Vermont Safe Prisons and Positive Corrections Culture

The Protecting Inmates and Safeguarding Communities Discretionary Grant Program was created as a result of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (the Act), Public Law 108-79. The goal of the Act is to eradicate sexual assaults in all of the correctional facilities in this country, be they federal, state, or local in nature. Nevertheless, the statutory focus for this grant program is state and local correctional facilities. This program is divided into two parts: (1) Protecting Inmates and (2) Safeguarding Communities. The Protecting Inmates part focuses on providing funding to state and local agencies for the costs of personnel, training, technical assistance, and data collection in the areas of prevention, investigation, prosecution, and treatment of victims of inmate on inmate sexual assault in a correctional facility. The Safeguarding Communities component of the program focuses on assisting the states in developing and implementing strategies when making release decisions for sexual aggressors without compromising public safety and addressing the needs of the victims after release.

The State of Vermont will use these grant funds to improve inmate and staff safety. The objectives include: increasing reporting of prison sexual exploitation; protecting vulnerable populations; increasing capacity to investigate and support prosecution of reported sexual assault; and determining the prevalence of prison sexual assault. Additional objectives include: sustaining and expanding staff training in the prison rape elimination processes; reinforcing the concept of prison sexual exploitation as criminal behavior and destructive to the quality of prison communities; and delivering specialized training for investigators, prisons officers, medical, mental health and other staff, supervisors and managers whose duties require their intervention in incidents of prison rapes, as well as a preliminary investigation for the State Police and Internal Investigations Unit.

CA/NCF