Corrections quandary epitomizes Challenge
By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau – Published: April 19, 2010
MONTPELIER — No part of this year’s state budget better shows the difficulty of solving the problems facing Vermont government than the funding for Vermont’s prisons.
During nearly two decades, the number of Vermonters under Corrections’ supervision has skyrocketed, as has the cost of keeping them there, even as crime rates have been basically flat. As laws and sentences have gotten tougher, the number of Vermont inmates, whose housing makes them the most expensive of all those under state supervision, has gone up by 154 percent since 2009.
As the plan for the Challenges for Change government efficiency program puts it, “we have come to view incarcerated bed space as an unlimited resource — always available to meet an ever-expanding demand without regard to cost.”
The solution is simple: Reverse that trend by putting fewer nonviolent offenders in jail and releasing more of them sooner.
But that isn’t so easy to do, or to do quickly. And given the fiscal crisis brought on by declining state revenue over recent years, the Challenges for Change program is being counted on to reduce prison costs by about $10 million over the next year (although $3 million of that will need to be spent to increase transitional housing and other programs for former inmates).
Housing, a problem for many Vermonters, is even more difficult for those coming out of prison. There are now more than 150 inmates who have served their minimum sentences and could be released except they do not have housing awaiting them that the state deems appropriate.
The plan now making its way through the Statehouse would expand use of other kinds of punishments for nonviolent offenders, to keep them out of prison, expand furloughs and other types of release, and put money into housing and other programs to aid former inmates — with investments targeted to municipalities with the highest numbers of offenders. For instance, the measure expands house arrest (with electronic monitoring) for some pretrial detainees who would otherwise be taking prison space.
“We are not going to release anybody in any of these proposals without thinking about their risk,” said Andy Pallito, the state’s Corrections commissioner. “We are still the safest state in the country.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Bennington Democrat Richard Sears, has been working this year on a bill to reduce the number of those jailed after being convicted of nonviolent crimes. That bill dovetails with the Challenges for Change goal of reducing by more than 300 the 2,300 Vermonters now incarcerated.
But Sears does not think the entire $10 million of savings planned for in Challenges can be achieved without a dramatic and risky change — for instance, closing one of the state’s prisons and sending more offenders out-of-state, or releasing some inmates who should not be out.
There are proposals, including in the Judiciary version of the Corrections bill, which may be able to save as much as $5 million.
“I don’t believe we can go further than that and still protect public safety,” he said. Even proposals which appear simple on their face — like closing the Windsor work camp — can have unintended costs, Sears pointed out. That work camp is one of the only places in the prison system where inmates can earn “good time” off their sentences, which means if it was closed those offenders would spend more time inside.
That will mean that the balance of the savings counted on for the prison portion of the Challenges efficiency effort may have to be found in the rest of the state budget, Sears said.
Add to the other worries the fact that some cities, including Rutland, Barre, St. Albans, Winooski and St. Johnsbury, already have disproportionately large numbers of Vermonters under Corrections supervision within their borders, along with the courts, probation and parole offices and other services they use. Then the problem gets even trickier.
As the House approved the Challenges for Change proposal last week, Rep. Paul Poirier, a Barre City independent, successfully asked for a measure that could limit the number of those released who go to those communities, but the measure could also prevent some inmates from being released at all, and therefore perhaps limit how much money is saved.
Poirier’s amendment would apply only to those released from prison, rather than those under Corrections supervision who have not been incarcerated. And, despite the measure, the Corrections commissioner could still release such offenders to those cities with a large portion of offenders living in them (more than 2 percent of the population) if the inmate being released has family or “other connection” to that community.
Still, the measure could mean that some offenders will stay in jail, Poirier acknowledged.
“Clearly there won’t be as many people put out as fast as the state wanted,” he said. “It is going to slow the process down, but I think in the long run it will make it more equitable.”
Not everyone thinks Poirier’s change is a good one. There is a good reason that offenders are housed in cities with courts and Corrections services, said Matthew Valerio, the state’s defender general. And there is a benefit to those cities as well in the form of state workers living and working there, Valerio said.
“People seem willing to take the economic benefit from Department of Corrections,” he said. “Those areas employ hundreds of Corrections workers. They own houses in those communities, they pay taxes in those communities.”
Before becoming the head of indigent defense for the state, Valerio, who lives in Proctor, had a law office in Rutland, one of those communities with many parolees. “It literally never occurred to me” that having Corrections offices and courts in the city was a bad thing, he said.
But although Barre fought to have the court located there 30 years ago, he wonders if that was the right decision for the city, Poirier said.
“The impacts outweigh the benefits, to me,” Poirier said. “If they had to do it all over again they would not want the courthouse,” he said.
That portion of the Poirier amendment dealing with municipalities in which many former inmates live may also, if it becomes law, make the work of his department more difficult, said Pallito, the Corrections commissioner. Corrections has traditionally been given the job of telling offenders where they can’t live — for instance sex offenders generally cannot live near schools – rather than where they can live, Pallito said.
“I suspect we are going to have to report back … that we are holding people because we can’t release them to a community” if that measure becomes law, he said.
Overall, the Corrections part of the Challenges for Change effort embodies the difficulties in the entire process, which is intended to save nearly $40 million total.
“In many ways it is the hardest piece,” said Tom Evslin, who is in charge of the restructuring plan for Gov. James Douglas. “It is such an emotional issue.”
But it also offers the chance of improving how state government works, Evslin said. Lawmakers have rejected many of the ideas for lowering the cost of Corrections, but those ideas that remain have been strengthened, Evslin said. For instance, there is now a greater emphasis on keeping offenders whose crimes may not warrant incarceration out of jail, rather than simply thinking about how to get those in jail out, Evslin said.
Ultimately, although the details can become tremendously complex, reducing prison costs comes down in rough terms to two simple options, said Alice Emmons, the Springfield Democrat who heads the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. Either fewer offenders go in, or more come out. And so lawmakers and administration officials are trying to do both — while still making sure there is still room there for those who should be in prison.
louis.porter@rutlandherald.com
