 Okay. Oh, would you want to shut the door? Absolutely. Um, I'm gonna wait until end of class to go over some things that I want to make two dozen easier, but I feel like in the syllabus I said to bring a resume. Because I know I did that, right? Two resumes. Oh, no. Good, that's good. I'm not breaking it. I'm so happy that no one looks at the syllabus including myself. I have something to make sure. I thought that was the last class, which it should be. Since I make sure. Oh, okay. Oh, no. Molly, is she? Molly, second view. Okay. So, whenever you're ready, you can go. Please, again, no one do the critique while we're speaking. We all give our full attention. It's just us. Just us. Alright. Whenever you're ready. Camera's on. Alright. So, um, I'm sure most of you at the end of a long day, you know, you like to go back home, kick up your feet, relax. And maybe tune into your favorite show. There's Netflix, Hulu. How do you like it? Enjoy that? Good. Relaxing. So, um, if you're like me, though, you know, you do appreciate a good political drama. Alright. House of cards out there. The West Wing, if you really want to fall asleep. But that's your thing. That's your thing. But, um, so there's all these shows out there, right? They all have, well, more than one thing in common, but obviously one really important thing. So, they all have one thing in common, obviously, though, right? And that is that they tend to be fast paced. And to do that, they actually tend to sacrifice showing the actual legislative process and the actual process of like drafting bills, how it passes in whatever form of government they have. And I think that's a very important part that the viewers should watch. But they obviously can because, let's face it, it's boring. Nobody would tune in. They wouldn't make money. And they would not be on air. Probably. So, tonight, what I want to do for you, because I think it's important that we all in here as attorneys learn the whole process of how a bill is written and how it actually, like how the language can affect different people, different areas, different, you know, different everything, pretty much, because they cover everything. So, what I want to do for you guys tonight is to actually give you a few tips on what to look for when you are, if you end up going into this area or just in any legal profession at all. You know, this can, all these tips tonight can help you. So, obviously, like I said, the shows tend to cut this out because they're boring. And I don't want to bore you guys. So, I'm not going to do that tonight, all right? You're all interested. You want to hear more. So, what I'm going to do for you tonight is I'm going to condense all of that into what I like to call my do's and don'ts of legislative crafting. And I'm going to do it in a little BuzzFeed style, because BuzzFeed is fun, right? So, I'm going to start out with tip one. And that is brevity. So, all of these tips, before I really do begin, I got from the style book, the Rhode Island State style book for legislative drafting. And what the style book does is it gives you tips on basically what you should do when you're drafting a bill, how it should be worded, you know, basic writing skills that you should know. So, to start out, the most important tip is brevity. And that's the style book's fancy way of pretty much saying, shut up and be simple. So, brevity is the basic tip that you really should know. You want to keep everything that you're actually saying in your bill simple and to the point. They want you to limit the style book called it legalese, obviously that's their own words, not mine. They want you to limit legalese and pretty much, you know, state whatever it is that you mean and what the point is of the bill to the actual reader. Because not everybody reading these bills is going to be an attorney, not everybody's going to understand. So, you have to be clear in what you're saying. So, if you do end up writing a bill ever, I don't recommend it, but if you ever do do it, you know, you want to remember this one line, shut up, be simple. So, going on to tip number two, and this one's going to be pretty obvious from the title, so it's going to be a little quick, we'll get a little harder. So, this is obviously the short type, they want you to put in a short title. So, when you're actually, you know, drafting a bill, you want to make sure that everything you do pretty much is stated in the title. You want to make sure that there's like a short description of what it is, where it helps to like basically, once the bill is passed, it helps to put it in the general laws. So, they want you to keep it short, simple to the point, all that good stuff. And it basically follows the previous tip of brevity, keeping it simple. So, those two go hand in hand. Now, the third tip I have for you tonight is gender. This is very important still, but it's not so much of an issue today because of the changing times, but every statute should basically be gender neutral. You shouldn't basically put like, you know, personal gender specific pronouns of like his, him, her, all that good stuff. You want to keep it like to the point general to apply to everybody or people like that you can reasonably foresee. So, there is one exception to this rule though. So, the only case where you may be able to use a gender specific pronoun is if you have a statute that's dealing with a certain gender's, you know, situation, I guess you could say. So, if you have like a statute dealing with ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, obviously that's going to be specific to one gender. So, that's the only exception. Next tip, most important. Commas. You want to make sure that when you have commas or like when you're actually drafting a bill, you want to make sure that comma placement is in the right spot. Most important rule, nobody seems to follow it ever. And it's important because I can't give you like a specific example of this. It's really kind of case by, actually I do have one, but like it's not, I don't have any form because it's foreign. So, you want to kind of keep it specific to like the bill and like placing the commas where they are needed or not placing them where they're not needed. It's very hard to do, obviously. A lot of these mistakes are, you know, basic, like people just didn't look at the bill or they just didn't like, you know, kind of read it and it ends up screwing up the whole bill. So, an example of that, two weeks ago I would say in my office we had a bill come in. It was about reverse mortgages and basically what happened was they worded the bill wrong in the beginning. Like they just had word, they had like or when they met up. I mean, these guys just couldn't spell in general. I don't know how they got elected to senators, but it ended up being a mess and it creates a mess for everybody else, so common placement is very next tip. We're going to get into the domes and I stress to you guys, do not do any of this, any of this ever because I swear somebody somewhere will make a voodoo doll of you curse you. So, you want to keep these domes out of your bill. Let's start with number one. And or, never under any circumstance do you ever want to use and or in a bill? Ever. I want to repeat it right now. Never use and or. Never use and or. So, you never want to use and or and the reason for that being, because an idiot like me read a statute with and slash or and I would apply the wrong one to the wrong situation and you know once you do that then I'll have like a different interpretation in my own head as opposed to what the bill actually means and I can screw up my client if I'm an attorney and it just gets messy from there so what you want to do whenever you feel compelled to have an and or in a sentence you want to always put in or because the end would mean the subject that you're including the subject and everything that goes after it whereas an or is the subject and maybe one or more so you won't do that next and the final most important tip never do this ever at etc in a statute ever now this one tends to happen every once in a while and obviously you know as attorneys I I know you guys have probably seen this at some point or another attorneys will argue anything so if you add eccentric into a bill it turns ugly and that actually happened last week so we got a motor vehicle statute that came in and it basically said for motor vehicles and define them as automobiles motorcycles boats what I like to think of is anything reasonably found in an insurance insurance policy right now if you had a lawyer that was the devil he would obviously argue anything else maybe if somebody built something in their garage and they wanted it to be covered he could do that so you never want to put in an etc because it can get ugly so these have basically been my tips tonight I hope you guys learn something maybe I don't know but they're very important like I said they can help you in your career later on even if you don't go into the whole legislative drafting process but it's important to know any questions so with the eccentric part I mean are there ever times where you want to leave something a little bit over to interpretation and let like the chair decide or there is the is the goal always to literally define everything that's covered everything that isn't covered and lead absolutely no ambiguity you do want it you never want to leave any ambiguity so I'm sorry losing my voice you want to like always kind of cut out what what it is that you want to define what it is that you want to cover or you know explain to people and you never want to leave anything to chance is how it was explained to me at least so did you learn these tips just throughout throughout the summer did someone tell you them or did you actually yeah so like I learned them throughout the summer I was told and then like I actually got a copy of the start of looking at it makes sense and what's in this funny presentation on the sitting actually really boring too so we grab one of those self-protebe all right and if you feel like you can't really do it justice right now because you're just like adrenaline pumping you can also just do it at home and I don't and everyone else is doing it anonymously and maybe open go on that you get to watch you know what you do yourself again well that is so I haven't actually done this in the past if you prefer to watch it first which would make sense I'm happy to let you do it I feel like most people can do it in the initial critique which is pretty accurate I think it'll take a week to get okay that's the problem I could give it to you so it's always fun if you watch this up on video you could like you see things you didn't realize I think you would and if to the extent you want to wait I'm happy to try to get you the ambassador I just they're not that quick with the turn around so with the peer evaluations I will scan them all in and send them to know right now send to me send to me I'll collect so Jesse after we look stuff doesn't go next man down but just familiar this is the same rubric that I sent you all in the packet but just sort of look at it quickly so that when you're listening to stuff you're sure aware of the things we're gonna be critiquing them on but don't do the critique while you're well don't know the presentation okay wait and give everyone you know five minutes after and take your time but where you still work because you can also finish it after yeah okay you're good to go all right so how will bill becomes law I want you to look at this first slide over here because it's beautiful but no but really I want you to look at this property here how will bill becomes law because really what I could have wrote in that place was how an idea becomes law because I like to look at a bill as an idea it says an idea that we want to bring into our government into our society so I want you to remember that as I'm going on today with this presentation that a bill can equal an idea but before we move on into everything I just want to say this is a presentation for you guys this is for you and the reason why I say it's for you is there's two reasons the first has to do with the topic it's a topic of utmost importance it affects us all and the second has to do with you know matter who you are unless you are intimately involved with the workings of government and the legislator in general you can always learn something from this so I think everybody in this room can learn something from this presentation and something that's going to be useful now you might be thinking why should I care why do I care what how a bill becomes law it becomes law I follow the law so why should I care well a show of hands who here feels like they understand how a bill becomes law through the details federal or state state in general kind of right not exactly on point right now a second showing of hands who here has a political opinion on something that they really feel passionately about we all do and I was the same way when I came into my externship I had all these political opinions and political ideas in my head but I didn't know exactly how all this work how all government works so then I thought to myself how could I effectively advocate for something that I do feel so passionately about if I don't understand how it works so this is a necessary understanding for all of us and I again I think that we all can learn from this so let's look at this in a little more detail so we have our bill that's our idea and we put it into text okay so what's the next step what do we where we go from here how do we make our idea a law first we need a sponsor so for our purposes we're going to look at a bill from the House of Representatives just because it's cool and have the coolest workers over there but no we'll look at it from the House of Representatives point of view so we just sponsor who's our sponsor going to be the sponsor should be somebody who whose political ideals aligned with what our political ideals in our bill are the sponsors going to be somebody who's going to advocate for your bill in the House of Representatives and in fact in both chambers but so the sponsor's responsibility is going to be to get co-sponsors and then more importantly is going to introduce the bill to the House floor okay so once the sponsor introduces the bill to the House floor we go on to the next step which is committees so we have the speaker of the House in the House of Representatives he bleeds the House of Representatives he's going to direct into what we call committees now committees are the representatives with the best knowledge in specific areas there are the elite in certain areas so in the House committees we have 11 House committees and just to give you a few examples their House Finance House Committee on Health Education and Welfare House Judiciary so all these committees they have specific focuses and the people in there especially the chairperson has some sort of I guess you could call the elite knowledge in that specific area so the speaker will direct it to the appropriate committee and our elite representatives within those committees will hear the bill look at it into more detail they'll hear testimony and the way the pros and cons and then ultimately they're going to vote and when they vote in committee they're either going to vote to recommend passage of the bill to hold the bill for further study which basically translates to us that the bill is complex for whatever reason and they're not confident with either denying it or sending it forward so they're going to hold on to it or they can reject the bill so let's assume for our purposes that the bill gets recommended for passage so we go on to our next phase here which is we go to the House floor the beautiful building of a beautiful room that Susie saw today extremely hot okay but it's a very interesting process from this point on so once the bill comes out of committee it goes to the House floor and the speaker actually is in a unique position where he sets the calendar for each session so theoretically if the speaker of the House didn't like the particular bill he could post keep postponing it and maybe you definitely postpone it and kill it but again for our purposes let's continue on so what's going to happen on the floor you have these 75 men women in this hot room you wouldn't think that you would have that much to be considering how hot it was in that room but it's unbelievable at times what they argue over it but so that's what happens we end up getting debate over over the bills so one representative will say signal that they want to speak and they want to weigh the pros or the cons either way and after the debate is over the speaker will call for a vote now a majority vote in favor of the bill will mean that it passes so assuming that it does pass we go on to this next step which is transferred to the Senate so now we all remember in grade school we have two chambers in government we have the House of Representatives which is the cool part of the legislator and then we have this the Senate so what's going to happen is our house bill after it's passed the House of Representatives is going to be transmitted to the other chamber okay so they can weigh so from here it's going to go through the same process our experts now we have Senate experts in specific areas and they're going to hear about our bill and they're going to decide whether or not it's a good fit for the state after that if it does come out we go against the floor more debate in a hot floor if it comes out of there then we have Senate transmittal to the governor okay and that is where we begin our journey to or begin the endings to our journey for it to become law so from here the governor can do a couple things she has three options when the bill comes across her desk she can either sign the bill and that will make it law she can veto the bill like we learned back in the day send it back and then the general assembly can override the view or she can do something which really which is really interesting and which actually happens a lot is make the bill effective without her signature and how that's done is basically she I hesitate to use the word neglect but she doesn't touch the bill and after six days of it being transmitted from the chamber it becomes law so I'll tell you an interesting story you you may have figured out that I really like this topic it may not be the most interesting and when I came into my externship like I implied before I didn't really know all that much about it but I quickly learned a lot about it because I was quickly given a lot of assignments that dealt with bill tracking and I was immersed in this really quickly so I think the best way to understand this is through practice practice makes perfect so I think that's gonna help you guys out too I think practice makes perfect so I'd like to get a volunteer maybe we can go through a mock bill anybody want to volunteer okay so here's what we're gonna do remember we have our two chambers which bill do you want to which chamber do you want to focus on the house of the people are oh I thought you wanted to say no so the Senate bill so Senate bills in around literally start with five I'm sorry one okay whereas in the House representative they start 5,000 so pick a number one one okay so we have Don's bill number one and what is your bill on what's your idea a bill to pass the measure for Eric and your Schning all right so we'll put Don AC bill all right so we're in the Senate so what's our first step we have our bill here it is what's our first step we need a sponsor we need a sponsor who's gonna be our sponsor someone who sweats a lot so we have a sponsor and the sponsor does what he rounds up other co-sponsors and then ultimately what's the most important thing that the sponsors gonna do for you introduce it all right from there where does it go it's gonna go to the committee right the relevant committee I think it'll be simple of those right yeah it's gonna be in this case it'll be the Senate president who's gonna decide which is the most relevant so then from here it goes where if it comes out of the committee if he gets one of that right goes to the floor which the Senate floor perfect and after here it gets debated right and then it goes to vote right and after the vote it's gonna go to the governor no remember we have two houses oh crap to the house and our Chris Cross of the bill begins so our Senate bill is now going to be heard by the House so your same Senate bill number one dons a seat bill is gonna go to the House of Representatives so once it gets transmitted to the House of Representatives then where does it go to committee committee and comes out of committee floor right debate and vote and then after that go there and it goes to the governor now what's really cool about this and actually where I want to go next is that all of that kind of makes sense even though it Chris crosses everywhere you can follow the pattern but there are also strategies involved in how bill becomes law the first one I want to talk about is duplicates so dons a seat bill number one can also there can also be a we can call it dons a seat bill of five thousand and one and that's going to be the House version okay and sometimes what will happen is the Senate will pass the bill and it'll go all the way to the governor and the governor will sign it but the House version will still be stuck in a committee somewhere or hasn't gotten to the floor whatever the reason is but they will still push it and now when I was in my externship I asked my supervisor I said what's the point of that you already have that same idea of becoming law so why do you need to continue with it and he said well there's two reasons the first has to do a long-standing practice in the state of Rhode Island which that's just what they do they pass both of them and the second more relevant has to do with the so don if he's the sponsor of this bill he's going to get credit for becoming law whereas the House sponsor who put just as much effort as Don won't get any credit because his version didn't become law so that's one interesting way of the different chambers play games another one is the transmittal game so we have down here the governor transmitted right now over here the House of Representatives had the option to transmit the bill to the governor okay they're not obligated to and by the same token if a House bill came to the Senate the Senate would have the option and not the obligation to transmit the bill to the governor so there's a little bit of gamesmanship that goes on where they trade bills they said well we'll pass will transmit your Senate bill if you'll transmit our House bill so there's a little bit more that's involved rather than just this sort of zigzag that goes on so I want to leave you with one thing it's a reminder just remember a bill is an idea we all have ideas in our head now that we know how we can turn our ideas into law we can use our ideas to affect change where we see most fit and that's why this is important thank you and questions I'll take them down first of all those interesting these in if the governor doesn't sign it becomes law right if I'm not mistaken at the federal level they have like what's called it isn't like the pocket video where if they don't do anything it's automatically not law whereas in Rylan it seems like if you don't do anything it's it becomes wall right that's the latest in in Rylan but the pocket view I haven't heard in a while but I think that's right anybody else I have a question and it has there been with the new governor more of that style and not signing all the signs such as she goes very strongly about or I wouldn't I mean I don't think I'm in a position to say whether or not there's more or less but they're definitely especially in our state we have in other states too we have what's called song solemnization of marriages which basically says that the general assembly can vote to give you the power to solemnize someone in marriage so to do what to do to officiate it's a little bit of a tongue twister but I get through it so a lot of that happens in the governor doesn't have to sign it so she just lets it go so there are a lot when you look at them there are a lot that she just kind of let's go one that's become effective without her signature but you're right both of them she does strongly care about she will sign but a lot of the stuff she doesn't you think it's probably minor it's not worth her right and there are some other bills too that you know I wouldn't call them minor that she's led I was gonna say I assume that's where she wants to support something but doesn't want to have the political backlash right so that would be my tactic also I mean like if the Senate in the house they both want to pass a bill on something and like it passed different versions like which I think happens sometimes right but you know like kind of close can't they have one of those like joint committees or something where they like work out differences like come to a hybrid solution to do everything that well I think a lot of that happens in that sort of games and shit with what I play that transmittal game okay and they they through the bargaining they end up coming with what the bill that fits both of their needs through and based on the big picture I guess but it's different you're right because on the federal level they do have a committee that's made up of both senators and representatives that take the two different bills and create one right for the whole present question now I'm glad you're doing up here critique just put the stuff that's name on it not your name and stuff that you want to get a soft critique in the front you can do it now or later oh start it now and finish it later started our first class with a joke and then that was it we got one joke she's in my house I was like why is she at your office? I was hoping she would not have you are you kidding me? for sure I wouldn't have said that even if it were no I would have talked to a job I'm just laughing because it's like it's so hot I started with that because that's what we wanted to talk about haha a mistakes one? yeah I watched one on the sub-seato path he had this like really cool where he'd be describing something and then the artists would like draw things behind him like of what he was describing and I was like wow like I want that oh you mean like unrelated like one of those visual yeah it'd be just like this but like he'd be describing something and then there'd be like a sketch that would like that's like a really hot thing in conferences right now it's like all the national conferences I've been to in the past two years there's someone doing a visual which makes sense the big words or the concept is like an image and they're artists that get paid a lot of money my topic though it's like I might have looked up all like the mental health like no it'll miss like things how are they doing that so now I've got some ideas I had to I had to so luck dawn started you're still working on yours just stop it out and continue later there's no rush to do it just stand for a while so we can make it all up there is that yourself? here put it on the table I'll take it all do it once so you know what it's about I don't know I don't want to take it I don't want to take it sorry I got caught it's just a general flat it just looks like I did it I've seen countless folks come in with the same story or similar story charged with a very minor crime I'm going to use the example of a petty larceny so 6 degrees as low as he gets basically under 5 around a little less so essentially someone's charged with this crime and usually the first thing that the prosecutor is going to be interested in is a restitution like you shoplifted maybe you stole a iPhone or iPad something like that I don't know and they want to you know get that restitution for the victims the thing is though is that maybe you stole it you're going to buy drugs it's a thing you have an underlying mental health addiction issues and you probably don't have a job and so they're going to say can you get restitution if so we'll think about gnawing a charge getting rid of it right if it's a first or second offense something like that so usually the person is like oh I can get the money so we go to get a court and they really probably need a year to get the money but they're not going to get that money they're like 4 or 6 weeks and then in about 4 or 6 weeks they come in with like 40 bucks and that's when they're 4 to 6 weeks and the next time they'll come in with anything and the next time they come in with 100 bucks now they're 240 but they still need to get all the way to 400 and eventually the prosecutors are going to get annoyed and they're going to say and they say this all the time and I quote we don't run a collections agency you know and the answer you might say well why do you have to have all these court dates they don't want to lose track of the person they want to keep them coming back to court to urge them to get this done but like I said a lot of the times they just can't and on top of that there might be barriers to obtaining that money so they don't have a family or if they do have a family and they need to use what resources they do have to provide for them or if they have a suspended license it might be hard to get a job or if they're trying to get a job when you probably low level of skills, they're probably defender clients they're indigent people try going to get a regular run of the mill service job at a McDonald's or something and start wanting that all the days you're going to need off they're probably not going to want to give you that job and even if you did tell them that and they were willing to be amenable you might say why do you need those days off and now you're going to be stuck between the rock and the hard place of either A telling them the truth oh I got charged with larceny and the person's going to think jeez am I going to have to watch my cash register am I going to hire this person so then you're not going to get the job to get the money they need to pay the restitution or alternatively you start off on a bad foot by lying to a new employer to be in and that's just one crime there are a lot of other crimes where similarly whatever you need to do whether it's taking some counseling classes you're going to have constant court appointments you're going to need to keep coming back you might be driving on a suspended license the problem usually has to do with money you don't have money to get your license restored so you don't have money to satisfy the thing once you don't have a car you can't get a job it's a vicious cycle and it's very difficult so what does this mean first of all the people are constantly coming back to court and what you get is this these are pictures of courthouses all across the nation these people right here are standing out in like I think it's Michigan and it's negative five degrees outside and all the way they all got there early and they're lined up around the block because they know it's like first come first serve some court says it's not even first come first courthouses like in London isn't first come first serve it's whatever the hell they decide to call you but like these people are lined up and these are Alabama I forget where this this one's actually Massachusetts I think and I forget where this one is but it's a common scene people are just coming back all the time and a lot of the times finally when you get to this breaking point where the prosecutors are like no more we're not in a collection agency they'll say like well we got an offer for you you need time to pay well guess what we'll give you time to pay we'll give you like two years give you on probation for two years we'll be repaying this debt over time the problem is though if you're dealing with an image of people who live in low income neighborhoods through on probation they may have underlying mental health issues they may have underlying addiction issues you know in your heart they like as much as you're going to hope they clean everything up there's a good chance they're going to get you with a new arrest if they get you with a new arrest that's a violation of probation and that can mean jail in fact in all times it does if the offensives know so it's really like a vicious cycle and that's why you have this this is the number of incarcerated Americans per capita and ever since basically in 1970, 1980 and really in the 90s you just see this go off the charts is that there's more income inequality there's more people stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty which leaves them to be unemployable which leaves them to not be able to do things they can't get a job so they turn to crime and we've criminalized everything and everyone always wants to be tough on crime so basically what you get is this exponential growth in the number of incarcerated persons that's why our own professor of savagery Roger Williams University held an entire seminar this past semester all about mass incarceration it's a big problem and so I would analogize the criminal justice system in this country all across the nation to something like the hotel California if you're an indigent person you like what you can never seemingly leave the good news though is that there is some progress that people have said to themselves there has to be a better way and in fact certain places have tried it now unfortunately in New London one of them so essentially I guess I should probably start off by saying this but this is the top the essential topic of this presentation beyond just presenting this problem to you is to also present a solution and it happens not to be in New London but I was trying to think of a presentation what could be one thing that I would do to change the atmosphere in which I work and that's kind of a bold thing to say because I've only been there for a month I don't know a criminal justice system the way that all the people around me do but I have talked to a lot of other attorneys and they're excited about this phenomenon that seems to be in place in certain courthouses one of which actually is in Connecticut Hartford there's another burgeoning one in Waterbury in Stanford Connecticut but they're called community courts and basically what they do is they offer people the opportunity to get the charges against them knowledge which is to say thrown out but only after completing a certain amount of community service now in cases it basically the sentence is basically focused on rehabilitation even if you're a repeat offenders unless the crime is minor you're going to be able to qualify for a community court so the sentence if you want to call it a sentence always seems to sort of basically attempt to rehabilitate the person in some way so for instance another crime that commonly comes before community courts is prostitution so in those cases yes there may be a community service component but perhaps the more important component will include some sort of psychological counseling and you know all the times a psychological assessment a lot of times people are abused as kids and that's why they sort of turn to this activity a lot of times they have underlying drug problems and so they attempt to find out what's driving the person to literally sell their body for money for drugs or for whatever it might be and they try to address that and come to some sort of solution that will further the person's advancement in society that will help them get reintegrated into society because they recognize that when you're incarcerated and the more and more time you're incarcerated and the longer and longer a period of time you're incarcerated you start to forget how to function in the real world and moreover your reintegration into the real world the regular world that you and I all know becomes that much harder so another one might be the larceny and so for instance a lot of these courts are endowed with grants that are usually some sort of combination of public, private money fine money that might be paid by criminal defendants in other cases and what that all goes to is building a program so for instance if you shoplifted $100 with the groceries from the grocery store and you can't come up with the money well they'll have you do 10 days basically it's usually based on a $5 or $6 or something like that but you'll do a certain number of hours of community service you schedule it when it's convenient for you when you're not having child care issues when you're not having a part-time job or whatever it is you schedule the blog time or I'm going to come these six days and you can schedule it out and when you do it it's done, the case is going you're not on probation, you're not on some kind of suspended sentence where if you screw up again you're going to be facing a lengthy prison term you know you essentially you do it, it's done, the case is now and it is off you're not going to have any record it's going to make you more employable it's going to help you reintegrate into society and you avoid getting caught up in that vicious cycle we talked about earlier now as I told the benefits of this program I mean that's not just me speaking from a sort of public defender person's perspective because obviously you'd say to yourself the public defenders are always going to favor more lenient treatment of indigent clients because it's their clients, that's who they represent but the fact is that the Center for Court Innovation which is a non-profit non-partisan organization that has studied courthouses all over the United States of America have found that there are certain basically when people go through community courts the first one was in Manhattan I believe and they tried it there and it was like a pilot project it spread out around they have found that there are lower rates of recidivism for larceny they have found that people in some cases learn job skills so if you're say planting flowers for a period of time you might find that you like horticulture and gardening and then you might get a job landscape and you're something like that so people actually learn some skills along the way and it invests them into beautifying or helping or basically building relationships within the community in which they reside the community in Court in Hartford actually makes it easy for people to do these sentences because what they do is they either find them a placement in the area where they live, where they can walk to it because a lot of people don't have access to reliable transportation or if they can get to the courthouse because the courthouse is pretty much on every single city bus line if they can get to the courthouse there will be a big van that takes everybody who's doing the community court sins and they take them out to the job site and they perform their service so they have a way to get there and back and they're back in time to get the bus back home and it's something they can actually do rather than having to make more money by a couple of weeks and then they don't have enough and then they end up going on probation and if they mess up again they're jail so it's this model I think is much, much better and the Center for Court Innovation again, non-partisan, non-profit just basically wants to make courts more accessible more transparent to people, understandable it aims to increase efficiency this, right? where people are stuck constantly because a lot of these people are just marking time they're coming back to tell them that they're not done with whatever the hell it is they're supposed to do whereas if they can set out a time, I'm going to do all this service I'm going to do it in this period of time I can come to the courthouse on these days the van will take me and come back I mean it's clean, it's cut and dry they certainly work for it I mean it's really easy to try to borrow money from somebody just to satisfy obligation it actually gives them a role in literally working off their sentence and it is far too little utilized and also too I should mention, like I said earlier I said you might think this is a public defender's perspective so when I was thinking about doing this presentation earlier today I went and asked a prosecutor a couple of the prosecutors actually about what they thought about the community courts and I expected them to say oh it's like lenient treatment for these people should be in jail they're like no, we wish we had one here in New London is that the 3 of the 12? yeah, 3 of the 12 so as I said what do you think about that? they're like oh we love it, we hate prosecuting all these rinky-dink cases but they're like all we have is tools that are either threatening jail, probation or going to trial which that never happens really but I mean essentially that's all they have if they had a tool like this, like a community court where they could either shift them out for another community court in the parts of the country they have Saturday morning dockets you know part like maybe just for the morning on Saturday and everyone was charged with a community court offense just comes in and it's more like a, not even almost like a court it's almost like a social work type of a thing where they work at problems collaboratively and together they're like we wish we had something like that, it would make our docket so much lighter and it would allow us to focus on the cases that are actually important rather than these stupid ones that they themselves admit they don't really want to be bothered with but they can't also just let them go entirely because they'd be really failing in their function so a lot of people want this and none of your place has it it does take collaboration resources, I understand money doesn't grow on trees but I think there are a lot of ways to do it so you can add a small surcharge on internet payments for tickets Connecticut doesn't even have that they don't allow you to pay tickets to the internet which is ridiculous in this day and age so add a small surcharge and put it towards a fund that would help fund programs like this but also I would tell you I think that there are cost savings in and of themselves because the more and more people you have walking through the justice system every day I mean it keeps, well probably it keeps more public defenders employed but I mean that's a way to resource this too you have judges, you have court reporters who have to transcribe all the stuff that goes on I mean, you know, these court documents could be severely lightened you know, the amount of money we spend on jailing people which of course is astronomical everybody knows that, that could be lightened and I think in general these collaborative solutions are working, the statistics say they're working every attorney I talk to prosecutors, public defenders included all say that they would like to have it and I think the auditions spread and I think ultimately you know, these people they look happy you happy, I'm happy I have a question you had said that in these community service programs they're not on probation but what would it happen if they could screw up while they're doing this program do they just kind of get stacked up on one another? Yeah, they might have another, well it depends up here seriously what they did was let's say they got to breach of peace or disorderly conduct because they were drunk in public instead of arguing with their girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever I mean if it was something like that they'd get another community court but I mean if it was something more serious well I think the way it's done is that the community court matter is treated as separate so it's like, alright I mean if you go out and you seriously sell somebody that's not going to be a community court let's go on a real court and you're probably going to get locked up on bail and so therefore if you can't make bail you're not going to be able to do the community service because you're in jail so it would probably just swoop that case over so I mean yeah it would probably just become part of that docket but I mean you're talking about a period of weeks versus probation that lasts six months a year sometimes two years depends what it is so if someone says they need a long time to pay this fine or I need a long time to complete this counseling I don't have access to a car right now it's being difficult on me or whatever the longer they're on probation the longer that they are literally on thin ice and there's a case in Connecticut called Payne V. Robinson which says that any new arrest can trigger violation of probation there's a separate crime from the underlying offense so you can get like a disorderly conduct or something and if your probation officer decides to violate you then you violate it so then you face prosecution on the disorderly conduct you also face a separate charge which is a violation of probation and that doesn't need to be proven by reasonable doubt just preponderance that's why any new arrest I'm sorry gives rise to probable cause for violation of probation so really like whenever you're on probation if you're on thin ice it's really bad this avoids that because I go to the court for the first time at arraignment they sit me down with a social worker three weeks from now you complete this community service when you do it the case is done over and in three weeks you are out of Harold so this program is this the court system that is initiating this program or is this the public defender's initiating this like where is the entry point okay I once asked my own supervisor like who really runs this place and he said the judges really he's like the judges with the assistance of like court administrators things like that they look at docket loads they try to determine does this court housing do any bigger things like that you know he's essentially the judges and what usually happens is is that a group of judges and court administrators will say there's this federal branch out there for a community court project or something and then they'll you know make an application so why they need it and stuff and it could get them more money to have a Saturday morning docket or if it's a lot of money it could be an annex building or something where they have these cases and they put those a couple days a week you know in general you find in court systems there's a lot of resistance to change because people like predictability and I don't mean like the clients I mean like the lawyers the judges I mean they just like things to stay where they are and I mean there's a lot of inertia but at the same time there are some people who realize that if you convince people basically that things will be more efficient that it's not going to make them less useful or likely to lose their job and if you convince them that more money will flow into the courthouse opening up more positions things like that I mean people just need to know that security and or you know usefulness will not be jeopardized and I think most people are receptive to it and actually interestingly enough there's someone from the Center for Court Invasion at my courthouse right now thinking about trying to start awarding these things this last one I mean you kind of touched on it already but is it just grants that they use for funding or yeah like I mean there's like I said there's public money there's also private money for instance the one in Hartford some wealthy philanthropist or something I think he got either I don't know if he died and then left it to him or if he was just old and had a lot of money I forget which but I mean he he put on like an endowment which of course you know creates interest on itself things like that which helps pay for staffing and rent if you're into the building or something like that and so and then there's also like I said there's I think there are some in Hartford I think there are some fees that people pay like when they pay funds to the court they have little surcharges on things like that and that goes to funded you know all sorts of different things like when someone pays like court costs for instance you know a portion of the court costs goes to funding something like this so you know even if their case maybe gets dismissed based on my own $15 something like that so I mean yeah there's lots of ways that that happens but basically it's it's a combination of public and private funds that you need sort of a critical massive power brokers judges, lawyers, philanthropists probably politicians and stuff and also make the grand money to get just started and if you have those like-minded and similarly motivated people in one spot it tends to happen and if you don't have that critical mass of individuals it usually doesn't You may have touched on this but like can you is this an option for people with like stacked charges for like they might be facing losing their license or they have this as an option Usually for motor vehicle violations so I have a list of stuff that's covered usually about these things so breach of peace petty larceny prostitution, public drunkenness criminal trespass, simple possession i.e. a low amount of drugs drug paraphernalia low degrees of threatening i.e. not threatening with a gun but just like oh I'm going to kill you or something like that so this is a disorderly conduct so they call them quality of life offenses and I think interestingly enough, I don't know why they use that term a lot but I think it might be at least have two hypotheses as to what it might be hypothesis number one is that people stop doing these things they might find their quality of life improves and number two, when you have these sorts of things in your neighborhood and your community public drunkenness, prostitution criminal trespass, possession of drugs drug paraphernalia property destruction, criminal misdif all that kind of stuff that detracts from the quality of life that people experience in their communities and by actually doing this community service work whatever it might be, whatever projects need to be done you know you sort of address these harms to the community because that's the ultimate victim in a lot of these crimes and you sort of address the harm to the community by having people rebuild the community and so if people have stacked charges as you say for vehicle stuff, that typically doesn't qualify because I think the concern there is say a DUI or something I mean, that's not something you really work off community like the real concern there is making sure people don't do that again and things like that also take education classes and things they already do do community service though like for instance if you get a fine for a DUI or I'm sorry if you get a drug charge or a DUI charge or something like that and you don't qualify for this you usually maybe if you're a first time offender you might get a program for that and you complete classes and do things but usually there's a fine component and if you don't have the money for the fine they will give you community service hours and that's different because you know it's your own discretion and if you fail that program there is no second chance for that you only get a certain amount of time to do it and that so but they also for those ones for like a DUI or something like that or a motor vehicle charge they give community service but if you don't get it done by the time they say they're taking that offer back because they're like that's a gift to you and if you don't take it then you know give them the time for you good, thanks Don you're welcome self-critique yeah self-critique next yep does anyone else need a sheet do you have one for Don? yeah if you can talk to yourself I get the feeling they're probably done with that I was this close that's your far away you know I was being watched and the guy was like oh the silence is murdering me that's an invitation at the end of the day I'm just going to start going home I'd like to be a silence now so you left before 7am on the day side I think I left Friday at 2.30 you weren't leaving until 4pm well I mean last so last year my