By Wilson Ring
Associated Press
In N.H., more women inmates
Making a difference: Managing the female offender population
SAINT ALBANS — Earlier this month, the last male inmates left Northwest State Correctional Facility, headed for other prisons. A zero went up on the status board that tracks the inmate population.
In a few weeks, the prison — formerly home to some of Vermont’s most notorious criminals — will begin housing Vermont’s entire female prison population, women who are more likely to be behind bars for writing bad checks than for sex crimes.
When it does, there will be even fewer women than previous trends had anticipated, leaving 140 beds empty.
The reason: Fewer women are in prison. In the last two years, the number of female inmates in Vermont’s prison system has dropped 40 percent, thanks in part to programs that are specifically designed to keep them out of jail.
“I didn’t think the reduction of women incarcerated would be this dramatic,” said state Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, who chairs the Legislature’s Corrections Oversight Committee. “I still feel it’s the right decision and that having the women in one facility with a variety of options is very helpful.”
The newly renovated St. Albans prison will be designed to help deal with the special issues faced by female inmates.
It will have special areas for mentally ill inmates, programs where the women can learn a skill, a garden, a greenhouse, a print shop and a construction program being moved to St. Albans from the Southeast State Correctional Facility in Windsor, where most women are now being held.
In between the departure of the last man and the arrival of the first woman, the Northwest State Correctional Facility staff is getting special training on how to deal with female inmates.
“Women can be as dishonest as men, deceptive and confrontational,” said the Department of Corrections’ chief of planning John Perry. “Women offenders are more verbal and more overtly emotional and less physically violent. A problem a male inmate might try to resolve by anger, violence or refusal to comply, a women inmate might cry and might scream that you are abusing her.”
Switching the St. Albans prison was part of a package of changes to the Corrections Department designed to cut down on prison costs. The Dale Correctional Facility in Waterbury, where about 50 women are now held will be closed. The Windsor prison will become a work camp for less dangerous male inmates.
The men who had been held in St. Albans are now spread through the rest of Vermont’s prison system.
For decades, the number of women in Vermont’s prison system hovered in the mid teens. They were held in a section of the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington.
In the 1990s, that began to change. The reason: heroin, according to Perry.
About a decade ago, when the all-women Dale Correctional facility in Waterbury opened with a capacity of 45, the state had about 75 female inmates. Then the state converted the Windsor prison into a women’s facility.
At its peak, about two years ago, the state had almost 190 female inmates, said interim Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito. As of Thursday, there were 116 women in custody, the lowest number since August 2002.
Female inmates are more likely to be in prison for writing bad checks (for men it’s sexual assault on a minor), said Perry.
Women are more likely than men to suffer from mental illness and face other challenges like serious substance abuse issues, Perry said.
It’s not a single thing that helped the department reduce the number of women offenders. It was a variety of programs from a number of different agencies that each work with the reasons women end up in prison.
“This is really a collaborative process between (the Agency of Human Services) and community partners,” said Susan Onderwyzer, of the Department of Corrections who works with female inmates.
It includes programs that help women fight alcohol and drug abuse and find places to live in the community.
Within the next few weeks, the construction workers swarming over the St. Albans prison will complete their renovations. More bathroom stalls are being added. Partitions are being installed in the showers. More surveillance cameras are being installed. Holding cells are being added.
Shift Supervisor Greg Machia, a 17-year veteran, says there’s more to the changeover than construction work, though.
“A male and a female, they’re both incarcerated, they’re both inmates,” said Machia. “They have specific needs that males don’t that we have to be aware of. It’s physical and emotional.”