Did you know that even though Vermont has some of the lowest crime and incarceration rates in the country, elected officials are proposing to spend upwards of $70 MILLION on a new women’s prison?
Spending tens of millions of dollars to incarcerate about 100 women (half of whom are simply awaiting their trial) just doesn’t make any sense to us.
That’s why we’re supporting a campaign to close the only women’s prison in Vermont—the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility—and stop construction on a new one.
Let’s take a moment to talk about who is actually being locked up in the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility.
These women do not need time in prison. They need support. Incarceration has a disproportionately destructive effect on women’s physical and mental health and well-being. Not only that, study after study shows that incarceration does NOT make communities safer.
We don’t need a new prison. What we need instead is increased support and services for women, their families, and their communities in Vermont.
Vermont is facing real challenges—high cost of living, little affordable housing, limited mental-health and substance-use treatment services.
Note to our Vermont elected officials: Pouring more money into incarceration isn’t going to solve the problems we face. Building a new prison isn’t going to help anyone move into an affordable apartment, get the counseling they require, or find the training they need to thrive.
Instead of spending $70 million on a new prison, let’s use that money to fund programs that will help women, strengthen our communities, and address the root causes of incarceration:
Throwing more and more people into jail doesn’t work—it harms individuals, devastates families, and perpetuates cycles of poverty and violence in our communities. Unlike incarceration, all of the solutions listed above have actually been found to reduce crime and improve lives.
Our friends at FreeHer have been working alongside other advocates and people who are directly impacted in Vermont to end the incarceration of women in the state. Thanks to their hard work, in 2024:
The best way we can help the women who are currently incarcerated at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility is to relocate them to local programs that actually address the underlying issues that brought them into contact with the criminal legal system in the first place—ensuring that they can stay in close contact with their communities and families.
There’s more work to do, but the conversation around incarceration is finally starting to shift in Vermont!
Here’s the disappointing thing: Vermont had actually been making some real progress in reforming its criminal legal system in recent times—incarceration rates are down 40% over the past six years. And yet, despite that, the Vermont Department of Corrections is still spending $189 million a year on prisons!
It makes no sense to spend that kind of money on incarceration! And it makes no sense to spend tens of millions of additional dollars on a new women’s prison when there are so many other challenges facing our state and so many more effective ways to address the root causes of incarceration.
We hope you’ll join us in the movement to invest in women and the social services that support them and strengthen communities around the country and here in Vermont.
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