A new law is designed to deliver permanent solutions to serious allegations about the state corrections department — allegations made more than a year ago, and affirmed in a report by an independent firm hired by the state.
Gov. Phil Scott announced Thursday that he had signed H.435, which overwhelmingly passed both the Senate and House.
“We spent a lot of time on that bill in my committee,” Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, chair of the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions, said Friday.
The goal of the legislation is to create safer conditions for both corrections staff and prisoners, she said.
Emmons pointed to the establishment of an internal corrections investigative unit, authorized to probe allegations that the Prison Rape Elimination Act was violated, and other major events that occur in the department, such as the death of a person in custody
“So that when there is potential sexual misconduct. there is a process in place,” Emmons said. “It’s really to help the functioning of the corrections department and its employees to be in a much safer and accountable environment.”
A proposal that corrections officers wear body cameras while on duty did not make it into the final legislation. Instead, Emmons said, $1 million was appropriated for body cameras for corrections officers, once the department sets policies on their use.
“We put language in to make sure that the body cameras would not be implemented or purchased until the policy was in place,” Emmons said. “The Department of Corrections is to report back to us next year with that policy.”
Other reforms in the legislation include outlawing sexual contact between state Department of Corrections employees and the people under the department’s supervision. That’s an expansion of current law, which bans employees from having sexual contact with those they directly supervise.
Also, the bill creates a Corrections Monitoring Commission that will promote anti-retaliation policies and advise the corrections commissioner on the reporting of sexual misconduct.
Two items that had been in an earlier version of the bill were removed at the urging of the Vermont State Employees’ Association. One called for using polygraph examinations for job applicants; the other was drug testing for employees.
The legislation does call on the Criminal Justice Council and the state corrections department to develop minimum training standards and a process for certification and decertification of corrections officers, and deliver a report to the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee by Dec. 1.
The legislation included some of the recommendations outlined in an investigation by the Downs Rachlin Martin law firm into the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, the state’s only women’s prison.
The state hired the firm to perform the investigation after a series of articles in December 2019 in Seven Days detailing allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct at the women’s prison.
The firm’s report, issued in December 2020, concluded that the allegations were largely accurate.
Vermont Defender General Matthew Valerio, whose department includes the state’s Prisoners’ Rights Office, said Friday he saw the bill as a positive step, even though items like drug testing of staff were removed from the legislation and were recommended by Downs Rachlin Martin.
“There’s now some oversight of the Department of Corrections that didn’t previously exist and a statutory mandated internal review process and mechanism that didn’t exist,” he said.
Valerio said he doesn’t expect the reforms to end with the passing of the bill.
“Change in the Department of Corrections has been an ongoing evolutionary thing,” he said, adding that the department will always be under intense scrutiny. “It’s part of what goes with doing that job.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Scaled-down corrections reform bill earns the governor’s signature.