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The smell of human waste, fly and maggot infestations, moldy showers, persistent heating and cooling issues, and overcrowding are just some of the inhumane conditions in Vermont’s only women’s prison. 

Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility (CRCF) in South Burlington has also been the subject of multiple abuse scandals and lawsuits. Last year, in reference to Prism reporting about the state’s plans for a new women’s prison to replace CRCF, Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC) Policy Director Isaac Dayno suggested that a radical path forward was not off the table. In a statement to Prism in July 2024, Dayno said that “the State of Vermont, and more specifically the Department of Corrections, is not opposed to abolition.”

Broadly, prison abolitionists nationwide are working toward a world without incarceration. This would require upending laws and policies that sentence people to cages for crimes, and the physical removal and repurposing of jails, prisons, and other facilities.  

“The commissioner has said it publicly before that we would love to not have a reason to exist,” Dayno said. “As a department, we are there to hold folks who have been adjudicated through the criminal justice system, or who are being held prior to trial. And we would really love to see that number fall to zero.”

In a December 2024 interview with Prism about Vermont DOC’s position on prison abolition, Dayno said, “We know, based on the plurality of research, that incarceration is inherently criminogenic, and incarceration in the United States has not been shown to be particularly effective.” Dayno did not respond to whether the department still holds these views on abolition by publication time.

But Dayno’s statements are in conflict with Vermont DOC’s function as an agency and its plans for ongoing expansion. Rather than do away with CRCF entirely, the state is moving forward with a $97 million new prison build that the agency has branded as “Scandinavian,” “trauma-informed,” and “gender-responsive.”

In nearby Massachusetts, a similar proposal for a new women’s prison was successfully delayed for five years by grassroots efforts. Organizers led by Families for Justice as Healing pushed back against the lauded “trauma-informed” design by construction firm HDR. However, in June, Gov. Maura Healey announced plans to move forward with the new $360 million prison.

Vermont DOC’s efforts to paint its new prison project as the necessary evolution of its embattled prison system reflect broader strategies to rebrand incarceration for the 21st century. Instead of deconstructing the prison through decarceration and diversion policies, states such as Vermont are betting big on new architectural designs they claim will revolutionize the way people in custody are cared for. 

But like new prison projects across the country, critics are adamant that Vermont’s new prison will inevitably subject incarcerated women to the same harmful conditions, including sexual abuse and medical neglect—systemic issues found across facilities where human beings are caged against their will.

The “unique needs” of women 

The push for the new women’s prison project in Vermont heavily relies on claims that CRCF was built only as a temporary, short-term detention center for men. DOC spokespeople and those who contract with the DOC to provide services, such as Karen Tronsgard-Scott, executive director of the Vermont Network Against Domestic & Sexual Violence, often repeat the claim. 

“The Shumlin administration moved the women to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, and that facility was designed as a detention center, never meant for anybody to live there long-term,” Tronsgard-Scott said, referring to former Gov. Peter Shumlin during a televised community forum on the new prison project in October 2024. 

Dayno echoed the claim: “It was built more than 50 years ago as a temporary detention center for men. So the structure was really never intended to house women. It’s not gender-responsive, and it’s outdated.”

A 1972 document from the Vermont DOC tells a different story. According to public records, which broadly outline design information for the original building, Chittenden was built as a “community correctional center” meant to accommodate both men and women. Indeed, at the time of the document’s writing, more than 50 years ago, leaders in Vermont expressed hope that the new building would help the state avoid new prisons. 

Titled “A Comprehensive Proposal for Prisons in Vermont,” the document says, “The Community Correctional Centers are the core units of a modern correctional system. To fully develop the potential of the centers and avoid further construction of major institutions, the State should begin planning for improvement and replacement of existing centers, and expansion into areas not now served.”

The building that became Chittenden Regional was built in 1974 to hold 72 men and eight women. According to a 2011 copy of an inmate handbook for CRCF, “In 1983, the physical plant was expanded to meet the growing needs of the inmate population and had a capacity of 197. The mission of the facility was changed in August of 2011 and became the state’s only women’s facility with a program-rich environment and a capacity of 175 women and a small number of beds for male detentioners.”

While the basis of the argument for Vermont’s new women’s prison is built on false claims, for decades, the carceral net has expanded to ensnare more women. The effort is often framed as responsive to women’s unique needs, and this falsehood has cruised along thanks to the legitimacy provided by academic partners.  

The concept of a “gender-responsive prison” was first invented in 1999 by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC), the federal agency housed within the Department of Justice that gives training, technical assistance, and information services to federal, state, and local corrections facilities. The gender-responsive project first began as a criminological research initiative, not a movement one, and it led to the expansion of California prisons and jails in 2006. The NIC popularized the term to concede that U.S. prison design is based on assumptions about incarcerated men. Gender-responsive approaches to incarceration try to acknowledge that women in the criminal legal system are generally more economically and socially marginalized, less violent than men, and more likely to experience childhood and adult victimization, substance abuse, and mental illness. 

The concept of gender-responsive prisons was embraced by California’s Gender Responsive Strategies Commission (GRSC), a group composed of high-ranking correctional staff, criminologists, and representatives from state and local offices. In July 2005, the GRSC contracted with criminology professors Barbara Bloom and Barbara Owen to “design correctional policies, programs, and housing strategies that reflect gender distinctions and address women’s issues.” Some of the first gender-responsive solutions proposed by the commission were expansionist and paternalistic, according to abolitionist scholars and activists.  

“They proposed building dozens of so-called ‘Female Rehabilitative Community Correctional Centers’ (FRCCCs) to house 4,500 people that the commission themselves found suitable for release from state prisons,” said Jess Whatcott, abolition scholar and associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at San Diego State University, in an email. 

“Advocates rallied to quash the FRCCC plan, calling these community correction centers ‘mini-prisons.’ Although the FRCCCs were not built in California, there continues to be a cottage industry of women-led consulting firms that meet with state correctional systems and county jail operators to offer trainings on how staff and administrators can be more ‘gender responsive,’” Whatcott explained. 

The same California commission was responsible for recategorizing sterilization during labor and delivery as a “necessary medical practice,” as chronicled by abolitionist attorney Cynthia Chandler in the book “Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States.” 

The term “gender responsive” is used today by politicians and prison boosters to conjure images of softer, cleaner, more humane prison facilities. This phenomenon has also come to be known as “pinkwashing” by activists fighting the expansion of women’s prisons. Since the 1990s, gender-responsive policies and project branding are partly responsible for the steady swell of women’s incarceration. 

Today in states such as Vermont and Massachusetts, corrections officials use the term “gender-responsive” to describe the siting and interior design of new prisons and jails rather than the policies and programs applied within them. When it was invented, gender-responsive was about policy. Today, it’s more akin to an interior design brand. 

So what does gender-responsive mean to the policy team at the Vermont DOC? 

“We’re really hoping that by offering a Scandinavian-style facility where the doors are unlocked, and women can come and go for work and treatment, then we’ll be able to make a demonstrable impact on public safety in our communities here in Vermont,” Dayno told Prism. 

Referred to by abolitionist scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore as the “Nordic distraction,” several U.S. states, including Vermont, have embraced the allegedly more humane approach to prison and rehabilitation modeled in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.   

When asked in a December 2024 interview to specify what about the Vermont’s proposed new prison is gender-responsive, Vermont DOC’s director of communications and legislative affairs, Haley Sommer, said, “We’re working with our partners in buildings and general services to ensure that the environment is more responsive to the unique needs of women, and so just creating a space that has better lighting, higher ceilings, more access to natural areas.” 

In an August 2024 DOC presentation before the state’s Justice Oversight Committee that oversees the agency, the DOC, Buildings and General Services, and their design partner HOK, revealed an illustration of a building that looked like a college campus surrounded by gardens and trees, as well as images of exteriors and interiors from Norway’s Halden Prison. 

According to Dayno, Chittenden is plagued by heavy slamming doors and low ceilings. “It’s a lot of concrete and rebar,” he told Prism. “It’s very little natural light. It was really designed to keep people locked up. I think it was designed to take people out of the community.”

However, Dayno’s former boss, Vermont DOC Commissioner Nicholas Deml, who left his post in August, had previously contradicted Dayno’s assertions about CRCF’s replacement. “The punishment that somebody receives is handed down by the court, and that punishment is separation from society,” Deml said in a November 2024 news segment. 

While officials and advocates discuss what’s best for the women incarcerated in CRCF, those inside have long said that the physical living conditions at CRCF are horrendous and must be improved. However, more programming spaces won’t mean much without the staff needed to provide the programming.

In September, the Vermont State Employees’ Association, the union representing prison guards and other workers, announced a “serious staffing emergency” in the state’s prisons. Limited staff working long hours inside dilapidated facilities means that incarcerated people get less access to recreation and visits, deeply lowering their quality of life. 

The plans for Vermont’s new women’s prison promise more outdoor time, rehabilitative programming, and connections to the local community—all components that require significant corrections staff to facilitate. However, the plan fails to address the agency’s current personnel crisis.

“If they build a new jail with room for many more women, they’re just going to fill it up, and they’re not going to be in any position to provide more services than they do now,” said Lisa Barrett, a volunteer with the community bail bond fund, the Vermont Freedom Fund. Barrett frequently posts bail for people incarcerated at CRCF, and she told Prism that the facility doesn’t have the staff necessary to carry out even basic functions. 

“They’re so understaffed that their caseworkers are often assigned to other functions, such as guard duty,”  Barrett said. 

“Information that can be misleading”  

While officials sell the public on the idea of humane prisons, the state of Vermont is currently doing little to stem the alarming rate of its in-custody deaths.

As a small progressive state with a low prison population, Vermont’s record of prison deaths is especially alarming. Ten incarcerated people died in custody in 2022 and 12 died in 2023. Three people died in 2024, and four have died in 2025 thus far.

In 2021, Deml was brought in at the height of the department’s public relations crisis regarding in-custody deaths. He previously worked for the CIA. Deml was replaced in September by Jon Murad, the former police chief of Burlington, who now serves as the interim commissioner. 

Murad’s grasp of the new prison build is “fuzzy,” according to Vermont town officials who met with him regarding the state’s plans. The current estimated cost for the CRCF replacement facility is $97 million. In February, the DOC pursued a zoning request change with the town of Essex to begin building. However, a statewide coalition of community groups coalesced to fight the build and won. 

On Oct. 12, the Essex Planning Committee voted to deny the zoning amendment, effectively halting the proposed construction. Another DOC expansion project, this time a youth jail, was also recently put on pause after community stakeholders in the town of Vergennes refused to “align” with the DOC’s plans. The new facility was intended to replace the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, “a 30-bed facility in Essex that closed in 2020 amid allegations that children were abused by staff,” the local publication Seven Days reported. 

Jonathan Elwell is a volunteer organizer with FreeHer Vermont, an effort focused on ending the incarceration of women and girls. He told Prism that officials in Vermont are oversimplifying CRCF’s issues to the public. 

The kinds of abuse and violence and trauma that happens at CRCF is more about the Vermont prison system itself … and not about the conditions of the building.

Jonathan Elwell, Freeher Vermont volunteer

“The conditions at CRCF are deplorable, and we urgently need to get people out of that building,” Elwell explained. “But the central issue is not that there’s not enough natural light. The kinds of abuse and violence and trauma that happens at CRCF is more about the Vermont prison system itself, and prisons in general, and not about the conditions of the building.”

Elwell also noted that the public should be wary of many of the claims coming from Vermont DOC. The organizer produced a report in collaboration with people incarcerated at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, about a prison research study that one participant described as “smoke and mirrors.”  The survey’s initial results revealed “grim” and “toxic” conditions at the prison, but the results were never published nor acted upon, according to Elwell and his contacts inside. 

“It just feels completely ludicrous to trust this institution with so much investment of public money, when they have a track record of violence and coercion and manipulation,” Elwell said. The organizer cited medical neglect and in-custody deaths as examples. More recently, formerly incarcerated people have highlighted forced detox within Vermont DOC prisons.  

Vermont DOC and legislators on the Justice Oversight Committee appear to be gearing up for a long public relations fight for their new build. 

During the 2024 meeting where the new design was proposed, Chair of the Justice Oversight Committee, Democrat Rep. Alice M. Emmons, told her committee that officials had “a lot of work ahead.” 

“This is what happens when you try to site a facility within the agency of human services,” Emmons said. “There’s always a lot of concern and fear and information that can be misleading … but we have to continue putting money aside for the facility.”

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor