Delaware sends inmates to Pennsylvania facility marred by complaints of abuse, poor health care and several Vermont inmate deaths.

Vermont's experience with Pennsylvania's DOC.

Vermont inmates who died after housed in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, prison.

Why Delaware moved its inmates to prison system despite the complaints.

Vermont signed a three-year contract in 2017 transferring more than 200 of its inmates to Pennsylvania in an effort to ease prison crowding.

But poor health care, the deaths of several Vermont inmates held at Pennsylvania's SCI Camp Hill facility and allegations of racism resulted in that contract being terminated 16 months later.

"I guarantee you we're not going back there," Matthew F. Valerio, Vermont Defender General, told The News Journal. "There was nobody who was unhappy leaving there as far as I can tell – not the (Vermont) Department of Corrections, not the inmates, not my office that oversees the Prisons' Rights Office."

Yet on Oct. 5, one day after Vermont announced it had relocated those 215 inmates from Pennsylvania to a private prison in Mississippi, Delaware officials signed a two-year contract to send more than 300 of its inmates to Pennsylvania.

All the Delaware inmates will be sent to that same Camp Hill facility, just south of Harrisburg, before they are transferred to other Pennsylvania prisons.

Delaware sending 330 inmates to Pennsylvania at cost of $40,000 per day

Delaware corrections officials said they did not talk to counterparts in Vermont before signing their agreement. It is unclear how much Delaware officials knew about Vermont’s issues with Pennsylvania.

The Delaware Department of Correction signed the $40,000-per-day contract with Pennsylvania in October and publicly announced the contract in November.

Delaware wanted to reduce its prison population to try and limit the amount of overtime correctional officers work.

Delaware DOC Commissioner Perry Phelps said after looking at different options, they determined that sending prisoners to Pennsylvania would bring the maximum benefit in the shortest amount of time.

"We are not trying to punish anyone," Phelps said. "We are trying to make the system work and unfortunately sometimes we have to make decisions. That was one of the tough decisions we had to make and hopefully it's a short-term."

Phelps also addressed the deaths of the Vermont prisoners, saying prisons house people who don't always take care of themselves on the outside.

"I mean if you abuse your body for 20 or 30 years and then you come to prison ... then we've got some catching up to do to get your health up to where it should be," he said. "Sometimes, unfortunately, people don't always survive that."

Vermont authorities were scratching their heads.

"It doesn't sound like to me that Delaware's officials did their due diligence before deciding to take this step," said Tom Dalton, executive director of the advocacy group Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. "Because if they had looked at Vermont's experience, I would hope they would not have made the decision to send their citizens to Camp Hill, Pennsylvania."

Vermont's experience

A lack of prison space has forced Vermont to house some inmates in other states for decades.

Before being sent to Pennsylvania, Vermont inmates were held in a private prison in Michigan operated by GEO Group.

Vermont was given short notice to get its prisoners out of Michigan and with Pennsylvania open to housing them, officials in Vermont shipped them to the Keystone state in June 2017.

Vermont's inmates were mainly housed at Camp Hill, which has traditionally been an intake facility in Pennsylvania, not a long-term housing facility.

Shortly after the prisoners were transferred, Vermont officials began receiving complaints about prisoner treatment and medical care.

Mike Touchette, Vermont DOC Deputy Commissioner, said they received similar complaints at other out-of-state facilities they've housed inmates at.

"Pennsylvania was not exclusive to the grievances or complaints," he said.

But there were Vermont inmates at Camp Hill who died in a period of time that Vermont had not seen at other facilities, Touchette said.

The Burlington Free Press reported these Vermont inmates died after being held at Camp Hill are:

Roger Brown,a 68-year-old child molester who died on Oct. 15, 2017, while at Camp Hill.

Timothy Adams, 59, was serving up to 35 years in prison for sexual assault when he died on Nov. 2, 2017 – about two weeks after returning to a Vermont prison to be close to family.

Herbert Rodgers, 62, who doused lye on his former wife, died on Dec. 18, 2017, after being taken to Harrisburg Hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Michael Senna, 63, a convicted kidnapper, was found dead in his cell on Sept. 1, 2018, at Camp Hill.

In all these cases, the inmates had terminal illnesses and were dying, said Vermont Defender General Valerio.

"The medical care, or lack thereof, didn't cause the death," he said.

The issue Vermont authorities saw was the lack of palliative care. "What was clear is that they weren't getting the same kind of quality of medical care as if they were in Vermont. That's clear."

The case that stood out was that of Brown, who was serving a sentence of six to 15 years on three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child.

While incarcerated, Brown wrote in a diary about his declining condition and pain from his lungs that started in early August and escalated to searing pain in his back, rib cage and hip. The pain kept him from sleeping.

Brown, who supposedly didn't know he had cancer, was denied prescription medication and given ibuprofen and Tylenol.

The Associated Press obtained Brown's diary and provided some of the following excerpts:

"No sleep last night, long hours in pain. Ibuprofen makes me groggy but doesn't do much for pain," he wrote on Sept. 24, 2017.

"Can't sleep at night. Hip on fire, painful," he said on Sept. 25, 2017. He also wrote that he thinks his hip is broken and it feels like his back is breaking in half when he coughs.

When he could no longer write, Brown's final diary entries were written by his cellmate.

"I had the sergeant declare a medical emergency because Roger was in so much pain. I wheeled him up to medical. We were refused! The short nurse on duty told Roger 'chronic pain is not a medical emergency. ... It was all in his head,'" Clifton Matthews wrote.

He later wrote that they were continually "rebuked and refused medical attention." Brown was admitted to the infirmary the evening of Oct. 14, according to Matthews.

Brown died the next day.

James A. Valente, a Vermont attorney representing the estates of Brown and Adams, said what they've learned from these cases is that their pain was ignored.

"Whether or not negligence actually caused their death is a much, much more difficult, more complicated question," he said. "What I do think is fair to say, that from our cases, that there is substantial evidence that these inmates were in pain from terminal cancer and the institution did very little for them."

Dalton, of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, said Brown's diary is a clear sign of his pain.

"If you read his diary, a layperson can see that he was in serious distress," Dalton said. "His cellmate and people around him were alarmed for him and were trying to get him help and he ended up dying."

'One of the worst experiences'

Dalton said one problem was that Vermont's deal basically gave Pennsylvania authorities the right to treat Vermont inmates as Pennsylvania inmates.

He said their inmates complained about inadequate medical care, abuse by staff, being kept in their cells for long periods of time and a lack of rehabilitation programs.

"It was a series of problems and yet the sending state has very little opportunity to conduct reasonable oversight because Pennsylvania has a right to treat them like they are their inmates and use their policies," Dalton said. "They made it difficult for communication to take place."

Valerio was more frank.

"It was maybe one of the worst experiences sending people out of state that we've had in the entire history of doing it," he said.

Amy Worden, Pennsylvania DOC spokeswoman, said her agency offers a wide range of treatment, education and job training programming at its 25 institutions.

She said that under the terms of the Vermont contract, Vermont inmates were provided with treatment programs based on inmate need and the receiving state's resources and availability.

"I would also point out that Vermont had the option of embedding its staff in SCI Camp Hill, the Pennsylvania prison where their inmates were held, and did not avail themselves of it," Worden said.

Delaware searches for crowding solution

Transferring inmates out of Delaware's prison system was expected to reduce mandatory overtime, referred to as "shift freezes," which last fiscal year helped push the department's overtime budget to $30 million.

That was a 39 percent jump over the $22.2 million paid out the previous year.

Forced overtime has been a problem in the DOC for years and addressing it was one of 41 recommendations made by an independent review team that looked into the Feb. 1, 2017, deadly siege at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center.

The siege claimed the life of corrections officer Lt. Steven Floyd.

The contract requires Pennsylvania to provide reports in order to compute good behavior time. In doing this, Delaware DOC can monitor the progress of their inmates while out of state.

Although Phelps said there is always concern for inmates in their custody, he didn't expect a problem with their transfer to Pennsylvania, especially since most of Delaware's prisoners were not expected to remain in Camp Hill for an extended time.

The News Journal has learned that at least one Delaware inmate was transferred from Camp Hill to Coal Township, which is north of Harrisburg, Phelps said they hoped to have their inmates in prisons near Phoenixville and Chester.

The ACLU of Delaware, which has suggested reducing prisoner populations in order to deal with crowing and overtime, said they have concerns for the health and well-being of the prisoners and their families who are being moved.

"Based on reports we are receiving from family members, communication with their loved ones in Pennsylvania is sporadic and extremely limited," said Kathleen MacRae, ACLU of Delaware's executive director. "We are also hearing many complaints that prisoners are not receiving their medications or that medications are being abruptly changed."

MacRae said they have not been able to verify or deny these reports, but they continue to work with family members and with the Delaware DOC to get answers.

Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.

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