 Let's just get going. Good evening. Welcome to the July 2022 meeting of the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel. Let's start with introductions. I will do my best as usual and I will manage to mess it up. Jeff, could you start us off, please? Jeff Jones, I guess at large, XPSP. Right, thank you. Grant. Hi, my name's Grant. Panel, scribe. Sounds good to me. Tyler. Good evening, everybody. Tyler Allen, I'm the adolescent services director for DCFFSD and I am the commissioner designated appointee to this group. Great. Thank you. Jessica. Hi, everyone. Jessica Brown, she, her, hers, assistant professor of law and associate director of the Center for Justice Reform at Vermont Law and Graduate School. At large appointee to the panel. Thanks. Thanks. Elizabeth. Elizabeth Morris, juvenile justice coordinator at FSD. Great, thanks. Evan. Evan Minin from the department of state's attorneys. Great. Barb. Barb Kessler with the state police and I have no power, so that's why I have no lights. It's a great evening, yeah. Rebecca and friend. Rebecca Turner from Defender General's Office. I'm sitting beside a deputy defender general. I'm Marshall Paul. I'm the chief juvenile defender. Great, thanks for coming. Welcome. Jennifer Pullman. Hello, good evening. I'm Jennifer Pullman. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services. Thank you. Thank you. Phone number that begins with 3-4. It's in the 802 area code. Yep, that's Christopher Loris, research associate with Crime Research Group and Disclosure, also a member of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, not here wearing that hat. Great, thank you. Judge Zone. Hi, Judge Tom Zone. I am the chief superior judge in Vermont. So we are getting one heck of a storm over here right now. So I'm not sure how long I'll have power and activity. It's going to be one of those evenings, I think. Robin. This is Robin Joy, director of Research Crime Research Group, also having weather issues and a German shepherd that's trying to sit on my lap because she's afraid, so. Understood. Hi, Ching. Hi, I'm Ching Rim, the evaluation and program analyst at Shelburne Farms. I'm a community member on the panel appointed by the director of racial equity. Great. Susanna. Hello, Susanna Davis, executive director of racial equity for the state. Thank you. Jen Furpo. Hey there, Jen Furpo from the Vermont Police Academy. Great. And according to my screen, I've gotten everyone, if I miss somebody, announce yourselves, please. It's impossible that I did that. All right, it's not. Great. Welcome. Okay, announcements to, does anyone have any that they'd like to put forth at the beginning? Okay. Monica is, oh, go ahead, Susanna. Hi, I am going to cheat because I have to look at the whiteboard over there, so I won't be looking at you, but I just wanted to update this group. As you all know, a number of criminal justice-related study groups and working groups were just created by, did we already talk about this? Not that I remember. Okay, then I just wanted to make sure that you all are on notice that there's a lot of analysis getting underway right now about disparities in different aspects of criminal justice and law enforcement. So there is the Gileo Database Study Committee happening and the Traffic Regulation Group that has been assembled to determine which traffic offenses can be moved to secondary enforcement. There is another one having something to do with law enforcement data collection that also came out of S-250. I'm flagging this here because some of these are temporary, quite temporary. And so it may end up coming back to this group in the coming months when those findings happen. And I have to note that the chair of one of those groups is in this room, and I'm very grateful to Evan for agreeing to take that on for the Gileo Database Study Committee. So I just wanted to make sure that people in this room know that in a few months, some of those findings are going to happen and I don't know if it makes sense to have for us to talk to those other groups since there's considerable overlap, but that's there. It probably does. I mean, I know that you and I, Susanna, are both doing the 250 one. So I hadn't even thought of it. Thank you. But yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Monica cannot be here this evening. That's the one announcement I have. Otherwise, I wanted to simply raise the issue of chat etiquette during our meetings. What happened last month was I was splitting and this may be a matter of my own density and age, but I had to split concentration so many ways to watch the chat, help facilitate the conversation, see if anyone's coming in late, and then also monitor... Oh, I said that, monitor the chat. I was really confused. And what ended up happening is Chief Stevens wanted to get in the meeting and I didn't let him in because I didn't know he was there. So I'd like to ask if someone has a statement, just make the statement. It doesn't necessarily need to go into the chat. It ends up feeling a little like side conversations in an in-person meeting that a couple of people are sitting off on the corner and talking and nobody knows what's going on. So I would actually recommend if we could that if you have something to state, just state it. If you need to put a reference into the chat, great, but please just also say that you've done that. The other issue with that is that it helps Grant with keeping the transparency of this group going because of course, he can just say this is in the chat, but that has no meaning if someone's reading the minutes. So I would just ask if we could do that. Suzana, you had your hand up, but you took it down. Did you still want it down? I was gonna ask if you would find it helpful to have somebody who could be the tech monitor during meetings in case there's someone in the waiting room or something. That would help, yes. That would help enormously and we should, if anybody wants to do it, please just identify yourself and let people in. It's not that big. Okay, thank you, thank you. It's not that big a task, but it's important. And I felt horribly last month that he wrote me an email after the meeting and just said, I tried, but I couldn't. And that was on me. So anyway, I would just ask if we could do that with the chat and not actually chat in the chat. And that's all that I have for announcements. We can move on to the approval correction, whatever, of the minutes from last month. Oh, Jess. Instead of putting it in the chat, I think that, and I totally agree with everything you said about using the chat in big meetings like this. I think that Sheila might have joined the text. And so, yeah, thank you, Sheila's here and she asked if we had done introductions, so. Sheila, go for it. Okay, thank you so much, Jessica, for the text. So much has transpired in the last hour that I would just face it a little bit. Sheila, Milton, she, her, hers. I am appointed by the Attorney General at large community member and representing the Root Social Justice Center, Centering Blackness. Happy to be here, thank you. Great, thanks a lot. Okay, the minutes, the minutes. Addenda, corrections, deletions, all right. Seeing none, I'd love to entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to adopt the minutes from the June 14th, 2022, our debt meeting. Great, thank you. Anyone seconding? I can second. This is Sheila. Great, thank you. Any discussion beyond this? Okay, hearing none. All in favor, please signify somehow. I raise your hands. Do both. Aye. Aye. All opposed? No, all abstentions. I'll abstain, Tyler. I wasn't here last time. Got it, thank you. And the minutes pass as submitted. And again, Grant, thank you very much for all that you do. Okay, continuing onward. We started all those wonderful discussions last month and we started them. We didn't by any means get to finish them. So I wanted to continue that discussion as I said in the letter that I sent out before this meeting. And what I thought to do was to begin with the second look subcommittee because Rebecca got kind of crammed in at the end. And we didn't really, we were like, you know, get it in, hurry up. So I wanted to start with her and then I wanted to move into the juvenile justice subcommittee, subcommittees thinking. And that's when we'll have Robin Joy present a bit as well and then finish up with the community safety reviews except I think which he has asked, which he did, I got this right, didn't I? You're gonna wait until next month to do it, correct? I think his generator may have. Yeah, he's not here. He's not here. Anyway, I think we're waiting on that. So Rebecca, do you want to go ahead? I think, Seitan. So, right, so the second look subcommittee got some final minutes and I got some words in last month. So I don't want to take up too much time but I want to make sure everyone has a sense of what the subcommittee did and also to hear sort of the pieces that we landed upon recognizing within that subcommittee specific areas within the general concept that we had identified as either places that other jurisdictions, state, federal or model legislation relating to second look were going and I'd love to hear any reactions as to any particular places within the second look field are of interest. But we can go further into further detail later and then just to clarify, because I think there were some questions as to whether or not second look subcommittee met since the last time we have not. So there hasn't been another meeting sort of on hold to have this discussion. I think there was my recollections there was general agreement that to move forward in this area. So hoping tonight to delve into again, the specific points within and to get a sense what if any areas within this are a particular interest with this group and then going from there a subcommittee can meet and hopefully come together with something if not next month than September. I also wanted to clarify Ton Marshall is here and I'm really excited that he's been able to join us tonight. I did not intend, although he's welcome to join in and add his thoughts on the second look generally he certainly was not a part of that subcommittee that met. But what I was hoping knowing that we were going to touch down on the juvenile justice data more deeply for this month I wanted to make sure that our juvenile defender got to comment share with you guys his perspectives being part of that system. And my mistake. So I just wanted to share that. But let me let me kick this off and hopefully not take up too much time because a lot of people are going to say a lot of things to share. So when we last met and and and I should say the members if everyone has them in mind Evan Meenan Aaron Jacobson from AGO which he are two a ton myself. Anyone else on that subcommittee that I'm missing who is there. Not that I can think of. This is a team I was there too. Oh yes sorry excuse me and I know Jess Brown and wanted to join and could make it for future if you're interested just shoot me an email and I'll make sure you're included on on on future meetings. What we talked about was how the landscape around second look legislation first here in Vermont before we went elsewhere and where we started was looking at what we call sentence reconsideration laws as enacted in current Title 13 7042 sentence reviews. And right now that statute as written provides very specific narrow circumstances for a second look reconsideration of the sentence after it's been imposed. The one that came up recently for review initially by Sentencing Commission which voted in support of it. But then when it went to the legislature right around COVID 2020 spring we lost the support from some state's attorney's offices and that just sort of fell to the wayside. But there was there was support across the boards initially in Sentencing Commission including AGO, ODG, state's attorneys, the judiciary, DOC. Probably others I'm missing. And any event the concept is this right now we have just a 90 day time limit very strict for filing a request outside of that 90 day period post dating sentencing or the finality of the sentence being upheld by the Supreme Court post that 90 day clock passing. Someone is out of luck to asking the court for review. So there was a proposal to allow some flexibility in that taking away the time limit allowing for a second look so long as and the materials that were passed around in June a ton passed around the proposed language was something akin to getting making sure we had based on the stipulated agreement of all the parties involved the prosecutors the defendant and with the acceptance of the judiciary I think was the rule that sentence reconsideration could occur and take place. And but that's the proposal that fell through so we still currently have on the books the old law which is the 90 day time limit. Pretty harsh consequence on that. So question has been posed is it worth revisiting. Sentencing Commission has considered revisiting it and hasn't moved forward on it yet. Our depth certainly could consider and weigh in on that question. So there is that. There's also on the books current midpoint review for probation imposed in both adult and juvenile delinquency dispositions. And that provides an opportunity and automatic look once you reach the helpful point of probation to determine whether or not that that probation should continue. Some of the limitations that automatic look it's not automatic well for for in the instance some juvenile delinquencies. So there's lots of room there to sort of revisit finesse. So let me just so that's it really for a second look. I mean people have talked about alternative proceedings in different courts getting out of the criminal court system to revisit a civil court. You take you know other kinds of proceedings post-conviction relief. We're not concerned with that. We're concerned with specifically allowing a judge to revisit the sentence imposed in just that narrow topic. And working from that we looked at what other states and Congress had have done on this front. And we have lots and lots of models to work from. And so instead of we weren't at the point of pulling and reviewing the language of these statutes. We discussed for the general concepts that these various laws focused on. And really what the goal was was that it allowed fundamentally a court to reevaluate the sentence that was previously imposed after certain events take take place on a passage of time certain amount of time is taken place and to determine whether the sentence or disposition in the juvenile blinquency context is still appropriate. Another theme that develops around this is to develop you know a meaningful opportunity for you to make sure that you get input from from all sides that we try to address whether these recognizing various disparities going into sentencing decisions including racial disparities to try to inject some sort of objective criteria to to make sure that we can remove some of that discretion that in there is in and has been problematic in the past. So developing objective criteria criteria deciding what times. And another another theme that that we see across the country states having passed this is an automatic review so it doesn't require an affirmative action on the part of the of the juvenile or adult who's in sentenced. Yeah. I mean I can say again Rebecca what what you just said. Can you say that last sentence that you just said. Sure. Another theme that we see developed is building in a mechanism for automatic review of the sentence so that it doesn't turn on whether an adult sitting in in a jail or a child sitting you know and just was in a you know in the custody of DCF or whatnot or being in a secure facility. It doesn't turn on their their affirmative applications requesting a second look it just happens after a certain measure is passed time and and else and elsewhere. Again going a little bit more detailed than this is the last place and I'll stop. The various legislations have looked at well which sentences should should qualify for second look. And so some jurisdictions have focused on well let's look at the ones who are incarcerated in sentence to the longest sentences to make sure that we don't lose sight of whether or not the original reasons for imposing them have changed right to make sure that that the purposes of sentencing recognizing you know changing norms following over time can be revisited. Thoughts of different reasons. The costs born it's a recognition of the cost and severe costs suffered with with lengthy sentences costs in terms of financial costs in terms of a societal loss for that person costs in terms of adequate rehabilitation family friends all all sorts of costs involved there whether or not more studies have shown that it actually serves the original purpose intended does serving a longer sentence actually deter does it actually rehabilitate is it actually punitive is that what we want as a priority. So focusing on length of sentence another type type in nature of the offense involved underline the offense. So some are focused on the most serious felonies. All right again linking up to types of offenses. Some are focused on the age of the person at the time that the crime occurred getting at the youth who are incarcerated and sitting in adult prisons recognizing as as as we get all the studies have been recognized for a while now but what has not caught up is is the judicial system recognizing it right the scientific studies on the adolescent brain and and whether or not actions by children or youth under the age of 26 or 26 actually receive the same culpability as someone who's older right studies have shown that the science the brain has a different show something different in terms of culpability right. So it's assessing that base so that those they're getting at that focusing on youth. Other things that are considered whether or not through this second look process is the person entitled to a right to counsel. Is the person entitled to a review process so that you get a further built-in check on the situation. Another question has been well what do you do with the cost savings if second look if a judge grants the request and lessens the term of incarceration. Some legislation has has been targeted towards what do we do with those savings. We invest them in specific places. So that's that's that's it in a nutshell. Areas that we're looking at. Any questions. Jennifer. Hi it's fine. Yeah sure. Sure I said I'm with you on the Senate Senate Commission so I guess I'm a little bit confused because I know that this is a part of what the Senate Senate Commission has been looking at. So I feel like this is a discussion that should have been happening. And I know I signed on for the subcommittee but that hasn't met. And it feels like a lot of information that in no way shape or form have victims been a poison. So this feels really concerning to me to be now having this discussion right here. And we just did earn time. We've done you know early discharge from probation. I just am confused as to why we're having this discussion here when as the Vice Chair of the Senate Commission I thought we would be having that more there. So I appreciate what you've been doing in terms of research but I just feel like this should have been a piece that was vetted there. So I'm curious about the overlap. Yeah no thanks for raising that. And I forgot to mention it here this evening but throughout this process when the subcommittee has been meeting when before the subcommittee met for our depth I shared that I was also Vice Chair and that we've been working on this issue in the Sentencing Commission as well. And I also shared that we were at the beginning of that and you're part of that subcommittee as well Jennifer and we haven't had. Maybe we've met two or three times total and then the legislature the session set in right. The timing of this happened to be that we started discussing looking up from our data project and coming back to revisiting areas that might be of interest for our depth. And our depth has visited Sentencing Commission at least once there's been significant overlap of interest areas. And I think what you're seeing here is one of those areas of overlap. I think that one of the discussions we had as a subcommittee when I think I mentioned it last month or the month before was specifically knowing this. Knowing that there was an effort parallel effort in Sentencing Commission whether or not it made sense for IRDAP to go forward separately or to join forces or to defer to the work of Sentencing Commission. And others here should chime in but my understanding was where we landed on this was that there are definitely different people involved here specifically we have. We have active community members who are panel members here who are not on Sentencing Commission. We have the specific focus on addressing racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile delinquency system. Sentencing Commission of course the mandate is different not focused on racial disparities not inclusive of the juvenile delinquency systems. So our discussion was it is great that there is this overlap. It's great that we have crossover of subcommittee members. Evan and Aaron included on both of these subcommittees. And we thought that at this preliminary stage it made sense to keep them separate. But to not you know we have some synergy growing inherently and naturally given some of the crossover. As to your concern about feeling left out of this process I think it's great you're here. We'll all think you'd be part of the the the subcommittee we can send we can send you some notices and when that gets going. And hopefully on the Sentencing Commission side we'll get that going as well. But I know that this was specific interest of getting this part and it came up because we've been talking a lot about reform ideas in this panel but focused on the pre-conviction side of it for our VAP. And we wanted to address and think about reform ideas getting to people who are already incarcerated who have already been held with juvenile dispositions. And this was an area that popped up. And I think Aaron Jacobson was the one who recommended it. Sure and I appreciate that. I just think that there are ripple effects that you know people who've been harmed by crime will also need to have their voices heard. Evan. Thanks Aitan and thanks Rebecca for the summary of our subcommittee meeting on what was it. I think it was like June 9th or something like that. But you know I do share some of Jen's concerns though especially around victims. And I think that that was a concern that I tried to flag on June 9th. You know it's it's unfortunately very easy for victims to get lost in a lot of these criminal justice reform conversations. But you know they weren't mentioned much during our June 9th subcommittee meeting. They weren't mentioned at all in the handout from the June 9th committee meeting that was then referenced or circulated to this group. And you know they weren't referenced in the summary of the June 9th meeting. And I think that we really need to understand not only how sentences affect defendants because they certainly do. But they also affect victims to a very great degree. And that includes victims from across every demographic. And I think that we need to be keeping victims in mind as well when we're talking about disparities based on any immutable characteristic. And I also it was not my recollection that we have agreed to move separately on this issue as our DAP. I think that there's value at a minimum in the two committees working together even if ultimately the sentencing commission and our DAP might make different recommendations about what course the legislature should take in terms of reforms. I think there is a sufficient overlap in the composition of the two groups that some efficiencies could be obtained and some perspectives could be gained by having the two subcommittees work in tandem with one another. So I think that that could be beneficial. I also think that as our DAP moves forward in this conversation we really need to keep in mind how it might be connected to this group's mission. Right. I mean our groups enabling legislation. Well I mean it does it doesn't specifically identify things like second look legislation and that but if we're going to move forward with a proposal like that I think we need to be prepared to identify for ourselves the public and the legislature and victims how you know where are the any disparities in sentencing. What are the causes of those disparities and would something like second look legislation actually address those disparities because we want to make sure that if we move forward with a second look scheme you know we don't want to implement it in a way that could exacerbate or create new disparities which is certainly possible. We have a lot of you know objectively neutral laws that I think we found out have been implemented not necessarily evenly all the time and I think we need to be cautious with any new regime that we put forward so I just wanted to make sure that the rest of the R DAP understood that you know the committee is is looking at this topic but we haven't necessarily reached a consensus on some of these big points and I just wanted to make sure that folks were were clear that the department had some concerns hopefully we'll get those ironed out through additional conversation. I had been thinking along what what Rebecca had asked us to think about what parts of this are particularly planned in a way for those of us who are on the R DAP and I think what I wanted to say sort of addresses what you Jennifer and Evan have just mentioned about victims I'm not sure that what I have to say actually says any it doesn't it doesn't go to where sentencing commission seems to be. What I've been thinking of and partly because in the trainings that Barb Kessler and I do for the police academy we show the film 13th quite often and if you watch that film as much as we have which is to say about a thousand times at this point one of the things that becomes very clear is the way in which marijuana legislation certainly through the 80s was used and frankly by a democratic president in the 90s to get people off the street and put them away with that wonderful three strikes idea and we're still cleaning up from that I mean I just remember signing a petition the other day online about someone else who'd been put away for life because they had a pot conviction I don't know you all are lawyers or a lot of you are lawyers I'm not but I don't know what in Vermont we may have that would be an analog to that but if there is something that would be an analog to that and it has been proven beyond reason that there is enormous racial disparity in the way that sentencing around those three strikes laws came to be there was enormous racial disparity there and I personally was interested in looking at the ways in which those sorts of mechanisms may be functioning within the state Evan thanks a ton I think I think that's a really it's a really good question and and I think it actually gets to one of the points that Rebecca flagged in that in that June 9th handout which is an important one you know what offenses are going to be eligible right at what point in someone's sentence are we going to start reviewing this kind of thing for example do we have the kind of problem in Vermont like the one that you just identified and and I don't know the answers to all of those questions you know I I think the committee is probably going to delve into some of that but but one thing that I did do back in September of 2021 as part of the the sentencing commission commission's work on this was that I asked DOC if they could sort of give me a list of those individuals who will end up serving 15 years or more in in in prison or you know effectively incarcerated because they're on furlough but being supervised in the community and the idea was that 10 years and 15 years um tended to be a common number uh but my understanding anyway I could be wrong about that a common number for when someone might get the benefit of a second look review and the spreadsheet that I got there was actually a far more people than I thought um you know several several hundred people um I think around 318 but many of the offenses that is causing that length of supervision are things like homicides murders manslaughter aggravated assaults uh you know sexual assaults aggravated sexual assaults and so I think that um you know one thing that we need to look at is is those two points that you raised you know for what offenses would people be eligible and who who actually is getting dinged with these really long sentences uh and fortunately we we can get some of that data in order to make uh a better informed decision about what recommendation to make okay thank you Sheila thank you aton I just want to acknowledge I don't know if it's just me but um we're gonna answer really heady conversation and even though it seems maybe kind of simplistic it's it's a lot and it's it's really busy I'm appreciative of it but I just want to acknowledge that there's a lot of deep conversation going on in the space so Rebecca thank you for saying what um you said and giving us a report out I'm I I think I have multiple sort of comments or questions or things but I'm gonna focus on three things and try to be clear so one of my questions is around why I'm kind of curious so when you mentioned um um these um the 90-day time limit um and I apologize if I didn't hear it but I'm wondering with these various different um laws that we are looking at I'm wondering what's the why behind it of why they were created so and just yeah I'm just curious why why and it's not for you to answer right now I'm just wondering to the group I just want to pose that question of why were these laws created like we're talking about laws and a lot of laws were created under white supremacy and under undue to racism a lot of laws and so kind of curious of what was the thought or feeling in Vermont of why these even stipulations laws even came into creation because that would be interesting for me to know and moving forward of why we wouldn't want these laws and would help gain us maybe information what we're really talking about which is racial disparities um the other kind of question I have is um which I've been really curious about using um sort of a time what you said around the marijuana laws I'm very curious of what happens when laws do change so somebody's in jail right now in Vermont from marijuana we've done this what I actually don't know I'm extremely ignorant to what are their rights now are they allowed to go back it does that change them or they just SOL because they got imprisoned and during that time and it was the law at that time and so sorry you know I actually don't know the answer to those questions on any of the laws and so I'm really curious of what does happen or is it like that's what we're doing right now we're trying to figure out what does really happen and we're making it up as we go along and meanwhile people are continuing to be harmed um and then my final question really more statement is I'm listening to everybody talk and we are here because we are addressing racial disparities in the criminal adult and juvenile systems and so I'm wondering does it matter what the crime is and I'm not I'm not sure it's adding up to me because the foundation of what we're looking at is racial disparities and racial disparities go across any crime that we must be talking about I cannot imagine that there isn't necessarily racial disparities now I understand we've had some reports from I think of Stephanie and some other people are like oh the coke and crack but that's all due to racism too of what that disparity is so we can say and have the argument that the coke was all the white people so there isn't disparity there so we're not looking at that but that was created to balance out this crack convictions over here so I'm very curious of why does it matter what the crime is if we are in agreement that white supremacy lives in these systems um racial discrimination is happening we understand that racial disparities go across the board that is the common denominator we should be looking at and not piece-mealing of which crime should be looked at because we can know we can just open up Netflix like we were talking about the 13th and know that there are people who have been prosecuted for murders who didn't murder people and people who have been for a lower crime who have been busted for weed that shouldn't be in jail now so does the crime really matter when taking a second look is my question just general for the whole group hey Tom can I respond or is there someone else please yeah no go for it I was just thinking Sheila thank you for like for those three points and there are each one also really big so let me recognize that as well like big and and keeping it on on the big issues and I think let me start with the first one as a response when I was looking quickly to get a summary sense of what current legislation what current models for second look legislation are out there that's what I shared with you in terms of focusing on crime I am with you and what I want to share and I forgot to mention this this summary none seem to have as a primary focus secondary focus even mention of second look being developed and enacted to address racial disparities and so what we are not seeing is is exactly what your point is it doesn't matter about the crime when we have a structure right this racial this racist structure in place and how to keep that the focus on right so there's that then I have the focus too on types of crimes that have been passed are some of the most serious offenses but your question brought up things that we know from from a lot of different sources now about the misdemeanor and misdemeanor system and how much they capture so many people bring them in and keep them into the system and I think the perhaps when we go forward making sure we're centering the the second look legislation making sure it's addressing racial disparities generally I think there is a role to approach it from a an offense based approach but always with a focus on perhaps why are we focusing on that right and and you know I'm just thinking about how CSG we you know Evan you talked about not sure we should be focusing on this because we maybe I've heard in your suggestion or comment that we need more data and if I if I've heard that wrong then so be it but this is the moment I just want to remind us all we do have some useful data on this point from CSG right and others and we've had this in the compilation reports and again Sheila's point on the type of offense we know certain drug offenses that certain that more black people in Vermont are likely to be charged with certain types of felony drug offenses so that to me maybe a way we can use certain offenses to target what your bigger point is is making sure this addresses racial disparities second point marijuana I agree with oh retroactivity question what happens with new changes in the law that are favorable what happens to the old you know I'm nodding my head and I also don't know we would we this is a big issue for us in litigation and we can absolutely make recommendations for future legislation current amendments to current legislation to make sure that if we want reform measures to have retroactive effects then we should make we should think about that right and then as to your first one also a really important point I don't have the answer why how did those 90 day or other time limits that are such a huge wall with significant consequences where they come from which row and I don't know the answer to the right I think your point is well taken that we should be understanding how we got to the place to then better understand what's the best way to correct it I'm just just to add in here not to call on you but Evan knows the answer to that Jennifer Holman refer to Evan first because I was going to put him on the spot and he didn't know that I was going to do that but I do want to weigh in briefly I I'm on the spot what I well I do had mentioned last month I remember very particularly you talked about the 90 day that limit and why it was you don't remember well I definitely don't remember what I said last meeting but I can say that in I I can I have two thoughts to offer the first of which is in in general my understanding is that the limitation that there is a time limitation for seeking a sentence reconsideration because the law in general places some value on the issue of finality finality for the court so that it's jurisdiction is not never ending over any particular matter finality for a defendant to a certain degree even though some some defendants I guess may wish that things weren't final finality for the state finality for the community and most importantly finality for the victims in terms of why that deadline is 90 days my understanding is that Vermont law took that 90 day deadline from federal law I don't know though why 90 days was selected in federal law in other words as opposed to 100 days or 120 or 30 days right so I don't know why that specific time period was taken but my understanding is that same 90 day timeframe appears in federal law that's what you said last month I just didn't want to take it away from you that wasn't my point it was Evan's point okay all right uh thank you Jennifer now you're Jennifer and then Jeff and then sir I'll be quick um I just wanted to say as in from our standpoint we've never opposed any of the movements towards expungement and sealing with respect to drug crimes that's not ever a piece that we've ever taken a position on and we can completely support and see where that's coming from um for from our perspective it's more the person the crimes of personal violence that absolutely we would want victims to be heard when it comes to crimes of sexual assault domestic violence homicide aggravated assault those are pieces where victims voices should be heard and right now you know we're already hearing that victims voices have they agreed to a sentence but that's already going to be changed because you're getting set potentially seven days off a sentence each month so as far as whether it's automatic what that looks like um for those crimes we from my standpoint there has to be a voice for victims in that process and so I'm looking forward to working with the groups on the Senate's Commission in here just to make sure that there is that process and again we are also concerned um about victims who are you know not a part of the conversation who are often dismissed because of where they sit because of who they are who aren't taken seriously and those are pieces that we also want to elevate so for for that perspective and again Sheila um I've watched you so much on YouTube I respect you so much and just um letting you know that with those particular crimes that's a piece that we really do want to be heard thank you great thanks Jeff well I'd like to walk us back just a touch when someone for whatever reason is the victim of racial disparities they are a victim of something which is illegal very seriously and therefore I think we have every right to make every discussion we're learning that and I reject the fact that that can be challenged just look at the disparities in the treatment of some police departments in this state those people are victims and that is against the law and they are sentenced and punished inappropriately that's all I want to say I want to walk it back a bit why are we here what's the name of this crew and what are we thinking about thanks Jeff judge Zonae well I've been in his job as a law school professor uh very well done I do agree with him on the on the part about the 90 days basically follows federal law and I do not know where the 90 came from as far as that number major I did want to touch base though on that the one thing that Rebecca mentioned and we've kind of danced around that is this 90 days and the three considerants the bending commission advanced and that would have changed 90 days to allow a temporary consideration at any time upon agreement of the prosecutor who had the case defendant and the judge would have to accept it and that would necessarily include victim input and that did not go forward and I would again note that that's an important provision when you're looking at racial disparities I think because if you have any situations where everyone agrees if you have the prosecutor say I believe so my predecessor may have been influenced by Rachel uh you know the bias here I want to change that if it's outside the 90 days it can't be done I think the law did have something in there to have that to be able to refer that's why the sentencing commission gets both to go forward on that and so I recognize there's a second look and some other aspects that I would I would acknowledge are much more controversial if you will but I would hope this one isn't the 90 days any time upon agreement because everyone gets to see it the same the prosecutor has to agree the defendant has to agree the victim has an absolute opportunity to be heard and the judge has to approve it and so if if this group were to weigh in on that I would be hopeful that we could try to put that this next legislative session thank you okay anyone else Sheila um I think I heard it was a little bit hard to hear you um but I I think I heard what was being said and I'm just what I think I'm be what I think I heard is that there is some provisions in place to allow those who were involved in that case per se to have an impact on whether the 90 days whether you can go beyond the 90 days or not um and so I was just a little disconnected from that comment because even though I know that's true I'm talking about that in Vermont knowing that most leadership is white once again readdressing what I just said in my last comments about how white supremacy is in everything and if everyone gets to agree but isn't that kind of like the point like the person goes to the court and then the judge is like the judge agrees with the lawyer or the prosecutor isn't it the same thing going over again and maybe it's giving another opportunity for them to have a different thought a different feeling a different understanding of the situation but um just because there's given the opportunity doesn't mean it's effective like we can talk about uh approximation map map excuse me we can talk about all sorts of things that we're given opportunity to but don't necessarily are effective or happen so I'm a little I'm just connected from the comments here and maybe I'd like somebody can lean in to me and let me help me understand if I'm off but I'm feeling like this is the same difference of the same body if I heard you correctly the same people who prosecuted that person has to now agree a year later that they didn't want to prosecute that and yes maybe that does happen but I would like to know how often has that happened in Vermont and how often does it and is my point do people understand my point of how effective that might be or not be I'm I'm a little bit angry and confused right now Evan Thanks Aetan Sheila I don't think you're disconnected at all at least in my opinion and it was it was something that I was trying to flag earlier and maybe I didn't do so well but so right now the law does not allow the parties to stipulate that a sentence can be reconsidered after 90 days one idea that came out of the sentencing commission was to create that ability in the law I wasn't serving on the sentencing commission when that conversation was happening so I I don't have as much knowledge about why that proposal ultimately fell apart as others in this group but but going directly to your comment it's what I was trying to say which is we could create that in the law but what do you know how what are our guarantees that's that's actually going to address any racial disparities in other words we might allow that to happen and then five years from now are we going to discover oh boy it turns out that you know prosecutors are only stipulating when the defendants are white or you know defense attorneys are only filing these motions for sentence reconsideration when the defendants are white and nobody they might not be doing so consciously but we we now know that conscious bias isn't the only bias that exists and so that was my point which is you know we we we know there's biases and we have an idea for criminal justice reform but we really need to make sure that we connect the dots between the two and make sure that the reforms actually address the disparities and don't exacerbate them or create new ones I think that that should be that should be the goal when we come up with these proposals Sheila and then I'd like to move us along to our next topic thank you for that I wanted to bring up I think a couple of years back and I excuse because I don't think he's in the room but I believe Judge Garrison had mentioned a few years back some concern on some of these some type of these laws because of who was liable and what and what would happen so let's say these parties agree so first of all I want to say I think this is a option I'm not shutting down this option I'm just saying that then where's the accountability I don't know I feel like it might be a false solution because my understanding is some comments I believe a couple years ago that Judge Garrison made was he was concerned if I'm correct about what position this would put those attorneys judges or whomever in those power decision making positions what would that put them in in terms of being liable and do those people have immunity or where's then the accountability so you messed up and said that there was racial disparities and I was a piece of that which Jeff right here pointed out which is against the law and yet we're gonna be like yeah we messed up but we just gonna make it good from here on out and and where's where's the accountability so I distinctly remember Judge Garrison being very concerned about this and I'm sure there are people in the space who are very concerned about it I'm concerned about it on the other end of immunity being used and there being a lack accountability and this being a false solution to to look like there's accountability when really there isn't and so though I like some elements I again I see through I see through I see through the weeds okay we thank you we're gonna need to I want to let this one go for right now because obviously we have a lot there's a lot to talk about on this one and it's gonna be huge Rebecca I think the next move is probably to talk about when the subcommittee can meet again so we don't need an answer you know I'm just saying I think that that's I think we need to go there so that we have something big and solid to bring back to the panel as a whole and then make that conversation a bit more efficient if we can and then mess it up again and go off and do it again but that would be my suggestion so were I to leave this for the moment because we're not going to solve it in the next hour good okay I want to move on to the juvenile justice subcommittee and which will include our two guests for the evening I'm not Tyler do you want I mean Elizabeth presented this last time you're here now I don't know how you guys want to separate the labor here but have at it yeah I don't so our subcommittee has not met since the last meeting on this topic so I have fairly little to report I did want to say that I'm really appreciative for the conversation we just had it was one that you know I I didn't have as much to weigh in on but I'm very grateful for the depth of conversation that just occurred with regard the juvenile justice one we presented what it was we were able to you know compile and put together I can see there was robust from the minutes I can see there was robust conversation apologies to the group that I wasn't there for it and I would like to at some point have it maybe hear about from group members you know what actionable next steps kind of came out of that conversation what points of interest I do notice they're reflecting the notes a couple you know conversations to follow on what happened with Woodside so on so forth but that would be useful to me as we kind of pick this back up and you know that way our group can gather together but and after that I think I would turn it over to Elizabeth who is kind of active in this process to see if she has any thoughts of follow-up before you know we ask our guests to contribute to that side of the equation so Elizabeth did you have anything you wanted to pick up yeah thanks Tyler so there was there were three specific asks from us for this meeting that I want to make sure that we're following up and and providing to all of you the first one was more detail on some of the information that the crime research group discovered in their recidivism reports to our system improvement committee as we call them which is a state subcommittee of our state advisory group and Robin I know Robin you're here so I'm happy that you're here because I know you can answer more a lot more questions on that than than I potentially could then there was a desire to learn more about just the JGRI in general I know Sheila in particular you had asked for an overview of what DCF is required to do in general what that law is and what we're kind of on the hook for I guess what you said so I'm ready to to go over that and there was also a desire to go over the ERD plan which has that data that we submit to OJJDP so those are the three things that I think that we can talk about under our section right now and I'm actually wondering Sheila not to put you on the spot but it might make most sense for you to go over more in more detail that information that you discovered for 18 and 19 year olds and your recidivism report since we did talk about it at the last meeting and then we can move on to the more general data that we haven't talked about yet does that does that work for you Robin oh yes me yes it does is that worse for the group sure so hi it's been a while since I've been before this group yes so we did a report at the request of DCF and their systems improvement group on giving a baseline recidivism for 18 and 19 year olds that were processed in the adult system and the idea behind the request was that this was to give them to see when we move those kids down into the juvenile system if they have better results right as far as measuring recidivism recidivism is the measure that we were asked to measure so that's what we measured there are other things that people can measure but this is what we can do with administrative records and I think the point that you all were interested in was a footnote of mine on the big 12 so under the legislation I'm going to use the term youth I don't know what 18 and 19 what what the appropriate term is my 18 year old self is screaming at being called a youth but I'm going to use youth damn it I was an adult children with unformed brains I'm not sure but anyway the 18 and 19 year olds you know what so that if you are charged with what is called a big 12 crime you are not eligible for going down to juvenile court and so when I was looking at that and I was removing those those youth kids from the system from the study I just did a quick race analysis and found that this was going to disproportionately affect black youth and that they weren't going to be able to get the benefit of going to juvenile court and the benefit is that you're not going to get a criminal record I mean so there's a huge benefit in addition to the more care focused approach as opposed to a punitive approach in the adult system so this is a policy that like Evan was talking about earlier where really good intentions but it's going to contribute to our racial disparity so I was pointing that out in that footnote that this is something that wasn't addressed in the legislation and is going to have this disparate impact and will compound right because those kids that are going to go through the adult system are not going to get that criminal history and that's going to keep you know compounding next time they go forward like look they've already been through the system so those that aren't aware the big 12 crimes and I've been doing this for 17 years and I don't know where this list came from I know it's part of what we call listed offenses which is statutory but does anyone actually know like who came up with this 12 everyone is shaking their heads Robin so okay so yeah I mean it's just been around as long as I have and if Judge Donne doesn't know and some of the others that have been around then yeah so the big 12 and I had it up but basically it's your murders your manslaughter sexual assaults aggravated assault burglary in an occupied dwelling mayhem unlawful restraints depending on how how you actually list them out depends on actually how many crimes there are I think what was interesting about this though is that one crime in particular is one is affecting well two crimes are affecting the black youth in this cohort it's a very small number I just want to say that it is a very small number of people but these people are going to be affected and the two crimes that were kind of coming up were probably the most controversial on that list which is the burglary of an occupied dwelling and the aggravated assault so then anticipating a question or two I then went and looked at work data like how many times are people charged are these this age group charged with you know aggravated assault and it comes down to something else right because if you're automatically excluded because of the charge but you plead down to something else where does that leave you in this juvenile you know in this expansion to juvenile court it still kind of leaves you an adult court as far as I understand so overall you know if you were found guilty but that's also a big F if you were found guilty of the of the charge that excluded you from juvenile court you were found guilty of that charge so it's not a lot of being charged with aggravated assault and being dropped down to simple assault however this is just back of the napkin kind of stuff it does not include I can I just didn't have time to do it and we have a whole study that's going to look at this in a year or two it doesn't look at the whole process of stacking of charges right so you charge the aggravated assault and then you charge something else I don't know disorderly conduct and really it's a disorderly conduct but somebody is upping the charges along the way to try to get a better you know to scare somebody or something so if the one to one ratio of what you're charged with and what you're convicted of if you are convicted is pretty much there's not a lot of movement not a lot of people are convicted and it does not include the whole mess of charges that you can get when you yeah so this is just back of the napkin the stuff for future study so I thought that was you know if I had to say one thing to this panel I would say the burglary of an occupied dwelling which I know in the past and like I'm talking in the Douglas administration people were talking about really looking into that because it is an occupied dwelling if it's a second home and no one's been there for six months it's an occupied dwelling if somebody breaks in while you know during the day and no one's there and I don't know if it's an occupied dwelling if it's my shed in the backyard but what are you you know that was that was there was some discussion and I think the sentencing commission does have a subcommittee on listed offenses of which these 12 are to look at those listed offenses because they just just kind of keep gone growing so I'll just stop there since I can't see any of you and see what kind of questions you may have or comments or other quick analysis that I can do for you on the fly I'm looking Robin but there are no hands yet so I don't know Rebecca just click my Robin Rebecca hi I just I just I think Elizabeth did you just forward us that report that you're talking about so we have and I certainly haven't had it I've never I haven't seen haven't had a chance to read this report I appreciate you being here and sharing some of the highlights well so the report is just before is the so the report is really about juvenile about those 18 and 19 year olds and recidivating it's the footnotes that has to deal with racial disparities so in the footnote I'm saying this policy is going to lead to racial disparities later on so I'm trying to try to explain the footnote anyone else that helped Robin thank you okay sure thank you um yeah I find off then if nobody has anything else right I does anyone yeah let's Matt keep poor Robin here if we does anyone have another question for her no okay great thank you Robin take care Elizabeth do we want Mr. Pohl to go then I'm sorry what was that do we want Mr. Pohl to speak now our other guest or I can feel free to go into the overview of the JGRA and then some more details on the RD plan whatever seems appropriate what works best for you guys I I think while we have Marshall here I think it'd be great to hear what he has to say I know we'll be able to we'll be here next next month as well if we run out of time right okay great great and I will go I will go and I will try to be fairly brief so for people who don't know me I'm Marshall Paul I'm the chief juvenile defender for the state of Vermont and I've been working in juvenile defense since 2010 anyway and so it's really been a big focus of my career and generally when I show up in a meeting like this I'm here to tell everybody that juvenile law and juvenile justice is way more important than people are giving it credit for and that that's where people really need to focus their energy and I'm going to I'm going to do a little bit of that today but in particular I want to focus on a couple of issues that I think probably Elizabeth and Tyler are going to talk about in more detail and that's just areas in the in our juvenile justice system where I think racial disparities are you know fundamentally the most problematic and of course it's problematic to have racial disparities anywhere in the system but one thing I think happens when we talk about racial disparities in the juvenile system is the focus tends to go where the numbers are the greatest you know when we have areas where there is you know the greatest number of kids who are facing disparate treatment because of their race that's of course what everybody pays attention to because of numbers but I'm hoping to sort of focus people's attention on that same number that Robin was just talking about and that's focusing on those kids who are being charged as adults and that's actually you know when Tyler and Elizabeth talk through their you know the racial the racial disparity data that DCF has collected I don't know if they'll talk about that issue exactly they'll talk about a lot of issues that are going to seem a lot bigger because of the numbers of kids involved it's actually in Vermont a very small number of youth are charged as adults however I'm here to argue to our death that the disparity in that category is actually even though it's one of the smallest numbers of kids it's actually one of the most important disparities because that's where we're talking about the the ways that that system has the greatest impact I mean the differences has Robin sort of alluded to the differences between the juvenile system and the adult system are really significant and it's not just the question of do you come out of it with a record it's do you come out of it with a record it's how long are you under supervision it's what are the effects of that supervision what happens you know how are you supervised what happens in the event of a violation or an alleged violation or even a revocation it has to do with what types of supervision do you get what kinds of provision conditions are you put under and what kinds of expectations are there I mean the differences are tremendous and really it's been proven up and down that the juvenile system and especially the juvenile probation system hands down is better for youth than the adult system that when youth are putting the adult system they are more likely to come out of that system more likely to commit further offenses in the future than when they went into that system it actually makes kids more likely to recidivate and less likely to desist from offending behavior and the juvenile system actually has incredibly a completely different record it had the juvenile system in a lot of ways has figured out how to reach youth and how to reach adolescents and kids who are emerging out of adolescence into adulthood and so that's really what we're talking about is we're talking about the question of are you sunk into the deepest end of the adult system with the stiffest consequences and the harshest adult penalties that are going to make you in the future more likely to commit adult offenses or are you going to get the benefits of the juvenile system which are actually going to make you less likely to commit adult offenses in the future and that's why I think this is a really important number and it's a number that scares me and that is that in Vermont you know it's about well if you look at just Chippin County it's about 40 percent of kids of youth who are charged as adults are black and that's in our county you know in Burlington it's about five percent of the of the kids under 18 are black I'm not actually sure what the Chippin County population what the population of black people overall in Chippin County is and I know that for kids under 18 which is what I have the data for even though 19 is our age juvenile jurisdiction 18 is the age that the census uses so I know age 18 even though I wish I knew age 19 but it's about five percent of the under 18 population of Chippin County that's black but it's about 40 percent of the kids who are being charged as adults and that's actually an improvement there was years ago it was above 50 percent years ago more than 50 percent of the kids who were who were being charged as adults in Chippin County were black even though the population of kids was I mean we're talking like five percent so it's really a wild disparity and even though it's a small number of kids I mean we're probably talking about you know I don't know I'm just speculating here but I bet it's under 20 kids per year around the state I bet it's 10 kids per year in Chippin County even though it's a small number of kids this has been a very persistent disparity you know this is not just an outlier this isn't just one year where you know some persistent you know particular event has caused this disparity this is a disparity that's seen year over year and frankly from from my perspective you know the difference in the juvenile versus the adult system and to see so many kids being denied that you know those benefits of that juvenile system because of their links really to me just magnifies that one statistic the importance of it really kind of above all the others just you know it's almost like it's incumbent on us as we start to address these disparities to start where we're doing the most damage and even if it's not to the greatest number of kids man that is the most damage like when it comes to excluding kids from the juvenile system that's where the damage is the greatest so I guess I'm just sort of hoping to focus people's it's hoping to focus the art apps attention on that statistic and as far as you know what can be done to address it I'm not coming with any sort of particular policy recommendation except to say that a lot of what we focus on in the juvenile system is we focus on dispositional things we focus on what happens to kids after they have been charged in the juvenile system and what and I you know adjudicated and we are trying to decide what should the juvenile system do with that kid what services should be provided what conditions should they have to be a should they have to abide by but what we don't focus on often is the entry point and that's what I think is really important here you know this is when it's when it's about juvenile court versus adult court it's all about making just making some changes at that entry point and so that's I'm just hoping to kind of steer art apps attention towards this statistic and kind of towards that point of entry into the adult system as a point where some changes need to be made even though I'm unfortunately I don't have any brilliant solutions to just kind of announce that could solve the problem. Thanks a lot. Thanks very much. Questions, comments, people. I have one if no one else has one. Go for it. So I need to put you on the spot and and because 40 percent to me is is is like jaw dropping. And when we talked about that last month I mean 40 percent when you compare it to the demographics of 5 percent 40 percent period. So how does how does Vermont stack in terms of the rest of the country if you know in terms of that degree. I mean it's jaw dropping from just looking at from Vermont numbers. Is this the norm is the stint of racism? There is there is dramatic racial disparity in every state Vermont is not at the top like our numbers are not so high that we rise to the top of anybody's list in terms of our racial disparity in the juvenile justice system. But I mean as you can see 40 percent of which is you know 35 percent of what would be expected that's dramatic. So a follow up question because this has come up a lot with our data talk and you touched upon a little bit numbers. You talked about how these numbers are small 20 10. How can we trust that the small numbers reveal what you know what we're hearing that this is a serious race. You don't have to trust just those numbers because we like this is some of this data is reported year over year and so we can look back. So I you know Elizabeth can probably answer. I know they haven't been reporting those adult transfers all the way back because like I have the the I don't know I didn't used to be called ERD used to be called DMC number. The DMC numbers going back to like 2015 never included like all of these adult transfer numbers. That's only been in the last few years but it's been enough that we've been able to see that it is consistent year over year and that's what I always look for is Trends year over year because I mean I think in Vermont we can get one year that skews like if you just look at a snapshot with our small numbers you can get weird outlier numbers. So I just always look for the year over year. Right. I mean as a layman it seems like it's significant that you have that over across time. Yeah. Julio. Just so I understand the number you threw out is that it is that the overall number is there a different number if you control for the seriousness of the offense that's charged. That's the overall number but there's not going to be there's not going to be youth charged as adults for anything that's not serious. It's not even possible to transfer youth up for a misdemeanor so youth can only be transferred up for a felony or they can start in the adult system and remain in the adult system for a big 12 offense. But they're like there are felonies that are assault felonies and there are homicides. I mean is there any you know within within the the data that that identifies like what the large number of of cases are are moved to to the court because I I'm just not familiar with that those numbers that I don't know how detailed they get. You'd have to get some more granular numbers from the court. Okay. Anyone else? I would just chime in. I that's it's a really thought provoking statistic. And I recognize we're talking about Chittenden Chittenden County specifically but I think you know probably the statistic looks a little differently when you look at the entirety of the state but I think the point of it remains. And so and I think Marshall is exactly right to be putting us at we're talking about a relatively small group of of youths emerging adults whatever we want to call them. But I would say the the crux of the challenge here with regard to DCF is for all that DCF is able to serve youth the reason we're able to serve youth differently is because we have a different emphasis the emphasis on family the emphasis is on remaining in the community community placements utilizing the family support groups and so on and so forth. That's how DCF is structured and built around kind of all sides of how we operate. And I think that that yields us a great deal of opportunity for inter successful intervention around criminogenic behaviors as well where we have challenges lies with our ability to provide for the public safety in that context. And so when we're talking about the small group of youth with these big 12 charges often the conversation becomes attached to public safety. And so I would just further emphasize to to the point that Marshall made that that also attracts all the attention to it. So we're talking about a small group of people but we're talking about something that inflames and excites communities and systems around what the area of concern is here. And so you know I I wish you had a solution to come with that idea Marshall focusing on entry point. But I think that is the good starting point is what you know that looking at what the entry point. I think that's that's where we'll get farther. Just a little context. Anyone else Marshall thank you that was really helpful and scary. I will say that leads really well into the conversation about what the feds ask us to focus on and what contact points or discretion points as they refer to the mask. So I'm happy to go into that to that detail now if that seems appropriate. Sure you can't we have only one other item really on the agenda. So feel free to take you know 1015 minutes or so. Okay sounds good. I will do the overview of the JGRA and then go into context about some more of this data. Some of which that Marshall was just referring to. So first of all there's a lot of there were a lot of questions and a lot of conversation last month regarding what DCF is required to collect and then submit to the federal government. So all of those requirements are stemming from one very specific federal law the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act that has a huge amount of requirements included into it and ethnic and racial disparity work is one piece of that. So what I'm going to share is actually I'm hoping that it'll just help for people who are visual learners as well. A review this is I will be completely open. This is stolen from the federal government. I won't say stolen but they use this to train counter all of those across the nation who do this work myself included and my counterparts in other states. So I just snagged it directly from them. So the JJDPA was officially first put into implementation in 1974. So this has been something that's been along for decades and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act was created as a part of the JJDPA and they're essentially focused to support local and state efforts in preventing delinquency and improving the JJ system. And it's a part of the U.S. Department of Justice. This is just their vision statement. You guys don't need to see this but this is a helpful visual to see how long this work has been a part of both Vermont's work but also other state's work too. So you'll see some information here. These are other core requirements of the law that we don't need to go into detail about but you'll see in 1988 in a reauthorization of this law they first started referring to this work as disproportionate minority confinement and then the language has evolved over the years to disproportionate minority contact and it is now racial and ethnic disparities. So this first original implementation of it in 1988 it was because the JJRA was really focused on the disparities in secure confinement and that has since evolved to think of other discretionary points similar to the discretionary point that Marshall is just referring to. So I'm actually going to skip ahead a little bit and just go over what OJGDP asks states to do. So they have a three stage model that they ask us all to implement. So one we have to identify the problem that's gathering the data. Two we have to develop an action plan to address that data and three we're supposed to evaluate if we're having any success in essentially making any change in those data points. So these are the five contact points that OJGDP specifically says that they want to see data on and these are points that they believe to have the most impact on youth. So to Marshall's point those big 12 kids OJGDP views that as one of the five contact points because they they see exactly what Marshall is just saying about the impact that it has on youth to be in adult court versus family. So they refer to it as transfer to adult court. Obviously we have direct file with those big 12. They also want to see secure confinement and pre-child detention. This both of these are secure holdings. In other states it might look a little different. For us this would be the youth that were held in either two different ways. Previously at Woodside of course we no longer have Woodside as a secure juvenile facility in the state of Vermont or they also want to be seeing the data on when a police officer decides to bring a youth back to their facility in the middle of the night and charge them the feds want to see the race data on whether or not those youth are being held securely at those facilities. Right. So facilities might have a cuffing rail or a holding cell that they might place that juvenile aisle in while waiting transfer to either a secure or non-secure placement. And currently all of these law enforcement facilities do report data directly to DCF on those instances and they include race data on that. So right now that is the pre-trial detention or the only pre-trial detention in the state of Vermont if we're not including of course the small instances where we do have juveniles who are in DOC custody who have ended up at an adult facility. They want to see arrest data. I think that one's pretty self-explanatory. Then they want to see diversion data as well. So they want us to do a three-stage reduction model. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because I'm not sure you guys need to go into the detail of it. But this is the definitions of each of these different contact points per OJJDP. The reason why I think this is particularly important to share with you all is because of the definition of arrest. I think this is is pretty important. OJJDP's definition is youth are considered to be arrested when law enforcement agencies apprehend, stop or otherwise contact them and suspect them of having committed a delinquent act. Delinquent acts are those if an adult commitment commits them would be criminal including crimes against persons, crimes against property, drug offenses, crimes against public order. I think what's really important about this is OJJDP is saying that they understand that even if say a police officer stops a kid and says hey what are you doing if that doesn't result in anything any kind of file etc. there's still an impact on that kid. So OJJDP does view that as that youth being arrested. So I find that incredibly important wanted to point out to the rest of the rest of the panel. I'm not sure necessarily we need to go into the other four definitions but I'm happy to do so if there are any questions later on. I'm going to switch I'll pause and see if there are any questions and then I'm going to switch to the ERD plan just given the amount of time we have and I can't see hands so if someone can let me know that'd be great. I'm looking there are no hands up at the moment. Okay so I'm going to start at the very beginning of this so this might answer some of the questions that Marshall is just pointing out. This is just the juvenile population separate into Burlington Chittin County and then State of Vermont. This information is from something called EZPOP which is from the census but it is a specific online it's completely public website. If you if you Google EZPOP it's one of the first ones to pop up that OJJDP asks that states use when when creating this data right. So these are the exact numbers according to the census obviously they might not be necessarily incorrect and then what we did is we also included the percentage in the Burlington School District because we have called out some data in this report that's specifically about Burlington and given that we wanted to have that that baseline information. So we see that you know Chittin County does have you know slightly higher percentages of Black youth than in the state you know 5 versus 3 percent etc. So one thing I do want to make clear about this and something that you'll see but OJJDP has received I will tell you a lot of feedback about and I'll use the word anger about about this requirement we are not allowed to use RRIs there might be some of you might have heard that phrase before. What they want us to be looking at is the percent of the race population that is arrested or the percent of that population that is diverted. So they want us to take the the number of youth in for instance the entire state that are Black and they want us to figure out how what the percent of that population is that is arrested. So some numbers that I'll just make really clear here that just for our sake of time that I think should be well acknowledged is you know we statewide only have a 3 percent rate of youth who are Black and we have almost a 9 percent of statewide arrests. This is based on the National Incident Based Reporting System which actually Robin sends to me. So I know Robin has left but thank you to CRG for sending this information along and you can aggregate it by county as well. So we see a significantly bigger discrepancy when we're looking at Chittenden County based on the state. I think you know you can make your own analysis on based on why but we see about 15 percent of Chittenden County arrests are Black and only 5 percent as we know that Chittenden County is Black and which yeah three times as much. Of course OJJDP doesn't want us to be referring to it as that but we all can do that basic math. So this is the data that I typically will call out whenever somebody tries to tell me that we don't have disparities in our arrest rate. This is Burlington sends me this their data directly. This is some of the course of three federal fiscal years. So keep in mind there this is a continuous trend that we see year after year after year where 46 percent of their arrests are Black youth. 46 percent that is almost half. I don't think there's much else I can say other than you know it's pretty disgusting. So I'll just leave that there. This is specifically for 18 and 19 year olds. I separated them out for a pretty obvious reason given race the age. And this report is before you know obviously 19 year olds aren't in our system yet etc. But knowing that that we're going to have both 18 and 19 year olds in our system next summer separating those populations out. Interestingly enough this doesn't have quite as bad disparities. The reason why I see that's interesting is because national data has suggested that 18 and 19 year olds actually have the highest rate of disparities when it comes to arrests. Which so it's it's interesting to see that at least in Burlington that rate that rate does go down. So this is stateway court diversion referrals just kind of the quick and dirty. We see that for Black youth about 12 percent of all of their of all the cases for Black youth are diverted compared to about 31 or almost 32 percent of all white. We see some also issues that you'll continue to see as we go along in this number of unknown. There is quite a lot of youth data in the courts that currently says that their race is unknown which is which is a problem when you're trying to understand how large the disparity is when we have such small numbers. So this is Chittenden County as well obviously we're looking we have the state information in this the Chittenden County as well info separated out. It's not quite as bad for Chittenden County at 9.8 percent in comparison to that 12.9 white youth stays about the same however. So this is for youth that were held at Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center. Keep in mind this is the last year that this information is going to be included in this federal report. We no longer have Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center as a secure option in the state of Vermont. What I will replace this with is the the race data of the youth who have been held securely both that's new now. Even though to be quite honest OJJDP doesn't view those as our youth. They view those as New Hampshire's youth because they're being held in New Hampshire but I will include it regardless and I'll also include the information for the small number of youth that have been held in adult facilities since the closure of Woodside as well. Keep in mind those are really really small numbers. However at Woodside we had about 17 percent of the youth that were held at Woodside were Black and as we know only by excuse me 3 percent of our statewide population is Black. So this goes into those holding logs that I mentioned earlier. It's the race of youth that are held securely by police. This is just for federal fiscal year 2020 and that's because we just started including this in this report. So I don't have the the three-year aggregate but essentially this is the decision that police make when they bring a youth back to their facility to either hold the youth non-securely. So if they have the youth just sitting in their lobby handcuffed to nothing waiting transfer that's non-securely. Being held according to the federal government or at least the JJRA. However if they are held in a holding cell or if they are cuffed to a cuffing rail the feds view that as a secure hold. There's some other core requirements that they monitor regarding that. But this shows the instances statewide and also in Chittin County of when the youth that are held securely are Black. Chittin County it is over over half. So that means that law enforcement decide that those Black youth should be held securely significantly more often than their White youth. Their White counterparts and then statewide it's about 25 percent of the time that a youth is held securely that youth is Black. And just to keep in mind you know the reason why the federal government wants to be it wants to look at that information is because they understand that that is a trauma for you to be held and locked up at what is a facility that is not designed for them. You know these are these are small often rural facilities in the middle of Vermont that are not that are not designed for to hold juveniles. They're designed to hold adults. So that is something that the feds monitor and acknowledge is is not fast for kids to be held then. Elizabeth I just want to say we we got a sort of winded eye. This is important but we're kind of running out of time. I will go super quickly through the next two pieces and then we will we'll yeah and I apologize. Youth Delinquency positions filed 8 percent Black statewide whereas only 75 for White. Chittin County this is just the separated out. We see the percent of Chittin County Delinquency petitions are about 26 Black only 50 percent White. And this is the information that Marshall was highlighting earlier about those youth that are in the criminal division in comparison to family stuff the Big 12. So we the data has changed a little bit. I think Marshall you were referring to data from the previous report but it is about 20 percent Black in the most recent three-year aggregate. And Chittin County and then about seven in statewide. I will say you know this does include some some COVID data. So you know keep that in mind about some of this. But I will stop sharing given that we have 10 minutes. I know I know we're we're stuck. That's okay. Thank you. I want in terms of going forward I want to point out one of the things that I know which he's doing with his subcommittee and we won't be hearing from him this evening is you'll remember he was going to look for other reports community safety reports from around the state similar to the one that was done in Brattleboro. And the idea was then that the subcommittee that he has would meet and pull out some themes from those that looked certainly of wide application statewide application and certainly in you know provoke the interest of the people who are on the subcommittee. My suggestion is that we all do that. We've with the last two months pulled a lot of this stuff out. There's a lot floating around. Grant's done a great job of capturing all of that in the minutes. So I should think it would be fairly easy to go back and refresh our recollection about things that have been said. And I would recommend that we would meet as subcommittees between now and really like about a week before our next meeting in August. So I can pull together an agenda and we can take it from there. In other words narrowing the discussion down a bit. Not because we're narrowing it down just because we are at that moment. We'll blow it back up again. You know that. We've done that a lot. But that would be my recommendation. Any discussion on that. Okay. Rebecca. No discussion. Just a request Elizabeth. Thank you for that. And I was would you be able to share that that presentation with us. I didn't see in the queue. Thanks a lot. Yeah I'm happy to. I can send the OJJDP overview. I will also share which slides I was highlighting because there'll be a lot of other information in there which I think is all good information for you to have. But I did I did pull about 10 of like 40 slides from it. Great. Okay. The last issue and we really don't have a lot of time for it but I'm going to simply highlight it. And Rebecca your hand is still up. Okay that's just me. Sorry. My fault. Got it. Is that you'll remember last month Susanna brought forth a bunch of questions to us which are in the minutes that we just approved regarding what the ARDAT needs from this new division of racial justice statistics. That is captured not only in the minutes but also in the body of Act 142 the enabling statute of this division itself. You'll remember that in the letter that I sent out I put a link to that act and asked people to refresh their recollections by looking through the minutes. I would repeat that and ask that people do that so that we can have that discussion at the beginning of the meeting next month. All right. One of the issues was how did we want the reporting from the division to come to the ARDAT. I actually have some ideas on that but I want to wait until we can have a broader discussion about it rather than just sort of squeeze it in in six minutes or four minutes. Excuse me. My math sucks. So I just want to remind you that we have that to do for next time as well. Is there any new business? Okay. I see none and of course we already have a lot to do because we're going to meet as subcommittees. The next meeting is on the 9th of August so that gives you a sense of how much time we have in which to meet as subcommittees and that's really about it I think for tonight. Very full meeting. Thank you very much. I thought that went really well. A lot came up that was really critical. Would anyone like to make a motion to adjourn? I'll make a motion to adjourn. Good. Would anyone like to second it? I can second it Sheila. Excellent. Thank you. Is there any further discussion that needs to take place? Seeing none all in favor please signify by I or raise hands or something. All opposed. All abstaining. We are adjourning and I will see you all and certainly talk to you long before the 9th but see you all on the 9th of August. Thank you very much for a great meeting.