New Group Aims to Reduce Vermont Prison Population

Suzi Wizowaty, an elected member of the Vermont legislature, recently started an organization whose primary mission is to reduce the number of people in the state’s prisons. “We’re trying to create a movement,” she told the Valley Post on July 25. The new group’s web site is www.VermontersForCriminalJusticeReform.org.

More than 10 percent of the people in Vermont prisons are African American. Just 1 percent of people in Vermont are black.

Senator Jeanette White represents Windham county, which includes Brattleboro, in the Vermont legislature. She told the Valley Post last year, “We have a huge prison population. All those people don’t belong in prison."

Vermont's prison population doubled between 1996 and 2006, from 1,058 to 2,123, while crime rates did not increase. That's according to www.PewStates.org.

Vermont is home to about 626,000 people. The U.S. population is about 314 million. As of 2008, there were about 2.3 million people in U.S. prisons. No other nation on earth incarcerates such a high percentage of its people. As of 2008, the U.S. had about 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. "England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63." That's according to "U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations," an article by Adam Liptak that appeared in the New York Times on 4/23/2008.

About 13 percent of Americans are black. In the U.S. in 2008, black men were six times more likely to be in prison than white men. That's according to:

http://ABCnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5009270&page=1#.T0zvRIcgf-U

According to the New York Review of Books, "Now and then a book comes along that might in time touch the public and educate social commentators, policymakers, and politicians about a glaring wrong that we have been living with that we also somehow don’t know how to face. 'The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness' by Michelle Alexander [published in 2010] is such a work."

On the book’s web site, she lists groups that work to reduce the number of prisoners in the U.S.:

www.NewJimCrow.com/take-action

The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond explains why the average black person is much poorer than the average white person. Rich people can afford better lawyers.

On August 22, 2012, a judge ordered a man released from prison in Springfield, Vermont, near Brattleboro, after 18 years in prison for a murder that he probably did not commit. The murder happened in 1994 in Dover, Vermont, which is also near Brattleboro.

John Grega was released on $75,000 bail pending a new trial based on DNA evidence that was not considered in the original trial. He was 50 years old when he was released. The date for the new trial has not yet been decided. Grega’s lawyer is Ian Carleton of Burlington, Vermont.

As of 2000, there were about 200,000 wrongfully convicted people in prison in the U.S. That's according to the book “Actual Innocence” by New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer and two other authors.

As of this year, 297 prisoners in the USA have been proven innocent using DNA. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before being freed. Seventeen of the people who were freed had been sentenced to death but were freed before the government could execute them. This data is from www.InnocenceProject.org

About half the people in U.S. prisons are there for non-violent crimes, mostly related to drugs.

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Creating better community support

Reducing prison population sounds great, but the real issue is building community support and options for those in jail. For those on drug/alcohol charges as are most of the St. J population, real community support needs to be provided. Rides or vouchers for rides to work, 12 step and probation/parole mtgs. A program designed for offenders that will provide work as 99% will not hire someone with a record. Perhaps a skills based program. A halfway house for those who are facing homelessness. Therapy, mentoring, family services. Perhaps community housing and board for community service? It is time to find ways to move those with addiction issues out of jail and into the community with respect and a place for them to grow and thrive.
As far as the harder core Springfield population. .. We need to look at models from other states, San Francisco for example. And we must be aware that there are national corps who do this 'social rehabilitation' work and beware of entering into an agreement with such groups without careful scrutiny. Lest we be guilty of making arrests to fill the facilities as is the case in some parts of the country.
This is an important issue. It is about social justice. It is about being inclusive. It is about not criminalizing addiction.

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