Vermont Oct 28 2017 he apparent suicide of a corrections officer has prompted an advocacy group to call for improving conditions in Vermont’s prisons and reducing incarceration.

Corey Beaudet, 41, died Oct. 18 in Ira from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to a news release from the Vermont State Police. His death is under investigation.

Beaudet had been a state employee since 1999, according to the Vermont Department of Human Resources. He had been a community corrections officer since 2010. In 2015, he was honored as the Corrections Officer of the Year.

“Corey was an 18-year, respected community correctional officer in Rutland, and his loss is tragic for his family, his friends, his colleagues and the entire VSEA and Rutland communities,” Dave Bellini, a correctional officer and the president of the Vermont State Employees Association, said in a statement.

Unlike traditional corrections officers, community corrections officers work outside of a facility and work with prisoners on furlough and probation, according to the Department of Corrections. The state of Vermont currently has 44 community correctional officers and 478 correctional officers, who work in facilities.

Beaudet is the second correctional officer to die by suicide this year.

In June, the Vermont State Police found Craig Sabourin, 53, dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Sabourin had been a state employee from 2003 to 2015, according to the Vermont Department of Human Resources, and once earned the Preservation of Life Award from the Department of Corrections. Days before his death, he himself had been accused of a crime, according to the state police.

Lisa Menard, the commissioner of the Department of Corrections, said she doesn’t hear about correctional officer suicides regularly, “but once is too often.” On the national level, she said, “it is certainly an area, where, like law enforcement, there is a higher prevalence” of suicide.

Tom Dalton, the executive director of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, said correctional officers are more likely than the general public to experience work-related post-traumatic stress disorder and have high rates of suicide.

Dalton pointed to a 2013 literature review from the U.S. Department of Justice that included research on the stress that correctional officers face. The review found, in part:

In 2011, about 31 percent of correctional officers reported “serious psychological distress,” twice the rate of the general public;

In 2012, 27 percent of correctional officers who responded to a study indicated they were suffering from PTSD;

“Much more research is needed to develop a better understanding of the prevalence and causes of suicide among (correctional officers).”

“Corrections officers obviously often feel stress around things that they have to do as part of their job,” Dalton said. “I think it’s worth thinking about the financial and human cost of incarceration.”

“Correctional facilities are not a safe place for anyone, whether that’s staff or inmates, or incarcerated people,” he said. “We really should be doing everything we can to … limit unnecessary human exposure to what are basically toxic environments.”

He said correctional officers are subject to the “constant anxiety of having to be in an environment where they could be subjected to assault or violence of some kind or witness violence of some kind. … I think that it’s important that we be doing everything we can to support our corrections officers.”

Leigh Steel, the project director of For the Sake of the Children, has worked with incarcerated women in Vermont. She said correctional facilities are “harsh.”

“The majority of women who are incarcerated in Vermont are there because they have histories of trauma, which has led, in many or most cases, to their long-term problems with addiction, and those issues led to their criminal activity,” Steel said.

“It was always really painful for me to see women escorted to segregation for some infraction, which often would be a minor infraction,” Steel said. “Maybe she’s just totally freaking out and wouldn’t stop screaming.”

When an inmate is escorted to segregation — or solitary confinement — the person is handcuffed with hands behind their back and often shackled at the ankles, Steel said. “Watching her sobbing while she was being taken to segregation was always very painful for me,” she said.

Bob Lafayette, a former inmate at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, said he witnessed the mental health issues correctional officers face related to witnessing assaults and working mandatory overtime.

“They would tell you, maybe not tell anybody else, but tell the inmate that they didn’t go home. They just slept in their car in the parking lot last night because they had to be back for another shift,” Lafayette said.

“There’s an attitude there where you don’t complain because if you complain about anything you get put on, like, third shift, or somewhere that would make you want to complain again,” he said.

Lafayette said he personally knew Sabourin, who died by suicide in June. He said Sabourin’s death “is a great summary into what atrocities these guys witness.” Among Sabourin’s duties, according to Lafayette, was staffing a mental health segregation unit.

“He was in this unit, and he’s not trained right,” Lafayette said. “He’s never had any training of dealing with mental health patients … It’s not really designed to be a mental health facility. It’s meant to be punitive and solitary.”

Menard, from the Department of Corrections, agreed with much of what the advocates said.

She said overtime is often mandatory when another worker calls out sick and a shift needs to be covered, but that the Department of Corrections has been able to fill more of its open staff positions across the state since closing a prison in Windsor.

“Being a correctional officer is a very difficult job,” Menard said. “I’m not sure that people fully understand what the role of a correctional officer is. They’re not simply standing at a door with keys letting people in.”

“They are in units talking with inmates in custody every day,” she said. “They’re hearing very traumatic stories. They’re certainly seeing and experiencing behavior of some inmates that definitely have an impact on how they view their job, and there are things they certainly don’t want to take home to their families.”

Menard said the department offers an Employee Assistance Program to provide short-term counseling to workers, a peer support team, and staff trained in crisis management. However, the Department of Corrections does not have access to a clinician who specializes in treating trauma, she said.

“We’re looking for potentially to try to put something in place,” Menard said. She said the department would like to work with someone who understands the corrections environment. Right now, she called it more of a research project, but said the department would implement it as soon as it finds answers.

“It’s a priority for me,” Menard said. “I care deeply about the staff that work for the department.”

VT Digger

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