Transfers & Facility Placement in Vermont (DOC)

One System, Six Facilities

Vermont’s Department of Corrections is the sole agency for incarceration in the state — pretrial detainees and sentenced people live in the same six facilities, and every facility holds both. The published placement policy (issued February 2026) sets the factors that drive transfers: gender first — women are transferred to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington after arraignment (placement for transgender and gender-diverse people follows a separate policy) — then program needs, medical and mental-health needs, court appearances, population management, and bed space.

For men, that means placement is regional but fluid: someone is generally held near their court while a case is pending, but program assignments and bed management can move them anywhere in the system. The facility pages below cover all six.

Intake

A person entering a facility may be housed separately until intake finishes: a health screening, tuberculosis testing, and a mental-health screening are required before placement in general population, and when possible a five-day classification is completed first. A caseworker handles orientation. Vermont publishes no rule on visiting during the intake window — the facility’s front desk is the way to find out whether a visit can happen before classification ends.

What a Transfer Changes

Transfers between Vermont facilities run through a central classification unit, and the published mechanics matter to families:

• The visiting list survives the move for 30 days at the new facility — after that, the incarcerated person must submit a new list
• The visiting schedule changes completely — Vermont facilities differ more than most states’ (weekday-only one-hour blocks at St. Johnsbury, weekend alphabetical blocks at Newport and St. Albans, unit blocks elsewhere)
• Mail must be re-addressed to the new facility

DOC publishes no system for notifying families when someone is moved — the practical channels are the person’s own call, the Offender Locator linked from the DOC homepage, and for custody-status alerts, VINE registration at vinelink.com or 866-976-8267.

The Mississippi Facility

Vermont has housed sentenced men at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Mississippi since 2018 — about 130 as of late 2025, run by the private operator CoreCivic under a contract DOC announced in 2023 (up to 300 beds, with DOC staff monitoring the contract and welfare). Only sentenced men are sent; pretrial detainees stay in Vermont.

The published selection rules carry two family-relevant points: family circumstances are a criterion in deciding who goes, and family emergencies are a published priority for bringing someone back to Vermont.

For staying in touch, DOC’s posted Mississippi materials describe video-visit kiosks, daytime visiting hours, and phone service through the same vendor family ecosystem — but nearly all of that guidance dates to 2018, so before planning anything around the Mississippi facility, contact DOC’s Constituent Services Unit for current procedures. The distance is the hard reality: Tutwiler is roughly 1,400 miles from Vermont, which makes the phone, mail, and video channels in these guides the working connection for most families.

Tracking Where Someone Is

The Offender Locator is reached through the link on doc.vermont.gov’s homepage (the tool itself runs on a state system that requires clicking through — bookmarking the tool’s own address doesn’t work). DOC also publishes a daily population dashboard and, unusually, a daily individual-level public data file. For automated alerts when custody status changes, VINE (vinelink.com, 866-976-8267) covers Vermont.

For everything else, DOC’s Constituent Services Unit — the “information for incarcerated individuals’ families and friends” hub on its site — is the published family channel, and the central office in Waterbury answers at (802) 241-2442.

Verify Before Acting

For the general, nationwide overview of this topic, see the national guide: Know Your Rights.