Audio: Should Vermont's most mentally ill inmates live in prison?

Recording equipment isn’t allowed inside the secure perimeter at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield. But visitors are. And last Thursday, 10 lawmakers and a couple of reporters joined Superintendent Mark Potanas for a tour of the grounds.


Audio from this story will be posted early afternoon on Monday, Sept. 21.

http://digital.vpr.net/post/should-vermonts-most-mentally-ill-inmates-live-prison

Should Vermont's Most Mentally Ill Inmates Live In Prison? By PETER HIRSCHFELD • 3 HOURS AGO SHARE Twitter Facebook Google+ Email The Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield houses some of the most mentally ill inmates in the state. Lawmakers next year will contemplate alternative housing for some of those prisoners. The Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield houses some of the most mentally ill inmates in the state. Lawmakers next year will contemplate alternative housing for some of those prisoners. PETER HIRSCHFELD VPR Corrections officials say the number of mentally ill inmates housed in Vermont prisons has increased in recent years, but critics say correctional facilities aren’t equipped to provide the kind of care this population requires. Lawmakers are now contemplating whether the state needs alternative facilities for its sickest criminal offenders. Audio from this story will be posted at approximately 11 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 21. Recording equipment isn’t allowed inside the secure perimeter at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield. But visitors are. And last Thursday, 10 lawmakers and a couple of reporters joined Superintendent Mark Potanas for a tour of the grounds. The 45-minute trip focused partly on secure wings dedicated to mentally ill inmates. It’s a population that this facility, the state’s newest, specializes in. And the scene unfolding inside these prison walls can be a difficult one to watch. Visibly agitated men peered out at their visitors from behind tiny glass windows on the doors to their small jail cells, and Potanas recounted horror stories, some too disturbing to repeat. The experience was a powerful one for many of the lawmakers who made the trip. “I’m actually speechless,” said Moretown Rep. Maxine Grad, talking in the parking lot of the facility after the tour. Grad is the Democratic chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee, and it was her first time at the Springfield prison. Springfield Rep. Alice Emmons, Democratic chairwoman of the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions, lives nearby this facility. She wants as many legislators as possible to see what’s going on inside. “There needs to be more people invested in seeing the tragedy that is being set up and carried out for folks with severe mental illness who are being incarcerated,” Emmons says. “And I think that this was very sobering today. I know it was sobering for many committee members.” "There needs to be more people invested in seeing the tragedy that is being set up and carried out for folks with severe mental illness who are being incarcerated." - Springfield Rep. Alice Emmons The issue of mental illness in the Vermont prison system isn’t anything new. But Potanas and others say an over-strained mental health system has spawned an influx of seriously ill inmates at his facility. “What happens I believe is the police, looking to keep people safe, and the courts, to keep people safe and to keep the public safe, tend to lodge people who may not have been lodged in a prison before,” Potanas says. Potanas says corrections officers routinely deal with patients suffering schizophrenia, personality disorder, bipolar disorder and other serious conditions. He says his staff does its best to accommodate their needs. “We do the best we possibly can with what we have to work with,” Potanas says. “But, I can’t guarantee anything, because officers aren’t doctors.” Emmons says the situation in Vermont’s prisons runs counter to the de-institutionalization movement this state once embraced. “We are institutionalizing them, in a correctional facility. And it’s not appropriate,” she says. While there’s near unanimity now about the inappropriateness of the prison setting for many mentally ill inmates stuck behind bars, it’s far less clear what policymakers will do about it. "We do the best we possibly can with what we have to work with. But, I can't guarantee anything, because officers aren't doctors." - Mark Potanas, superintendent, Southern State Correctional facility Secure psychiatric facilities can run $1 million per bed to construct, and often carry far higher operational costs than prison beds do. Bennington Sen. Dick Sears is the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He’s asked the Department of Corrections to help lawmakers understand the scope of the problem. “I just need a number to understand – on any given day. How many people are in need of psychiatric care who are incarcerated?” Sears asked corrections officials last week. “And should those people be being dealt with by the Department of Mental Health instead of the Department of Corrections? That’s the question that I’m hoping this committee can at least make some recommendations to Legislature on, is how do we deal with that?” The lawmakers touring the facility last week are members of the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee, which is expected to make recommendations to the full Legislature early next year about how to address the issue. Emmons says she hopes the process will generate a sense of urgency in the Statehouse. “I think it’s so well hidden that people are not even conscious that it’s occurring,” Emmons says. In the meantime, Potanas says he more resources would improve his staff’s ability to provide a safe and compassionate, if not therapeutic, environment for his toughest cases. “I need more mental health staff, I need more medical staff,” Potanas says. “We don’t have a large tax base in this state, we just don’t, and we’re putting an awful lot of pressure on them now, so I understand. We work with what we’ve got.” Mental illness isn’t the only thing complicating health care in prison these days. An aging inmate population means medical staff and health services contractors are serving a higher-needs caseload that they have in the past. “This is not the same Department of Corrections as it was in 2007, when I came,” says Dr. Delores Burroughs-Biron, health services director at the Department of Corrections. “This is not the same patient population that we used to take care of.” Financial liability for the medical care of Vermont inmates falls almost solely on the state, and the cost of caring for older, sicker inmates has put significant upward budgetary pressure on the department. “We have critically ill individuals who are getting sentenced, and we have critically ill individuals who we are taking care of, and individuals develop critical illnesses when they are with us,” Burroughs-Biron says. Efforts to find alternative housing for some of these seriously ill patients – such as open beds at nursing homes – have thus far been unsuccessful. Housing the inmates in alternative settings might allow the state to draw down federal Medicaid dollars that are unavailable for inmates housed in prisons. The oversight committee meets next in October. Legislative committees will also resume a debate next year about construction of a secure residential psychiatric facility. The size of that facility might depend in part on how aggressively the state wants to address the issue of finding alternative placements for its most mentally ill inmates.