For more than 35 years, on a forested road near the banks of the Winooski River, Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center housed some of Vermont’s most troubled youths.

By the time Gov. Phil Scott’s administration shut it down in fall 2020, the 30-bed juvenile detention center in Essex had drawn multiple lawsuits, replete with horrific details describing inhumane conditions and treatment for the facility’s residents. 

Few publicly lament the shuttering of Woodside, but since then, Vermont has had to make do without a dedicated facility to hold young people involved in the justice system. The state has struggled to comply with a tangle of ever more complex state and federal regulations, and over the past four years, dozens of people 18 and younger have wound up in adult prison, some for extended stays. 

Now, after years of delays and scrapped plans, state officials are pushing forward with the creation of a new residential facility in Vergennes. This June, four years after Woodside’s closure, officials inked a $10 million-plus deal with a for-profit provider. 

But even with a contract signed, the state has not yet decided what kind of facility it wants — not how big to build it, nor the legal profile of the youths who will be sent there. State agencies are debating, for example, whether the facility will have capacity to house older youths and those charged with serious crimes.

There are “complicating variables when it comes down to how many beds do you build, and for what population,” said Tyler Allen, the adolescent services director at the Department for Children and Families. “Because there’s a lot of pathways things can go.”

‘At the start of conversation’

Woodside held a population of youths who had been charged with crimes and “found to present a risk of injury to (themselves), others or property that (required) them to be treated in a secure setting,” according to a lengthy 2019 report on the facility.  

Even before Woodside closed, officials were exploring plans to replace it with a smaller residential treatment center. In 2020, Sean Brown, then the commissioner of the Department for Children and Families, said the state was working with the Becket Family of Services, a network of New England nonprofits that serve youths, to open a new five-bed facility within a year. 

But the proposed location — a 280-acre parcel in Newbury owned by the Vermont Permanency Initiative, which is linked to Becket organizations  — drew backlash and litigation from neighbors.

Earlier this year, the state shelved plans for that center and announced that it would build a new facility, the Green Mountain Youth Campus, on state land in Vergennes. Officials hope it will open in 2026, six years after the closure of Woodside.

The campus’ original design called for a 14-bed complex for justice-involved youths aged 12 to 18 with two sections: a six-bed wing for longer-term treatment and an eight-bed wing for shorter-term crisis stabilization. 

A rendering of the proposed Green Mountain Youth Campus. Photo courtesy of Vermont Department for Children and Families

But Allen, in a recent interview, said that officials were considering adding a third section to the campus, one designed to accommodate youths 18 and older — a population scheduled to have many criminal cases moved to family court in April under Vermont’s Raise the Age law. 

That law, which passed in 2018, gradually increases the age of offenders who are referred to family court instead of criminal court for committing nonviolent offenses. While the first stage — raising the age to the offender’s 19th birthday — took effect in 2020, lawmakers have delayed further changes to statute. This April, barring further delays, the state is set to raise the age to an offender’s 20th birthday. 

The new proposal would create a 22-bed center — just eight beds shy of Woodside’s capacity. It could also allow the facility to serve youths charged with more serious crimes who end up in adult prisons, Allen said.

“This is just at the start of conversation,” Allen said earlier this month. “So that’s actually going to be introduced to our facility planning stakeholders and other folks just in the coming weeks.”

Members of the House Human Services committee tour a temporary secure juvenile facility in Middlesex on Tuesday, February 13, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

‘A long haul’

Last month, Vermont also opened a temporary four-bed site in Middlesex called the Red Clover Treatment Program. That facility provides short-term crisis stabilization to justice-involved youths aged 12 to 18 as an interim measure before the construction of the Green Mountain Youth Campus. As of Nov. 4, Red Clover had two youths placed there, according to Department for Children and Families. 

Vermont has contracted with a newly created entity called Sentinel Group, LLC, to operate Red Clover and to help design — and potentially run — the Green Mountain Youth Campus. The contract, obtained by VTDigger through a public records request, calls for the state to pay Sentinel Group up to $10.7 million over two years, a sum that does not cover the cost of running the future Vergennes facility.

A state spokesperson declined to provide an estimate for the cost of running that center. Woodside cost roughly $6 million a year to run at the time of its closure.

Sentinel Group was the only vendor that contacted the state after a previous request for proposals came up empty, according to state officials.

Jeff Caron, the company’s president, also leads the Vermont Permanency Initiative, which operates the Vermont School for Girls, the New England School for Girls, and Vermont Support and Stabilization, an in-home service provider.

In an interview Caron said that the Green Mountain Youth Campus would have to fit his specifications in order for Sentinel to run it. Without the right facility — one that would allow for appropriate rehabilitative treatment and career skills training — he might walk away, he said. 

“They would like us to run it, but again, who knows what’s going to happen in a couple of years?” he said. “I would love to do that for the state of Vermont. But again, it’s a long haul, and if they don’t build a building that I want, then I’m not going to do it.”

A room at a temporary secure juvenile facility in Middlesex on Feb. 13. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Woodside faced repeated criticism, legal repercussions and lost federal funding for lacking necessary therapeutic or rehabilitative programs. 

At a September meeting of a state advisory panel, Allen, of DCF, said that Sentinel Group was a nonprofit, although the company is in fact a for-profit entity. Allen acknowledged that status in an interview earlier this month. 

The state “made the decision that that wasn’t a barrier to contracting,” he said. “They were the only folks who came out and said, ‘We think we can do this thing.’”

Caron said that the company’s for-profit status reflected practical concerns, rather than a profit motive. He works with four other nonprofit boards, which eat up a significant amount of time and energy, he said, and another board is simply beyond his capacity. 

“People are going to assume he’s just a money-grabbing guy, but that’s not the case,” he said, referring to himself. Caron said he is dedicated to helping treat and rehabilitate youths, rather than simply incarcerating them — a commitment he said was borne out by a long track record in the industry. 

“I’ve been in the business for over 30 years, and I’ve been to numerous lockups and all the programs all over New England,” he said. “And secure detention centers for youths are not progressive and they don’t really work. They’re just an offshoot of adult incarceration — which we know doesn’t work a whole heck of a lot.”

And yet, Vermont youths have ended up in adult incarceration in recent years.

‘Sight and sound’

Vermont’s juvenile justice system is an intricate one, and young people involved in it may have very different experiences depending on their age and the severity of their alleged offense.

Most cases involving youths who commit lower-level offenses take place in family court. Currently, those youths are sometimes placed at crisis stabilization facilities, such as Red Clover or Bennington’s Seall programs, or at out-of-state residential centers — places that raise concerns of their own. 

But for youths 14 and up accused of more serious crimes — from a list colloquially called the “Big 12 offenses”  —  cases must begin in criminal court, and young people may be housed or sentenced in adult prisons during or after their cases. 

The Big 12 includes murder, manslaughter, sexual assault and other severe crimes. This past legislative session, lawmakers removed one crime from the list — burglary into an occupied dwelling — and added three new ones: using a firearm while committing a felony, trafficking a regulated drug, and aggravated stalking. (Those new Big 12 offenses only start in criminal court if the alleged perpetrator is 16 or older, however.) 

Vermont Department of Corrections data from the three most recent years shows the state has held hundreds of people 21 and younger in adult prisons, several dozen of whom were 18 and younger. 

The state incarcerated 178 individuals in 2022 who were under 22 years old. Twenty-two of those people were under 19, and eight were under 18. 

The overall figure rose in 2023, when Vermont’s prisons held 260 people younger than 22. Thirty-two were 18 and under, and five were younger than 18.  

The department also compiled data for 2024 through Sept. 12. By that time, Vermont had incarcerated 192 people under the age of 22, on pace to slightly exceed the 2023 figure. As of Sept. 12, 22 of the people held this year were 18 or younger, and four were under 18.

Members of the House Human Services committee tour a temporary secure juvenile facility in Middlesex on Feb. 13. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

When young people enter adult prisons, a slate of specific federal requirements comes into play. Federal law prohibits people under 18 from being housed within “sight and sound” of incarcerated adults, and requires supervision in situations when minors and adults are allowed to interact. 

Vermont’s Raise the Age law adds further complications. Because the legislation increased the age of full criminal responsibility to 19, 18-year-olds who enter DOC custody must be granted a hearing during which a court decides whether to house the youth in an adult facility and allow sight and sound contact with incarcerated adults.

For 18-year-olds, courts often waive the sight and sound separation rule, according to Allen, the DCF official, usually at the request of the youth, who generally do not want to be held in isolation.  

Over the past few years, federal officials have cited Vermont for violations of those regulations. In the 2021 fiscal year, the state reported five instances in which youths, all 18-year-olds charged as juveniles, were not separated by sight and sound from incarcerated adults. Because of Vermont’s Raise the Age law, the state is required to sequester those 18-year-olds from older incarcerated adults — unless waived by a judge — even though they are adults under federal law.

Those five incidents all occurred over the span of five months directly following the implementation of the Raise the Age law, Joshua Marshall, a DCF spokesperson, wrote in an emailed statement, “and DOC immediately began implementing practice change and developing policy” to prevent any more infractions. 

Still, those violations came with a cost. The federal government reduced the size of a state grant by 20%, or $120,000, for the next fiscal year. The feds also required the state to spend half of the roughly $480,000 in remaining grant money to address the issue. 

More recently, Vermont was cited for running afoul of another section of the federal law, one that limits how long justice-involved juveniles can be held in adult facilities. Under those regulations, youths cannot be held in adult facilities for more than six hours “for the purposes of processing or release or while awaiting transfer to a juvenile facility,” according to federal guidelines. In rural areas, youths may be held for up to 48 hours. 

But in the 2022 fiscal year, Vermont saw 13 instances in which youths were held in adult facilities for longer than allowed. Two youths were held for over 130 days each, according to DCF. 

Because that requirement is relatively new, the federal government is not yet penalizing states for those violations, Marshall said.  

‘A function it was never designed to serve’

Currently, the state uses a dedicated four-person unit at Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland to hold youths, Isaac Dayno, executive director of policy and strategic initiatives for the Department of Corrections, said in an interview. 

The wing in Rutland allows for sight and sound separation, but sometimes the situation is more cumbersome. If multiple juveniles are arrested for the same crime, a judge could order them not to have contact, Dayno said, further complicating Vermont’s makeshift system. 

Some corrections officials have expressed concern about housing young people in adult prisons.

“We’re trying to manipulate the correctional system to meet a function it was never designed to serve,” Dayno said. “We want juveniles to be housed with DCF. They have the training, they have the expertise.” 

Joshua Rutherford, DOC’s facilities cooperation manager, recalled that more than 20 years ago, as a correctional officer, he witnessed a 16-year-old being housed in his unit for a nonviolent felony. 

“We kept an eye on him. We tried to keep him safe,” Rutherford said, “but he was a 16-year-old living with adults in a correctional facility. I don’t know how much good that did him long term.”

Rutherford kept tabs on the youth after he left prison. Eventually, he died of an overdose, he said.

“It’s possible that he could have been diverted to a different system, and that result could have happened anyway. I don’t know,” Rutherford said. “I do know that adult prisons are adult prisons, and they serve a purpose in our society. We have a mission. But I think as a state, we always should be looking very carefully at who we put in incarceration.”

But it’s not clear how many youths the new treatment facility in Vergennes will be able to keep out of adult prison. 

That’s because most of the youths housed in prisons are there because of serious, Big 12 charges. And the Green Mountain Youth Campus, as originally designed with 14 beds, would be more geared towards serving youths with lower-level offenses. 

The Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Essex on Sept. 16, 2020. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Whether or not the Vergennes campus can serve youths accused of more serious crimes depends, to a large degree, on whether or not the state greenlights the expansion to 22 beds, according to Allen.

“In the event that we are going to build a three-program campus that has 22 beds, I think it’s much more likely that DCF will have the capacity to meet the needs of a population of DOC youth,” he said. 

‘Another Woodside’

Since shuttering Woodside, Vermont officials have drawn criticism both for the timing and manner of its closure — and their plans to replace it. 

Steve Howard, the executive of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, has been consistently critical of Gov. Phil Scott’s decision to close Woodside. In post-Woodside Vermont, state employees have often shouldered the task of supervising youth in crisis — some justice-involved — while they wait for a bed somewhere. 

“You don’t close a facility until you have another one ready to open,” Howard said. “That’s a management failure.”

Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, chair of the the House Human Services Committee, speaks at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Jan. 25. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, the chair of the House Committee on Human Services, said this past legislative session that the facility was closed prematurely, leaving the state ill-equipped to safely treat the youth in its care.

“I just wanted to say that in public,” Wood said in a February committee meeting. “It wasn’t right to close Woodside.”

The state’s proposal for a new facility has also drawn skepticism. In Vergennes, residents expressed concern about the impact to the local community and the fact that the city hosted the Weeks School, a now-shuttered youth detention and reform school, for decades.  

Lawmakers have worried about the impact of potentially housing 12-year-olds alongside 18-year-olds. Other advocates fear that the Youth Campus will institutionalize a disproportionate number of youth of color — something that happened at Woodside, according to Deputy Defender General Marshall Pahl.

At the time of Woodside’s closure, Pahl said at a September meeting, “If I remember right, there (were) four non-white residents and one white resident, and that’s in an overwhelmingly white state.”

And multiple organizations and advocates have expressed fears that the Vergennes site will simply repeat the abuse and mistreatment that occurred at the facility it is slated to replace. 

Lauren Higbee, deputy advocate in Vermont’s Office of the Child, Youth and Family Advocate, has argued that high-security residential facilities are generally more costly and less effective at rehabilitating youths than community-based resources.

“We’re building the most expensive intervention with the least effective outcomes,” she told lawmakers this summer, describing the state’s plans. “We are building another Woodside,” 

But the Department for Children and Families has promised that the new facility will represent a new chapter in the state’s efforts to rehabilitate justice-involved youths. 

Having an operator run the center while DCF conducts oversight will lead to more accountability, officials say. By contrast, the state both ran and regulated Woodside. And the state has stood up a network of advisory boards and advocacy groups to monitor its progress, providing an extra layer of oversight. 

“We can do it right this time,” DCF Commissioner Chris Winters told Vergennes residents at a public meeting this spring.