On Tuesday, August 11, the question is really this: has State's Attorney Sarah George's approach to prosecuting crime earned more time to prove itself — or has the county seen enough of it?
I'm a huge fan of objective journalism as evidenced here and am putting my money where my mouth is.
As for this topic, and prosecutors race, Sarah's had enough time. Chittenden County was trending down, and that trend hasn't changed, its gotten much worse. The fact that the re-offenders are the main problem, and only recently addressed was her main failure since that group caused the most long term damage. We need bonds.
This was a detailed writeup of a novel way of comparing the 2 candidates apples to apples, but it’s treatment of the backlog and how it got to be what it is left out an important fact.
The wording treated the backlog as if it stemmed from George’s policies, for instance see the section titled “a backlog is a choice, not weather”. Except that the backlog clearly was caused by the pandemic (which is similar to weather in that it’s unpredictable).
With no mention of the word “pandemic” to be found in a whole article that hinges on a court case backlog, I don’t know what to think of this article. How did this get missed?
Many years ago, Frank Murray was Chittenden County’s non-nonsense State’s Attorney. I interviewed him once for a newspaper article. He made the point that 1-2% of the adult population are psychopaths. While not all are criminal offenders, those that commit crimes are notoriously difficult to rehabilitate.
As we are seeing now, they are street smart and capable of gaming the judicial system. When asked how best to deal with these people, Frank said that the only way to protect people and property was to separate them from society in their “peak criminal years.”
Our current 7-year experiment with treating offenders as poor wretches who need not put up bail or be prosecuted for anti-social behavior must end on August 11, 2026 with the election of Bram Kranichfeld as our next no-nonsense State’s Attorney.
The people committing property crimes now are not psychopaths, they have a mental illness called addiction. There are so many incorrect assumptions about the impacts of bail. This is a well-researched topic, and one of VT's experts is Prof. Kathy Fox who was was a sociology (criminology) professor at UVM for 30 years, who volunteered in the prisons, conducted research in them, and now volunteers at the So. Burlington community justice center.
"In terms of social problems and public disorder, the justice system has very little impact. No matter what. No matter who is in charge. When people talk about unhoused people in the park and retail theft downtown, they may not realize a) the state’s attorney has literally nothing to do with housing, and b) the system around retail theft is surprising. Let’s say a person steals $500 worth of stuff from a downtown store. That is a misdemeanor (under $900), and a police officer would issue a citation to appear in court. The person is then free to go about their way, although they may be trespassed from the store. The court date might be 12 weeks out, or 9 or 6 or 4. If it’s 9 or 12, they will likely forget their court date. If it’s four, they are more likely to appear. If they don’t appear, the court can issue a warrant for their arrest and take them to jail. (Jailing someone in Vermont costs more than $300 per day by the way.) Maybe that is what Bram intends when he says the vague word “accountability.” We can disagree about how worthwhile that strategy is. But I can tell you the research shows it makes things worse, for the accused and the crime rates, which do not decline because of bail."
You have a certain piece of information wrong. Gov Scott ASKED George what she needed to resolve more cases, and the Accountability Court was entirely her recommendation.
Where did you get your information about this statement? "When Governor Phil Scott announced a new Community Accountability Court for Chittenden County in October 2025 — a dedicated docket and special prosecutor for people with five or more open cases — George didn’t resist it?" This is entirely backwards and once again, marginalizes a woman in power.
We went back and reviewed both our wording and the reporting surrounding the creation of the Community Accountability Court.
We do think there is an important distinction here. The story did not say that Sarah George merely acquiesced to the court. The sentence you cited is immediately followed by: “She co-signed it.” Our point was that George affirmatively supported the approach, despite some of the political rhetoric surrounding differences between her and the Scott administration.
That said, your note prompted us to look more closely at George’s role in the development of the court. There is evidence that her role was more substantial than simply endorsing the finished proposal. George has said that when the governor’s office asked what she needed to move more cases, she identified a courtroom, a judge and a prosecutor — key components of the eventual Accountability Court.
We have not, however, found support for the broader claim that the Accountability Court was “entirely her recommendations.” Contemporaneous accounts from the governor’s office and others describe its development as a collaborative process involving George, the Judiciary, Burlington officials and several other participants in the criminal justice system.
We also want to address your suggestion that our wording “marginalizes a woman in power.” Nothing in our reporting or characterization of this issue was based on Sarah George’s gender, nor would we evaluate the actions of a public official differently because that official is a woman or a man. We think questions about accuracy, credit and accountability are best resolved by examining the record itself rather than attributing disagreement to gender when there is no evidence that gender played any role.
So we don’t believe the Compass passage is backwards, nor do we think it portrays George as passive — particularly given the statement that she “co-signed” the initiative. But we do think there is additional context about her role in helping shape the proposal that is worth noting, and we appreciate you bringing that to our attention.
Thank you for reading Compass Vermont closely enough to challenge us when you think we’ve missed something. That kind of scrutiny is valuable to us.
I'm a huge fan of objective journalism as evidenced here and am putting my money where my mouth is.
As for this topic, and prosecutors race, Sarah's had enough time. Chittenden County was trending down, and that trend hasn't changed, its gotten much worse. The fact that the re-offenders are the main problem, and only recently addressed was her main failure since that group caused the most long term damage. We need bonds.
This was a detailed writeup of a novel way of comparing the 2 candidates apples to apples, but it’s treatment of the backlog and how it got to be what it is left out an important fact.
The wording treated the backlog as if it stemmed from George’s policies, for instance see the section titled “a backlog is a choice, not weather”. Except that the backlog clearly was caused by the pandemic (which is similar to weather in that it’s unpredictable).
With no mention of the word “pandemic” to be found in a whole article that hinges on a court case backlog, I don’t know what to think of this article. How did this get missed?
Many years ago, Frank Murray was Chittenden County’s non-nonsense State’s Attorney. I interviewed him once for a newspaper article. He made the point that 1-2% of the adult population are psychopaths. While not all are criminal offenders, those that commit crimes are notoriously difficult to rehabilitate.
As we are seeing now, they are street smart and capable of gaming the judicial system. When asked how best to deal with these people, Frank said that the only way to protect people and property was to separate them from society in their “peak criminal years.”
Our current 7-year experiment with treating offenders as poor wretches who need not put up bail or be prosecuted for anti-social behavior must end on August 11, 2026 with the election of Bram Kranichfeld as our next no-nonsense State’s Attorney.
The people committing property crimes now are not psychopaths, they have a mental illness called addiction. There are so many incorrect assumptions about the impacts of bail. This is a well-researched topic, and one of VT's experts is Prof. Kathy Fox who was was a sociology (criminology) professor at UVM for 30 years, who volunteered in the prisons, conducted research in them, and now volunteers at the So. Burlington community justice center.
"In terms of social problems and public disorder, the justice system has very little impact. No matter what. No matter who is in charge. When people talk about unhoused people in the park and retail theft downtown, they may not realize a) the state’s attorney has literally nothing to do with housing, and b) the system around retail theft is surprising. Let’s say a person steals $500 worth of stuff from a downtown store. That is a misdemeanor (under $900), and a police officer would issue a citation to appear in court. The person is then free to go about their way, although they may be trespassed from the store. The court date might be 12 weeks out, or 9 or 6 or 4. If it’s 9 or 12, they will likely forget their court date. If it’s four, they are more likely to appear. If they don’t appear, the court can issue a warrant for their arrest and take them to jail. (Jailing someone in Vermont costs more than $300 per day by the way.) Maybe that is what Bram intends when he says the vague word “accountability.” We can disagree about how worthwhile that strategy is. But I can tell you the research shows it makes things worse, for the accused and the crime rates, which do not decline because of bail."
You have a certain piece of information wrong. Gov Scott ASKED George what she needed to resolve more cases, and the Accountability Court was entirely her recommendation.
Where did you get your information about this statement? "When Governor Phil Scott announced a new Community Accountability Court for Chittenden County in October 2025 — a dedicated docket and special prosecutor for people with five or more open cases — George didn’t resist it?" This is entirely backwards and once again, marginalizes a woman in power.
Thank you for writing and raising this.
We went back and reviewed both our wording and the reporting surrounding the creation of the Community Accountability Court.
We do think there is an important distinction here. The story did not say that Sarah George merely acquiesced to the court. The sentence you cited is immediately followed by: “She co-signed it.” Our point was that George affirmatively supported the approach, despite some of the political rhetoric surrounding differences between her and the Scott administration.
That said, your note prompted us to look more closely at George’s role in the development of the court. There is evidence that her role was more substantial than simply endorsing the finished proposal. George has said that when the governor’s office asked what she needed to move more cases, she identified a courtroom, a judge and a prosecutor — key components of the eventual Accountability Court.
We have not, however, found support for the broader claim that the Accountability Court was “entirely her recommendations.” Contemporaneous accounts from the governor’s office and others describe its development as a collaborative process involving George, the Judiciary, Burlington officials and several other participants in the criminal justice system.
We also want to address your suggestion that our wording “marginalizes a woman in power.” Nothing in our reporting or characterization of this issue was based on Sarah George’s gender, nor would we evaluate the actions of a public official differently because that official is a woman or a man. We think questions about accuracy, credit and accountability are best resolved by examining the record itself rather than attributing disagreement to gender when there is no evidence that gender played any role.
So we don’t believe the Compass passage is backwards, nor do we think it portrays George as passive — particularly given the statement that she “co-signed” the initiative. But we do think there is additional context about her role in helping shape the proposal that is worth noting, and we appreciate you bringing that to our attention.
Thank you for reading Compass Vermont closely enough to challenge us when you think we’ve missed something. That kind of scrutiny is valuable to us.
Compass Vermont