Lawmakers tour Springfield prison

A panel of legislators toured the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield on Thursday, with an eye toward the supports available for inmates with serious mental illness and complex medical needs.
http://www.vnews.com/news/state/region/18652607-95/vt-panel-focuses-on-mental-health

Vt. Panel Focuses on Mental Health By Dave Gram Associated Press Friday, September 18, 2015 (Published in print: Friday, September 18, 2015) Email Print Share on facebookShare on tumblrShare on twitterMore Sharing Services 0 Springfield, Vt. — A panel of lawmakers toured the Southern State Correctional Facility on Thursday to get a sense of the challenges the Department of Corrections faces in handling mentally ill and aging inmates. The Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee heard two central messages: The state’s prisons are struggling to handle inmates with a wide range of mental health disorders; and moving inmates too old and infirm to offend again to private nursing homes is very difficult because of the stigma attached to the prison population. Prison Superintendent Mark Potanas led lawmakers, staff members and reporters on a tour of portions of the Springfield facility devoted to caring for mentally ill inmates and those with major physical health problems. Included were stops in the prison’s new kidney dialysis unit and a cell block staircase that is soon to get a new chair lift for inmates unable to walk. Potanas said 54 of the prison’s more than 380 beds were devoted to inmates with serious functional impairments, a state designation referring to people with severe mental illness. Creating programming suitable for the range of mental illness is difficult, he said. “What works for schizophrenia is not necessarily what works for bipolar (disorder) or depression,” Potanas said. Another significant challenge, he said, is that “you have to decide whether what they’re doing is behavioral or a result of mental illness.” On the issue of aging inmates, about 16 percent of Vermont’s inmate population of a bit more than 2,000 is over age 50, a number outgoing Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito said had doubled in recent years. Health problems connected with aging are worsened for many inmates by decades of substance abuse and poor diets. An offender who is 50 “could be in a 70-year-old body,” said Rep. Alice Emmons, who chairs the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. Many of the aging prisoners are serving long terms for sex offenses, but some are now so incapacitated they can’t get out of bed, said Dr. Dee Burroughs-Biron, health director for the Department of Corrections. Sen. Dick Sears, chairman of the joint committee, asked whether some of those inmates could be kept in less secure settings, freeing up prison beds. But many are on the state sex offender registry for life, with their addresses posted on the Internet. Burroughs-Biron said nursing home administrators had expressed strong reluctance to having their facilities listed as sex offenders’ homes.