Gov. Phil Scott’s administration is proposing that Vermont contract with a private company to build a 925-bed correctional facility in Franklin County.
Calling it a “10-year vision,” Secretary of Human Services Al Gobeille emphasized that the complex would be constructed gradually over the course of a decade.
Legislators asked the Agency of Human Services to come up with a plan to address the state’s aging correctional facilities as well as shortcomings with its mental health care system. The recommendation is in a report from administration officials to legislators.
The facility would house male and female offenders, including those with mental health diagnoses.
Its construction would cost roughly $140 million, according to the agency’s estimates. A private company would build the facility and then lease it to the state.
Scott’s communications director, Rebecca Kelley, said the governor supports the “vision” laid out in the report and “recognizes there’s a lot of work to do to make it a reality.”
The project would replace the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington and the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans. Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center would close. The new facility would eliminate the need to send Vermont prisoners out of state, according to the report. The report suggests that the facility could save the state money over a 20-year period.
The House Committee on Corrections and Institutions will discuss the matter at a Statehouse hearing Tuesday.
“We’re going give the report a full vetting and we’ll do our due diligence,” said chair Rep. Alice Emmons (D-Springfield). “It’s going to be a long conversation.”
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No private contractors involved in incarceration, unless they’re incarcerated. And in the private prison industry, most of them deserve to be in their own jails.
This is a bad idea for so many reasons, not least of which is that for-profit prisons are immoral.
I wondered when Scott’s republicanism would surface and how.
The very idea of for-profit prisons is antithetical to what Vermont is. Vermont is not about shareholders in other states profiting off of the misery of incarcerated Vermonters. Vermont is not about the state agreeing to occupancy quotas, which these for profit prisons are notorious for, thus incentivizing the state to incarcerate more people.
Governor Scott needs to be pressed hard until he absolutely repudiates this idea.
Youd be able to release many if you redo all of Christina Rainville cases in Bennington County! She built many cases here with the help of a lot of corruption of dcf and such! Over sentencing for those who were guilty also .. some should be incarcerated for crimes that arent ! I travel to Pa to see my loved one! Why we pay these States is beyond me.. but most of them treat our inmates better and some .. Vermonters die with little explanation of why:( Im mixed emotioned on this matter but will continue to listen .. ACLU is our last chance to freedom for these inmates! Thank you
Private industry making a profit from keeping people in cages for alleged “crimes” that harmed absolutely no one, is the last statement I would apply to the word “Vision”. Turning people into criminals with unconstitutional “statutory law” is becoming way, way too profitable for the BAR association mob and their cronies. Courts are being run like revenue collection (extortion) mills, being fed by an ever increasing police force that doesn’t work for the communities they are sworn to serve.
Doing the math based on FY2015 stats, this adds a net 300 beds to the VT incarceration system, assuming all out-of-state prisoners are brought back home.
Meanwhile, the prisoner population has been trending downward. (Per the VT DOC’s own statistics)
This isn’t to save money.
http://www.doc.state.vt.us/about/reports/f…
This scam is being foisted upon Vermont by a for-profit prison company. Any review of their operations over the last three decades would make it clear that hiring them, an outfit whose employees have to sue in major class actions to get paid legal wages, who abuse and even kill inmates, who get paid for specific services then concoct documentation to make it appear that they were doing their jobs, who have bribed a long train of public officials with cash and quids pro quo, would know better than to deal with them. It would be like hiring the mafia to deal with the shoplifting at your store.
Their business model is larceny, purely and simply. The state has been contracting with them for decades and should have learned its lesson long ago.
“Why close the one in St Albans? It is hard enough for the visitors to make it there let alone Franklin county!”
Seriously?
Where do you think St. Albans is?
“Where and why in St. Albans ?”
Seriously?
Where and why would you guess? Take a wild guess. It’s not difficult.