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Reforms Fall Short of Mark for Female Offenders
On Friday, January 14th, the Department of Corrections (DOC) was over capacity by seventeen women, or more than ten percent. “We have had a five hundred percent growth in female incarceration in the last five years,” says Jill Evans, director of correctional services for women offenders (see Vermont Woman “Doing Time,” November 2004). “Windsor opened for women over a year ago, which increased our capacity, but we knew it was only a matter of time until that was filled.” The first phase of the reforms has six components; although some will affect female inmates, none were specifically designed to address their needs. Smith’s recommendations include: doubling the number of transitional housing beds from 75 to 150; building a second work camp; increasing funding for the Governor’s Drug Enforcement, Treatment, Education and Rehabilitation program (DETER); increasing funding for the Work Force Development programs; creating two pilot programs using global positioning systems (GPS); and an ongoing reorganization of the Agency of Human Services. Of the six reforms, the transitional housing will likely have the largest impact on women. “Given that there are a number of non-violent female offenders and we are trying to reserve our beds for those who have committed violent crimes, I would certainly expect women to benefit from the additional housing,” Smith says. According to Evans there are three requests for proposals currently pending that would create an additional twenty-four beds for women -- twelve in Burlington, and six each in Barre and Rutland. The numbers and locations were chosen based on the profiles of released offenders from the previous year, and of those likely to need housing in the coming months, she said. The recommendation to build a second work camp excludes women altogether. “They talk about work camps as a lower cost alternative to prisons -- but only for men,” Evans notes. “I’d be interested in finding ways to combine vocational training with restorative justice for women as well.” Smith told Vermont Woman he is open to the idea of accommodating women in a similar program sometime in the future. “It’s a very valid question that will get reviewed, but I haven’t been party to any specific discussions yet,” he said. Work camps are a unique form of incarceration because they are the only place where offenders earn “good time” off their minimum sentence. At the St. Johnsbury camp, men can earn a thirty-day reduction for every thirty days they successfully participate in the program. Men can cut their remaining sentences in half. “It is patently unfair that women are not provided with the same opportunity to reduce their sentence,” stated Senate Majority Leader John Campbell (D-REGION), after a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on prison regulations. “Anybody would rather be in a work camp.”
A secondary and more destructive effect of harsher sentencing for women, equally ignored by this first set of reforms, is how frequently female inmates permanently lose custody of their children. Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act passed by Congress in 1997, termination of parental rights proceedings are begun if children have been separated from their parent 15 out of 22 months. “Some states ‘stop the clock’ for the time that a woman is in prison, but Vermont interprets the law such that imprisoned women are judged to be physically absent,” Evans explained. Senator Campbell was unaware of this situation, and unhappy that the state was taking such a punitive attitude. “I would advocate for the ‘time out’ approach; we want to keep families together,” he said. “These women have committed a crime, and it has to be addressed, but what is the most humane way to do that without continuing the victimization process?” Campbell says he will look into the procedures used by the Department of Children and Family Services. Harsh sentencing, lack of safe and supportive transitional housing, and loss of custody are problems affecting female offenders, but these issues often get lost in the constant shuffling for open beds and looming budget battles at the Statehouse. “We are facing a $70 million hole in the budget as soon as we walk through the door, so we have to articulate how expanding programs will save us money in the long run,” Campbell said. Plans to open a separate mental health and medical ward at the Dale Correctional Facility in Waterbury this July will free up sixteen additional beds for the general population, but, “the progress we have made is not sufficient enough to impact the rate increase -- the numbers are still going up,” Evans reports. “Ultimately we will have to make a decision to house these additional women at a men’s facility, which would displace more men; or to start sending women out of state.” Mary Fratini is a freelance writer and photographer living in Montpelier and haunting the committee meetings on prison reform this session. For more on the issue of Vermont women in prison, see the Life Inside: Women in Prison in Vermont. A printer friendly version of this article is available. Vermont Woman is a forum for news, issues, features, arts and entertainment from the perspective, experience, and voices of Vermont women. Vermont Woman is a monthly newspaper published in South Burlington, Vermont and is excerpted here on this site. All content ©Copyright 2005, Vermont Woman Publishing |
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Last month, Governor Douglas accepted the first phase of prison reforms recommended
by Secretary of Human Services Charlie Smith. The continuing momentum for overall
reform of the correctional system threatens to obscure the increasingly precarious
situation of Vermont’s female offenders, who are now officially, and
consistently, overcrowded.
This first phase of reform overlooks other situations unique to women offenders,
including harsh sentencing and termination of parental rights. There is growing
anecdotal evidence of a gender-based disparity in both charging and sentencing
offenders. “Women seem to be getting disproportionately charged for crimes,
particularly violence against intimate partners; they are being brought in
for things like slapping and scratching,” Evans says. The Center for
Crime Victims Services is currently funding research at Norwich University
to analyze data by gender to determine if the statistics support those conclusions. “If
we find that there is a disparity, then we need to meet with the state’s
attorneys and court administrators to find a viable solution,” says Campbell.