most of the recommendations made in December 2020 by Downs Rachlin Martin, a law firm the state’s Agency of Human Services hired to investigate the allegations.
“It aims to create a better work environment for state employees and a safer place for people under the state’s custody and care, and also to create a more transparent oversight in monitoring our Department of Corrections,” said Rep. Sara Coffey, D-Guilford, vice chair of the committee.
The legislation, however, would not result in immediate action on many of the recommendations the law firm made. Instead, it would charge various committees and commissions with reviewing the recommendations before they became law. Among those provisions:
- A proposal to put body cameras on correctional officers would get extensive study from the Department of Corrections, with recommendations due to lawmakers next January.
- A proposal for more significant drug testing and polygraph examinations for corrections employees would be considered by the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee, with a report due in December.
- A proposal to set minimum training standards for correctional officers, and adopt a process for certification and decertification of corrections officers, would be studied by the Criminal Justice Council and the Department of Corrections. The Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee would hear those recommendations in December.
“Would I like to see it moving quicker? Yes. Am I surprised that it’s not? No,” said Jim Baker, interim commissioner of the Department of Corrections. “That doesn’t mean we’re not doing a lot of work at [Chittenden Regional] on other recommendations that were in the [Downs Rachlin Martin] report. This is just one of the pieces of that.”
Baker said the Legislature is often cautious on issues that involve people’s civil liberties, such as drug tests and polygraphs, and certification and decertification is a “very complicated issue” that requires a lot of time and effort.
The bill would establish an oversight commission for the Department of Corrections focused on addressing sexual misconduct within the system. It would consist of a former judge, attorney, corrections officer, incarcerated person, a management-level corrections employee, the current executive diretor of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and a person with experience in human resources.
The bill would also establish an internal Corrections Investigative Unit charged with investigating deaths, escapes, allegations of sexual misconduct and the movement of contraband in prisons.
Though several policy changes the committee contemplated were kicked down the road, Coffey said that the oversight panel, called the Corrections Monitoring Commission, would make a big difference. She said that other issues, such as mandatory drug testing of employees, needed more study due to how “complex and intertwined” they are with existing state and federal laws.
“We did not have the time needed to come up with clear policy here,” Coffey said. “We’re anticipating taking that up next year.”
What about staffing?
Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, said his members are “generally disappointed” by the bill.
“We have begged, begged and literally begged this committee and the administration to take the No. 1 problem in corrections seriously, which is the staffing crisis,” said Howard, whose union represents most Department of Corrections employees.
He said H.435 does nothing to address that and instead “attempts to shift blame for the culture in corrections to the frontline staff in a way that leaves out the most important part of who created the culture in corrections, which is management.”
According to Howard, it was VSEA members who first brought the problems at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility to management, but those employees were ignored. Meanwhile, he said, the people in power who created the problems have only been promoted.
Howard said VSEA members are “always supportive” of more robust hiring standards, but issues like drug abuse are “not widespread” in the department. What is, he said, is the massive amount of overtime exhausted employees are expected to clock.
“Every existing policy or federal law just needs to be enforced by management,” Howard said. “This is typical corrections. It adds more layers, more hoops to jump through for frontline workers and does everything we can do to not address the real problem.”
Coffey called it unfair to characterize the bill as targeting frontline workers rather than making higher-level systemic change. She said she thought the union’s preferred course of action would ignore sexual misconduct and drug abuse by correctional officers.
“I think these allegations are so serious, and the suggestion that we not do anything about it did not seem acceptable to me and other members of the committee, and that’s what VSEA seemed to be suggesting: for us to ignore the problem,” Coffey said.
According to Baker, the bill is “focused where it should be focused,” though he agreed with Howard that the department has a staffing challenge.
“We don’t have a problem recruiting people. We have a problem retaining people, and retention centers around culture in the organization,” he said. Baker said H.435 would result in cultural changes within his department that would certainly help with the staffing crisis, in addition to helping incarcerated Vermonters.
Advocates divided
Criminal justice advocates have mixed views on the legislation.
Falko Schilling, a lobbyist for the Vermont chapter of the ACLU, said the bill, as written, would be a “move in the right direction.” He said the ACLU isn’t opposed to anything in the bill, but time will tell whether it actually changes the culture within the department.
“It’s unfortunate that it’s taken this long to get to it, but lots of things happened in the interim that delayed the process,” Schilling said. “We think the business of changing the culture within DOC needs to be happening now; you can’t just wait for information from advisory committees. There needs to be work on the ground to address every single systemic issue.”
But Ashley Messier, executive director of the Women’s Justice and Freedom Initiative, said the bill puts too much emphasis on the possibility of drug testing and polygraphs and not enough on making fundamental changes to the staff. She called it a “far reach” to think that those measures could address the actual scope of the problem.
“Substance use or alcohol use is not a straight trajectory to sexually exploitative or assaultive behavior,” said Messier, who was previously incarcerated at Chittenden Regional. “This will address maybe 10% of the problem.”
More importantly, though, Messier said, the bill ignores what she considers a key recommendation in the Downs Rachlin Martin report: considering alternatives to prison.
“My concern is that this entire bill is incredibly focused on employees, and even on criminal prosecution of employees that violate this statute. What I do not see is what this is going to do for folks living at [Chittenden Regional],” Messier said. “The most important recommendation in that report was to look at and invest in community alternatives, and decarcerating these women.”
The corrections committee endorsed the bill unanimously on Friday but took additional testimony on the bill Monday and Tuesday. It’s next scheduled to go before the House Appropriations Committee, after which it could receive a vote on the House floor.
Read the story on VTDigger here: House panel seeks to outlaw sexual exploitation of parolees and probationers.