Last weekend, roughly fifty Vermonters gathered outside Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility (CRCF) in South Burlington. Organized by FreeHer Vermont, attendees braved the chilly Saturday afternoon holding signs and chanting “No more fear, no more hate, no more prisons in our state.” While this was far from the first FreeHer rally at the site, this event was Valentine’s themed, with heart-adorned signs with slogans like “joy not jail” and “make love not prisons,” and chants aimed at those being held within CRCF that those assembled loved them and will never forget them.
FreeHer is also running a canteen fund campaign to fill up the commissary accounts of those in CRCF. (In 2022, The Rake investigated the extortionate prices that Vermont prisons charge incarcerated people to purchase basic necessities.)
Several speakers took to the megaphone to read the testimonials of those who have been or currently are in CRCF, to denounce plans for a new women’s prison, and to link the struggle for prison abolition with other struggles for justice across Vermont.
Tiffany Harrington spoke to the crowd about what she saw and experienced while incarcerated at CRCF. She gave birth to her son Isaiah while still incarcerated there, and suffered from postpartum eclampsia, a serious and life-threatening childbirth complication. Despite the complication, and the need for recovery after a C-section, prison officials wanted Harrington returned from the hospital as quickly as possible.
“So the nurses asked the medical staff here at CRCF if they would actually give me the meds they prescribed, and check my blood pressure at least every four hours,” Harrington said. “However, they only checked my blood pressure once, and then they didn’t check it again. During those two weeks, I started getting sicker and sicker.”
Harrington said that only after weeks of making requests through sick slips, and a friend having an ACLU staffer call the prison to demand she be seen by a doctor, did she get any sort of check up or care. As soon as they saw her dangerously high blood pressure, she was taken back to the hospital in an ambulance and treated. Such a staggering case of neglect reinforced for Harrington that she must not be the only one. “It makes me wonder how many people have died or had really, really dire consequences at the hands of [Vermont Department of Corrections] and their medical providers,” she told the crowd.
“There’s no such thing as a trauma-informed prison”
Jenna, a healthcare worker, warned people not to listen to the marketing the Department of Corrections [DOC] was using around the proposed new women’s prison. DOC claims that its proposed new prison would be “trauma-informed” and offer additional amenities for those incarcerated within. “No amount of natural light can replace the feeling of sun on your skin. No calming color scheme can erase the trauma of being separated from your family, community and loved ones,” Jenna said. “No soundproofing can hide the fact that our neighbors are being held behind bars, surveilled 24/7, isolated, and oppressed.”
Throughout February, FreeHer Vermont is collecting signatures from public health workers for a new open letter that will be sent to the legislature in Montpelier. The letter details the negative health outcomes of incarceration as well as alternatives to the millions of public dollars allocated to prisons and jails.
This signature collection takes place alongside FreeHer’s grassroots organizing work to delay and ultimately halt new prison construction. Currently, DOC is looking at two potential sites in Essex, and has faced significant local public pushback against it.
Patrick is a writer and organizer based in northern Vermont. He is on the editorial collective for The Rake Vermont.
