Committee hears testimony that S.193 would create secure forensic facility to restore competency for a small group of defendants

The House Corrections & Institutions Committee heard extended testimony on S.193, a bill to establish a forensic facility to provide competency restoration services to defendants in a narrow subset of life-offense cases.

Jared Bianchi, who identified himself as a prosecutor in Pennington County and spoke on behalf of state prosecutors, told the committee the bill addresses an "extraordinarily narrow population" but one with urgent needs: defendants in serious cases who are found incompetent or for whom sanity is at issue and for whom the current system offers no practical path to restoration. "We are spending an inordinate amount of time, especially with competency cases, litigating the question of whether the person is competent in the first instance instead of moving beyond that to see whether they can be restored to competency," Bianchi said. He estimated the program would serve roughly five new cases a year, acknowledging that caseloads could accumulate over time if restorations are not achieved.

Bianchi told lawmakers that under the bill, defendants who require hospital-level care would still go to a hospital, but those who do not need hospitalization could be placed in a forensic facility "that meets the definition" in the statute for periodic competency reviews and restoration services. He said the bill is intended to provide flexibility for implementation and cited other states' models as precedents while urging care to avoid constitutional problems.

Clinical witnesses from Wellpath described how a restoration program typically combines legal education, psychiatric medication management and group-based therapies. "This might be more philosophical, but I have longed for a forensic system of care," said Dr. Lisonbee Richards, vice president of psychiatry for Wellpath, describing the current practice in Vermont as one in which some patients "languish" in the system without a clear path forward. Dr. Robin Hodges, senior vice president of mental health for Wellpath, said programming could include legal-education modules, DBT and CBT groups, and focused psychiatric care, but that details such as daily schedules and precise FTE counts have not been finalized for Vermont.

Committee members pressed a set of implementation questions: whether the program should be housed in the Department of Corrections (DOC) or under the Department of Mental Health, whether existing correctional units (referred to in testimony as "Alpha" and "Bravo") could be adapted to provide a therapeutic, recovery-oriented environment, and whether evaluations and treatment should be separated to avoid conflicts of interest. One member raised concerns that a contractor who provides health care under DOC contract could face a conflict if it both treated patients and also made evaluative recommendations that affect custody and restoration findings. Dr. Richards and others said treatment providers typically avoid disciplinary decision-making and described models in which forensic evaluators are independent of day-to-day treating clinicians.

On operational questions, DOC’s director of communications, Hailey Sommer, told the committee the bill does not fix where a clinical services director would sit and that an MOU among agencies would likely be required; she also noted multiple legislative reporting checkpoints and a planning timeline that the testimony said would not put a facility in place until 2028. Committee members asked for staffing numbers, vacancies and contract-cost estimates; witnesses said the current DOC clinical contract would need scope adjustments and additional positions (a forensic psychologist and enhanced psychiatry and nursing coverage) to run a dedicated restoration program. During the hearing a figure of roughly $40,000,000 per year was discussed as the approximate current size of the DOC health contract; witnesses said the restoration program would require a contract amendment and added dedicated roles.

The committee did not take formal votes. Members asked staff to continue drafting statutory language and signaled an intent to return for further work and for additional witnesses, including DOC operations staff and mental-health legal counsel. The next procedural step was described as refining placement of a short analytical sentence in the capital-bonding amendment (for a separate H.955 matter) and circulating a draft for Ways & Means before deciding whether to schedule it for the next calendar.

The committee concluded by asking witnesses to provide the requested staffing and vacancies data and by scheduling further work sessions on S.193.