Vermont

Overview Implementing the Strategy Media Coverage Publications & Maps

Step 1: Analyze Step 2: Provide Step 3: Quantify Step 4: Measure

Step 2: Provide policymakers with options to generate savings and increase public safety.

On January 9, 2008, the Justice Reinvestment Working Group convened a policy forum in the State Capitol to review an initial set of policy options. State officials, including the governor, chief justice, and legislative leaders, attended the policy forum to review these options and consider strategies for future implementation.

At the recommendation of the Working Group, state policymakers adopted several of the Justice Center’s policy options, and in May 2008, the Vermont Legislature approved, and Governor Jim Douglas signed into law, House Bill 859, “An Act Relating to Increasing Substance Abuse Treatment, Vocational Training, and Transitional Housing for Offenders in Order to Reduce Recidivism, Increase Public Safety, and Reduce Corrections Costs” which included:

the closing and reorganization of several prisons and the establishment of a new 100-bed work camp for male offenders with substance abuse treatment needs;
the establishment of pilot screening and assessment processes prior to sentencing and prior to release from prison to identify people who are appropriate for treatment and diversion programs;
the expansion of the Intensive Substance Abuse Treatment Program, a diversion program that provides intensive community supervision, to include a residential treatment option;
steps to improve the supervision of high risk offenders, which policymakers estimated should reduce by 10 percent the number of people under community supervision returned to prison:

– establishing caseload caps for community corrections officers and assignment of supervision levels as based on the severity of offense and the risk to reoffend;

– requiring judges to limit conditions of probation supervision to those that require rehabilitation, increase pro-social behavior, and reduce risk to public safety;

– authorizing corrections officials to use electronic monitoring for people placed on conditional reentry, furlough, parole, or probation supervision;

– creating an administrative probation program, a form of no-contact supervision, for people convicted of certain nonviolent misdemeanors who pose a low risk of harm to the public; and

expanding transitional housing and job training programs to reduce costly and unnecessary delays for people entering the reintegration program and to reduce their recidivism upon release by 10 percent.⁸

Step 3: Quantify »

Vermont Legislature, House Bill 859, “An Act Relating to Increasing Substance Abuse Treatment, Vocational Training, and Transitional Housing for Offenders in Order to Reduce Recidivism, Increase Public Safety, and Reduce Corrections Costs”, enacted 2008.