Family Rights and Advocacy in Vermont

If someone you love is locked up in Vermont, you have a resource on your side that almost no other state can match: the Prisoners' Rights Office. It is a state-funded legal office, staffed with attorneys and investigators, whose job is to handle the conditions and length of confinement for Vermonters in custody, and it is legally required to investigate every death in custody, every suicide attempt, every assault, and every use of force. That kind of built-in oversight is rare, and it matters for you.

Vermont also runs a small, unified system. The Vermont Department of Corrections (VDOC) holds everyone, sentenced or awaiting trial, in six facilities, since Vermont has no separate local jails. The catch is that Vermont contracts with a private prison out of state, so some Vermonters are held hundreds of miles away. I have been on the inside, and I know the family on the outside carries a load nobody talks about. This guide is written for you.

What the VDOC System Looks Like

VDOC operates six correctional facilities across the state. They include:

Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility (South Burlington), the state's facility for women.

Northern State (Newport), Northwest State (Swanton), Southern State (Springfield), Marble Valley (Rutland), and Northeast (St. Johnsbury) for men.

Because the system is unified, your loved one could be held at any of these whether they are serving a sentence or awaiting trial. And some Vermont inmates are housed at an out-of-state private facility under contract, which raises its own challenges for visiting and communication. VDOC keeps a specific FAQ for families of people held out of state, so if your loved one is placed out of state, start there.

To find where your loved one is housed and get their ID number, use the Inmate Locator on doc.vermont.gov. For help, the Constituent Services Unit is VDOC's office for assisting families and the public.

Staying Connected: Phone Calls

VDOC uses ICSolutions (ICS) for phone service. Your phone number must be on your loved one's approved list. To fund calls, you can set up a prepaid account through OffenderConnect (offenderconnect.com/portal) or by calling 1-800-483-8314, or use Access Corrections at 1-800-546-6283 or 1-866-345-1884. Calls go one direction, your loved one calls you, and they are recorded except properly arranged legal calls.

One practical tip straight from VDOC: calls from ICSolutions are sometimes mistakenly flagged as robocalls and blocked by cell carriers. If you suddenly cannot receive calls, add the ICSolutions phone number for your loved one's facility to your phone contacts, which usually fixes it.

Staying Connected: Tablets, Messaging, and Video

ICS tablets have been distributed at all Vermont facilities. They support messaging and video visitation, each with its own pricing. One Vermont-specific feature: Gold Passes, which give your loved one a full hour of uninterrupted tablet access with all features, can be purchased through JailATM.com. To buy one, sign in at JailATM.com, search your loved one's last name or ID, select them, and complete the purchase. Video visitation is a real lifeline if your loved one is held far away or out of state.

Staying Connected: Visiting

Vermont has general visiting rules that apply to all facilities, plus site-specific schedules for each location. Check both on doc.vermont.gov: confirm the general rules, then find your loved one's specific facility for its schedule, since hours and procedures differ by site. Video visitation is available in addition to in-person visits.

If your loved one is a parent, ask about Kids-A-Part, a Lund program that supports children of incarcerated parents and facilitates visits in a child-centered space inside the facility, with parenting services at the women's facility (CRCF) and the Northeast facility (NSCF). You can reach Kids-A-Part at kidsApart@lundvt.org.

Staying Connected: Mail and Money

Use your loved one's full name and ID number, and check the current mailing rules on doc.vermont.gov before sending, since what you can send is limited for security. Legal mail follows separate rules.

For money, VDOC uses a deposit-coupon system along with electronic options. The website provides a sample deposit coupon and a blank coupon with instructions, plus money-order details. You can also deposit electronically through the same vendors used for phone and tablet services, including JailATM and Access Corrections. Money goes into your loved one's account for commissary, phone, and tablet use.

Your Rights and Your Loved One's Rights

Most rights inside belong to the incarcerated person, not to family members, but knowing them helps you advocate.

Your loved one has the right to reasonable contact with the outside world through mail, phone, and visits, subject to the rules above and to discipline. They have the right to medical and mental health care, to reasonable accommodations for disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act, to practice their religion, and to be free from abuse. They have the right to use the grievance system to raise problems formally.

Vermont's disability obligations are backed by a federal settlement. The U.S. Department of Justice reached an agreement with VDOC requiring it to provide accessible facilities for people with mobility disabilities and effective communication for people with hearing disabilities, including sign language interpreters, videophones, and hearing aids, plus accessible cells, intake, visitation areas, and programs. If your loved one has a disability and is being denied access, that settlement is leverage.

Vermont also has a specific designation, Significant Functional Impairment (SFI), for people whose conditions, such as serious mental illness, traumatic brain injury, developmental disability, or dementia, mean they may respond differently in a prison setting. Advocates have raised serious concerns about holding SFI individuals in segregation, so if your loved one fits this description and is being isolated, that is exactly the kind of issue the organizations below take on.

When Something Goes Wrong: How to Advocate

Start with the Constituent Services Unit. For general concerns and questions, VDOC's Constituent Services Unit is the family-facing office.

Push the grievance process. Encourage your loved one to file and appeal through the formal grievance system, document everything, keep copies, and mail a copy to you as backup.

Contact the Prisoners' Rights Office (PRO). This is Vermont's standout resource. The PRO, part of the Office of the Defender General, is a publicly funded legal office at 6 Baldwin Street, 4th Floor, Montpelier, VT 05633-3301, phone (802) 828-3194. Its attorneys handle health care, prison discipline, sentence calculation, furlough, parole, and conditions of confinement. By law, the PRO investigates deaths in custody, suicide attempts, assaults, uses of force, and incidents causing serious hospitalization, and its lawyers have even traveled out of state to investigate incidents involving Vermont inmates. If something serious has happened to your loved one, this office can act.

Contact Disability Rights Vermont (DRVT). DRVT (disabilityrightsvt.org) is Vermont's federally mandated protection and advocacy organization for people with disabilities, including mental illness. It monitors prisons, has authority to investigate abuse and neglect and to access facilities, has challenged the use of solitary confinement on prisoners with mental illness, and publishes a corrections resources page for families. If your loved one has a disability or mental illness and is being mistreated, contact DRVT.

Contact the ACLU of Vermont. The ACLU of Vermont (acluvt.org) works on prisoners' rights and systemic conditions issues, focusing on broad problems rather than individual cases.

Know the other resources. The Vermont Human Rights Commission (802-828-2480) handles discrimination complaints, the Vermont Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service (1-800-639-7036) can help you find an attorney, and community justice centers, like the Burlington Community Justice Center, support people returning from incarceration.

Use national organizations. The Human Rights Defense Center and Prison Legal News (humanrightsdefensecenter.org) cover prisoner rights and prison communication costs. Families Against Mandatory Minimums (famm.org) works on sentencing. Worth Rises (worthrises.org) tracks the prison telecom industry. The ACLU National Prison Project also works on prison conditions nationwide.

Contact elected officials. Vermont is small, and a letter to your state representative or senator about a systemic problem, especially the out-of-state placement of Vermonters, genuinely gets attention.

Taking Care of Yourself

Get your number on the approved call list, and if calls stop coming, remember the robocall fix. Set up your prepaid phone and deposit accounts, learn the visiting rules for your loved one's specific facility, and use video visits and tablet messaging to bridge distance, which matters most if your loved one is held out of state. If your loved one is a parent, lean on Kids-A-Part. And remember that Vermont gives you a real legal ally in the Prisoners' Rights Office. Most of all, take care of your own health, because doing time on the outside is its own kind of sentence, and staying steady for yourself is part of staying steady for your person.