Vermont DOC Practive of Imprisoning People After Rejecting Parole Plan

The Vermont Department of Corrections’ (VDOC) process of reviewing prisoners’ post-prison accommodations plan is the subject of a prisoner’s lawsuit alleging VDOC abuses its discretion in denying prisoners release after rejecting their plans.

The suit was brought by Wendy Pelkey-Grant, who was scheduled to be released in October 2013 after serving the minimum on her six to fifteen-years sentence. Pelkey-Grant is a violent offender based on a voluntary manslaughter charge for killing her abusive husband.

With her release looming, VDOC’s regional office began analyzing Pelkey-Grant’s release accommodation plan. Based upon information from that office, her daughter used her own savings to secure a two-bedroom apartment in West Rutland. A probation officer gave a favorable report and VDOC gave preliminary approval.

“He said he thought it was perfect for her to come live with us,” testified Alyssia Pelkey. Then, VDOC received a victim complaint about Pelkey-Grant living in her home town of Rutland, and it rejected her release plan.

“It felt like we were being toyed with a little bit because we don’t have any money to pay people to look into it for us or anybody in our family who is important,” said Alyssia in an interview. “We don’t have any leverage, and they could do whatever they wanted.”

Pelkey-Grant filed suit, and the court held a hearing. Advocates say that the perception is VDOC is too quick to end a prisoner’s housing plan. “That’s the opinion of people in jail, that they’re being denied for arbitrary reasons,” said Suzi Wizoswaty, a former state lawmaker who heads Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. “Many of them do have potential housing options that would take them.”

VDOC’s decision to keep Pelsky-Grant in prison means taxpayers will continue paying $58,000 annually to imprison a woman eligible for release, but for an approved residence. There are about 241 prisoners, about 10 percent of VDOC’s population, being held beyond their release date for this very reason.

The irony here is that VDOC is so overcrowded that it pays $17 million annually to house up to 660 prisoners in private prisons in Kentucky and Arizona. Those prisons are owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). VDOC Commissioner Andy Pallito told a legislature committee that he would immediately release prisoners with rejected housing plains if he were ordered to end the CCA contract.

In 2014, a Vermont state court held it is unconstitutional to send just male prisoners out-of-state. See: Carpenter v. Pallito, 2014 Vt. Super. LEXIS 52 (Vt. Super. Ct. Aug. 13, 2014). VDOC subsequently decided it would not appeal that decision. Housing prisoners far from home is a bad idea.

Grassroots Leadership, a social justice group, released a report, Locked Up & Shipped Away: Paying The Price for Vermont’s Response to Prison Overcrowding, that found, as the state court did, that housing prisoners in out-of-state prisons cuts ties between prisoners and families. The report said the effect is increased recidivism.

The Vermont legislature mandated VDOC to reduce its current recidivism rate of 41 percent, which is down from recent years, to 30 percent by 2017.

“Residence is a direct corollary to recidivism,” said Pallito, “We do have a lot of factors that I recognize. I also recognize that we have a recidivism mandate we need to get to.”

The VDOC is stuck in a prison-industrial-complex rut; it uses privatization to ease overcrowding caused by keeping prisoners incarcerated for longer periods, even when release is an option.

Sources: sevendaysvt.com; Associated Press; vtdigger.org

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