“We won in every single district in this county,” George said in an interview Wednesday. She called the results a “command” from the community to continue with the reforms she’s initiated since taking office. “I really hope that it’s seen by law enforcement and others in the community as a sort of, let’s come together and do this, push forward on some of these issues together. And I look forward to doing that. That’s what I plan on doing.”

George, who was first appointed by GOP Governor Phil Scott but has run as a Democrat, will be unopposed in the general election, and is all but certain to secure an additional four-year term. 

George and Kenney fundamentally disagreed during the campaign about the proper scope of prosecution and policing in Chittenden County, with Kenney faulting many of George’s reforms.

During her tenure, George has implemented major changes. She has refused to seek cash bail and declined to charge people for possessing buprenorphine, which helped inspire legislation that in 2021 made Vermont the first state to legalize possession of the prescription medication used to treat opioid addiction. In 2019, George ordered her entire staff to visit a prison, saying she hoped the experience would lead them to seek fewer and shorter sentences.

George has also significantly expanded the use of pre-charge restorative justice programs, Bolts reported in July. The state’s attorney has been a champion of restorative justice since she first took office, arguing that it is a more compassionate and victim-centered form of harm response that can allow people to take accountability for their actions while avoiding contact with the criminal legal system altogether.  

She allied with so-called progressive prosecutors around the country who are looking to reform local court systems, some of whom celebrated her win on Tuesday. Many have faced pushback this year from critics of reforms, including law enforcement associations. In June, San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin was ousted in a recall, while fellow reformer Diana Becton prevailed over police attacks in neighboring Contra Costa. George’s win comes just five days after a reform challenger ousted the police-backed DA of Tennessee’s Shelby County (Memphis).

Similar tensions arose in Chittenden County. Major police associations, including both local and state unions like the Vermont Troopers Associations and the Chittenden County Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Kenney in recent weeks after long feuding with George over her approach.

Police departments criticized George for declining to prosecute certain cases—and, by extension, hemming them in in their duties. A statement from the Burlington Police Officers’ Association criticized what they called her “pattern of non-prosecution,” calling her actions “disastrous.” George, meanwhile, argued that the police themselves were declining to make arrests in cases that she would have prosecuted—in order to prove their own point and drum up fears about rampant crime.

“In some cases, they were saying, ‘I’m not going to even respond to this because Sarah George won’t prosecute it’—and in a lot of those instances, it was things we absolutely would have prosecuted and would prosecute if the police sent it to us,” George told Bolts. Asked for an example of such a crime, George cited vehicle thefts—which Burlington officers’ association had singled out in their letter denouncing George’s reforms. This conflict also seemed reminiscent of the dynamics in San Francisco around Boudin: in the months before his recall, San Francisco police refused to assist the DA in a sting operation, leading some to speculate whether they were engaged in a retaliatory “work stoppage.”

In recent weeks, local media has published multiple accounts of individual officers invoking George as the reason they couldn’t or wouldn’t arrest someone. According to Seven Days, after a couple’s moped was stolen and the couple tracked down the thief, police let him go, placing the blame on George’s directives. In an encounter caught on body cam and reported on by VT Digger, a Winooksi police officer blamed the police’s inability to address crime and drug use in the neighborhood on George’s “super-progressive, soft-on-crime approach”—and urged the Winooski residents he was talking to vote for her opponent Kenney. 

One of George’s most controversial reforms was her policy of not prosecuting cases that arose from traffic stops for things like a suspended registration or a broken brake light, which she enacted to try to reduce the documented racial bias that factors into such encounters. The Vermont Troopers Association cited this reform as evidence of “an imbalance, [sic] that put her in direct conflict with her elected responsibilities as State’s Attorney.”

Kenney’s campaign echoed much of the criticism that local law enforcement leveled at George, arguing that restorative justice was not appropriate for repeat offenders, denouncing her traffic stop policy as “radical,” and highlighting upticks in theft as evidence of George’s leniency on crime. 

But the criticism failed tosway the county’s voters, and given Vermont’s progressive voter base, the highly visible support from police may have actually hurt Kenney’s chances. George prevailed on Tuesday by a margin of 62 to 38 percent.

George said the last-ditch involvement from law enforcement seemed to spur a dramatic escalation in the amount of hate mail she received during the home stretch of the campaign. At the same time, George said, she suspected that the community would react against the outpouring of police opposition.

“I think they were rightfully pretty angry that they were pawns in this political game that it felt like law enforcement was playing,” George told Bolts.

The post Reform Prosecutor Wins After Police Union Attacks in Vermont appeared first on Bolts.

In 2017, when Sarah Fair George became the state’s attorney of Chittenden County, the most populous county in Vermont and home to Burlington, she knew she wanted to center restorative justice. In the years since taking office, she has promoted the practice as a more compassionate and holistic approach that can keep people out of the criminal legal system, encourage meaningful healing for victims, and ensure deeper accountability for those who cause harm. 

George’s focus on restorative justice has been part of a broader effort to overhaul the criminal legal system in her county. She has declined to seek cash bail and prosecute possession of buprenorphine, a stance that helped inspire legislation that in 2021 made Vermont the first state to legalize possession of the prescription medication used to treat opioid addiction. Her office also adopted a policy of not pursuing charges where evidence was collected during traffic stops for a suspended registration or a broken brake light, a provocative attempt to reduce the racial bias that can lead to such stops in the first place. 

“I think Sarah George has demonstrated a broader commitment to a reshaping and rethinking about what a just system looks like and what the role of a prosecutor is in the justice system than honestly any state’s attorney I’ve ever seen in Vermont,” said Bobby Sand, a former state’s attorney and founder of an innovative restorative justice program at the Vermont Law School (Sand supports George in his individual capacity).

On August 9, George will face Ted Kenney, who recently left a top post in the Vermont Attorney General’s Office to run in the Democratic primary for Chittenden County State’s Attorney. Kenney stresses that he’s no lock-em-up type, and has the CV to prove it: a longtime public defender and criminal defense attorney who has volunteered with a local transitional shelter and an organization that assists unhoused people. 

But Kenney’s rhetoric in the race echoes that of more conservative candidates running against reform-minded incumbents around the country. His campaign has focused on retail theft and a recent increase in crime, arguing that reforms under George, including her traffic stop policy and what he sees as her reluctance to request strict conditions of pretrial release, are too extreme and undermine public safety.

Kenney also claims that George’s use of restorative justice has been too reflexive and sometimes applied inappropriately. Their conflict illustrates the intellectual and political challenges that restorative justice poses for reform-minded prosecutors. For those like George who see the practice as a philosophy, it’s a totally alternate framework for adjudicating harm, with many principles that stand in direct opposition to the way the current criminal legal system operates. Vermont’s groundbreaking but imperfect integration of restorative justice into that system also leaves prosecutors like George vulnerable to many of the same criticisms levied against other aspects of criminal justice reform: that it’s too lenient, will be exploited, or only works in low-level cases and can’t adequately address serious harm. 

George is going farther than any state’s attorney in Vermont to integrate these two radically opposed systems. “Whether the public is ready to fully embrace that or not, I don’t know,” said Sand. “I guess we’ll find out in August.”

Where the traditional criminal legal system sees law, crime and punishment, restorative justice centers the concepts of relationships, harm, and repair. RJ, as Sand calls it, is “a philosophically different way to respond to harm.” It inverts the thinking behind some of the country’s most infamous tough-on-crime policies, like so-called three strikes laws that condemned people to life in prison if they accrued a third charge after already having two felonies on their record. 

“I always say to my volunteers: do you believe in second chances—and do you believe in 22nd chances?” said Christalee McSweeney, director of the Williston Community Justice Center. “Because sometimes that’s what it takes.”  

The Abenaki and other tribes indigenous to Vermont would have practiced some form of restorative justice, according to Sand, but when it began to be reimplemented in the 1990s, by two department of corrections officials, it was within and around the criminal legal system: courts, jails, prisons, probation, parole. Today, restorative justice is practiced in Vermont in a number of different forms, from post-release accountability circles, a program that Sand estimates is the most robust in the country, to community mediation that elides the criminal legal system entirely, to diversion and pre-charge programs.

Becky Penberthy, the Adult Restorative and Volunteer Coordinator at the Burlington Community Justice Center (CJC), which handles the city’s pre-charge restorative justice cases, says the goal of the process is to help people work through what they did, why they did it, what impact it had on the person they hurt and the people around them, and what they might do to make amends. “When something terrible happens and you’re both in on it, it doesn’t matter what your role is, a relationship is created—and it’s a terrible relationship,” Penberthy said. “The relationship can be repaired, so that people can move on.”

Two important questions the Burlington CJC asks participants are: what were you thinking at the time and what have you thought about since? Penberthy considered a hypothetical situation with a participant who drank too much and got into a bar fight. In response to the first question, he might recall that he didn’t like how someone was looking at him; to the second, he might confess that he didn’t even clearly remember what happened, and that he felt ashamed for letting himself get so drunk. 

Next in the process, the restorative justice practitioner would ask the participant to consider who’d been hurt: the guy he punched, obviously, but also the bouncer, who’d had to break up the fight; the bartender, who’d had to clean up the resulting mess; and his girlfriend, who had to pick him up from jail. Though these questions are the same for everyone, everything that flows from them must be tailored to the individual. The instigator of the bar fight, for instance, could be a college freshman with a fake ID who’s intoxicated in part by their newfound freedom, or someone who struggled with substance abuse for decades and might need treatment before being able to participate in the RJ process at all. 

George first became a prosecutor in Chittenden County in 2011, where she was assigned to domestic violence cases. She had gone to law school to become a public defender, but this was one area where she felt forthright about seeking justice for victims. “In my head, I thought that meant some form of punishment, even jail,” she recalled. “What I learned really quickly was that most survivors of domestic violence didn’t really want any of that.”

Seeking other ways to remedy the harm that domestic violence caused, George discovered restorative justice—but quickly learned that Vermont prohibits its use in three cases: sexual assault, stalking, and intimate partner violence. Still, the experience helped her develop a different framework for thinking about harm and repair. When George was appointed as state’s attorney in 2017 after her boss left to become Attorney General, one of the first things she did was invite Chittenden County’s CJCs in to discuss the practice with her staff.

Most restorative justice cases that the state’s 17 CJCs receive are referred there directly by law enforcement. But how many and what type of cases police send over depends on how much the state’s attorney in question prioritizes restorative justice—meaning that CJCs in George’s jurisdiction are a lot busier than others. “It’s very clear that there’s Chittenden County and then there’s the rest of the state,” McSweeney said. 

From the outset, George expanded her use of restorative justice in court. “Whenever our advocates would have conversations with victims that felt like it’d be a good fit, they would talk to them about it,” she said, and either recommend a restorative justice process instead of prosecution or as a condition of a case resolution. Then the pandemic hit. Caseloads skyrocketed, and the courts closed. George can’t explicitly tell police departments what to do, but she suggested that they expand their notion of what cases might be eligible; occasionally, she sent back cases that she thought would be a better fit for pre-charge restorative justice. The Williston CJC’s caseload went up so much that they dramatically expanded their volunteer base to meet demand. 

George’s opponent, Kenney, partially blames this expansion of restorative justice for the recent rise in crime in Chittenden County; George responds by citing a Seven Days analysis of 10 years of data that shows overall crime has declined, adding that there are obvious external factors, like the pandemic itself, that explain the spike in theft-related crimes. While Kenney says he’s a fan of restorative justice and supports using it as a tool, he argues that it’s been applied too widely under George.  

To McSweeney, the Williston CJC director, the pandemic actually facilitated the restorative justice process. She told Bolts that her office saw higher levels of engagement from both participants and victims under a new, virtual system. “They don’t have to come to an in-person meeting, they don’t have to worry about transportation or childcare,” she said. “I think for impacted parties, it’s easier to talk about what happened in the comfort of your own home on a screen rather than coming face to face with somebody.”

Another reason for the higher level of engagement, McSweeney said, is that participants might be leery of coming into the Williston CJC itself, since it shares an office with the town’s police department.

Herein lies the paradox: restorative justice is a critical tool for reducing the power and reach of the traditional criminal legal system, but the form of RJ that begins at the moment of harm (or the legal violation, in a more conventional framework) is usually practiced within it. Even if a community justice center’s restorative justice process precludes someone from ever getting a criminal record or having to appear in court, that person often still got there because of an arrest.

George’s attempts to expand direct referrals between law enforcement and CJCs shrinks the scope and reach of her office, a goal of many serious reform prosecutors nationwide. But the Vermont system relies on police as frontline arbiters of restorative justice, and the pandemic’s changes to operations have only strengthened that reality. In April 2020, George issued a memo encouraging police to consider sending more eligible cases to CJCs instead of to her office for prosecution. Prosecutors in George’s office may have less discretion over people’s lives now—but local law enforcement now has more. “It also does mean that we don’t have any way to track the potential disparities in who’s being referred and who’s not,” George noted.

Chittenden County is Vermont’s most diverse county, but it’s still more than 85 percent white. Burlington is over 80 percent white, and the police force has a documented history of stark racial bias in traffic stops, arrests of and use of force against Black civilians. Though CJCs and local police departments have tried to cut down on referral bias by creating lists of infractions that are suitable for restorative justice, it’s not unreasonable to think that such bias could still play a role in referrals to those programs. For police to properly screen people for restorative justice, they also need to be able to assess whether someone might be willing to take accountability for their actions. But the traditional criminal legal system enshrines the presumption of innocence: “We’ve literally trained people who have committed a crime not to talk to police, not to admit anything, and then not to take any responsibility,” said George. “So some of that can be really difficult to gauge immediately.”

In an interview, Kenney seemed less worried than George about the potential of bias in police referrals. He denounced her policy of not pressing charges based on evidence discovered during routine traffic stops, which she enacted to try to cut down the well-documented bias that can play into those decisions, as “radical,” saying he’d opt for continued anti-bias training instead. But he criticized George for ceding too much power to police by encouraging them to refer a wide range of cases to CJCs, saying he wants the state’s attorney to have more control in whether to bring the power of the criminal legal system to bear on a defendant. 

“The more serious things—a repeat offender, or a felony level offense—I would want the police to refer that to the State’s Attorney’s office as the first step so that they can do a review,” he told Bolts. “That does not mean that the people who don’t make the cut for reparative boards are going to go to jail. One of the benefits of bringing a more serious case into the criminal justice system is there are more tools available.”

Practicing restorative justice within the confines of the criminal legal system, rather than pre-charge, means there are more established consequences for failing to follow through, which raises another philosophical conflict between these two opposing systems. “My philosophy and my understanding of restorative justice is that it’s voluntary, right?” McSweeney said. “And so the moment that it becomes a court condition, it’s no longer voluntary.”

Probably the biggest controversy over restorative justice, and certainly the biggest in the state’s attorney race, is the question of accountability: what happens when people stop participating in the process? It seems like everyone agrees that restorative justice doesn’t work unless the person is willing to participate. How could it? “People need to want to take accountability,” said George. “It’s a lot harder than just pleading guilty.”

The association of restorative justice with leniency rankles many of its acolytes. “Most people don’t know how much work goes into a particular case,” said McSweeney. “Most people don’t know what a restorative contract looks like. When I train law enforcement [about RJ,] when I give them a copy of what a contract looks like, they’re normally pretty shocked at the depth of what we ask people to do.” 

Penberthy described the restorative justice “conference,” where the participant and their community volunteers talk through the harm caused and settle on a course of action intended to repair it. If the victim chooses to be present, they too will answer a series of questions, including: what was the hardest thing for you? In Penberthy’s experience, the answers are unpredictable and often surprising. A damaged car might mean more to its owner than just its monetary value—it might be a lifeline. A schoolyard threat might strike a particularly painful chord because the child’s parent had lingering trauma from a similar experience when they were in school. “In the best of situations, it becomes really quiet and really intimate,” Penberthy said. “And people really settle into this very, very challenging conversation.”

Still, McSweeney said that participation is essentially still voluntary in the pre-charge system,  meaning there’s not a surefire mechanism for accountability when people simply drop out of the process. And this is what leaves the system most vulnerable to criticism from people like Kenney. His campaign website asserts that restorative justice “will never work if there is no consequence for refusing to engage in the process.” When people fail to complete the process, he said, “many cases are being accepted for prosecution by the state’s attorney, but some of them are not.” George said her office looks at each case where participants drop out: “In some cases we’ll take the case and in some cases we’ll say, like, it’s been nine months and they haven’t picked up anything else. So we’re not going to charge it at this point. But we decide with each case.”

When she volunteered on the reparative panel in the city of Winooski (akin to a local CJC) in 2018 and 2019, Kayla Loving thought long and hard about restorative justice’s ties to the traditional criminal legal system. “I think the assumption was: oh, this is restorative justice, you just work with the police department,” she said. “And that’s not the approach I wanted to take.”

Now, as the restorative justice coordinator for Spectrum Vermont, which provides youth and family services, Loving focuses on a more holistic vision of restorative justice that aims to strengthen community before the harm-repair framework begins. “The way that I think it should be implemented is, first by providing opportunities for people to learn from one another and be authentic with each other, so that they are comfortable with one another and really value each other as human,” she said. That way, “when harm does happen, which will happen, they already have a relationship in place.” She’s currently conducting listening circles with middle and high-schoolers; the group recently discussed how to support each other amidst the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

Though it wasn’t for her, Loving respects the work of the CJCs, noting that the Burlington office recently hired a community mediator to help resolve interpersonal disputes before the criminal legal system ever gets involved. “I do think it is having a positive impact on the community,” she told Bolts. “And I think it might have even more of an impact if we did focus on community-building in the first place and not just: okay, something happened. Now what do we do?”

The post A Vermont Prosecutor Expanded Restorative Justice. Now She’s Defending It At the Polls. appeared first on Bolts.

Sarah Fair George, the state’s attorney of Chittenden County (home to Burlington) in Vermont, has instructed all staff and prosecutors who work in her office to visit the St. Albans prison, also known as the Northwest State Correctional Facility. “Most prosecutors have never stepped foot in the buildings that they sentence people to spend years in,” she wrote on Twitter. “That needs to change.”

I talked to George on Wednesday about her initiative, and how it could change practices in her office. She said prosecutors often treat prison time “nonchalantly,” as something abstract, and get in the habit of “just throwing out numbers.” “We say six months or two years, and don’t really have to think about what it means for the person,” she explained. 

“It’s important to stand in that space and see it for yourself, and feel it for yourself,” she added. “My hope is that people recognize that six months is a long time to spend in jail. Maybe thirty days can be enough time, maybe no jail. Just being more cognizant of the space you’re sending people to when you put an arbitrary number on an offer sheet.”

George said this perspective should fuel shorter sentences, but also restrain prosecutors from seeking incarceration in the first place. “They spent an hour and a half there and were relieved to get out,” she said of staff members who have already visited St. Albans as part of her initiative. “So let’s imagine how this might impact somebody who is there for six months or a year, and how this impacts them as a community member when they get back out. Is there a way that we can avoid that entirely, and not risk them coming out a more violent person or with some type of trauma having been in jail? Can we find another way?”

Her comments flip the typical way opponents of criminal justice reform react to cases of recidivism to argue that people were not treated harshly enough. Instead she suggested that some instances of recidivism should force prosecutors to confront the failures of incarceration. “That hasn’t worked, that person is back. Maybe we need to find another way to address this particular person,” she said.

I also asked George, who has implemented programs to divert people from prison, how lawmakers could further decrease reliance on incarceration. She endorsed a proposal to eliminate de facto life without parole sentences, which would be a national first. She also told me that she plans to work for incarcerated people to have better access to ballots. “Although we are proud of ourselves for saying that inmates can vote,” she said, “I don’t think we do enough to make sure that they do.”

George’s announcement comes a month after the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums called on lawmakers to visit a carceral facility to see how people are detained. 

The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

You announced that you have instructed prosecutors in your office to visit a prison in the next month. What is the impetus for this, and what insights do you wish them to glean?

For me, it has gone back to my own experience having been in some of these prisons. It has shaped a lot of my reform policies and how I approach prosecution in general. When I was in grad school, I went to multiple prisons and was on the mental health wards at those prisons, which were in some cases pretty appalling. Then, when I was at the public defender’s office, I went to several prisons and met with clients and heard the stories of either how they were treated in jail or the conditions of jail, solitary confinement, stuff like that. I came into being a prosecutor with that background, and with that idea of what some of those prisons are like. 

I have always thought it is important for people to understand what probation does, and what some of our community partners do, and that’s always been stressed. But it’s never been stressed that they should also fully understand what prison means, and what a jail sentence means for these individuals. 

As prosecutors, we get very comfortable with just throwing out numbers as an amount of time. We say six months or two years, and don’t really have to think about what it means for the person, that six months for one person could be detrimental to their entire lives. 

What are you thinking of when you say it’s important to understand what prison means for individuals? What it is that you think people in your office should have to witness?

Literally just seeing the facility, and understanding literally where they’re sending people. But also being in one of those cells and sitting on the bed in a cell and seeing how small that space is, and seeing a solitary confinement room and seeing how claustrophobic you get in five minutes in that room. Hearing those sounds in the jail of those doors closing, and how cold and harsh all of those sounds are. Seeing inmates in that environment.  In Vermont, there is this idea that jail isn’t that bad, and in some sense we’re very lucky, but that’s a lot easier to say on the outside. You spend an hour and a half in the jail and you find yourself relieved to come out. You know you were always coming out, but you have that experience and you think, “Okay, maybe that TV and that good food is not as important as I thought it was when I just lost my freedom for an hour and a half, knowing full well I’ll be coming out and I’m still relieved.” 

As a prosecutor, the only time I’ve been to a jail is for a deposition of an inmate, or an inmate who wants to do a proffer. Those meetings are very structured, they’re in a space right inside the jail, so you’re not going very far. There’s really nobody else around. That doesn’t count for me, that’s a very easy way to say you’ve been in a jail without actually being in a facility. I think it’s important to really stand in that space and see it for yourself, and feel it for yourself.

How exactly do you think prosecutors should take these things into account in the course of their work? At what stages of their discretion should this weigh in?

It may not start necessarily with the charging decisions, but I think in some cases it could. If you know for example that this person’s parole could be revoked and they may go back to jail, or you know that they might be held in bond or some other violation, then maybe it does charge at the charging decision. But at the very least, I think that when you’re giving an offer on a case and you nonchalantly say six months as if that’s not a lot of time, my hope is that people recognize that six months is a long time to spend in jail. Maybe thirty days is enough time, maybe no jail. Just being more cognizant of the space you’re sending people to when you put an arbitrary number on an offer sheet.

But also understanding where people are coming from. Somebody may have a long record, and that record has led to incarcerative sentences several times in their history—maybe you can have a better understanding of why they are in the place that they’re in, having spent all that time in jail. Maybe doing it again isn’t going to do them hasn’t favors. That hasn’t worked, that person is back. Maybe we need to find another way to address this particular person.

In the past, you have talked of promoting law enforcement responses that keep individuals in their communities, rather than “taking them out of the community and putting them in an incredibly violent and dangerous space, for however long.” How does this new initiative connect to the other policies you are putting in place to cub incarceration? 

Prosecutors recognizing that this place that they’re sending people is a real place, and it is not a nice place, and it’s not a good space. They spent an hour and a half there and were relieved to get out. So let’s imagine how this might impact somebody who is there for six months or a year, and how this impacts them as a community member when they get back out. Is there a way that we can avoid that entirely, and not risk them coming out a more violent person, or with some type of trauma having been in jail? Can we find another way?

I think there are very few law enforcement officers who have really spent any time in jails. Of course, they’re taking them to and from, but our sheriffs actually do a lot of our transport. I think it would be a good idea for law enforcement who have spent any time in jail, to see that and ask how is this actually helping our community for somebody to be in this space for some amount of time? If we start having less sentences on these cases, not to generalize all law enforcement, but they may start thinking, “Oh, he only got 30 days, when in the past we would have done six months.” We need to all be on that same page that thirty days is a long time for somebody to be held in jail, and it’s not because we’re going easy on them, it’s because we recognize that no more than that is necessary.

There are legislative proposals in Vermont to scale back the length of long prison terms. One bill filed this year would have eliminated life without parole sentences, and ensured that anyone is eligible for parole after 25 years. Is that a reform that you would support, and what other measures do you think could curb excessive sentences?

I do support it. I worked with the individuals who submitted that bill, and am still hopeful that it will get more traction in the next session. I think it’s certainly a great start. It’s not a huge number we’re talking about. But I think the conversation leads to, who are the people who are serving life without parole, and is that really necessary. 

Our bail statute has recently changed. That has eliminated a significant amount of people serving jail terms pre-conviction, which has lowered our incarceration rate, which is really fantastic. I support that as well. We have some legislation going about our  habitual offender statutes and using that less in more specific circumstances, that should keep more people out of jail. 

My colleague Vaidya Gullapalli wrote last month that officials visiting jails or prisons can only go so far, as they may see a curated version that does not capture the experiences of people detained there. How will your office also ensure to incorporate voices of people impacted by the criminal legal system in your work?

I struggle with that. Half of the staff went yesterday, and half of the staff is going next month. I was speaking with all of them, I asked did you feel like that experience was fake, did you feel like you didn’t see things that you wanted to. Most of the attorneys felt like they got a good enough impression, but they didn’t see a solitary confinement cell. They didn’t actually go into one. That was something that was disappointing to me, something I want to work on for the next one. I don’t know how to get around that. Obviously jails have the policies and procedures in place for people visiting the jail that they have to follow, so what do you do? Getting people in there in whatever way that the Department of Corrections will let us in is my first step.

For me, the next step is something that I try to do when I’m in court. If somebody has spent some time in jail, I’ll ask their attorney, can I talk to your client for a few minutes? I’ll ask them what was your experience like, which jail were you in, how did they treat you, what did they do well, what could they work on? I also do that on Twitter. There’s a couple of people who are out of jail now but I know are vocal about their how they were treated in the Department of Corrections. I’ve had conversations with them, I’ve called them, I’ve talked to them. I’m trying to find ways because I fully acknowledge that us going on a two hour, three-hour tour at DOC is going to be what DOC wants us to see. And I don’t know if that’s their fault either. So doing that, plus talking to people and hearing their experiences is the best we can do right now.

On solitary confinement, the prison we’ve been talking about was recently hit by a lawsuit this year over the death of a man held in solitary confinement. What can your office do about potential abuses or complaints regarding detention conditions in jail?

The county I’m in only has only one jail, and it’s an-all female-only prison. We do handle any allegation that come from that. We have prosecuted several guards from the past for sexual assault in that facility. Other than through the media, I don’t know about other facilities because they don’t come from my office.

I think that the Department of Corrections has a lot of work to do to have some of their own safeguards in place that don’t require inmates to even report things—more video that is being fed to some other facility—so there isn’t a requirement on an inmate who is already in a very vulnerable position to have to tell on a guard who is in charge of their safety. I don’t know how as prosecutors we can facilitate it because we don’t know about it until it’s already happened, but it’s certainly a good question. I think there needs to be more community oversight in general on all of thee facilities, and more community members or boards that are allowed to just drop in randomly and talk to inmates, and what they say is protected.

Vermont is one of the two states where people who are incarcerated have the right to vote. That resonates with what you are saying about the importance of the perspective of those affected by the system. My question is whether you support that, but also how you think Vermont’s system of universal enfranchisement shapes conditions in prisons, and what would you say to other states that may be considering a move like this?

I absolutely support it, I am very proud of Vermont for doing that, and I think every state should allow them to vote. From my perspective, in Vermont and I think nationally, a vast majority of people who are incarcerated are ultimately released. They are still a community member, and they should still have a say in the way their community is run, whether they’re in jail or not. 

When I was just elected in 2018, I asked a lot of people who had been incarcerated whether or not they voted while they were in, and a lot of them either didn’t know that they could, or tried and weren’t able to get an absentee ballot as easily as I think they should have been. So I talked to the Secretary of State about how, in the 2020 elections, we’re going to try to find some better ways that inmates can get easy access to absentee ballots to actually be able to vote. Although we are proud of ourselves for saying that inmates can vote, I don’t think we do enough to make sure that they do and that they actually can in practice and not just in theory. 

I don’t have an election in 2020, I have a four-year term, so I’m hoping to spend my get out the vote on the inmate population in Vermont. There are a lot of inmates who don’t recognize that they haven’t lost their ability to vote, so we have some work to do, and that education is going in these facilities around election day. You know, of all the governor’s races we’ve had, I can’t recall a governor ever visiting a jail and speaking to those individuals. That’s a place where we could really work on, making sure that they know what their rights are, and making sure that their leaders do care and want them to vote.

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