Spend less on prisons, more on treatment?
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By DANIEL BARLOW Vermont Press Bureau - Published: January 17, 2008
MONTPELIER — Senate lawmakers unveiled a plan Wednesday to cut spending on Vermont's corrections system by closing a Waterbury prison and focusing more efforts on treating nonviolent criminals in local communities.
Four Democratic leaders of the Vermont Senate said their plan to restructure major parts of the state's prison system is still a work in progress, but that it could end up saving the state millions of dollars in a few years.
The proposal calls for the closure of Waterbury's Dale State Correctional Facility, the renovation of St. Albans' prison into a women-only facility, and using Windsor's prison as a home for low-risk offenders and those with drug or alcohol problems.
Senators said the cost savings would come from a new focus on treating nonviolent offenders with substance abuse issues in local communities, as opposed to sending them to one of the state's nine corrections facilities.
"We really need to reserve our prisons' beds for the violent offenders that we all agree need to be locked up," said Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, during a Wednesday afternoon press conference at the Statehouse announcing the new plan.
Vermont spends more than $130 million each year on its prison system — a number that has increased by double digits as the prison population increases, despite the state's crime rate remaining stable. Between 2000 and 2007, the Vermont Department of Corrections' budget grew 74 percent.
During that time period, the state has built two new prisons, launched a community work camp (a second work camp has been proposed and the state is now looking for a receptive community) and started sending some prisoners to out-of-state facilities.
But the growing cost of imprisoning people literally threatens to consume the state budget.
The Justice Center of the Council of State Governments released a report this month that estimated a growth of 23 percent in Vermont's prison population over the next 10 years — at the potential cost of $82 million to $206 million over what the state is spending now.
That group also presented a plan to lawmakers and Gov. James Douglas this month that would have the state invest in substance abuse programs in and out of the prison system and reduce the term lengths for inmates who do not violate probation.
That plan had a $2.7 million price tag, but estimates are that it would save between $5 million to $6 million annually.
Corrections Commissioner Robert Hofmann unveiled a slate of cost-cutting proposals in a report in December, which also included possibly closing one facility, increasing the caseload for probation and parole officers and using drug treatment programs across the state to reduce recidivism.
Hofmann said the plan proposed by lawmakers Wednesday was "very close to one of the proposals" the department suggested last month. All the proposals on the table have their own "pluses and minuses," he said, adding that the Douglas administration will reveal its own approach to the corrections crisis in the governor's budget speech next week.
"I think there is a strong consensus among lawmakers and other stakeholders that these recommendations are reasonable," Hofmann said. "Some have more cost savings than others, but all the options on the table may be viable in some way."
The plan unveiled Wednesday — which was supported by Sen. Susan Bartlett, D-Lamoille, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Richard Mazza, D-Grand Isle, vice chairman of the Senate Institutions Committee — is similar to one proposed by Sears toward the end of the legislative session last year.
Sears said this new effort is an expansion of what he jokingly called his "wacky idea" last year to close the Waterbury prison. This reworked plan now also focuses on placing the estimated 200-300 nonviolent inmates with substance abuse problems into residential and community programs to ease the bed crunch at the prisons, he explained.
"This is a new option for the state," said Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham. "If we continue to do what we do now, we'll be eaten as a state by this unsustainable growth."
One aspect that the senators had few details on Wednesday was the finances attached to the plan. Sears estimated that once the new substance abuse program in local communities were up and running, the state could see about $4 million annually in savings — about what it costs now to run the Waterbury facility.
But he and other supportive lawmakers said those savings wouldn't kick in until at least 2009 because the first-year savings from closing Dale would need to be funneled toward building that community substance abuse system. There also may be additional costs to upgrade and renovate the two other facilities, lawmakers said.
Bartlett, who as chairwoman of Senate Appropriations holds the purse strings for major projects, said she knows the proposal will ruffle some feathers. But this new approach is a work in progress and more details will be clarified through the legislative process.
"We expect to hear a lot of criticism, but we're pretty tough," she said. "We can take it."
Contact Daniel Barlow at daniel.barlow@rutlandherald.com.
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