Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
The state pays to incarcerate 117 Vermonters in a Mississippi prison owned by one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the country. Lawmakers, prompted by a new bill, are again considering whether that practice is ethical — and, if it isn’t, what to do.
The bill, now on pause for the year in a committee room, would end contracts between the Department of Corrections and any private or for-profit entity operating a correctional facility.
In an April 3 committee meeting lawmakers discussed not only the bill but also the ethics at play in sending Vermonters down south. Imprisoning people out of state makes it harder for them to visit with family, talk to legal counsel and ensure they’re given the treatment guaranteed by Vermont law.
Lawmakers and department officials agree it isn’t ideal to imprison Vermonters out of state, but they say bringing them back would put in-state prisons dangerously over capacity.
The state’s caught “between a rock and a hard place,” Rep. Troy Headrick, I-Burlington, the bill’s lead sponsor, told Community News Service.
Some lawmakers object to the principle of for-profit prisons. Many expressed weariness about the values of CoreCivic, the company that owns and operates the Mississippi prison.
CoreCivic is one of the largest private corrections companies in the country and operates about 80 facilities. The Mississippi prison where Vermonters are sent, Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, houses over 2,500 inmates and is over 1,300 miles by car from Burlington.
The 117 Vermonters serving sentences there live among themselves in their own unit, said Haley Sommer, spokesperson for the department. They’re usually serving lengthy sentences and less likely to need long-term health care or mental-health services. There are a number of employees whose sole job at the department is to oversee the state’s contract with CoreCivic, Sommer said. Those employees head south every few months to meet with incarcerated Vermonters in person, she said.
Still, lawmakers in the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions have ethical qualms. Rep. Conor Casey, D-Montpelier, read aloud a statement from CoreCivic’s CEO during the April 3 meeting. The executive called President Donald Trump’s deportation initiatives “truly one of the most exciting periods” in the company’s history.
“I think it’s below contempt,” said Casey, referencing CoreCivic’s company attitudes.
Vermont could build “a mega-prison with 1,000 beds” if it wanted to, he said. “And we could do it for dirt cheap, you know? But we don’t do that because people would be disgusted, and I think they should be disgusted.”
Most lawmakers there seemed to agree that in principle, the state shouldn’t contract with for-profit prisons. But many expressed skepticism that the timeline of the bill was reasonable given the state’s limited resources.
Lawmakers’ ethical concerns about private prisons are shared by Kathy Fox, a sociologist retired from the University of Vermont who has expertise in corrections.
“Those companies have a vested interest in policies that keep people incarcerated and to cut corners where they can” because they’re financially motivated to do so, said Fox, who opposes for-profit prisons. Those values don’t align with Vermont’s, she said.
Under the bill, effective July 1, the Department of Corrections would neither “negotiate nor execute” contracts to send people to out-of-state prisons unless those facilities are run by a public or nonprofit entity.
By January 2030, any existing contracts would be axed or amended to comply with the new law. The bill would also bar the department from using rehabilitative, educational, health care or “other support services” provided by a private or for-profit entity.
That would mean the phasing out of contracts with CoreCivic, the corrections health care provider Wellpath and other companies that run programming in prisons
“Obviously, it’s not Vermont’s preference to house individuals in an out-of-state facility,” Sommer said, but there simply isn’t the capacity to keep people in state.
Research shows that distance between family and prisons corresponds to fewer visitations, Fox said. Research also demonstrates that prison visitation reduces misconduct and has a host of benefits for when an individual re-enters the community after serving their sentence, she said.
“I doubt any state thinks it’s ideal,” said Fox, noting she’s only aware of a few states that imprison a significant number of people out of state. At least two other states, Montana and Texas, send incarcerated people to the same Mississippi facility.
Headrick said he recently received a letter from a Vermonter incarcerated in Mississippi. That man wanted to come back to Vermont to be closer to his aging parents, Headrick said.
Last year two Vermonters died in the Mississippi prison within two months.
In recent years Vermont prisons have been filled by a record number of detainees due to longstanding court backlogs. Vermont’s facilities are old and hard to renovate, said Sommer. And the corrections industry is seeing a staffing shortage nationally that’s hit Vermont too, she said.
To bring back everyone in Mississippi would put Vermont’s prisons at 135% capacity, Sommer said. And overcrowding combined with understaffing affects the wellbeing and safety of both incarcerated people and staff, said Fox, the sociologist.
Sommer told lawmakers in the April 3 meeting that it would be “dangerous” to bring those people back without re-evaluating sentencing laws. Moves to reform or defund the state’s carceral system can make it harder to do a dignified job of serving people in custody, Sommer told lawmakers.
The committee decided to table discussions on the bill for now. The state has already begun a survey of Vermont’s prisons that will propose avenues for returning incarcerated people. That survey’s due November 2026.
Headrick said he wishes legislators had more appetite for restorative justice practices that put fewer people in prison. But the bill’s ambitions seemed far-fetched to the committee as a whole — plus, it’s cheaper for the state to incarcerate people in Mississippi.