Block J at the Camp Hill prison in Pennsylvania is where Vermonters are being housed. File photo by Jasper Craven/VTDigger
All 269 prisoners were in the custody of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections by 3:30 Monday afternoon, according to Mike Touchette, director of facility operations for the Vermont DOC.
The Vermont inmates are now being held in a 3,272-bed prison in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Most of them will be housed in their own unit, Block J, away from the rest of the prison population.
Some prisoners were moved from Michigan to Pennsylvania by air, on flights that took about 90 minutes, according to Touchette. Others were moved by ground transport, about a 10-hour journey.
The move came two days before the end of Vermont’s contract with the operator of the Michigan prison, the GEO Group. Vermont inmates have been housed at Northlake Correctional Facility near Baldwin, Michigan, since June 2015.
Late last year, the GEO Group told Vermont state officials that the company would not extend the contract when it expired. The few hundred Vermont inmates were the only ones at the facility with a capacity of 1,000. Meanwhile, prices for beds in private prisons were climbing nationally amid an anticipated increase in immigration detainees in the early phase of the Trump administration.
In May, Vermont officials finalized an agreement to house inmates in the Pennsylvania prison system.
As inmates adjust to the transition, Vermont Department of Corrections staff will be on the ground in Pennsylvania over the next few weeks to assist, according to the department.
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