At a time when Vermont communities need resources to address housing insecurity, mental health, and the opioid epidemic, the Scott administration has proposed a major expansion of the state prison system through construction of a multimillion-dollar prison complex. This proposal ignores the very real opportunities we have to expand more effective and lower-cost community-based solutions through investments in people, not prisons—and the fact that 4 in 5 Vermonters support the use of alternatives to incarceration.
Incarceration trends in Vermont: 1986 to 2022
Policymakers have succeeded in reducing our prison population by about 40% from its peak over a decade ago. Evidence-driven policy choices identified and enacted via Justice Reinvestment Initiatives I & II and decarceration efforts made in response to COVID-19 have meaningfully reduced our overreliance on incarceration. But there is more work to be done.
Understanding Vermont's prison system
65% of the 1,358 people held in Vermont's prison system have either not been convicted of a crime and are being detained pre-trial, or they have already served their minimum sentence but are being held past their minimum release date.
Some of the people who are detained pre-trial are held on cash bail, a policy known to perpetuate racism and classism—so much so that Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George ended the use of cash bail in Vermont's largest county in 2020, and the legislature has considered S.27, a bill that would eliminate cash bail for misdemeanors. We hope to see this bill expand in scope so that people are only held pre-trial based on if they present a danger to the community, not how much money they have or which county they live in.
Racial injustice in Vermont's prisons
People of color, and especially Black people, face significant racial injustices throughout our criminal legal system. This includes in rates of incarceration.
A study of 2019 data showed that compared to white people, Black people were:
- 3.5x more likely to be defendants in a misdemeanor case
- 5.9x more likely to be defendants in a felony case.
Furthermore, despite using drugs at similar rates, Black people in Vermont were 14.6x more likely to be defendants in a felony drug case compared to white people between 2014-2019.
The Division of Racial Justice Statistics, created by the legislature in 2022, should help policymakers better understand and address the racial disparities embedded within our criminal legal system.
Our overreliance on incarceration is expensive
Proposals to expand Vermont's prison system under consideration by the legislature are projected to exceed $500 million. Each additional prison bed is expected to cost the state $800,000 to $900,000. These "one-time" costs are tied to long-term expenses, and come despite clear evidence that both victims and offenders are served more effectively and at a lower-cost when we utilize community-based alternatives to incarceration. The prison proposal before the legislature includes plans to expand the capacity of our prison system far beyond current needs. This is based on an unnecessary assumption that we will incarcerate more Vermonters—rather than fewer—in the future and fails to take into consideration the opportunity to reduce our overreliance on incarceration through smart policy reform.
Savings generated through decarceration and increased use of community-based sentencing could be re-invested in education, job training programs, affordable housing, mental health treatment, and more—which are also investments that strengthen our communities and reduce crime. Planning to spend millions of dollars expanding the footprint of our prison system without considering lower-cost and more effective alternatives to incarceration is fiscally irresponsible and threatens the great progress our state has made towards building safer, connected communities that rely on prisons only as a last resort.
It is critical that you make your voice heard on building a smarter, more humane justice system
Before committing millions of taxpayer dollars to new prison construction, legislators should answer three critically important questions:
1) What alternative, lower-cost, community-based facilities and re-entry programs could serve the majority of Vermont's incarcerated population sooner and better than this proposal?
2) What impact could further criminal justice reforms have in reducing incarceration and recidivism rates, therefore reducing the need for costly additional bed space in state prisons?
3) What else can be done to meaningfully improve the lives of incarcerated people today?
We can build a smarter, fairer, and more humane criminal justice system in Vermont - spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a bigger prison is not the answer. Contact your legislator and urge them to invest in people, not prisons.