The Scott administration’s effort to prolong the prison stays of some incarcerated individuals is drawing scrutiny from lawmakers and civil rights advocates.
In April of 2025, the Department of Corrections broadened its own authority to keep people in prison beyond their minimum release dates. As a result of those updates to the “Risk Containment Policy,” many incarcerated people who would have otherwise been released into the community are spending longer behind bars.
“This is concerning in many ways and feels like it is working at cross purposes with a lot of the work the Legislature has done over the last few years,” said Falko Schilling, advocacy director at the ACLU.
“If you doubled the size of the Prisoners’ Rights Office, we would not have enough people to handle the caseload that is coming as a result of this change in policy.”Defender General Matt Valerio
Commissioner of Corrections Jon Murad defended the changes at a Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday morning. The policy updates significantly expand the population of incarcerated people subject to “risk containment” status. They also eliminate the requirement that the Department of Corrections conduct a costly and time-consuming forensic analysis before determining that a person poses too great a risk to be granted furlough.
“It is in keeping with our obligation to protect the people and the property from offenders of the criminal law,” Murad told lawmakers. “And it is in keeping with our obligation to provide treatment and care for those who are given to us by the courts so they may successfully return eventually to the community.”
Murad said the new policy assesses risk based on factors such as individuals’ behavior in prison and whether they’ve committed violations while on community supervision in the past.
But the policy also contemplates their criminal histories and the natures and circumstances of their underlying offenses. South Burlington Rep. Martin LaLonde questioned whether those considerations should come under the purview of the Department of Corrections.
“That is stuff that is taken into account presumably … in plea agreements, in the court’s sentencing, and now those factors are coming into play again,” said LaLonde, the Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “That’s troubling to me, that that’s kind of a second shot at what the punishment for this person is.”
The department updated its policy at the behest of Republican Gov. Phil Scott, according to transcripts from a court hearing late last year in which DOC’s classification director, Jordan Pasha, told a judge, “We had received direction from the governor's office to look at mechanisms that the department had to slow down releases in the interest of public and victim safety.”
As of Tuesday morning, according to DOC data, 77 individuals were “risk contained” beyond their minimum release date. Schilling said that before the policy updates, fewer than 10 people were on risk containment status.
Murad said that statistical comparison is inaccurate, because DOC used different terminology prior to the policy changes going into effect. He wasn’t immediately able to provide data showing how many more people are on risk-contained status as a result of the changes.
Defender General Matt Valerio said the policy changes have meaningfully prolonged the prison stays of people his office represents. Under the previous policy, he said, incarcerated people had “reasonable expectations” they would be granted furlough after serving their minimum sentence.
“Clearly what has happened is there has been a second look at sentencing by the department, which will hold these people longer than they would have reasonably expected at the time they were originally sentenced,” Valerio said.
Since the new policy went into effect last April, the number of post-conviction relief petitions filed by his office — they ask a judge to correct or reduce a sentence — has more than tripled. Many of those pending cases involve due-process challenges to the legality of the new risk containment policy.
“If you doubled the size of the Prisoners’ Rights Office,” Valerio said, “we would not have enough people to handle the caseload that is coming as a result of this change in policy.”
