20200129-105340-23

Analysis Area 1: Analyze crime trends, including recent increases in all categories of violent crime, to help the state understand the impacts of these trends on the prison and jail populations, as well as other parts of the criminal justice system.
Background: Despite having lower crime rates than most other states, Vermont’s crime rates have been rising in recent years. Vermont’s 2017 property and violent crime rates were both second lowest nationally, but between 2007 and 2017, the violent crime rate increased 33 percent, which was the fourth-largest increase among states. Although this increase represents a modest rise in the volume of crimes (less than 400 additional reported violent crimes, driven by increasing aggravated assault and rape totals), it does indicate a concerning trend. Due to data analytic limitations, Vermont is not able to determine the extent to which these increases in violent crime may drive prison populations in the near and long term, as well as their impact on other areas, including law enforcement and victim services.

During the first working group presentation in August, CSG Justice Center staff presented national arrest and crime reporting data. While Vermont’s violent crime rate rose between 2007 and 2017, the state’s property crime rate dropped by more than a third, falling in all categories. National arrest data indicate an overall decline in drug arrests across the state, but analysis of state-level data will provide more information. Working group members noted that decriminalization of marijuana likely contributed to the decline in drug arrests and expressed interest in looking more closely at certain types of violent offenses, especially domestic violence offenses.

Update: During the December presentation, CSG Justice Center staff presented information on the state’s domestic violence community programming options, which are limited in their ability to treat people of differing risk. Participants are also required to pay for the treatment, which can be prohibitively expensive and leave program providers underfunded. CSG Justice Center staff also presented background on Vermont’s formerly effective network of sex offender treatment programs, which have diminished considerably in recent years, leaving some counties with no available programs.

Analysis Area 2: Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of community supervision to understand the causes of recidivism and technical violations that result in jail and prison admissions and identify possible alternatives to incarceration for violation sanctions.
Background: Vermont’s probation and parole populations have decreased considerably since the state first engaged in JRI in 2007. The probation population has fallen 33 percent, from 6,862 people in 2008 to 4,570 in 2018, and the parole population has decreased 20 percent, from 1,049 people in 2008 to 840 in 2018. Although Vermont has a history of stable recidivism rates (the three-year return-to-prison rate), the recidivism rate slowly and steadily increased between 2010 and 2015, rising from 43 to 52 percent, respectively, (for cohorts released between 2010 and 2015). However, with limited data analytic capabilities, the state is not currently able to identify more refined metrics of recidivism and revocations, including how many people on probation are revoked to jail or prison, for what types of violations, and for how long.
Update: In December, CSG Justice Center staff presented on DOC data analysis, which revealed that nearly 80 percent of the average annual proportion of admissions to the sentenced incarceration population were people who were returning or being revoked from community supervision (furlough, parole, and probation). CSG Justice Center staff also presented an assessment of the state’s community supervision. Although DOC has incorporated a variety of evidence-based practices, limited resources have prevented the state from fully implementing an evidence-based approach that may better support people and enable them to remain in the community. The assessment also revealed that there is not adequate recidivism-reduction programming available to all higher-risk people; DOC staff and community-based providers could benefit from additional training on effective practices for working with higher-risk and higher-needs people; there are wide variations in the quality of and access to non-DOC provided community-based programs available to people on supervision; and there are gaps in access to the appropriate level of behavioral health care.

Analysis Area 3: Assist the state with developing a DOC population projection to inform Vermont lawmakers’ discussions on how to ensure that limited prison space is prioritized for people who are convicted of the most serious offenses.
Background: Vermont’s corrections system is unified, and DOC is responsible for all pretrial, sentenced, and supervision (probation and parole) populations. As a result of JRI and other changes in policy and practice, the state’s corrections populations have largely decreased over the past decade. Between 2008 and 2018, the state incarceration population decreased 16 percent, from 2,053 to 1,724 people. However, during the same period, the state’s pretrial population increased 30 percent.
In FY2018, Vermont’s prisons were operating at 138 percent of capacity: 1,513 people were being housed across 7 prison facilities with a total design capacity of 1,100 beds, and approximately 230 people were serving Vermont DOC sentences out of state. Vermont’s correctional facility system is aging, and five of the seven facilities are in need of either replacement or significant maintenance improvements. In particular, the DOC is struggling to deliver appropriate and costly health care services—including mental health and addiction treatment—to an incarcerated population that is spread across several small facilities.
Vermont leaders are interested in ensuring that jail and prison space remain prioritized and available for people convicted or charged with serious offenses, but without more information about trends and drivers behind crime increases and revocations to prison among people on supervision, the state cannot reliably achieve such public safety-focused corrections planning.

Update: No update.

Analysis Area 4: Assess the state’s response to people under correctional control with behavioral health needs, particularly opioid addiction, and identify opportunities for improving treatment access and quality.
Background: Vermont has been hard hit by the opioid crisis. Between 2007 and 2017, Vermont’s drug overdose death rates increased 115 percent, from 10.8 deaths per 100,000 residents to 23.2 per 100,000 residents. Deaths due to opioid-related overdoses are rising each year, from 56 deaths in 2011 to 110 deaths in 2018—a 96-percent increase. Understanding the prevalence of opioid use and addiction among people in Vermont’s criminal justice system and ensuring that they receive access to withdrawal management, treatment, and recovery services tailored to their unique needs is critical to ensuring that the state is able to uphold both public safety and public health.
Update: In the December presentation, CSG Justice Center staff presented an assessment of behavioral health interventions for Vermont’s criminal justice system. DOC facilities have worked hard to develop mechanisms for behavioral health screening and assessment, but there are still opportunities to improve identification of people with co-occurring disorders and mental health needs that do not rise to SMI. There are also limited mental health and substance use treatment resources in DOC facilities and in the community, requiring the department to use a “triage” approach focused primarily on SMI and MAT populations. There are case planning policies in place to ensure that behavioral health information guides treatment and programming referrals, but due to information sharing inconsistencies, supervision officers do not always have consistent or comprehensive knowledge of clients’ behavioral health needs. State police and local law enforcement have cross-system mental health training; however, there is less focus on training law enforcement on responding to people with addictions or co-occurring disorders. Finally, appropriate housing is a significant challenge for people with behavioral health needs in the criminal justice system due to resource limitations.

Analysis Area 5: Evaluate Vermont’s data systems and capacities and identify sustainable opportunities to help policymakers access information they require to make safe and critical policy decisions.
Background: When Vermont first led JRI in 2007, the CSG Justice Center provided the state with new and critical analyses of corrections populations that continue to inform decision-making related to supervision best practices and other policies. However, since then the state has encountered data challenges, including limited staff within DOC dedicated to research and data analysis and siloed data collection and reporting across state agencies that prevent a more comprehensive understanding of the whole system. The Vermont DOC has migrated to a new case management system in recent years, and while basic analytics have been sustained, it is far more difficult for DOC staff to conduct in-depth research projects that require custom case-level data exports. As a result, key public safety and system measures, such as supervision violations and revocations, remain difficult to access and analyze. As mentioned earlier, Vermont is unable to even produce a prison population projection, which would help inform policymaking and future planning. Instead, the state is only able to look back at projections that were produced during the first JRI effort, which do not reflect new pressures and realities associated with the opioid crisis and other systemic drivers.
Update: During the December presentation, CSG Justice Center staff highlighted findings showing that Vermont has not adequately invested in analytic capacity and practices to effectively use data to inform decision-making. This makes it particularly challenging to understand how and when graduated sanctions are used before a person returns to a DOC facility for an incarceration sanction or full revocation. Field supervision staff do not yet consistently receive coaching and quality assurance to ensure they are using the data management system effectively. Supervision officers report that entering and retrieving information into the case management system can be cumbersome to the point of affecting their ability to input or access necessary information and decreasing the time they are able to work with clients. Officers do not appear to consistently enter information about intermediate sanctions into the case management system, which means DOC leadership cannot monitor this policy. Finally, DOC needs resources for expanded internal capacity to regularly extract data; clean and maintain data files for analysis and potential data sharing; develop a set of key metrics, including critical information such as supervision outcomes; and publish them regularly in dashboards or annual reports to better inform agency and legislative decision-making.