Home to prove there is life after prison

This house will be rehabilitated to create Northern Lights at Varney House. photo by Courtney Brooks

By Courtney Brooks | Special to the Vermont Guardian

Posted August 18, 2006

In less than a year, women who have left prison will find a new home near Burlington’s bustling downtown — complete with round-the-clock services aimed at providing them with the support they need to stay in the community and not end up back in jail.

In March 2007, a transitional home for women offenders will open on Cherry Street, a project supported by eight non-profit groups. The house, Northern Lights at Varney House, was seen as a way to bring all the services under one roof.

“What we began to find is that housing is a key factor in whether a woman is successful in transitioning back to the community or not. If a woman was in the wrong kind of housing, if she was bunking up with friend or with a family member who perhaps was unsupportive of their efforts to stay sober or clean or who was angry with them for having gone to prison, it could easily lead to relapse, or violation of the terms of parole or probation,” said Tiffany Bluemle, executive director of Vermont Works for Women, who has been instrumental in creating the project. Vermont Works for Women has offered job training for incarcerated women for six years, and the house began as an extension of its work.

Ten women at a time will live in the house, averaging stays of nine months to one year. The house will cost about $300,000 a year to run, said Bluemle.

At a community meeting Aug. 15, local businessmen and residents raised concerns about parking, construction, noise, cleanliness, cost, supervision, and safety.

When asked if violent offenders would be in the house, Bluemle told people at the meeting, “The vast majority of women who are incarcerated were convicted of non-violent crimes, so statistically speaking the pool we would be drawing from wouldn’t be full of violent offenders.”

However, they are not ruling out housing violent offenders, and will review each person on a case-by-case basis, said Bluemle.

In addition, the women will have a 9:30 p.m. curfew, two full-time staff will sleep at the house, it will be locked, and the women will not be given keys so that staff will let in each person. There will also be an alarm system installed that tells staff whenever someone leaves. And visitors will only include children, caseworkers, and counselors, among others.

One lawmaker, who was at the meeting and whose district includes Varney House, said the state should put more money in efforts such as these.

“There are about 100 people in jail right now in Vermont who have already served their time, and they can’t leave prison because they have nowhere to go. There’s no transitional housing. So we’re keeping them in prison at about the cost of $40,000 a year per person, and think of what we could buy with that. And I’m not saying that we should give free college to the people in prison, but that would be cheaper than putting them in prison,” said Rep. Jason Lorber, D-Burlington.

“We need to invest more in society than in prisons,” he added.

Some at the meeting were excited about the rundown house, which local merchants said was an eyesore, being rehabilitated. There will also be an addition built and some structural changes inside, said Bluemle.

The home is an ideal locale because it is close to area social services, as well as the regional bus station and retail shops, she said.

There are eight organizations that have pooled their respective strengths and experience working with female offenders, Bluemle said. They are The Howard Center for Human Services, Mercy Connections, Vermont Works for Women, Vermont Children’s Aid Society, Burlington Housing Authority, Burlington Community Justice Center, Lund Family Center, and Women Helping Battered Women. The women will be provided with mentors, job training, and both general and substance abuse counseling.

“Women, upon exiting prison, have a number of different needs. They need a job and they need to have an ally who is perhaps unrelated to them and not a state official, so every woman will have a mentor,” Bluemle said.

Bluemle said the home will serve as a mini-community where the women can begin to support one another to make it outside of prison.

Another group involved in the project is Vermont Children’s Aid Society (VCAS), which will offer services to parents in the home. Eighty percent of incarcerated women are parents, and 80 percent of those women are the custodial parent, said Cheryl Herrick, the group’s development director. VCAS offers similar services to mothers before they are released from jail.

“Our social workers do a whole range of services in the jail; some of it is very logistical, private support. Also, working with the women doing grief and loss counseling that these women experience being separated from their children, and working for them to find the best way, where it’s appropriate, to get as involved as possible in their lives and keep parenting. The transitional house is a really important extension of that service,” Herrick said.

Herrick said these wraparound services are designed to help the women succeed at reentry.

“And they want to succeed. The conditions of release can be really difficult. Transitional housing that will have 24 hour staffing every day of the week, having someone there to help them navigate this incredible thing they have to do,” Herrick said. “They’re released from prisons without a lot of money, without a lot of skills, and we don’t want them to connect with the people that they were in trouble with that got them in jail in the first place. How do we expect them to succeed without some help?”