In Vermont, a person could be convicted of ten separate offenses in a year, receive short sentences or probation on each one, and none of it would register as recidivism in the state’s data.

by Compass Vermont

Governor Scott called a press conference on Wednesday to talk about public safety. His general counsel, Jaye Pershing Johnson, spent about 15 minutes laying out the status of a criminal justice reform package the administration has been pushing across multiple legislative sessions. None of it made the news. No reporter asked a single question about any of it.

That’s because the question-and-answer period was consumed almost entirely by the South Burlington ICE enforcement action of March 11 — a subject Compass Vermont is covering separately and will continue to report on as developments warrant.

But what Johnson described deserves attention, because it affects something Vermonters encounter far more often than a federal immigration raid: whether the state’s criminal justice system actually works when someone in your community commits a violent crime, violates a court order, or cycles through the system faster than the courts can keep up.

Here’s what the administration asked the legislature to do this session. Here’s what’s actually happening. And here’s what it means if you’re the person waiting for the system to deliver a result.

Young offenders who age out before anything happens

If a teenager or young adult under 22 commits a violent crime in Vermont, the case often ends up in family court under the state’s youthful offender framework. The idea behind the framework is sound — young people with developing brains may respond better to treatment than punishment, and family court is designed to provide that. But Johnson described what happens in practice: conditions of release in family court carry little enforcement weight. Cases stretch out for months because of court backlogs. And offenders routinely reach the age ceiling — 22 — and exit the system without ever facing meaningful consequences for the original offense. The entire logic of connecting actions to consequences while a young person’s brain is still forming gets defeated by the delay.

The administration asked the legislature to require that a young offender enter a conditional guilty plea in criminal court before being transferred to family court — essentially restoring the framework that was in place from 2009 to 2019. That way, if a youthful offender violates their conditions in family court, there’s an existing guilty plea to fall back on. There’s accountability baked in before the transfer, not just a process for revoking status after the fact.

What passed out of House Judiciary instead — H.642 — improves the process for revoking youthful offender status once someone is already in family court. Johnson acknowledged it as a step forward but said it sidesteps the core problem. If you’re a victim or a community member wondering why a violent young offender seems to face no consequences, the answer may be that the system is designed to give them every benefit of family court without requiring them to accept responsibility on the way in.

Repeat offenders who keep walking out the door

Vermont’s constitution guarantees the right to bail for most offenses. That means judges have limited tools when someone who is already out on bail picks up new charges, misses court dates, or violates conditions of release repeatedly. The result, in practice, is what prosecutors and law enforcement describe as a revolving door — individuals cycling through arraignments, conditions, violations, and new offenses while the original case is still pending.

H.409 passed the House and crossed to Senate Judiciary. It clarifies that prosecutors can appeal when a judge denies a request to revoke bail. Johnson called it “fine as far as it goes” but said it doesn’t solve the underlying problem — it punts the development of workable revocation standards to future court cases, on a future timeline, with future victims.

If you’ve ever read a story about a defendant who was arrested for the fourth or fifth time while awaiting trial on earlier charges and wondered how that’s possible, this is the gap in the system the administration says it’s trying to close. What passed doesn’t close it. It opens a procedural door that may eventually lead somewhere.

A state that can’t measure its own failure rate

Vermont’s official definition of recidivism — the metric that tells us whether the system is working — only counts offenders who were sentenced to more than one year of incarceration and return to prison within three years for a new offense resulting in at least 90 days of incarceration. That means a person could be convicted of ten separate offenses in a year, receive short sentences or probation on each one, and none of it would register as recidivism in the state’s data.

H.410 would broaden that definition and require annual reporting. It passed out of House Judiciary and moved through House Appropriations this week. Johnson expressed appreciation — the administration has been requesting this change for multiple sessions. It’s the one piece of the package that appears to be moving largely intact.

Why it matters: until this changes, Vermont is making criminal justice policy based on a number that structurally understates the problem. When someone tells you Vermont’s recidivism rate is a certain number, that number excludes the majority of people cycling through the system.

Six people in prison who can’t stand trial — and nowhere else to put them

Almost every other state has a secure facility for people charged with serious violent crimes who have been found mentally incompetent to stand trial. Vermont does not. That means individuals charged with murder, aggravated sexual assault, or kidnapping — who cannot understand the charges against them or participate in their own defense — end up in Department of Corrections facilities without a formal competency restoration process. If they stabilize enough to leave a psychiatric hospital but still can’t stand trial, there’s no secure middle ground. Johnson said there are currently six such individuals in DOC custody. Their cases exist in a kind of limbo.

S.193, introduced by Senator Virginia “Ginny” Lyons, passed Senate Judiciary and is now being deliberated in Senate committees. The bill would create a secure forensic facility within DOC for this narrow group — only defendants facing life sentences who don’t meet the threshold for psychiatric hospitalization. The concept has been discussed since at least 2020.

This matters to victims directly. The mother of a young woman killed in Pownal by a man previously found incompetent to stand trial and released into the community has been among those advocating for this legislation. The gap in the system isn’t theoretical. It has body counts.

What got no hearing at all

Two of the administration’s proposals have received no hearing this session. One would repeal earn time and midpoint review — policies designed to reduce the prison population that Johnson said have created administrative burdens on an already understaffed Department of Corrections, produced uncertainty for victims about when an offender will actually be released, and distorted sentencing in unintended ways.

The other would limit courts’ authority to defer or suspend sentences for repeat violent offenders. Johnson said this proposal has never received a hearing in any session it has been introduced.

A third proposal — pretrial supervision, originally championed by the late Senator Dick Sears, who served 32 years in the Vermont Senate before his death in June 2024 — was designed to help defendants comply with conditions of release and show up for court dates, particularly when hearings get pushed out 30, 60, or 90 days. The administration committed to fixing and funding the program, but Johnson said the courts haven’t used it. As of Wednesday, the program won’t be repealed, but its funding will be redirected elsewhere.

The pattern

Johnson framed the problem in structural terms: every session, the administration brings a comprehensive public safety package. Committees divide it up and send pieces in different directions. Some get partial attention. Others get none. The gap between what communities are asking for and what the legislature delivers grows wider, and it becomes harder to explain.

Governor Scott drew a direct parallel to what he described as a similar dynamic on housing and energy policy. He urged the Judiciary Committees to focus on public safety in the second half of the session “without being distracted by federal issues which are not in our control.”

What happened next made the point for him. Reporters spent roughly 45 minutes questioning the governor and Commissioner of Public Safety Jennifer Morrison about the South Burlington ICE enforcement action, the state police response, and whether an independent investigation is warranted. The public safety legislation Johnson had just detailed — the proposals that would directly affect how Vermont handles violent young offenders, defendants who can’t stand trial, and repeat offenders cycling through the system — received no questions from the press.