Vermont parole board director outlines conditions of release and 2025 violation hearing data

MONTPELIER — Mary Jane Ainsworth, director of the Vermont Parole Board, told the House Corrections and Institutions Committee on Jan. 15 that the board has narrowed its standard conditions of release to “6” and presented the committee with data on 2025 violation hearings.

“A lot of this is similar to last year,” Ainsworth said, summarizing the board’s packet, and added the board “reduced their number of standard parole conditions from 15 to 6” after several years of technical assistance to better match supervision to individual risks and needs. She said statute authorizes the board to craft conditions designed to protect victims and reduce recidivism.

Ainsworth gave the committee a list of the six conditions that appear on every parole agreement, including: no new criminal acts or court-order violations; timely reporting to parole officers; notifying a supervising officer of law-enforcement contact; allowing visits by parole officers at home or work; a firearms prohibition; and not leaving Vermont without permission. She noted furloughs and interstate transfers require approval from the supervising officer or another state under interstate-compact rules.

Turning to violations, Ainsworth said, “In 2025, the board held 179 parole violation hearings.” She told the committee that of those hearings, “116 individuals were continued on parole, and 63 individuals were revoked,” and that an additional 41 people waived their violation hearings and accepted revocation without appearing.

Committee members pressed on how violations are discovered and enforced. Ainsworth said the Department of Public Safety runs a law-enforcement notification system that often alerts parole officers when a parolee has been stopped. On interstate and out-of-state contacts she said, “there’s no national database that an individual can look up,” but law-enforcement systems and DPS connections notify supervising officers in many cases.

Housing approvals emerged as a central operational concern. Ainsworth explained the board sometimes imposes a housing-approval condition, and if the Department of Corrections “has not approved housing for the individual, they will remain incarcerated until they have an approvable residence.” Committee members said that reality can effectively delay release for people who lack immediate, approved housing options.

Members and the director also discussed the composition of violation caseloads. Ainsworth said roughly half of violations are technical (reporting failures, positive drug or alcohol tests) while a substantial share involve new offenses or combinations of new offenses and technical violations. She described how some violation hearings turn into lengthy proceedings when witnesses are subpoenaed; others are brief, with average parole hearings lasting about 15 minutes but sometimes running 45 minutes to an hour.

Ainsworth cautioned the committee about data limits: the parole board maintains some information in a parole module of the offender-management system but also keeps separate Excel spreadsheets, and she apologized for numbers in the packet that may not fully reconcile. The committee asked to hear testimony from DOC field offices and parole/probation officers to better understand frontline supervision and to request more robust longitudinal data on how many parolees never return for violations.

The committee did not take any formal votes during the session. Members said they planned follow-up hearings that will include DOC staff and additional data requests to evaluate how technical violations and housing approvals affect reentry and public safety.

The committee adjourned after scheduling future testimony and follow-up work on the parole board’s operations and data needs.