WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Vermont to Send Inmates to Oklahoma

Vermont to Send Inmates to Oklahoma

Waterbury, Vermont - March 10, 2006

Vermont Corrections officials are finalizing plans to increase the number of inmates transferred out of state to serve their sentences. They say they have no choice because the in-state prison population continues to explode despite special efforts to relieve chronic overcrowding.

"We're looking at a facility in western, a relatively new facility in western Oklahoma as the site for coming up some more beds," said Vt. Corrections Commissioner Rob Hoffman.

Hoffman says the corrections department is contracting to reserve to up to 240 beds at the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Oklahoma for Vermont inmates. But the beds will not be filled all at once.

"Let's say over the next several weeks I expect we'll start with what'll be a trickle of a few dozens to start," said Hoffman.

Some of them will come from this prison in Kentucky, a privately run prison which saw a riot two years ago. There are 380 Vermont prisoners in Kentucky and 80 in Tennessee.

The transfers are all part of Vermont's continuing response to chronic prison crowding pressures. The result is that 20% of Vermont's inmates are serving their time out-of-state-- the highest in the nation.

Jailing the inmates out-of-state is a taxpayers bargain: it costs only $20,000 per year per inmate compared to the $40,000 per year to house them in one of Vermont's nine state prisons. Despite the huge savings, the offenders, their families, and many state leaders would rather bring the convicts home, including Commissioner Hoffman.

"They're further from their families. They're disconnected from their personal networks that hopefully will help re-integrate them into society and in some cases they pick up some bad habits," said Hoffman.

But these days it costs at least $40 million to build a new prison, more than Vermont is willing to spend. So shipping inmates out of state may not end anytime soon.

"We would love to bring them home. At the present time it's a necessary call it a necessary evil necessary for the time being," Hoffman added.

Brian Joyce - Channel 3 News