Archive

  The many challenges Vermont currently faces demand courage, bold thinking, and leadership if they’re to be solved. In the past, we’ve occasionally had a leader emerge with the courage… Read More

Rarely do I repost another’s blog, but I cannot express my own horror better than that expressed by the Cornell Law School’s Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. Please read Cornell… Read More

To build or not to build… (a new state prison) that is the question. Under the leadership of Jim Baker, Interim Commissioner of Corrections (DOC), along with a plurality of… Read More

Under the aegis of U.S. Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump, three men have been killed and Barr has celebrated the killings in our name even though 60%… Read More

Our prisons are a petri dish for Covid-19. Vermont has over 1700 people in its six correctional facilities and another 300 locked away in federal prisons. Some 7800 Vermonters are… Read More

The last person Vermont executed was Donald Demag on December 8, 1954. Demag committed two robberies and killed two people while doing so. He was electrocuted in the state’s electric… Read More

The recent reactions of various officials blinking in the glare of the latest reports by Seven Days and Vermont Digger about the inhumane and abusive conditions and lack of accountability… Read More

VT Digger column – Schubart H. 543, a funding bill to study options for building new prisons has both drawn ire and nonsense from those supposed to act on it,… Read More

In the criminal justice system, three groups have agency: the victim, the offender, and society at large. Our ability to balance these interests will determine the efficacy of our criminal… Read More

While most of the civilized world has abandoned execution for moral as well as practical reasons, President Trump is now proposing an expanded application of the death penalty – traditionally… Read More

Many small colleges are struggling with low inquiry, application, and admission rates, including here in the Northeast. Rising tuitions, student loan abuses, and radical change in employment patterns have discouraged… Read More

The scale of incarceration in our country is more than a gauge of domestic crime, it is a socio-economic indicator, telling us how we are doing on the key metrics… Read More