Vermont lawmakers are getting some outside help to drill into why the number of detainees in the state is growing.
Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito alerted lawmakers last week that the number of people held while awaiting trial had climbed to 458, putting the Chittenden Correctional Facility on the verge of overflow. Monday, the Corrections Oversight Committee, a group of state senators and representatives that convenes over the summer, received a deeper overview of the situation. It also got an offer of help.
The Justice Center, an arm of the Council of State Governments, which conducts nonpartisan research for states, volunteered to dig into the data on Vermont’s detainee population and lawmakers are hoping their work will shed light on the problem.
Jessy Tyler, the Justice Center’s research manager, told the committee that Vermont isn’t alone. The center has documented the same trend in states such as Hawaii, where they traced the problem to an increase in the average length of stay for detainees.
The center will look at whether the number of arrests is increasing, changes in the time needed to dispose of a case and whether there are more nonresident detainees in the system, among other possible causes.
When detainees enter a correctional system, it can create a domino effect, prompting the DOC to send other inmates out of state to make room for them. That can be disruptive for those inmates and their families, and Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, says that’s one of the things about the detainee numbers that gives him pause.
Under Sears’ direction, the Corrections Oversight Committee will consider two approaches to the detainee problem. They’ll look at the costs associated with building a centralized detention facility, and they will look at the possibility of incorporating a 24-hour monitoring system into the state’s home detention program. That program has rarely been used, in part because judges have been concerned about the limitations of the technology being used.
But while lawmakers seek answers on the detainee situation, another player on the criminal justice scene says the high number of detainees shouldn’t distract the state from a perennial problem at the opposite end of the correctional system.
Vermont Defender General Matthew Valerio said he doesn’t find the rise in detainee numbers all that perplexing — he attributes it to an increase in felony charges, which, he said, can be traced to two recent drug sweeps in Springfield and Bennington.
“I don’t think you can look at the detainee population in a vacuum. What you’re really talking about is prison population as a whole. The detainee population is the one we like to talk about because at that point of the process, these people haven’t been convicted,” Valerio said. “Frankly, they are probably looking at the wrong end of the system.”
If the state is looking to create space in its correctional system, the opportunity lies in clearing up congestion at the back end, Valerio said.
The state’s ability to reduce its detainee population is “probably minimal” by Valerio’s estimation. Judges generally have very good reasons for keeping people behind bars before their trial, Valerio said. “I’m sure the public isn’t clamoring to have detained people released,” he added.
The system has more sway, he argues, over a different group of incarcerated people — the roughly 190 people who have completed their sentence, but can’t find housing.
That number has stayed constant in recent years, despite efforts to expand transitional housing for offenders.
Pallito says there are DOC staff who focus specifically on helping this group find housing, but their efforts are often thwarted. “In many instances though, these are cases with complications such as numerous previous failed attempts at re-entry, complicated victims issues, etc.”
Valerio diagnosed the problem differently. He said community resistance is part of the problem, but he also suggested that the DOC could afford to loosen its criteria for what constitutes acceptable housing.
Sears says that the housing problem is very much on his radar as well.
Right now, though, the inflow of detainees is forcing lawmakers to re-evaluate a goal they set three years ago.
In 2010, the Legislature decided the state should reduce its detainee population to 300. That benchmark seemed workable — there were only about 325 people in detention at the time — but it’s been slipping further out of reach recently, which has Sears wondering if it’s time to discard that goal.
“Perhaps the 300 number was unrealistic and we’re going to hang around 400 and to prepare for that,” Sears said.
The detainee numbers cancel out progress the state has made in reducing its general prison population. The rest of that population has actually declined 8 percent since 2008, but a 26 percent increase in the detainee population, means that overall population has only gone down 2 percent.
Correction: Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, is chair of the Corrections Oversight Committee. An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the chair.