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State looks to South Burlington, Vergennes as new home for youth detention facility

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By Guy Page

The Vermont Department of Children is moving away from siting a secure juvenile detention and treatment facility in the rural Orange County town of Newbury and is now looking at South Burlington and Vergennes as possible sites for a 15-bed replacement for the shuttered Woodside facility. 

DCF officials testified in Senate Judiciary Wednesday, February 7 about the need for more staff to assist ‘justice involved’ youth. Best practices suggest one worker for every 12 families of JI youth. At present DCF has one case worker for 15.7 families. Furthermore the lack of a secure facility means often-violent children are “staffed” by DCF workers in unsecure settings – including foster care, unsecure youth facilities, emergency rooms and hotels. 

After the hearing VDC asked DCF Commissioner Chris Winters about the ongoing search for a permanent, secure, staffed facility. Newbury, ground zero for an intense battle between the State of Vermont and local officials on the siting of a secure ‘group home for JI youth, is now being considered for other uses, Winters said. He identified the two new sites under consideration as being located in South Burlington and Vergennes. 

Vergennes was long the home of the state’s juvenile delinquent facility, morphing over the years into a technical education training facility. It is unclear if this site is the Vergennes location on DCF’s radar. South Burlington is home to the state’s women’s prison. 

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4 replies »

  1. The usual State-City scenario, build new, suck the life out of the building with little or no maintenance, look to build a new building. Repeat.

  2. So, after spending god knows how much money on plans for Newbury and angering the townsfolk, somebody woke up. Or is it the woke woke up?

  3. At least Vergennes has been through this before, hosting Weeks School and subsequently Job Corps. Job Corps, for whatever good it does, has also hosted some serious out-of-state troublemakers over the years, who were basically given the choice between jail or going up to Vermont to “camp”. (Anyone remember Jose Rodriguez, enabled by moonbat Judge Amy Davenport, and later implicated in the death of missing 15 year-old Vermont girl, Chrystal Jones who turned up in a NYC prostitution apartment?)
    Again, I have to ask the obvious question:
    What the hell is wrong about continuing to use Woodside? Isn’t the complaint that it “looks too institutional” or too “prisonlike”? Well so what, it IS an institution and realistically it IS a prison. How about some colorful murals painted inside and out…we have so many talented mural painters around here. Or, I’m sure many of the “clients” would have experience as “spraypaint street artists” and have plenty of time on their hands. Essex is close to where most of the “clients” originate from…the bowels of Chittenden County. CVU High School has the same concrete architecture and I dont hear anyone saying we need to close it down since it looks “too institutional”. Is the problem with Woodside that there just too much egg on the face of bureaucrats after allegations of abuse there that they just dont want the reminder in the media? That sounds about right.