 I'm so glad we were able to make it that we didn't have snowmageddon again. I could be a televised audience. This is the December meeting of the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel. We should go around the room, introduce ourselves. I'm Eitan Nasred-Longa, chair, pronouns he and him. I'm Inger Jonas, Vermont State Police. I am the designee for Commissioner Anderson and pronouns she and her. David Chair, Assistant Attorney General, designee for the Attorney General and he and him. Curtis Green, Executive Director, Vermont Partnership for Family and Visibility. Rebecca Turner, Defender General's office designee for the Defender General. Jeff Jones, ACLU and XPSP. I guess he and me. I don't know how you do that. For Winnie Adunia, my phone number, she and her. Sheila Linton, Root Social Justice Center, Bradabrow and she and her. I'm Monica Weaver, Administrative Services Director at the Department of Corrections, designee for the Commissioner, she and her. I'm over for Mr. Hetsky, I'm a corrections research analyst at the Department of Corrections and she and me. I'm Jessica Brown, I'm an Attorney General, appointee from the community as well as a public defender, the Defender General's office, my pronouns are she and her. Gary Scott, I'm a Lieutenant with the State Police and my pronouns are he and him. Wafiq Fahor, Vermont For Justice in Palestine. Member of Black Lives Matters, Greater Wellington, he and him. I'm Robin Joy, I'm the Director of Research for Crime Research Group and she and her. That's it? Okay, everyone's here. Let us do the approval of the minutes. I realized that was several years ago. It's almost last year. You're right, it's almost last year. I have one moment which is just incredibly selfish. In the attendance part, I was here. I actually was here. It's okay, it was one of those invisible man moments. Yeah, that was the October meeting, October 9. Anything else that anybody came up with, I had my selfish moment and that was about it. Anybody want to, you know, I'm sure. I was the one who went out. Right. I moved to approve the October 9 meeting. Okay. All in favor? All opposed? All abstaining? I'm abstaining. Okay. That's the right way to do it because I wasn't here either. Yeah, no, that's fine. If you were here, I'm abstaining. But they carry. Thank you. Thank you, David. Announcements, regrets. Chief Don Stevens is out of town tonight. So he will not be able to be here and sends his regrets. Poor Ken Shatz has some evil pathological horrible good and is not doing very well and he's not happy. And so he's not going to be here, which also means that Karen Vastine's not going to be here because she's like overwhelmed taking up the slack for him. And so she wasn't going to be able to be here either. So those are, they're both down. But on the positive side, I got this wonderful picture from Pepper of two absolutely adorable babies. I mean, just, I want one. And I don't think he'll give me one, but I want one. They're really, really cute. So I was hoping he'd be here tonight, but anyway, so on the announcement front, we do have some positive news that doesn't have to do with someone being sick. So anyway, that's about it for announcements. We should move on then to the discussion. And you can you introduce Dr. Shanesky for us. And yeah. So what I wanted to, I'll introduce Liz and also just sort of give it a review. Please. I think before and then hand it over to Liz to walk through the report with everyone. So Mrs. Liz, we follow her. Sorry. She is with, she's relatively new with the Department of Corrections just six months. And she is a corrections research analyst. And this is one of the first projects that lives under check at the Department of Corrections. I'm happy to have her here recently coming from UM. She can tell you a little bit about her experience there. But before I hand it over to her, I do want to just give a little bit of context about the report. Um, it's been out since October 15th. We were required to, um, Oh yeah, it's been online for quite some time. I'm the legislative report. Yeah. And we testified at, uh, Justice Oversight. So sorry about this. Are you the judge? Are you the service? Yeah. Yeah, who would you send it out to? I'd bury it. Because it was a send it out. It was buried? Okay. So I just gave it out. No, I always have trouble finding it. Okay. I just, um, I also gave it to you to send it out. Yeah, I sent it, I sent it out. Again, this was in the pre-cambion. Yeah. Um, but I, I did send it out. Yeah. Um, like. We tried not to, um, make it a secret. Right. Um, not as to, as to where you, where you tried it. I probably should have re-sent it. I'm sorry. I, I. And what sign is it on? Which side? You know what the actual site is. Do I know the actual path? It's on. It's on the legislative website. Under the Court of Justice. I mean, I could probably find it by the court, but I couldn't tell you the exact path. Because it's probably pretty long. But they post it on the reports page. So every time you submit a report to the legislature, it gets posted on the reports page. So you can. Yeah, there's a reports and research to have at the top of the page. Then you go to that, and then go to reports and research and overview, and there will be a list, and it will be on that one. Yeah. So that's, or we can send it to you again. But if you want it to, you know. I'll do it again tomorrow. Anyway. It's, um, so it's been out since October 15th. Because that did go and present the report to the Joint Justice that was slated oversight committee's mouthful. I think the following week we were there. And it just kind of coincided with their meeting. So, um, and through that process of presenting it to Justice Oversight, it became very clear to us that there was some expectation about this report that because of the way the questions were asked, so in the executive summary, you can see very clearly what the legislature asked us to do. And we did what they asked us to do. And that was to look at the people who entered a correctional facility in 2017 and describe the characteristics of that population. And so we did, um, we did exactly what they asked. And as we started to have conversation with them, it was a little bit more clear that the report didn't sort of answer some of the underlying questions that a lot of people have around the population incarcerated. So we're already, you know, aware, aware of that. And there was some conversation for some of you who were at that meeting that the committee was having around who else. And maybe looking at different parts of the system to answer some of these larger questions that they have. In the meantime, they did give us some other questions that we can certainly go back and look at. But I want to, I want to say that it's really important for people to understand. This does not answer a lot of questions. And it was because we responded to what the legislature asked us to do. So what we want to do is go through, and Liz will go through and describe each section of the report and what we're going to do and not able to do. You can see also in the executive summary, I think it's, I probably have shared this with you all before, some of you that. We did, as we were putting the report together, recognize that there's some work that we need to do on our own to get a better handle on our data. And that has a lot. I actually am interested in this group's ideas around this, in terms of the way inmates identify their race and ethnicity and how we can capture that. And the types of ways that we can answer the questions in the current categories for these things. We know that we can make changes to our gender-based systems to allow for certain types of data collection. I would like to do that, including a more comprehensive array of kinds of categories for ethnicity, which is pretty limited right now. In terms of what we ask, it's not limited in terms of its capacity to be able to record it. So any questions about that before I turn it over to Liz? And if you want to say more about sort of like your background, I think that would be helpful too. I am Liz Sharnatsky. I am a corrections research analyst. The background is in experimental psychology. I finished up my PhD from UVM and my emphasis is in social psychology. So this is the departure for me, but I'm very excited to be here. Let's see. Any good data dive will uncover more questions than it answers. And I think this report is no exception to that. I think we are left asking more questions and more really good questions. But what we were tasked with doing, as Monica already mentioned, was really illustrating a picture of what our incarcerated population looked like as it related to some key factors that the group was interested in. So looking at trends that they might relate to our racial demographic background and whatnot. So we looked at a few different things in this report. We looked at a comprehensive overview of various demographic pieces of information which I'll walk through. We looked at crimes and sentence length. More to come on that caveat. We were limited in the data that we had access to, what we were able to do with it. And then we were also asked to do some interstate comparisons between Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire. And I'll speak to that a little bit more. That's just generally what we were tasked with looking at. Again, all descriptive, we really didn't get any causal claims about what underlying mechanisms or factors might lead to disparities that are observed or not observed. But really just creating a comprehensive illustration of what our incarcerated population looks like. So section one did just that. It was the analyses that pertain to different demographic factors of our incarcerated population. This is on page five. So the data that was used in section one included all of our incarcerated individuals. So everyone that came into a facility in 2017, it did include Vermont detainees, but it excluded federal detainees. Excluded rural? Federal. And when you say incarcerated, are you saying pre-conviction, post-sentencing combined? Sentence and saint, people. So you're saying the entire list, pre-conviction, pre-sentence, post-conviction. Got it? Okay. Is there in the state or within the system? Both there. It includes the out-of-state population. So at the time, these people, but it includes the out-of-state population. Does it, is it broken down in that way? Yes. And a little later. A little later, a little later. So table one just gives you a breakdown of our in the population by their identified racial category. All right. The majority of our incarcerated population was identified as white. So 85% with a total of 5,769 people incarcerated. Just giving you a general idea of the racial breakdown of our population. Can you just explain again, if I don't know if I heard it, who identifies, do they self-identify? They do not self-identify currently. That is a system that we would like to move towards. It is not a system of self-identification. I think that there's some, I think that the issue there is that it's not uniform in terms of the way that it's collected. So some people may be asked by a booking officer and some people may just be identified by the person had a category put in the system. So this is at the time of arrest or booking. It's when they are doing intake is when we collect this data. And so the officer either makes that decision and or could ask somebody and that go into the decision but ultimately relies on the officer or what their thoughts, opinions, or experience in that situation was what they put. I think there's a variety of ways that it's happened and that's what we were trying to make sure that we can get a little bit more uniformity in the way we collect the data. There's no standardization in the process of the collection currently when this was collected. But that is identified as a limitation in a... We talked about that. And are these the only categories in which they think of when they're making those identifications as well? They're the only included categories at the time that this data was collected. So again, would that be the only categories in which the officers would be thinking about with when doing intakes? There would be no way for me to know that. I don't know how we would answer that question. So I think the way I would say it is that there's a drop-down list in the system and they either have to pick from the list or leave it blank or say unknown. Right, these are the categories. So do you rely then on arrest information or when they come into your facilities? When they come in. So this is part of the intake process when somebody is physically in front of an officer. By an officer, though, you mean a corrections officer. A booking officer and, yeah. Commend to the department of corrections. That's correct. As opposed to a local investor. Right, it's our booking officer. Okay. Yeah. And one more question is, I know you said I wasn't a standardized uniform. Question I later identified. But can you confirm whether everyone is asked being asked or is it that only certain people are being chosen to ask? I don't know how to answer that question either, right? So everyone is supposed to, the question or the box is supposed to be completed for every person who comes in, right? We're supposed to capture the information. How that gets captured is, again, something that we believe there's a lot of variety and I can't tell you. That's a question related to fidelity to protocol. Right. Unfortunately, I don't think that we have the information to be able to assess that. The other caveat to all of the data is that what we were working with at the time that we were putting together this report was with existing data. So we were limited in the scope of things that we could actually draw from. We did not collect data to construct this report. This was drawn purely from previously collected data. Right. It's administrative data that we collected in the process of doing our work through. So it sounds like, okay. Go ahead. Correct. So data that comes from the court, you didn't have access to, but just in terms of the DOC procedure, I understand this that this one was convicted or arrested that race ethnicity that was visible is known to the court. Is that right, Robin? Robin? Yeah, it is. But I'll tell you that their data is missing a lot of race data. Okay. And so when and I'm judged correctly on the process, but my understanding is, is that's coming in from the fingerprint supported arrest? And it's being identified from the FBI and VCI state. I was just going to say that although we call a court data, it's relying on whatever information the police have identified when they file and process the individual and then comes through the state's attorney's office. I'm assuming they certainly don't do any identification. So they're relying on police. That's the paperwork that ends up in the court and we don't make any separate inquiry. Yeah. Although we may in juvenile dockets, but that's a whole separation. So there is possible that a single individual may be identified as two different races? I would imagine that's true. And there's different categories in every difference criminal justice database. Wait a minute. Sure. We're initially identifies as black or Hispanic and then doesn't get picked up or identified we are. So to go back to what I was, so we absolutely recognize that this is an issue with our data. And one of the things that we want to do is come up with a much more clear practice that we can tell our staff, this is how you are to collect this data. This is the question you need to ask. This is how you capture it. This is the order that you ask the question. That's work we were doing actually prior to this report being requested of us and that it requires us changing our database around. So it's something we've been aware of and I think this group's questions just helps us realize it's an important job. Are you all also saying that they're only allowed to check one box? That is an issue. And that we can change that as well. So right now the race category is you can be one of these and that we need to and we've already identified the fact that we're going to have more than one race drop down so that people can identify as more than one. Because we will be able to do that. But yes, right now. And that's we recognize that as a limitation. So I'm just leaping ahead here as Captain Obvious who's like concerned about this report. We've got to write. There's a lot of standardization it seems like you need in order to do this data the way that you even want to do it. That's not there at the moment. Okay. So that would be something that we should in fact consider as a panel when we start making recommendations to the General Assembly. Well, you may not need to make it to the General Assembly because we're already in the process of figuring out how we want to do this. And so helping us and making recommendations to us and so that we would implement it. I don't think we need to go to the other. It doesn't get to God. I'm going to the General Assembly. Okay. You know, that's great. We're willing and interested in hearing what we think would be the best practice for writing this. So I don't know if you'll express this later, but then I'm just wondering what the barriers have really been up to now because I feel like I've had this conversation about a decade ago with the same responses and the same answers in terms of the specific format of how we collect data. And actually I know I've had the same conversation for the last 10 years. So I'm just wondering what current barriers are there to still have this conversation like 10 years later of asking those questions and having something that clearly even many of these people around the table who have been doing it for a while too. Well, I can't really speak to what was going on 10 years ago because I wasn't with the Department of Art. So what barriers do you see in the barriers now to having a format? Right now I think that no, I don't think there's any barriers now other than figuring out the procedure and making and going out and really describing to our staff how we need to do it and changing the offender management system. Robin has a question. Yeah, so to deal with the whole system and I have been here for 10 years or more. Yeah, the courts are getting a new case management system. The courts are getting a new case management system. They just got a new case management system and the old joke was that Department of Corrections would get an update sometime long after the courts did. That was the old joke and we're still at the point where the courts are going through their case management system. The police have two different CADRMS systems and one is kind of more new and one can be programmed a little bit better. But I think to answer your question it's the legacy systems that were created 30, 40 years ago that are part of the problem and getting those changed. And so I don't know what the court's process is for getting public input on their new CADRMS system or your new case management system. What do you call CADRMS? On the police side, I use a lot of words. On the police side it's called CADRMS system. On the court side it's called the case management system. It's the structure of the data. It's how the data is structured. So that's been a huge barrier is getting those systems changed. And what is the barrier to getting the changed? I hear that that's a barrier but I'm not quite hearing what the barrier has actually been. You want to go through? Well, I mean with the court system which is, I just can't tell you how old it is. It's old so we're in the process of getting a new case management system that will take probably, I mean we started about a year ago and it takes to get the entire state covered three or four years. We expect the first section of a portion of it to be rolled out in the spring to the Judicial Bureau and then the next hopefully by summer if everything stays on track. We would introduce it into Wyndham, Windsor and Orange counties and then about a year later the rest of the state. But the court attempted a new case management system a number of years ago before I was in this position without success. And so they have started again and this one will be seen. So one more question, like when you say this case management system who created that or who is in creation of that? Well we're dealing with a vendor who has a system that is used in any number of states but at least in regionally Maine has just introduced a similar system or is in the process of it. Hampshire has had torsions of for a number of years. Rhode Island is another place we've visited so it's a it's a nationally recognized system. And who in Vermont has had the opportunity to vet that system when choosing that system for our state? Court, the court vetted vetted a number of vendors before deciding on this one. So when you say the court that is it's going to be I'm sorry if that seems like a good question but what does that mean the court? I'm sorry. Management within the court system judges, staff anyone anyone who would put their hands on the system and have to process the information comes into the court. Okay so it's a sort of what I would consider or say really top down to where it's being vetted by the people who are. I would say bottom up it's staff and the people that are actually every day putting their hands on the computers that have to know how to take the information in over the counter and put it into a system that is available it's not I mean ultimately the decision is made by the court to sign a contract but the information leading up to the acceptance of one vendor over another was for the most part groups of people it wasn't one or two individuals we had groups of people looking at different systems. So when I mean when I think of the term bottom up that would mean the people that are most directly impacted which are the people who are actually going to the system would be part of that not the people who are just delivering the services. So we just have a different understanding of what bottom up means and so I just wanted to know if the community at large because that's what we are here or the community at large giving our expertise around the state and our various positions to help make this successful. So I like this process better than what I think has happened in the future in the past where it sounds like a court system who is the ones who are going to be implementing those systems not necessarily the ones who are impacted by those systems are the ones who are learning and that's not what I mean I mean we need to have a more totality of a conversation around that because if the court system is seeing this yes they have an expertise in that but it's us who are on the ground us who are being put into this system who also know hey why don't you ask us just ask us an open question wouldn't that be easy to solve all this stuff we've done over the last 10 years? I mean that's just off the top of my head but so it's things like that to where asking again the most directly impacted people and those are the ones who are actually incarcerated the ones who have been incarcerated and the ones working with those people on the ground who are in either whatever spectrum of that that's happening let's keep going because I know you've got we're like only on page five and I know there's three more yeah there's it would be very hard to get through the whole report right in that regard so we can stop in areas where people think are we want to discuss and move to areas where we don't want to discuss I just thought a quick yes or no question okay if it really is a quick yes or no yeah it's hispanic being like is hispanic being used as a race this is part of the problem is the distinction between race and ethnicity and ethnicity but hispanics is neither a race nor ethnicity again right this is why we need we're working on trying to put things in the right category and then train and eliminate things from the drop-down list that are inappropriate to be in that list right now there's things in the list that we know aren't technically part of the list but they're there because again it was made it up all the way somebody made it up off the way and it's important just you know that the state at least for us I won't speak for the court but the state requires oftentimes departments when we make these really large IT purchases to buy an already existing off-the-shelf database right and and that's what we had to do with our databases by an already existing off-the-shelf database that came pre-populated pre-structured and had some ability for us to configure and we have been regularly going through and reconfiguring and trying to make it better and this is why there is really we still have work to do so that's something that we recognize and just to echo that that's why the first system that we attempted to put into place we were trying to do that but on your own and again it just did not work and so we finally gave up on that and the system we had as I said is that nationally recognized yeah vendor that we had very little control or configuration right so it it it comes as soon as you get it it comes with the limitations of the off-the-shelf to see no and you know so we're working through it anyway great and we were explicitly asked to also look at the geographic distribution of our inmate population so specifically looking at their last reported county of residents and then drilling that down further breaking down by their identified race so what we have in table 2A is it makes reported last county of residents broken down by their identified race and without getting 2 in the weeds this is not a super friendly table but degrees proportion of our incarcerated population was from Chittenden County 17% of the incarcerated individuals who reported Chittenden County as their county of residents which I know is a mouthful there's a statement with a lot of qualifiers 17% of them were identified as people of color and of that group of people of color 84% of them were identified as Black you're on page 6 I am on page 6 part of that gets back to the issue that we were just discussing a reporting error so if an individual was if there was not anything reported under race that was reported as unknown or this probably could also account for individuals who have an identity that would consist of multiple racial identifications I need something about identification or county I just I wanted to make sure I understood your question correct the unknown Vermont unknown oh under the county so that would qualify that is our out of state population so they either did not list a county or they would not be a county in Vermont so no so there's two I'm sorry I just want to make sure people are really Vermont unknown and then out of state as Vermont unknown and then out of state so it's on the continuing page correct so there's unknown Vermont they did not list a specific county in Vermont or out of state so that is unknown to us it was listed as an out of state so basically and I think does that mean that that they they self-identify as coming from Vermont they just didn't specify a county and then there are people who identify as having come from out of state or out of state but we just wasn't out of state right because no out of state far people around almost identify as homeless I'm sorry how are people more they're usually identified as homeless as homeless so they would be Vermont's no county yeah unknown yeah there's a home there is a way to get homeless if we know that they're homeless in a particular county we make this a county in there right so it's like you know you're homeless and we know that you generally are in this area we could put a county in there but we wouldn't put an actual street address which is kind of where the homeless entered and that doesn't always happen it's just if you know that you can do that there's also which is way beyond the scope of understanding that's a particular table but there's also recorded null answers as well which would probably account for a lot of those particular instances no no so just an A or a null and that for the purposes of this they were filtered out so we only put a people that had some sort of a response that we could analyze so a lot of those instances would probably follow in those categories right so what I get were there other questions on the county breakdown so the out of state then roughly 14 to 15 percent of the whole root right incarcerated population right so if I'm down down the page out of state and it says how underneath the black it says 14 percent out of state so then all the black people incarcerated in Vermont 14 percent how did that black 14 percent out of the whole population 14 percent of the people that listed an out of state county of residence identified as black so it's not 14 percent not out of the whole population out of the county and I want to make sure that people understand the distinction here that when we talking about out of state in this table we're talking about where people said they lived we're not talking about the out of state population the people who are incarcerated who are housed somewhere else oh right that's because they want to make sure people understand that that's a so in theory we should know the demographics of the non-incarcerated black population shouldn't it and be able to prepare that with a percentage of 14.3 percent incarcerated right that's in of the of the of the of the of the of the of the of the I will say caveat to that what we had available to us at the time was the general census data for each of those counties so you would also have to keep in mind that the entire population of a particular county is also not going to map on exactly what the incarcerated population so that includes everyone not just people between a particular age range so we have reported from 17 onward so there's something to keep in mind that's not an exact way to calculate the percentage but it's a good reference so you can use the appendix b at least a reference to keep you in idea yeah well it's just a general comment as you as your committee talks about categories and so on and so forth is thinking about what are you going to compare those categories to yeah and so when you use some of the census data the census includes Hispanic as an ethnicity and if you use some of those tables and right now most of the state data systems don't so that means for example you're limited in some of the tables that you can use where you can screen out underage people and things like that so as you think about what you want to compare to yeah think about what data are available and you know to so for example some of the race and traffic stuff data includes infants and children who aren't driving right that's that maybe something else right and the same thing here but it's part of that's because of the way the data are structured okay thank you which is why we did not include comparative analyses so just this is again we are being purely descriptive with our population and included appendix B as a reference for general interest table two B hang with me on this one this is a little bit a little bit complex it is we ran a test it's called the Kaisberg goodness of fit test so what this does is it allows you to determine whether or not the number of a particular group that you observe so this is the data points we actually have access to in this case there will be the number of black and white incarcerated individuals in our data subset whether or not that group of observed individuals is going to be significantly different from what you would expect and I use that word in a very particular way so it is a mathematically derived term so expect based on a proportion so proportion to a population so hey and this one is it hang with me this is this is not particularly user friendly so what we wanted to do though is we wanted to run this test to determine whether or not our observed proportion of incarcerated black individuals in the three counties that we focused on would differ from our hypothesized county again if that comes with my caveat this is not something this is not an observed number this is a mathematically derived number based on a proportion and in the footnotes I tell you exactly how to calculate that hypothesized number so essentially we just want to know whether or not our proportions would be significantly different for Chittenden County the observed number of incarcerated black individuals was lower than that mathematically derived hypothesized proportion for Franklin County it was the observed number of incarcerated black individuals was higher significantly and then for Rutland County there was no significant difference in our observed and hypothesized proportions I can give you a moment to digest that if you would like Franklin County is not significant Franklin County is Rutland County is not Franklin County is not so in Wademan's terms what is that saying about Franklin County to you so relative to their own proportion the proportion of incarcerated and non-incarcerated black individuals so again that was a calculated mathematically derived number so that's just a really important thing to keep in mind there was no significantly statistically significant proportional imbalance I guess between the two groups right we also have Franklin oh Franklin same thing right Franklin and Franklin was the same it would be in that case Franklin was a significant difference so for Franklin County the observed number of incarcerated black individuals was higher than that mathematically derived proportion would be Franklin it doesn't for Franklin it was for Rutland it was not so what was the mathematically derived number what is that replacing it was a calculated number based on the proportion what real-world number is that trying to replace I don't know if my question makes any sense the non-incarcerated yeah so I think what it kind of goes back to what the the legislative right yeah it goes back to what the joint justice legislative committee wanted and sort of I think what you were getting at is looking at what the population of that particular county was and whether or not there was some sort of imbalance but because of all the other reasons we just discussed about why it was started to do that we put this test instead okay so this is a like a benchmark like a way to compare who lives in a county with who is incarcerated in a county it would be that it's also for the kind of data we have one of the only ways we can read a comparative now okay sorry and just knowing the data that they're using and and what I heard in your question just because like if I get well Memphis the county live in I was up in Chittenden earlier today um if I get arrested and charged I've been Chittenden but I'm a resident to Washington I'm still showing up to watch so it's not measuring what the court in that county is doing right it's just measuring where I where I live okay so essentially it's a way for us to have like you said a metric or a benchmark or a general idea for whether or not a particular county is incarcerating it a proportional or an unproportional rate by a group that you want to look at and based on how you measure just say this again the three counties here the one is significance is yeah Chittenden so what's the significance in Chittenden tell me have a lower observed proportion of incarcerated black individuals then what would be mathematically expected and for Franklin County be any higher proportion of incarcerated lower expected incarceration rate of people of color lower observed than mathematically expected the number that we observed was lower than what you would expect based on based on the proportion that we derived but I may this one make sense more later I don't do you guys get this I don't know maybe I don't move on it's possible I don't I don't understand the math of it I will never write but but I understand the concept being that there's a mathematical calculation that they did to try to predict how many black people in Chittenden County would be in jail would be and there and then the number that they actually observed was lower than what they predicted from the math that they calculated right and I and I don't I don't know how that conclusion squares were like with this sentencing project of all of these things in terms of where and also the demographics of the disproportionate of the people color change so I just want to also go back to one of the beginning statements that I said and the first chart and then and this is again a lot of people were we are not trying to dispute at all that there's a disparity right so I want to say that very clearly we recognize that the numbers through that right here right so that's not we're not trying to do that or are you that point we sort of go into this sort of saying that's a true statement and then what we're going to do is talk to you a little bit more about what we see in the data for the people who came into incarceration in 2017 right and and I think that I just want to make sure that everybody's aware that that's what that's where we're starting thank you thank you so this is so this is what this is that's actually that's actually oh you have I'm sorry I didn't see you my question is what is mathematically expected or why this exercise you are doing it what will help us to see the bigger pictures how many blacks on jail in comparison to our demography why you do this exercise what kind of education to us to solve the problem what is the reason we are doing the mathematically expected we often get asked to say to say in public meetings like a legislative if there's a difference between certain counties that's a question that we get asked a lot by other people I think that if we were usually outside question just to sort of see if there's you know disparities regionally across the state and so this is one way we were trying to answer that question and I think there's other ways we can also try and answer it but that's why we did this does that make sense again we go back to the fact that the legislature off has asked us questions that are sort of difficult for the department corrections to answer within the scope of the data that we have and then to broader so we did we did what we could do with the with the data set that we had can I ask people around the table may have asked different questions of you but these are the questions that you were asked by the legislature to respond to is that a fair statement that is exactly correct thank you thank you thank you so in Travis stop data we've struggled with coming up with what is the if you took out any type of unconscious or conscious bias or any type of improper practice what would ticketing look like in Vermont in terms of racial demographics is that what this number is meant to be like is it meant to be like if you took out any sort of unconscious or conscious bias or improper sentencing and you just took a look at what you expect the population to look like in jail based on all reasons to be in jail is that what the population looked like that yes I wouldn't say that we could pinpoint pinpoint the exact expected contributions to all those factors like implicit bias or unconscious bias but it is accounting all things equal what would the percentages look like what would we expect them to look like and is that based on that assumption which is really the best that we can do because we're not able to identify all that which is and it's an undefined and undeniable point but we're not able to identify that so the closest the best that we can do is holding all things equal trying to keep what is consistent consistent what would our expected proportion be what do we see and what's the discrepancy or difference between those two things let's keep going because I think if we get caught that in the math in the algorithm it's going to just be it's going to be stats one on one although it's going to be stats it's going to be stats that's when a lot of you I'll want to ask you several years table three is looking at the gender composition of our inmate population broken down also by race so this is what we call cross tabs breaking down by two categories to give you count data so the majority of our inmate population identified as male 83% specifically of the people who were identified as male 11% of them were identified as people of color and of the male individuals who are identified as people of color 87% of them were identified as well 17% of our inmate population identified as female of those individuals 4% of them identified as people of color and 30 of the 41 or 73% of people who identified as women of color identified as black we had 22 individuals identified as transgender four of them identified as people of color and one of those four individuals identified as so again we are not making with this data any kind of comparative analyses we're not comparing across groups or between categories we're just describing what we see and can I just clarify because you're using the phrase identified as and I just want to make sure that my understanding still is that this what you talked about at the beginning like this data is collected essentially by booking officers and there's no standardized way that they're collecting information correct me if I'm wrong but is there a different process for the identification of gender people generally there is a different process for gender category okay but I guess I'm really referring to race yeah so when you say identified as black that could mean where are the booking officer where are identified that was by right they are listed in your system as black that's right okay however however whoever came to that conclusion yeah when I say they identified as male or female that it does that's imply a different process okay and then where identified as is implicit yeah male female transgender I've actually great confidence in those identifications and people are asked very clearly how they went to identify and their forms that we fill out and so so that's a much more clear that's a much more clear process yeah and those only three categories for gender as well we actually do make a distinction between transgender whether or not it's male to female and female to male but for the purposes of analytic processes and ease of reporting and explanation we collapsed across you what collapsed across male to female and female to male okay so there's no other there's no like interstates or non-binary there's like like 30 plus more deaders no we don't have those yeah so on page nine we also looked at age trends as they related to the racial composition of our incarcerated population the average average age of our inmates was 37 years old there was a third degree of variability or just our population was very diverse in regards to their age so that's something to keep in mind but I will say that this average is pretty consistent with the general population of Vermont since this data from that that year reported that the median age of Vermont is the story one alright looking at the degree of variability which was about 12 years we're in the the range of what you would expect the average Vermont to to be so the largest proportion of our MA population 35% was between 30 and 39 years old of that group 30 to 39 year olds 12% of them were identified as people of color and of the people of color between 30 and 39 years old 217 identified were identified as black and here we know for have further growth breakdown on gender and age I do not have a breakdown of gender and age in this report 14% of our MA population were 25 years old or younger of that age group or age ranges 12% of them were identified as people of color and then 82% of the individuals who are identified as people of color 25 years old or younger were identified as black I did run another test to determine whether or not there was a significant different age between black and white incarcerated individuals and we found that on average white individuals were older than black individuals but again there was a fairly high degree of variability so our population just looks very diverse in terms of age and in general just in terms of age over time the population is getting older right so we're seeing a decrease in the number of younger people coming into incarceration and an increase in the older so section two we looked at crime and sentence length data I have a couple of copy-ups for you guys related to this section the data that we had available to us again we did not collect any data for this report we were drawing on and we're limited to what we had access to existing data so for this particular subset of data we weren't focusing in on one particular year like in section one it was all 2017 this spans in inmates total time under supervision we also only used data for inmates most severe charge for the charge of the longest sentence length that's just something to keep in mind when you're looking at these analyses most severe charge or charge of the longest sentence length which more often than not violations they probably the exception to that were more most often one in the same to those two things to those two caveats makes sense because it will change the framing of how this can be one more time absolutely so this instead of focusing on one year like other section did it spans in inmates total time under supervision can we just add one thing so so we're still taking those people from 2017 right because the same group is in section one but we have to look back farther right in order to get well just their most severe charge may have been from a different year than from a different year makes sense right so it's using their most severe charge or charge of the longest sentence which may not use your most severe charge for what that they were issued to do what so to look at this sentence I see so the burglary the burglary things here could range from burglary sentences imposed in 1997 versus no it has it had to have been the charge for which they were still currently incarcerated right so we're looking at people in 2017 and then we had to say okay let's find out because the question the underlying question here is is there a difference between charges that white people are getting and not white people are getting sentences sentence sentences right so you're looking at 2017 but the conviction would have been in 2012 absolutely exactly so they're still serving the sentence and they're still serving the sentence so that's why we had to sort of do we had to go back in time and not just look at so sentence is imposed at different times before different charges right wouldn't that be really hard to do given that charges and sentences get it was very hard to get blended together it was one it was extremely hard to do which is why it was practically impossible to do this and this was the methodology that we came up with in order to provide the committee with some tell me something about that are you are you uncomfortable with that because it sounds it sounds a little cray-cray it sounds cray-cray well um what I mean I understand that you were told you had to do this but I'm also hearing and perceiving by looking at this and running some figures in my head that I'm not sure exactly this shows me something that's entirely probative well I think there are some things in here that are probative but I think as Liz said in the beginning is sort of these kinds of reports usually just results in more questions and that I think is exactly what happens I think it confirmed what we already knew which is that there's a disproportionate number of Black people incarcerated in Vermont I don't necessarily think we needed to go through this whole study to not do that I think that the legislature had some good intent in sort of trying to understand the reason behind that and the questions that they posed to us don't answer don't answer the question don't answer the reason behind it right so we still wondering why right absolutely right because the way that they it helps that to their conversation the problem of the question so we so we were we were trying to do as best as we could to provide some information so that we didn't completely dismiss the request right you know we needed to submit a report and spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out what we could do and I think you know it is kind of interesting to look at but it still doesn't really answer the underlying question yes thank you that makes more sense but if you're here explain this to us can you just do the actuality of like a person so I can actually understand what you're saying with this diagram here that we've got here would you mind doing that as this you need table five yes so we all are on the same page of what was impossible to do that doesn't really get to the outcome that we want that's been in a decade conversation about absolutely so what I was able to do was look at the most frequently issue charges and break that down by immigrants so if you're are some of the most frequently issue charges for our subset of data which we've already gone into how that's limited yeah but so so I'm just going to ask questions along the way if you do it so when we're looking at that white 87 is that 87 people 87 87 people okay so out of and this is 2017 or something this is using the same group of people that we've been talking about but they may not have necessarily been issued that card in 2017 can I ask you a question about that because when we first started talking about the group of people I may have misunderstood this was were these people who entered into the system in 2017 or everybody who was in jail in 2017 anyone who came in came in in or who was there okay because like like someone who got convicted of something in 2012 but had a 10-year sentence is still in jail in 2017 so they're counted okay because I at first understood you mean like people who were newly entering the system in 2017 that's not right okay so that one was incarcerated at any point in time okay so that's why someone is in this data who has a conviction from 2012 or whatever got thank you I think one thing on this chart one of the challenges in this chart and especially for folks who don't spend a lot of time in criminal court but to correct me if I'm also mischaracterizing one of your challenges one of the issues is that a lot of people get sentenced to concurrent sentences they're facing multiple charges they get concurrent sentences and the most severe sentence controls the whole thing so so as far as DOC is concerned all DOC has to know to carry out their job is what the long sentence is and that's what controls how long that person's in there but the reality is there's all these other charges next to it that just kind of got folded in so it's very hard for DOC to look at their data and say that such and such a charge resulted in a sentence unless it was the controlling sentence unless it was the biggest charge so there's a bunch of information that DOC isn't going to have we could I think you'd have to go back to the court files and look at it exactly I think Robin has a lot to say about sentence okay yeah you can actually go to the rap sheets and ma'am to go to your concern about 10 years later whether that sentence is concurrent or not gets transmitted to DOC on the witness on a piece of paper that's the exact same way it gets transmitted to BCIC where your rap sheets are in all sorts of stuff now now BCIC puts it into a nice format for me so I can extract it and do data analysis but whether that sentence is concurrent is transferred on paper will you do this do you want an example yeah I want you to so let's say my client Joe gets is charged with domestic assault for assaulting his intimate partner a lawful mischief for damaging his partner's phone while this fight is going on and then resisting arrest when the police show up and he might end up let's say the resisting arrest gets dismissed and he pleads guilty to the domestic assault and the unlawful mischief and on the domestic assault conviction he gets a sentence of 12 to 24 months to serve and then on the unlawful mischief which is a much like has a lower maximum possible sentence it's a lesser misdemeanor on the domestic assault he gets a zero to three month sentence and it's run at the same time so concurrently so he goes to jail and technically he's serving two sentences but the but the controlling sentences the 12 to 24 months because it's clearly longer so technically he's serving zero to three months on that unlawful mischief at the same time that he's serving the 12 to 24 month sentence on the domestic assault and as I understand what you're saying is you are using that controlling sentence the harsher longer sentence as for your doubt because the question is why are people in jail what for the crimes that you're keeping in there and in this case like all of those but really it was the assault so relevant to this chart is the reason Joe's in jail is really for domestic assault conviction right because he's got the so he's serving out 24 months and then you know what's Joe's race as compared to everybody else who's serving a domestic assault conviction and also like how does Joe's sentence let's say Joe's black how does Joe's sentence compare to some white guy who also got committed of domestic assault to savior or whatever which we'll have a kind of caveat so let me get to that so does that mean I'm going to try to ask this question now because I don't even know if it's an actual question so when I look at this it makes me think I don't know if I'm reading this right but it makes me think okay proportionally white folks are in jail more hence because we're in the second white estate in the nation so by default we're going to assume that's happening and that's what's reflected everywhere and including in this chart and what I see is that out of that still there's a disproportionate and black folks in every category that it looks like we've talked about yet it's much lower significantly lower here and so if that is the case it makes me concerned that if they're not being charged with those then what are they being charged with so not only the fact that yay they didn't do 87 of the burglaries and were charged with that only 11 but was there something even more egregious that they were charged with and the burglary wasn't it so whatever all these I'm just wondering if all these are a good low or are they low because they actually got bumped into more egregious charges or more whatever not good whichever word you want to use is what I'm sort of wondering when I look at these numbers of like domestic assault so it didn't end up being a domestic assault where they end up being with attempted murder like I don't know so those are the questions I'm sort of having and I don't know if that goes on in your report but I don't think that's something that we're able to answer right with this particular thing that we're seeing interesting of how I'm trying to think about it in my head and I think my question goes to one of the parts of the issue here which is if the sentencing data doesn't show a clear disparity but there is a clear disparity what's the other and what's the other this is some of the things might be exactly what you're talking about which is are people getting assigned different charges when prosecutors make decisions are they going to convict the different charges because that stuff could really play in so you know the sentences aren't that disparate that's possible with people of color are getting assigned the two sentences that are harsher or getting charges that are harsher and therefore maybe they're serving sentences the same as other charges but white people would have for the similar behavior would have gotten lesser charges so I think it's a good comment and it's exactly it goes to the hearts of exactly what the committee was trying to I want to make sure I understand Sheila's point so like so you how to do it well so you chose the most frequently charged offenses is that the first so we took the most severe charge we took inmates most severe charge or the charge with the longest sentence no I understand that only use that data and then of the most severe charges we reported the most frequently issued the most frequently issued charges so there is a complete index yeah appendix D every single one because I thought if I'm understanding Sheila's point correctly she's suggesting that so like attempted is attempted murder no so and so like if someone might have been charged with domestic assault like we can't tell if more white people are charged with domestic assault whereas for the same conduct person of color would be charged absolutely with with them so that's we're doing see what David said this is what sort of happened when we when we went over this with the Justice Oversight Committee which is all a lot of those decisions are made at a different point and the data that we're looking at is to the end of the line decisions have already been made at this point so those discretionary things that just they're just not going to be covered here at all right and really two significant discretionary ones the initial charge right in the hands of the state's attorney and then as you get towards the end before the sentence right it's what plea agreement is offered which would perhaps again the state's attorney controls the charge the court doesn't and you've got to remember that 90 to 95 percent of all the criminal cases going through the system are as well as the plea with it and so that's that's how these these numbers get there can I ask oh I did I have a really response to what you just said because I mean yes and you said that the state's attorney is the charging body and we've talked about the influence of police officers from the get go with identifying with their affidavits with the relationships with the state's attorney exactly on and on and on that actually go into those charges so I I want us to be mindful around the table of that language because we we keep on going back and forth when is the most impactful points I get discretionary points as I guess the terminology we're using and we have to remember it's from the absolute beginning and I know what you're saying I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying I just I want to make sure we're just really clear with that because when we say it's up to the state's attorney I I I don't think we should use that language anymore because it's really trying I understand what you're saying I agree with you I'm trying to distinguish the sentencing point from points before that where the discretion is exercised long before sentencing sentencing is as someone said is the end of the line and that's what we're looking at we're looking at data people have been convicted to really understand the process you've got to go back to charge agreement charge and the rest as you said so it's that discretion all along the way you've been waiting yeah I just want to say I think I and I feel for Monica often I know that but I do I feel like founded here and it's that the Department of Corrections is probably the least qualified to answer the questions that people want to have answered and I and I seriously you've made it a different way I've made it a different way I know you've made it a different way yes and I do mean it a totally different way but the questions that you all have answered and it's in all their caveats I will say that we do have a federal grant that's probably not going to be completed by the time you need to file a report. That's going to start with DOC data, but work all the way backwards through the NIVERS data and the police data. And because I can track people through the system or I can track incidents through the systems and NIVERS is a National Incident-Based Reporting System and gives us a wealth of information about things that aren't captured in other places in the data. So what kind of fire, what kind of weapon was used, what kind of injury was there. I don't get some things that, you know, like whether the victim's going to participate in the process, which may affect how things go forward, but I will get a lot more rich data about the circumstances of the offense that brought this person into incarceration. I answer the people who, and since I'm starting with incarceration, I'm not going the other way like who doesn't, but I will be able to answer, did someone with a similar situated intimate partner violence with the same level of injury recorded in the same type of, you know, criminal history record both in-state and out-of-state, did they end up in the same spot? But that's what you need to answer some of these questions and we need to go back, as you were saying, all the way to the police and what data can we get out of those structured systems to help you answer those questions. I will say in just response to that, I think that that is an absolute necessity. We aren't able to identify the mechanisms that underlie a lot of why this is showing us, but the good thing about starting at the end of the line while it doesn't answer those questions is it allows us to have directed focus or pointed attention to the areas which allows us to identify, okay, these are the areas that we need to go back and identify where the trajectory. So there is some merit to looking at what we already see is the proof of existence. So going back and then not knowing what the actual situation is, having directed focus on where to look for mechanisms that might be contributing to why we see that. So there's merit in looking at this as well. And I appreciate Robin's comment because it is true that oftentimes the Department of Corrections is asked to enter a fair number of questions because, you know, in some cases we do have data and some of it is really appropriate for the question and in this case it is. This question, I mean in your data, can you find out on the reports that an individual policeman is arresting more blacks or stopping more blacks and whites? Because we have to agree on the police department, not everyone is racist, but on the police department there is racism and they are racist policemen. They might do it and this is where the increase happened. If you don't put it and study it as data and find where is what you call that apparel, we're not going to stop it. That's not available in our data, but there are other, that's not available in our data, but there's other research around that's directed towards answering that question. And we can't speak to that. Yeah. Maybe our state officer can answer that. So your question is, in bad-out police officer? Yeah, some officers, they are stopping more police, more black people of colors than other policemen. They are stopping them by a car, they are arresting them, they are searching their car unlawfully, etc. The more stopping the blacks on the car, the more problem you're going to find, you're going to find it right. If you stop every white person, you're going to find the same average. So do you see certain officers in your office bringing you more blacks than whites? This is a major question. Yeah, this is, this is, well, we track the data of car stops in our department, and other departments are mandated to do the same thing. There's state law that requires every department to collect the perceived race of the operator of every car they stop, and then departments hold that data and they get public. So it can be known how many, what the racial demographic is of the car stops of every single department. Of the people arrested or the people arrested? So, well, a car stop may lead to an arrest or may not, and that's tracked as well, but the data is, that's tracked is, starts with car stops, and some of those lead to arrests. But if you're talking about improper condom, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and that's handled through, you know, internal affairs investigations and, you know, I guess I'm not entirely sure what your question is. I think he's asking, is the identity, the ethnicity of the person stopped as opposed to the police officer? In other words, he's trying to track, am I correct in saying? It's more like if a certain police officer is stopping more of black driver, arresting more, finding more of the blacks than other officers within the average of the population. So I'm assuming with the data that the major is talking about, they can identify the stops and the perceived. And the officer? In the officer, certainly. And the officer? Yes. Yes. And it's all public. And it says the officer is how many blacks they are arresting each one? Yeah. I don't think officer details is, well the officer details is important. The name of the officer. But the departments know the officer. Yes, yes. But you're aware of the, the data has been, a lot of data has been already collected or required to be collected. The legislature has that requirement. How long that is? 2014. 2014. Which actually is a, is a great point for us to consider because you have now, since 2014, had enough data to then, well not enough, but data that we don't necessarily have in the DOC or the tradition or the certainities. I'm sorry. Let me tell you a small story. I own a store in Kotsha store. A black person came in and tried to attack me at night, right? And to steal from me. I fought him back, locked him, and he got arrested. The moment they arrested him, they found the three women inside the car waiting for him. The three women are white, right? And he found a drugs on it. When I went to the court, because the court called me, you know, to be witness. He said, what do you want from him? All these questions, after they finish any question. I said, what happened to the three women? Because at least one of them came and looked at the store before he entered. He said, there is no three women. You mean a new report never been reported? No, nothing. Even though I know the first day, second day from the investigation that they arrested the three women or they found the three women, one of them is a driver. Later, the officer came in. I said to the court, I'm not going to be a witness. The officer came in and he said, well, the only person I can arrest is the person behind the wheel. I said, okay. He said, well, she's mentally not all together. She wasn't coherent. She was drugged, et cetera. I said, now you are a social scientist and psychologist. And she's full. She doesn't have anything. And they decided not to make a report of it. Okay. The chief of police of Colchester, I said, no way, you know, they didn't report it. There is no report about those three people. Only they want the guy they arrested at the beginning. Even though they stopped the car, they found the three of them, right? With the blood, with everything from the person who broke in. So there is racism on this story. You cannot tell me there isn't. We got the black guy. We let the three assistants. They are white women, you know? So how are you going to collect data like that? Yeah. Three points. One, I'm in agreement with you. The greatest disparity is at the first point of contact to one small little war story, which was three weeks ago. I got stopped for going four miles an hour below the speed limit in a school zone. Okay. That's my personal record. Now I will simply say that I wasn't all that polite at that point. But the thing on the table here is corrections. I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I think the disparity you need to look at is entered with different departments, different police departments in the state because there's a huge variance. And despite the fact that I'm from the state police, I think they're the best and working hardest on it. And that's really not biased. I just know more about them than other departments, which I have no good words for. The question here I like to hear is, and I don't know the point to discover it, the difference in the length of incarceration for similar or identical crimes. And that's what I want the department of corrections to tell me. And to what Robin's point is, is that sentence, that's not data that we can accurately describe. And that's the issue. That's what people wanted to know. And that's what the legislature asked us. Can I ask just to be educated? Where can that be found? So we did do a study a few years ago on that. And the legislature again asked us to answer that question. Was there a disparity in the length of sentence and the type of sentence? And what we found was that we had to choose what I did is I chose a sample. One, I had to choose a crime where I had enough people of color committing it. And there is a disparate right in that. So I chose assault, domestic, a possession of coke, and then possession of marijuana, which was a crime at the time. And looked at those four crimes where I had a sufficient enough non-white population to look at. And we used as variables the in-state records. We pulled the out-of-state records from the FBI. We tried the best we could to mimic the decision-making process that the defense attorney and the judge and the prosecutor go through. I did not have access at that point to victim data and who participated and so on and so forth. So other things that go into that decision. And what we found is it was really those out-of-state records drove the decision to incarcerate. And when I looked at those out-of-state records, and I've practiced in other states and stuff like that, when I look at those out-of-state records, they are not like our in-state records. There was a lot of armed robbery. There was a lot of aggravated... Yeah, but I bet there was a lot of plain view marijuana in New York City too. Right. And that gets to my next point, sir, is that in those out-of-state records is baked into everything that NYPD has ever done wrong and unconstitutional and the rampart division. We can go through almost every major metropolitan police department that has been sued or under a consent decree for its racist practices. And those convictions are baked in there. You're absolutely correct. And until the state or somebody starts just, you know what, any arrest in NY and New York City during these years while you're under a consent decree, we're not going to look at. Yes, so people are making decisions based on that. Absolutely. Thank you. I apologize for being aggressive, but I'm kind of aggressive. No, no, no. And so we're generally well happy to go through and describe a lot of these other tables to you, but I think that the point that people are coming to understand is that our data doesn't answer the questions that people really wanted to ask. And so, I mean, we did do the best that we could here it. So I just don't know if it makes sense or how you want to proceed. Well, there are a couple things that I'm thinking of right now. What is, I know, for Rebecca, we've had you like sitting and waiting to this commentary that we've been waiting for for about the defender general's response to this report. But it only makes sense when this is... When this is... When you hear from you full, is the reason you want to say. And then you go, oh, well, it's not really... Well, you said something tonight that was interesting. You said that, although you're first in line to recognize limitations, you said that there were some things that were appropriate. I think you said use the word appropriate. But what are the conclusions you think are fair? And I'd like to hear, you know, that given they're known and recognized. Unless you didn't mean that. Well, I think the one I meant was that in terms of probing into different areas. And what we told the committee when we testified on this, there are things that sort of back to what Sheila was talking about earlier. There are discretion points of the department of corrections and decisions that we make internally that are just our decisions. And that those are the types of questions people want to ask us in terms of disciplinary reports, segregation, release on furlough. Those are the types of questions people should be asking us. When it comes to these types of questions, who gets charged with sentences to the death, why do people get arrested differently? Those are not the kinds of questions to ask the department of questions. So if people want to ask us those questions, and we recognize them, we're actually trying to figure out a way to answer those questions themselves. Can I ask a question? Is that what that report is? No, because that's not what we were asked to do. Ask to describe our population. And we did. You go, and then I would like to take a few minutes because I actually have something that's pretty big in terms of where we go next that I think we have to talk about even though we have this still hanging over us. Go ahead. Maybe you've answered this already, but you combine the folks that are serving conviction, serving sentence on a conviction, and people that are just there because they were out without bail, pre-conviction. So in in section, not at one, but just in the whole group. But do you have the numbers somewhere in here that say that the total numbers of people who are convicted and the total numbers of people who are pre-conviction? Detainee population, that's your answer. Historically, it runs about 400 people a day for the last 10 years. And the last time we've done some snapshots. There's 400 people, uniquely 50 are federal prisoners that were held in our facilities. Of the remaining, the last time we did it, about half of them were held on hold without bail situations. In other words, Sears Felonies, the next tier down. We're felonies with significant monetary bail. The times we've done it, we ended up with about 20, 25, at most 25 misdemeanor offenses that were held for lack of bail. But you then have to go into the individual court records to find out what that really means because oftentimes you'll have somebody in there on a misdemeanor offense with bail, let's say a nominal bail, $100. But they may be there because they're on a violation of probation or on a furlough escape and they've been picked up and they want credit for, they're out on furlough, they've escaped, they've grabbed something at a store, so they're charged with petty larceny, break the window getting in, so it's a long for mischief. They might have a small amount of bail. So they're really being detained because of the furlough status, but they'll set bail on them to get credit for time served on the new offense. So even though there's a small number of misdemeanor offenses where bail is imposed, unless you drill into the individual case, you can't really tell the detainee population. I just want to make sure I understand your question though. So we have done lots of analysis specifically on the detention population and we can look and see what the racial breakdown is in that group and sort of what they're being charged with at the time. And I can't, and I have to go back and look because we did, again, it was this same study that Judge Gerrison is referencing and quite honestly I did it months ago, so I don't remember everything that was in there. I guess my question is really just because it seems like if you merge with those populations and do analysis of both, that in my mind it would be confusing because there are people who are being detained maybe just for a day or until the next court time, and then there are people who are serving sentences and people could be detained for any number of reasons like you just specified. And so it's sort of like the racial demographic of who's detained and the racial demographic of who's serving a sentence are telling you different things, but it could be wrong. No, I think, yes, I think that makes sense. And we often look at the differences between sentence and detainee, but we just do it in this report. A lot of times when I'm doing things I always break them out because I don't want to confuse the two. Okay, and then I need to go. All right. So if DLC was not the agency that should have been asked to do this, what agency should have been? I'm not sure I can answer that question because I feel like I wasn't, I'm not really sure exactly. I mean we put the actual charge and the questions, this is verbatim what the legislature asked us to do. And but the tactical error was that. But I'm not really sure what their underlying question was. We didn't get involved in the conversation as to when this got put in statute. And so I wasn't there for the conversation. I don't really know. There isn't one state agency that can answer this question. And I don't think there's one state. I think it has to be a joint kind of like looking at it together. Although I do think the crime research group study that Robin referenced is going to probably, is going to be one of the more comprehensive questions that we've ever had before. And so I think that's really interesting to see what they come up with, give them some time and then look at that report. And I don't know if you said it wasn't going to be done. I'm still waiting on the FBI. But I do feel like that's a report that's going to combine a lot of data from a bunch of things. Probably one agency or one department shouldn't be pinpointed because it's a system model. And it's a trajectory that needs to be examined. And that gets me where I want to go. If you will allow me, I'm really, I don't want to stop this because this is really organic. On the other hand, there are a couple of issues that have come up since this report was released that need to be addressed by this panel. And I want to flip them out there because it directly affects ways forward that we can or can choose to take. I am aware at this point now that the report that we need to produce has to be done earlier than we had initially imagined. If you remember when we first were discussing this, we thought we had until 2020. That is in fact not the case. Apparently, the committee that considered the DFC report wants this report more quickly, and we should proceed post case. I am not exactly sure what the new timeline is. I'm looking at you because you were there. There is no timeline. All there is is a sense of urgency. Okay. Let's just deal with the sense of urgency. Okay. I like that. That's just so helpful. Thank you. Well, I guess we're going to combine as much possible completeness with quickness as we can. We're going to probably miss a lot, I think, with this report. Given that there's urgency, I feel like we need to strike while the iron's hot. I've been told by other people who are not in this room that that is in fact the case. We really should get something down even if it is not complete. We should bear in mind here it doesn't have to be complete. It's not the only time a report is produced by this panel. I have a proposal to make, and I'd like you to understand I'm not dictating this, but I'm merely suggesting it as a way forward. In doing so, I hope to use everyone's time as efficiently as possible and to get some relevant and productive writing for the report accomplished in this new time frame that is just urgent. So the idea that I have has to do with the report that Chief Don Stevens disseminated that we all rather liked. I think it provides a good framework. Whether it's a perfect framework or not, who the hell knows? Who cares? It works. I think we should take it. It provides a good framework for what, according to statute, is in fact the body of the report that we will create. If we follow it, allow us to make full recommendations for approaching racial disparity in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. We've been discussing the report a lot, even while we discussed what we should do with 6A, you'll recall. At that point we had the luxury of time, which we now no longer have. The discussion for what I think are obvious reasons has taken a while. No doubt that it will produce some concrete ideas, I think, for reform. But I think we have to speed along. What I was told was there's a soft deadline in fact of 2019 and not 2020. That's what I've been given. What month of 2019? I was told it's not January, but don't think it's July. Well, I would think it's going to be just like a session. Yeah, there's urgency, they want to do something. And let's be, one is crossover. Right, which is the last hour of crossover. Well, it did change March. But it's usually going to be that second week in March after the meeting day. So I would suggest the following. And again, suggesting that we keep approaching that report with the same process that we've been using to consider it. Namely, each agency or organization reads the part or parts of the report that directly pertains to them. But as I suggested at that, I was going to say last meeting, but God only knows when that was at this point. Thanks. No, we would make concrete recommendations based upon the thoughts and observations that the reading provokes. I would suggest that everyone group up as it were, group up. Bless you. So you're talking about the specific, this specific report reducing. Reducing racial disparities in the. Yes. Okay. Yes. Yes. Divide ourselves based on our area we want to focus on. Which we were doing, right. Which we were doing when we were reading it and people were coming in and saying, this really resonated for me in this way. And these are some thoughts that this, I mean, pepper was really good at that in our last meeting of bringing forth some ideas that were actually very concrete about what we might do. I would suggest again that we group up and turn attention not away from observations and ideas, but also to these concrete recommendations because at some point that's going to have to come through. These should be recommendations for what in your various agencies and organizations would help to create less racial disparity than presently exists. They may also be preventative. Okay. This group discretion that we're having is absolutely great, but I think what happened at the last meeting, the last time we talked about 6a, was we found it really didn't produce a lot in the terms of concrete recommendations. It was very interesting. I remember saying, this is a really great discussion, but we really need to have some concrete recommendations. And it was like, I had dropped the large appliance in the middle of the room and everybody stopped talking. It was like, okay, well, refrigerator fell. Let's just all go home now. And I'm hoping to get around that. It was great talk. It really was great talk, but there was very little in the way of points that could be noted in a report. And that troubled me given what our mandate is. By gathering an agency or organization specific groups, the way that we were reading this report that Chief Stevens gave us, we can make these points without the inefficiency of my trying to micromanage that which I do not necessarily understand. I'm just going to be honest about that. I would suggest that it would be a better use of everyone's time. So I would like these smaller groups to meet when they can in whatever way they can, perhaps through email, perhaps through actual face-to-face, whatever works, phone conversations, Skype, y'all know things I don't know about this. And then make lists. And I would say lists that are in fact bullet-pointing that you can then email to me. And then I will do with it what I did with 6A, which is I'll start writing and then I will send that writing back to you all and you will tear it apart. And you will say this works, this doesn't work. I like this, I like that. Is this a perfect solution? No. But I don't think we have the luxury of looking for something that is absolutely stunning that we're all going to say, oh, this is really going to be fabulous. We don't have the time to really look for that, I don't think. I will send that out and we'll hammer it through and we'll meet again and we'll do exactly what we did, as I say, with 6A. Can you find a direction, not 6A? No, we're going to go through the report the Chief Stevens gave us. Everyone's going to read it according to what actually is specific to their agency or organization. Make bullet-points, send them to me, I'm going to write. Hey, Tony, I would just add that I have ideas in other organizations. They always don't have just insiders, handage files. And I would invite everyone to be here. Thank you for folks who are not coming from state. Wonderful. And that was another, that's like my last point is, here's a problem. Thank you. That was the problem. My suggestion would then be then send them to me anyway. And I'll compile. So we're going to start with Chief's report. I think we should start with that as a framework. That's my suggestion. By framework, I mean you mean sort of like an outline of all the different departments, so to speak, that it identifies as being involved in the conversation. And I'm feeling that even more strongly given this discussion that we're having right now and where we just ended with this, where Curtis was actually saying, where was it? I'm losing it now. What organization, who would do this? Who should be the person who should answer these questions? And then you said it's really got to be a multi-pronged response. I think this gets to that. I have to say, as I'm putting it out here, I'm going, oh my God, this is going to be messy as hell. Okay. I'm willing to take that risk if the rest of you are. Can I follow up on your questions? Please do. I mean, so I had the same thought that Rebecca did, which is like, should we really all be listing what we think our own agencies need to do. And I suppose some introspection is good and helpful, but I also think, for example, like I might have thoughts on what this is going to do or whatever. But then also, not that I'm anti-group, although one of the hardest things about groups can be just the logistics of making it happen. But as you were starting to talk, my thought was, why doesn't every individual person just come up with their bullet list? Okay. Using the framework of the report that he's gone, shared with us. Yes. Whatever agency or department or section of the criminal justice system you feel like you have thoughts about what it could do to be addressing racial disparities, why can't each one of us come up with our own list? Absolutely. I would simply respond to the fact that nobody wanted to read 74 pages. Well, you literally have to. You can take which ones you want to. Okay. That's my thought. Sounds great. And I'm offering to compile. And I think that's a great idea. And I think that instead of having us be groupies, you can have accountability buddies. Because I think that we don't just have a group, but it's good to call up and say, Japs, did you get to even the first ten pages of the thing and write and hold each other accountable, talk about what you were maybe seeing or thinking, be able to go off of it. So there's at least another sounding board of a person. I think that we should do that as individuals based on our own experiences and expertise. And we should do that with some accountability from somebody in this group that has a different perspective that might challenge us or have us look at things a different way. And be like, hey, so why were you thinking that? Or why are you having trouble reading the document? Or whatever the situation is, I think would be helpful. And then it would be trying to put five people together. Sounds great. I am just throwing that out there, folks, because I just feel like we need to, I like everybody's suggestion. I like the idea of sounding boards, accountability buddies. I think that would be great. I just want to throw another recommendation since the legislature or this committee, Joint Justice Oversight, indicated some interest from this committee, I think, in hearing where we were at. Do they meet monthly? They meet tomorrow. They meet tomorrow. And then they won't meet again, that's their last meeting. And then they don't. And then it's going directly to the committee, so if you want to go there. Okay. But there are opportunities to try to get on the agenda, wherever we think is appropriate. And then you can have some ideas for us in terms of, and so that you can provide an update or feel out where, where, when, but it sounds like we're moving forward, which I love, too. So, okay. There are ways for you, us through you representing us, to get before the legislature in this session, is my point. Identifying the community, getting on with your agenda, sharing an update on what we are doing, and getting directly back from the legislators. Okay. And I'm happy to work with you to facilitate getting you conversations directly with the House of Senate leadership. That would be lovely. They would best like to hear from you and us. I would, I would be more than willing. It strikes me as a judicial committee, but is there something else House Senate? That makes no sense, but they do also occasionally have joint meetings, hearings and things like that. So, I, maybe Tim and Mitzi have ideas about how they want to hear about this. And I think having a time work with them directly would be a good way to. Great. More than willing. Anyway, as I say, I didn't want to interrupt the organic flow of the conversation, but I also wanted to direct us in a certain direction, given what our mandate is. The other question I had was how we have very overlapping, not completely overlapping mandates with the newly created. That's right. Who has also identified problems. And I talked to Karen Richards, who's on the, on that body. And she, I said, I think there ought to be some liaison going on here between us and you. And Karen went, I think that's a great idea. First, we have to write the job description. And then after we write the job description, we'll talk about doing that and having somebody, me or somebody coming and talking to them and having somebody from them coming and talking to us. So that, in fact, will happen. I see, you're so hiring. Right. The job description for the executive director. Has it listed like it has been listed? It has been listed. Oh, it has been listed. I'm writing a letter for someone. So, yeah. Yeah. Generally, it closes. It closes. But, but, um, but they said, as soon as that, the dust is cleared from that. They want to talk about liaison with, with this body, given that we're all doing and hoping for the same things. So that, that's what I also want you to know. I also have met, I guess I should put in here with, um, the ACLU. They had some interesting criticisms of the report that I was sort of like, Oh, yeah. And I just kind of, I mean, I, yes. And I, I was given a, um, I, I, woefully inadequate was the term around the data set. So I wrote and said, that's interesting. What would non woefully inadequate data set look like? Just curious, which led to a really great conversation. And, um, I'm not ready to go through the whole thing yet because I'm still processing what they said. I took like lots of notes. And again, it was like before the snowstorm. So I've like lost everything, but it's there. Um, but one of the things that went on, they were also, um, that wouldn't it be nice if these kinds of reports happen more frequently, cited places like Oregon and Rhode Island that do them? I believe quarterly. Um, and I was sort of saying, well, if that's too much, you know, is there like bi-annually, I mean, it was a discussion. And certainly ACLU was in, uh, regular communication with us and asking for data, which we, which we provide. Um, I haven't heard that particular request from them that I'd be curious what the reports are that they're referencing. I will get them and forward them. And they had the same conversation with me and I showed them your public website and the public data that's all there on the public website, um, as far, and I sat with them for a while and went through and how to use your website. That was really nice of you, Ron. Well, I was doing it all at once, but I'm just not sure. Yeah. I hope I wasn't stepping in once chose. I was just trying to move things along. Oh, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Yeah, I'm just curious. I just wanted to let, I just wanted to let you know that, you know, we do have regular communication with ACLU and provide them quite honestly, lots and lots of other data that they requested specifically from us. Okay. So I've been going through my email search here, looking for something from Chief Stevens. I've got the work he did on 6A, but was there a report? I had to send that before again. I'm not sure I have that either because he started prepping something. I'll send it out again. Are you just talking to me? He shared, I might understand, when you're prepping a report, is he sharing a report that was compiled by the national, the U.S. sentencing project? Yeah. I will do that. Okay. I will, yes, that's what we're talking about. And I will, I will get that, I'll get that out again for those who need that. I will, yes, I will send that out again too, in case anyone looks for it. It was sent out, I remember, October 26th, but I'll send it out again. I will tell you that while we're in this organic process of brainstorming, that if you find other useful resources, not just this one report to share with you of us, you could, you know, we're not trying to get spun up, you know, because, you know, the same thing, just make it possible. Okay. Um, I would, hold on. That one of our commubations would be that the current research group takes on the position of data czar. Usually I get called data diva, but I'll say czar. No, it's not going to be good. It's helpful to the committee. I can actually, because I read some of your notes, I've read them all. I can tell you all the current studies that we have going on and how we plan to look at racial disparity in these various studies that run everything from what I talked about to something that we're valuing, we're doing stuff with one family center and child welfare and all sorts of other stuff. So I can write up a list. And it might be good for you to come and present to us. Yeah, be on our agenda. Be on our agenda. I'm going to Thailand. Oh, sorry. I mean, no break. How long? For two weeks. Oh, no. Yeah, we're not going to meet in Thailand. Okay. I'll take pictures. I'm going to go volunteer with elephants. I'm calling everyone this for two weeks in the jungle. But does that make sense to people? I mean, it seems messy to me even as I say it. I can't tell if it makes sense until I start doing it to be perfectly honest with you. I mean, I'm willing to give it a shot. I thought when you were referring to Chief Steven's report that it was something you could put together, I think I had that report, but it would be helpful to send it around again. I will do that. I remember it was a second day. It was just don't identify high-discovery points of how to distress. And you guys were just starting to say that, like, you know where we have the discretionary calls, whether it's to me, my one minute, less 10 seconds. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, my point is the question when we all talked about it that really it's just this one point of time. But one of the things I wanted to share is not to simply do and sentencing and to do is that there was plenty of discretionary calls within sentencing that we are not even focused on the cops and the point of initial contact charging. But the decision to sentence, we have a minimum and a maximum. And a judge decides the minimum number and the maximum that minimum to set determines the earliest eligibility for supervised release on parole. Whether that person actually gets out on parole is DOC's call, right? So what happens is that we see sentence, all right, and the sentencing lengths are not reflective of who is actually serving time in jail. And whether someone gets a probationary sentence, whether they get supervised release, whether they're actually spending time in jail, whether they get out on supervised release, who's getting violated, and pulled back in. And I think Monica made that point a little bit. I know. I agree with you. We are to be right. My point is that those are when we talk about what can come out of this report, where we have a discretion, where there is overlap between the sentencing decision and the judiciary and DOC, who's recommending the sentences in the first place, right? The state's attorneys and DOC. I just didn't want to push this all on the police, which I have no idea why he is there. Across all of us, we all have a right to point out this one sentence on the first page of the report that Dom sent around. It says, four key aspects to addressing racial disparity and criminal justice system. Number one, acknowledge the cumulative nature of racial disparities. Each stage builds on the other from a recipe through parole rather than a single act. That's right. That's right. Curtis, you had something you wanted to bring out of us, where we... The other half, I'm the chair of the Remox State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission of Civil Rights, and we have approval of our next project for the next year or two months, looking at school and prison pipeline. Just in Vermont. Right. So I think our first hearing, our community forum, will be January 19th in the Brown world, location and time to be in there. Thank you.