How do you feel about public safety in 2024?

2024-02-26

Dear friend,

Is crime getting worse in Vermont in late 2023 and 2024?

The most useful and reliable statistics on this will only come out years from now. As a legislator, I've been trying to stay in more real-time with how things are going across Vermont, and that takes first-hand stories. I'd love to hear your experience of life in Vermont in 2024.

How do you feel about safety?

"Another teen arrested for murder in Vermont" said the headline that a neighbor forwarded me, with the message:

It feels to me like crimes is rising in the state, sadly... lots to pray for

As a legislator, I love hearing specific stories, and then trying to zoom out and look at how they fit together as a system.

Here are some of my collected observations. I'd love yours...

I've heard some say that crime is not actually up, there's just a perception of it based on seeing homelessness around us. Certain headline stories stick with us and form a perception in our minds of a "catch-and-release" system, but it's actually not that bad.

There's a laudable thought here, that we shouldn't stigmatize people experiencing homelessness. There truly is a housing shortage and without housing and transportation there may be jobs, but it's hard to hold one down. Life happens. It could happen to you. Let's assume that everyone is trying their best and give them as much grace as we can.

However, from what I observe, we do have issues we need to talk about.

Sometimes there are specific stories that really motivate us. Myself, I am angry and frustrated that our criminal justice process is working so slowly that my buddy's sister's murder trial remains a year off​.

Why the delay? The court is swamped with murders. Ugh.

But as angry I am about this harm and the ripple effects on the family and the community, veteran legislators have told me that legislating in reaction to headlines doesn't age well. What's the big picture?

I've tried to grapple with this, and one thing I see is that we continue to live in a world where bad people do bad things.

I feel the need to say that out loud because when talking to law-abiding citizens who are not exposed to crime in their day-to-day, I often hear denial. I'm a case study in that. Until serving on the Legislature, the closest I came to spending time with offenders and getting to know their stories was on jury duty about ten years ago.

I do feel as though crime can be hard to grok until it affects someone close to you, or you get to know individual stories. And that's how it's supposed to be. If you're a healthy, well-balanced individual, you're not supposed to understand criminality. It should sound unbelievable that someone should do such a horrible thing.

I know you would never break the law. Nor would I. Sometimes, living in my bubble of decent people, I need a reminder that in the world we live in, we do need systems to deal with bad people who do bad things.

I've spent a lot of time as a legislator talking with prosecutors, and police officers and police chiefs and sheriffs and the Defender General, and Supreme Court justices, and incarcerated women and men.

Windham County Sheriff Mark Anderson and Rep. Tristan Roberts at a public safety forum in Halifax, December 2023.

From what I have seen, there is a pattern of crime in Vermont today that feels like it's creeping in on us.

Here's a for instance -- a mosaic story with common themes of drugs, sex trafficking, and homicide. I don't like to generalize about gender, but the genders in this story are typical.

There's a 24-year-old man in Hartford, CT, who acts as a predator and gets some vulnerable, poverty-stricken 14-year-old girls in his orbit. "Do you want to have some fun?" He gives them heavy narcotics. Then he presses a gun to their heads -- they are in fear of him from this moment forward. Then he sells their bodies. They get $250 each for the night, in cash. There's no one they can turn to for help -- they've seen friends get shot for less. And now they're addicted to narcotics.

This can becomes a way that some people live in 2024. It's organized crime and the teens and 20-somethings are disposable to those higher up. One night, there's a burglary. Now, everyone is an accomplice.

Somewhere up the chain there must be dealers who are profiting from all of those who aren't addicted to substances, but with over 60% of those incarcerated in Vermont addicted to opioids, a great deal of the crime that's showing up in court is connected to substance abuse. (Is non-opioid-related crime continuing just as steadily but not getting the proper attention? I wonder.)

One night, a couple of the young pawns are sent on a run up I-91. Could be young men, women, or both. They cover Hartford to St. Johnsbury in two hours, nothing to stop them. They deliver a bag of fentanyl and take some firearms and cash in trade.

The same night, the same area of town, someone gets shot, or maybe knifed. Maybe the victim is another criminal on the scene. Or maybe it's an innocent passerby. Maybe it's hard to tell, which makes all this even scarier. Who knows why? It seems insensible but it happens.

There are advocates who say we should stop building prisons, and empty out 90% of inmates. I've spoken with these advocates, and I truly respect where they're coming from. I've thought it over, and I've looked at the evidence, and overall my feedback is -- I support this as an aspirational goal, but what's the plan?

I have yet to see one that looks at the situation from the crime victims' perspective, and from the perspective of providing effective security for those who have shown they need it.

There is a perception I've heard from some advocates that Vermont incarcerates a lot of non-violent offenders. That's simply not the case, according to DOC population data. Vermont worked overtime during COVID to reduce our prison population, and we did -- by 30%. By and large, you have to be implicated in very serious criminal activity to be incarcerated in Vermont.

Visiting Marble Valley Correctional Facility in Rutland, Vermont earlier this month

I would be comfortable assuming that most-to-all offenders started out as crime victims. You see it over and over again. Yes, crime pays, and that will always suck in people who are vulnerable.

My gut instinct is that people are born good and turned bad, if only through the "soft bigotry of low expectations," as President Bush memorably said.

However it happens, there are 853 sentenced individuals incarcerated in Vermont today, and the vast majority are implicated in something far more violent than check fraud or shoplifting. Relatively few are incarcerated for nonviolent drug-related offenses.

As a society, let's be honest. Our rehabilitation toolbox isn't reaching certain people, for whatever reason.

Speaking in general terms to veterans of our criminal justice system, the most reliable indicator for turning someone's life around is age. A lot of people settle down and straighten out by age 30. A judge told me, "If I'm seeing you in your thirties, I'm probably going to be seeing you in your fifties." Another veteran defense attorney pegged the fork in the road at 42.

Does getting old, like really old, stop people from being lawless? Speaking anecdotally with correctional officers with lots of experience -- plenty of people mellow out and are model citizens behind bars.

And some continue to act in violent and anti-socials ways through their 50s, 60s, 70s and on. There are some individuals incarcerated whom Corrections would like to discharge to a nursing home, but a nursing home won't take them due to a history of violence with staff. (Nursing homes and their staff have enough challenges.) There are some people who are model citizens while incarcerated and then recidivate.

I want to underline here that in this essay, I'm expressly trying to not stigmatize or generalize. At the same time, my constituents are seeing patterns in what's going on, and they've asked me to try to explain what I'm seeing. Every individual is unique. Yet, I won't let that stand in the way of seeing patterns that we should talk about.

Some argue that we should "abolish prisons." To make this anything more than a slogan, we need to talk seriously as a society about how to end poverty, end child abuse, end child sex trafficking, keep kids off illegal drugs and overall, save people from criminality in their teens and twenties.

If we can manage that but we still have some folks who do end up incarcerated for violent crimes for a lengthy period to life, where these folks should live?

A protest sign leans against a wall during the Occupy4Prisoners Rally at San Quentin Prison in Marin County, California, on February 20, 2012. Daniel Arauz / flickr

One report I read said that people just need housing and jobs. We should build smaller, dorm-like secure residences in our communities, and give offenders job-training and access to treatment.

If that sounds as good to you as it does to me, let's figure this out -- how do we provide appropriate security? How do we provide onsite medical services and prescription medications? We need to run kitchens and laundries and have adequate family visitation areas in any such secure facility. Facilities like what this report envisions cost upwards of $1 million/bed to construct, and millions to run every year.

There are many operational factors of operating a secure facility that you and I have the luxury of not worrying about the way DOC does on our behalf, 366/24/7. We need to factor a lot in, and when we do that, the economy of scale points to facilities housing hundreds of persons.

Vermont already spends north of $95,000/inmate/year. Expect that to go up dramatically if we adopted this community-based model.

Maybe that would be money well-spent, if we could test the hypothesis that investing hundreds of millions of dollars in small-scale secure housing would allow us to close our conventional facilities. What if we found out that we take better care of the people in our custody and get them back on their feet? That they would be contributing to our economy and our communities rather than damaging them?

That's what we'd all like to see. Could we test this model? What community would like to raise its hand to try it?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I think questions like these represent some of the difficult parts of our system that we need to talk about.

Until we manage to address the issues we are facing in public safety, we need strong policing, fair and efficient courts, and an effective corrections system.

I strongly applaud the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for taking long and hard testimony on how clogged our courts are, and looking for creative ways to address that.

Address it we must. Deterrence does work, when we provide it. That includes police presence and that includes swift and certain justice. It is worrisome that our homicide clearance rate -- the rate at which murders are successfully prosecuted -- is going down (somewhere around 60%–70%). The clearance rate for all other crimes is much lower, and is also going down. I am skeptical of statistics in part because reporting of crime is down, because it doesn't feel like it does any good. (Please do report crime to police, by the way -- you never know when your piece of the puzzle might help an arrest.)

I'm not happy with Governor Scott's budget proposal that would force the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs to cut nine prosecutor positions, as department leaders reported to the Legislature last week.

It's a tough budget year, so it's true we can't just throw resources at public safety. We have to be targeted and we have to be creative, and we have to also dare to be visionary.

In House Corrections, I’m supporting Vermont State Police in building a new storage facility for Special Teams. Much-needed updates to our barracks have been one strategy to help Vermont recruit and retain excellent officers. Also, moving VSP completely out of their old Williston barracks will allow us to sell that valuable parcel of real estate, and bring the money back to the bottomline of the Capital Budget.

I’m holding the Department of Corrections accountable for provider offenders with a pathway to rehabilitation and successful re-entry into the community – ending the cycle of recidivism that law-abiding Vermonters like you and I are so frustrated with.

I'm encouraging DOC to do their best work. I went and spoke recently at the 176th Correctional Academy graduation at Lyndon State, in order to try to inspire and encourage the 34 new Vermont correctional officers in their new career. To be fair to DOC and to our officers, we owe it to them to acknowledge that the folks in their custody are challenging cases.

I'm asking DOC to describe in more detail its plan for maintaining crucial sex-offender-treatment services if it goes ahead with the Governor's proposal to shift these workers to staff.

For example, as an example within my committee’s jurisdiction, I have been strongly encouraging the Department of Corrections to fully implement Act 183 of 2022. Vocational training gives offenders valuable skills and more potential to hold down a job after re-entering the community. This not only helps them make rent, but gives them a purpose in life and a connection with community, other than via harmful and criminal behavior.

House Corrections & Institutions has voice strong concerns to the Administration about the lack of recovery coaching, counseling, and behavioral intervention both for inmates addicted to opioids (over 60% of the incarcerated population), and for those same individuals when back in the community.

The Color Guard at the 176th Correctional Academy graduation earlier this month was incredibly moving. I spoke to the graduating class, thanking them for their work and encouraging them to find sustenance in the meaning and purpose of the job.

While there are unfortunate staffing, cost, and other issues that the Dept. of Corrections (DOC) cites as obstacles, House Corrections and Institutions is ready and willing to work with DOC on solutions.

Notably, many individuals leaving a correctional facility lack a valid ID, which makes it impossible to obtain housing, a job, and consistent access to prescriptions and medical care.

Although the Dept. of Corrections and DMV have a process for supplying these IDs, they have acknowledged that there are gaps. House Corrections & Institutions is exploring ways to make this process more seamless and reliable via a "committee bill" that we'll be drafting this week.

***
Phew. Are you still there, reader?

I sat down to write this email as a quick check-in on our public safety situation. I started out wanting to ask what you're seeing out there, and then I found I had a lot to share on what I'm seeing, what I'm working on, and why I'm working on it.

Coming back to you...

What do you feel is working in your community?

What do you feel is not working?

How are you feeling with regard to public safety?

What else should we be working on?

warm regards,

Rep. Tristan Roberts
Vermont House of Representatives

P.S. This evening I'll pack my bags and drive to Montpelier, staying over till coming home Friday evening.

The firehose of activity in Montpelier can feel like a long way from the quiet Halifax backyard I'm looking out at now.

This newsletter is one way of bridging that gap, and I'd your feedback on how I'm doing.

Are you staying informed? How often do you read these?

Is this interesting? Too long? Too something? It's important to me to stay in touch with you, but how I do it is open to feedback.

Would you rather I did this on Instagram or on video or not at all? More in person or on the phone, less email?

Please shoot me a quick note -- and please be honest! As is too often the case (I apologize!) I am behind on responses, but I read every email and appreciate every report-back I get, from wherever you are in the world.

Lavender gazes at purple hyacinths and crisp apples from Dutton's farmstand.