February 2025

Dear Members of the Vermont State Legislature,

We are writing in strong opposition to the state’s plans to build new prisons – beginning with a $97 million women’s prison. As public health and healthcare researchers, organizers, providers, and professionals, we know that people are healthiest when they have the resources and care they need while remaining a part of their families and communities. Conversely, we know that the experience of incarceration is correlated with a multiplicity of adverse health outcomes, including higher rates than the general population of early mortality, hypertension, asthma, arthritis, cervical cancer, anxiety, depression, infectious disease, and more. Stopping prison construction will prevent further harm from investments in carceral systems and provide an opportunity to prioritize investments into community-based infrastructure instead.

In 2021, the American Public Health Association (APHA) passed a policy statement highlighting the harms of carceral systems and urging all levels of government to “re-allocate funding from the construction of new jails, detention centers, and prisons to the societal determinants of health, including affordable, quality, and accessible housing, healthcare, employment, education including in early childhood, and transportation.” Extensive public health research recognizes that incarceration is harmful to health, and the solution requires investment in community-based support and primary prevention rather than in building or renovating prisons and jails. Vermont has notably reduced the prison population by 40% from its peak over a decade ago, and it can continue to be a public health leader by reducing incarceration further.

An evidence-based public health approach requires that care and treatment happen in the community to truly address the root causes of contact with the criminal legal system. A “trauma-informed prison” does not exist. Prisons are places of profound structural violence premised on surveillance, seclusion, and punitive control. While incarcerated, people lose their freedom, are forcibly separated from their families and communities, and experience and witness physical, emotional, and sexual trauma and violence. There is a great deal of evidence that incarceration does immense and lasting damage to mental health, primarily through isolation from family and community and practices like solitary confinement. In a survey conducted by Human Impact Partners, 47% of respondents in a women’s prison in California experienced sexual and/or gender-based violence while imprisoned.

We know that our communities are in dire need of access to economic security, affordable housing, healthy foods, and quality healthcare and behavioral health treatment. However, incarceration should not and cannot be the primary point of access to care. Indeed, incarceration more often serves as a barrier to the resources people need to thrive in their communities. Due to discriminatory housing policies and practices against those with a criminal record, for example, formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to experience houselessness compared to the general population. People who have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder are overrepresented in prisons and jails, often due to a lack of access to community-based resources and the criminalization of mental health needs. Evidence shows that people are not receiving the care they need while incarcerated: only 37% of people in prisons and 38% of people in jails who have a mental health diagnosis, and 1 in 10 people who meet the criteria for substance use disorder report receiving treatment while incarcerated. Not only are prisons and jails failing to provide the treatment people need, but they inherently cannot: carceral facilities - by virtue of their punitive nature - cannot uphold patient rights requirements for care settings, like the ability to assert choice in treatment without fear of retaliation. 

The FY25 VT DOC budget is $197 million. Rather than invest more in carceral settings known for causing harm and limiting opportunities, we need to invest in policy solutions for all marginalized populations. “We must embrace a multifaceted approach and remember that our toolbox is not limited to just prisons,” said Jayna Ahsaf, FreeHer Vermont campaign director. 

• Decarcerate people in women’s prisons. Per the ACLU Blueprint for Smart Justice Vermont, 90% of people incarcerated in women’s prisons have experienced physical and/or sexual abuse. Prisons should not be considered a social safety net, and our people’s trauma from systemic failures should not be criminalized.

• Expand treatment for mental health conditions and substance use disorders so that people have access to recovery services without being separated from their families and communities. The public health research is clear: punishment worsens, not ameliorates, substance use. 

• Commit to addressing substance use disorder as a public health issue by decriminalization. Vermont has already decriminalized possession of marijuana and should continue along this path. Research has shown that the criminalization of drug use disproportionately exacerbated drug-related harms and imposed burdens on already marginalized and vulnerable populations. 

• Support prison moratoriums and recommend health-promoting investments into affordable housing, employment opportunities, affordable healthcare, accessible, reliable transportation, and non-carceral, non-punitive forms of accountability and harm that support reentry after incarceration. A vast body of research demonstrates that these investments can improve health outcomes, reduce recidivism rates, and prevent harm from occurring, creating the conditions that would make women’s prisons obsolete. 

Carceral settings inherently cannot provide appropriate treatment, and we can no longer afford to prioritize harmful systems that are guised as “trauma-informed.” Vermont has an opportunity to end its dependence on prisons, which will allow the legislature to invest further and implement dignified community-based solutions and supports. The $97 million planned for a new prison in Vermont could be better spent on new school construction, emergency preparedness to mitigate flooding, and community-based treatment and recovery for mental health and substance use disorders. Community-based behavioral healthcare saves money, decreases stigma, and improves health outcomes. 

We urge legislators to follow public health evidence and urgently stop the prison construction. Making a way to promote our communities' health, safety, and well-being instead.

In community,

Public Health Organizations

Public Health Professionals (VT)

Public Health Professionals (National)