Vermont 's criminal justice system as a whole does not collect, aggregate, or report adequate data. That includes data related to prosecutorial decision making, admissions to incarceration, full charge and sentence offense breakdowns for the incarcerated population, use of sentencing enhancement policies, length of stay in correctional facilities over time, and decisions about probation, parole, and furlough.
This lack of publicly available data impedes informed policymaking and obscures racial and geographic disparities in Vermont's criminal justice system. If we are committed to addressing those disparities, Vermont policymakers need a better and more consistent picture of the system as a whole, and must mandate system-wide, consistent, and comprehensive data collection and reporting.
