MONTPELIER, Vt. — Building a new facility with 125 to 150 beds to replace Vermont’s outdated women’s prison will take at least six years to become a reality, lawmakers said Friday, and cost $50 million to $60 million.
The state’s current capital budget for all new construction is around $62 million a year.
Members of the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions expect to get a feasibility and conceptual design study on March 5, outlining the various proposals for what a future correctional facility for women in Vermont might look like.
The current women’s prison — the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility — has for years been notorious for unsanitary conditions, with showers reportedly reeking of human waste, and infested with sewer flies and maggots.
A lawsuit last October over those conditions was dismissed by Judge Samuel Hoar, who ruled that the conditions were bad, but did not warrant a court injunction.
However, conversations about the prison’s conditions prompted lawmakers to focus on the need for a new prison for women incarcerated in Vermont.
Among the top proposals are:
■A new standalone women’s prison.
■A campus that houses both a new women’s prison and a re-entry program.
■A much larger multipurpose correctional facility that could house all incarcerated Vermonters.
Jeremy Stephens, design chief for the Department of Building and General Services said so far, the state’s financial projections have focused mostly on a strictly-women facility, as plans for a multipurpose facility would put too many potential factors on the table.
“I know that there’s a lot of support for doing a re-entry program facility for the women … and I think that’s the direction we’re ultimately going to go,” said Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, who chairs the committee. “You’re going to need some beds for women for an incarcerated need, and you’re going to need another building on the same campus for the re-entry program, and you may have to do the same thing for men as well.”
Whatever option lawmakers choose, the facility probably won’t look like any of Vermont’s current prisons, said Alan Cormier, facilities director for the Vermont Department of Corrections.
“I’m hoping it’s going to look more like a college dorm than a jail,” he said.
The next steps would be spending an estimated $500,000 on planning and programming for the model selected from the feasibility study, and $1 million for property search and assessment, Stephens said.
Officials said the design and size of the new facility should be finalized by fiscal year 2023.
Then, said Erik Filkorn, principal assistant with the Department of Buildings and General Services, the state can start looking either at a property it already owns or a location to buy.
Filkorn said the state will have to consider factors such as geography, proximity to courts, and transportation when thinking about the location.
However, the plan to build a new prison — of any design — does not have all-around support. Advocates say one major alternative is missing from the conversation: not building a new prison at all.
Solutions that don’t include building a massive, multimillion-dollar prison have been totally missing at the legislative level, said Ashley Messier, executive director of the Women’s Justice and Freedom Initiative, and once a resident at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility.
During the pandemic, with the state trying to discharge as many Vermont prisoners as possible, the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility has had about half as many residents as the year before, with no detrimental effect to public safety.
“And many more people currently in CRCF could be safely supervised in the community,” Messier said. “How do we know what we need to build for? If we build a new facility, whether it’s part of a campus or a standalone building, those are still beds we need to fill, and in order to generate money to keep those facilities going, they’ll fill those beds.”