Vermont DOC: 90% of incarcerated population male; serious felonies drive most long-term stays, data unit says

Vermont Department of Corrections research staff told the House Corrections and Institutions Committee on Jan. 24 that the majority of people in state custody are held for felony-level crimes and that the incarcerated population is getting older.

The department's Research and Data Unit, which maintains a monthly public population dashboard, reported that about 90% of people in DOC custody identify as male, roughly 70% are under 45, and the share ages 55 and older has risen to about 13.7% from roughly 10% a decade ago, according to slides shown to the committee and cited by the Research and Data Unit director. The dashboard snapshots presented to the panel were dated Dec. 31, 2024.

Why it matters: an aging incarcerated population increases medical and reentry needs and affects decisions about housing, programs and long-term costs. Committee members pressed staff on what crimes are driving the trends, how the department captures out-of-state convictions and how data limitations shape policy discussion.

Just King Moore, the Research and Data Unit director, said the unit compiles monthly point-in-time data for a public dashboard and other reports. "The vast majority of our population, like 90% is male," Moore said, and flagged the department's dashboard as the source for the figures presented. Moore also noted that the offender management system was not designed for prisons and can be "Frankenstein's monster" when adapted to current needs, producing clunky queries that require manual work.

The committee heard that most people in custody have felony-level charges. Moore and other staff walked the panel through a table that collapses many legal status codes into three broad categories for reporting: sentenced (post-adjudication), detained (pretrial), and holds (individuals held for other jurisdictions). Of 1,406 people counted in the department's combined snapshot of sentenced, detained and holds, roughly 809 were classified with a "felony serious" crime as their most severe offense; the presenters said more than 1,100 of the 1,406 were incarcerated on some type of felony-level offense when other felony categories are combined.

Committee members asked whether the rise in the 55-plus group reflected people aging in custody or newly admitted older people. Staff said both contribute and offered to break the breakdown into sentenced versus detained for the committee.

Staff explained that the dashboard uses the most severe crime on record for each person when grouping by offense type, so a person who has a drug possession count tacked onto a more serious aggravated assault conviction will be counted under the more serious offense. That methodological choice, presenters said, helps reflect what is driving incarceration beds rather than ancillary charges.

Moore said the unit also produces recidivism dashboards and can stratify results by demographic variables and program participation, though long-term cohort analyses require additional work and larger sample sizes for reliable findings. The Research and Data Unit said it has started tracking program participation outcomes but emphasized recidivism has measurement limits and that multiple metrics are necessary to judge program results.

Committee members raised survey work and service needs. The Research and Data Unit said it has conducted facility-level and patient-satisfaction surveys, and is exploring broader systemwide surveys, but current tablet and vendor limits mean some surveys still require unit-by-unit paper collection and staff data entry.

The presenters repeatedly described limits in the offender management system. Jordan Pasha, the department's director of classification, and Moore said many requests require two teams to pull, clean and analyze the underlying records because the system was built originally for jails and has been adapted for longer-term corrections reporting.

The presentation included these takeaways relevant to programming and custody decisions: a large share of beds are occupied by people with felony serious and felony person crimes (assault, aggravated assault, robbery, sexual offenses), the incarcerated population is aging, and the department's public dashboard (data as of Dec. 31, 2024) is the primary source for monthly point-in-time reporting. Staff promised follow-up analyses on offense breakdowns by age and whether older people are longtime incarcerated individuals or new admissions.

The committee did not take formal action during this presentation; staff said they would provide additional breakdowns on request and made available the dashboard link in their slide deck.