 Good evening. Welcome everyone to the award. It's November. November, the November 2020 meeting of the advisory panel on racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. I, we normally what we do is introduce ourselves and go around the table. It has now become a sick joke because I don't know how to negotiate this program. So I'm going to do my best. And if when I say I think, if when I say, is there anyone else? If I have missed you, please feel free to jump in and introduce yourself. What I'd like to know is that if you look at the agenda, we are used to having public commentary come at sort of the end of the meeting. And at the advice of Sheila Linton, we have now decided to weave it into the fabric of the meeting. But we do ask that people limit their comments to about five minutes. As this is only a two-hour meeting and we only meet once a month. The, as you can see, there is a presentation and I will let Rebecca Turner introduce that when we get there. The other thing that I just want to point out is that we will be discussing after that the draft that I sent to you of the report that we have due in just under, well, less than just under a month in about three weeks, little less than that indeed. And I want the conversation to be very focused on that. And if at any point I'm going to really exercise discretion as the chair, we start getting philosophical or way, way detailed, I'm really going to stop it. We just don't have time for it now. I don't like doing that. I think I have been clear that I don't like doing that. But I hope I can also depend upon your help with that. We've got a task. We have a deadline. It needs to happen. It needs to be very focused tonight. We do not meet again before this report is handed to the legislature. Therefore, a lot of focus. So I will start. I am Aitana Nesred-Mongo. I am chair of the panel. Professor Crocker, could you introduce yourself, please? I can. I was sitting here thinking, I hope he doesn't go to me next, because sorry, it's okay. I can handle it. So my name is Abby Crocker. I'm a professor of statistics at UVM. And I'm joining sort of as a guest tonight along with my colleague, Stephanie Clark from the law school. Great. Thank you. Tyler Allen. Good evening, everybody. My name is Tyler Allen. I'm coming from department for children and families. I'm the adolescent services unit director over there. Thank you. Jessica Brown. Hi, everyone. My name is Jessica Brown. She, her pronouns. I am the supervising attorney of the public defender office for Chittenden County, and I'm an at-large appointee to the panel. Thank you. Chief Don Stevens. That was a bad time to call you, wasn't it? No worries. Don Stevens. Don Stevens, chief of the Naliga-Demoneki tribe. Thank you. Thank you. Jen Furpo. Hi, Jen Furpo with the Vermont Police Academy. Judge Brierson. Chief Superior Judge, could you share it? Good evening. Thank you. Karen Gannett. Hi, everyone. Karen Gannett. I'm with Crime Research Group, and we are the statistical analysis center for the state. Loretta Saki. Hi. My name is Loretta Saki, and I am with the CSG Justice Center, and I work as a policy analyst. Thank you. Madeline Dardo. Hi, folks. Madeline Dardo. I'm also a policy analyst at the CSG Justice Center. Great. Representative LaMonde. Yes, hello. Martin Lalonde. I'm a representative from South Burlington, and I'm on the House Judiciary Committee. Just a guest today watching. Thank you. Welcome. Elizabeth Morris. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Morris. I'm the Juvenile Justice Coordinator with DCF, and I am in the Allicent Services Unit, along with Tyler. Thank you. James Pepper. Hello. James Pepper, designee from the Department of State's Turnies and Sheriffs. Representative Coffey. Hi, I'm Sarah Coffey. I serve and sit on the House Corrections and Institutions Committee, and I'm here as a guest tonight, just listening. Robin Joy. Hi, Dr. Robin Joy. I'm Director of Research for Crime Research Group. Great. Sarah Friedman, please. Hi, everyone. Sarah Friedman, Deputy Program Director with the Council of State Government's Justice Center. David Sher. David Sher, Representative of the Attorney General's Office. Captain Scribner. Julie Scribner. I am Co-Director of Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs with the Vermont State Police. Thank you. Heather Simons. Hi there, Heather Simons, Director of Professional Standards, Department of Corrections. Great. Professor Clark. Hi, Stephanie Clark. Here is a guest tonight, Director of the National Center for Restorative Justice, the Center for Justice Reform at Vermont Law School, and also Assistant Professor there. Thanks. Great. And last but not least, Rebecca Turner. Rebecca Turner, Panel Member, the Defender General's Designee. Great. Oh, and I noticed that Jeff Jones has showed up, and I forgot to invite him to introduce himself. Jeff? Yeah, Jeff Jones, Panel Member, and late. And Judge Davenport, I saw you. Hi, I'm Amy Davenport. I'm a retired judge and on a member of the Children and Family Council for Prevention Programs that looks at youth justice issues. And there's Monica. Hi, Monica. Well, hi, Aitan. Hi, everyone. Hi, I'm Monica Weber. I'm the Administrative Services Director and Representative for the Department of Corrections. Okay. And where, I'm sure she, Sheila's there. There. I was going to say, where is Sheila? Sheila's got to be here somewhere. There she is. Go ahead, Sheila. I'm sorry. I always end up being, my name is a middle. I don't know what happened. But Sheila, she, her pronouns, I am appointed by the Attorney General on the panel, and I represent the Root Social Justice Center as well. Thank you. Okay. Now, is there anyone I have forgotten? This is the moment to speak. Everybody on my little list here has, I've called, I think. Well, there we are. Great. At this moment, I'd like to turn the, what is it, the presentation over to Rebecca Turner to do the introductions for the first part of the meeting. Rebecca. Got it. Thanks, Aitan. So you've already heard Stephanie Clark and Abby Crocker introduce themselves, but I'm so happy that the two of them were able to join us on such short notice because as members of the new National Center on Restorative Justice, and I say new because they were just recently created, and Stephanie will tell us more on Abby, the details. I don't, it's the summer perhaps is when it was the official date, but certainly I learned about these folks in the fall. And what I learned was that the National Center for Restorative Justice is sort of includes three academic partnerships. VLS is hosting the National Center with Stephanie Clark as their director. UVM's Justice Research Initiative is partnering up with this effort as well as the University of San Diego. And so we have two of the three academic partners here with us tonight to share. One of the reasons why I thought it would be worthy of this panel's time to hear from them is that I quickly realized in talking with what they do that so much of their work is overlapping or complementary to what we've been talking specifically with our data collection analysis report. And the ideas that we've been generating and the issues that we hope to cover similar to the type of research and work that they're doing. And even more exciting, they happen to be in Vermont. And so I want to just let them do the talking, but I'm just so pleased that they're here with that Stephanie Clark. Thank you so much, Rebecca. And thank you, Etan and everyone for inviting us here. We're really excited to talk about the National Center on Restorative Justice and the work that we're doing. And I will say that we received the award, so it was a grant from BJA. And we received the award really at the end of March and have done a lot of just sort of infrastructure over the summer and are finally at a place where we're able to do the work, which is really exciting. The broader objective in the original solicitation was to improve or is to improve criminal justice policy and practice in the United States. And as you all know, that's just a huge umbrella. But there are specific deliverables that also come right with that solicitation. And I'm going to read you the language of the deliverables. And then I'm just going to share with you quickly the activities that we're working on that were accepted under our proposal. So the deliverables really are to develop and test educational curriculum designed to broaden the understanding of justice systems and restorative approaches through a degree program, a summer term institute or brief courses, while encouraging access to educational opportunities for incarcerated individuals. It's also to support research focusing on how best to provide direct services to address social inequities, such as simultaneous access to substance abuse treatment and higher education. So that's the language that came right from the solicitation. And I'll step back then and tell you what we're really doing. Rebecca already noted that we have partners in this. So Vermont Law School is only one piece of this national center. The University of Vermont and the University of San Diego and our federal partner is the Office of Justice Programs. So the four main activities that we are engaged in are all educational in nature and then designed again to implement these specific deliverables from the grant. So the first is a course mapping and evaluation of the existing masters of arts in restorative justice at Vermont Law School. So I will say we have the only masters of arts in restorative justice in the United States at a law school. So we're in a very unique position. But we're also doing this full course mapping and evaluation with our curriculum expert, Professor David Carpet, University of San Diego, to make sure that we're keeping up with what is needed and making sure that even though this is a new program, that we're doing it as best as we can and that we look at opportunities for what's missing, where do we have overlap, what do we need to improve on. So that's something that we're working on actively right now. The summer institutes, so we have two restorative justice institutes and they'll be offered twice a year. So one will be in January. The first one will be this January. It will be virtual and then we'll have another one in the summer. The institutes will happen two times per year and they'll be targeted towards specific professional cohorts. And the idea is to bring really restorative justice principles and approaches in philosophy and foundations to a specific cohort along with practical approaches and applications for that cohort so that they can learn principles and foundation and then go back to their communities also with skills, things that they can actually apply in their communities. We also are working with UVM and the liberal arts and prison programs. So that is one of our initiatives too. And so Professor Kathy Fox is currently actually sort of restructuring and augmenting that a little bit. We look to incorporate involvement with undergraduate students as well as the master's students from Vermont Law School. And the last activity is to provide educational opportunities for treatment court participants. And again, this is something that we look to implement and then how to be replicable. So all of these are things that we are creating to provide replicable models that people can then use back in their own communities or other treatment courts, for example, can use throughout the state and then also outside of Vermont. All of four of those activities and please understand there's a lot of depth to each one of them. So I could talk an awful lot about the processes and all of them at this particular point in the work that we're doing. But they all have a specific research and evaluation overlay. So along with this comes the need to collect data that's a mandate again from the grant and to conduct this research and evaluation that again will be iterative. UVM is the research and data hub as part of the award. And so they are doing all of that particular work. And Professor Abby Crocker is here with me and she is the lead in terms of all of the research that we're doing. And so I'm going to turn it over to Abby to talk a little bit about what that entails and how that is working with what we're doing at the National Center. Really happy and excited about this work and really excited about our partnerships and obviously happy to answer questions too. So thanks and I'll turn it over to Abby. So like Stephanie, thank you for hosting us tonight. I'm really excited to be able to talk to this group in particular about the work that's going on in the National Center because it is such a very exciting, cool opportunity for Vermont. And the law school specifically has those four educational objectives. And the University of Vermont, we are partnering with them to sort of identify sort of evaluation and research activities around those four efforts. But in addition to that, we're also sort of an incubator for new research ideas around specifically restorative approaches and social inequities within the justice system. And when we talk about sort of the justice system, it is across sort of the whole spectrum like from law enforcement through to reentry and community. And that sort of visual is how we're thinking about that piece. And so what we're doing is one, providing the evaluation and research component to the four sort of educational aims, but then also identifying ways to build the evidence base and identify opportunities in the existing justice system where, like I said, inequities exist and or there are opportunities for restorative approaches. And building that evidence base and then using sort of the educational framework to then disseminate that knowledge and study it further. And so how can we create new knowledge as well as disseminate the knowledge and then figure out sort of best ways to overall change the justice system? So it is an exciting opportunity and we are just really kicking it off. I think we have a really good framework at this point. But we're looking to sort of the years ahead and what makes sense for the best projects and activities over the next few months and few years and ways to sustain that moving forward. So like Stephanie, I'm happy to answer any questions but could also talk in detail all night. So thank you. Thank you both. Are there questions from the panel? Anybody have something that they would like to ask? If you put your hand up, I will do my best to see it. No. Okay. One of the things that I wanted to put forth is that in the interest of providing a report that gives the legislature a very broad sense of resources that are available to them in the implementation of Act 148, it became clear to me after speaking with professors Clark and Crocker that they may provide a model, an idea, a notion that we are, as the RDAF, I think bound to put before the legislature for their consideration. They very kindly have offered to provide a summary of what they've just told us that we can then input in our report. Probably I would say in an appendix because that would be where it would go as again providing information to the legislature about what resources indeed within the state and in this very exciting instance within the state and also moving out into the national scene are available to them for ideas, for models, for direction. These are people who are actually doing this work alongside of people like crime research group and so on. I'm operating on the idea that more is more right now. I want you all to have a sense of what I'm thinking about. That summary has not yet been written and I was certainly not in a position to ferret it out this afternoon, but I will as soon as it is up, get it out to everyone on the panel. That's all that I wanted to say to give you a sense of what I was hoping for. Jessica, you have your hand up. Yes, I do have a question and I don't mean to ask Abby to get too much in the weeds, but I could you talk a little bit about where you get your statistics right now, like are your data, excuse me, not your statistical data right now? Is that a sensible question? I don't even know, but Yeah, it's a good question and it's one of those. Vermont is a small world question because the National Center activities specifically are just kicking off. So activities associated specifically with the National Center are largely coming from participants engaged in National Center activities. That being said, UVM as a research partner with VLS, we're also a research partner with Monica from the Department of Corrections and other activities. So we have multiple efforts going on as sort of UVM in our activities, but then specifically tied to the National Center. We're getting data at this point from participants in National Center activities. And what we're hoping to do is expand more into like incubator projects, things that we can be working more with on the grounds folks to understand sort of existing data to evaluate programs and build the research and evidence base that we can then help translate into practice. Anyone else? Rebecca? You know, one of the things I just wanted to point out for the panel, what excited me most and just hearing Abby talk about just now was sort of realizing all of the separate projects that you folks have been doing, you know, UVM and now with this National Restorative, the Center for Restorative Justice, where you will be collecting data that we are interested in hoping the legislature will collect. And one of the things that I think as you read our reports and our appendices, the scope of data we would want to collect, right? It's just huge and there's so much room for like the efforts to not lose what is being done, right, at the National Center, you know, what you guys will be doing in the next few years. It just seems like there's some, it's just important to have collaboration on that data sharing and research and reporting. And it wasn't that spirit that I was also thinking of, including the summary and the appendices to this report, the idea of collaboration in fact. Anyone else? You tell me, can I just speak to what Rebecca just said briefly about the collaboration piece too? Because one of the things that's also required is that, you know, all of the data that we collect also gets reported in one of the reporting portals that's connected and it does have an outward facing public side. So this data is going to be there. It'll be available and, you know, we have to collect it and the more ways we can use it, I think the better. Great. Thank you. Anyone else before we move on? All right. Professors, thank you so much. You're welcome to stay. You're welcome to stay, but thank you for the presentation. Thank you. Great. Okay. I would like to switch gears now and get, start talking about the report. You all have the clean copy which I sent out, I believe yesterday. Tyler's looking confused, but okay. We're going to hope it went everywhere it was supposed to go. If not, it will. You should also know the subcommittee did meet this afternoon to work on final things in the drafting of it that we thought should be considered. I was hoping in the space of time between the end of that meeting and the beginning of this meeting to amend the clean copy and come up with clean copy 1.1, but that did not happen. So I want to just tell you what was discussed in terms of changes to what you have in front of you that have not yet been written, but will be drafted. Some of them may have in the next probably 24 to 48 hours. It's a list of seven items, one of which has already been accomplished. The first was from Monica Weaver that we actually would need someone in the various agencies that would be providing data. We would need someone in each of those agencies who is actually supported in the way that needs to happen to extract the data from that agency's databases and get it to the processing organization that we propose at the end of the report. The second issue were the two questions raised very nicely by Chief Don Stevens concerning bail. And I can't remember the other one. It was about, oh, Chief, help me out here. Your second question. Yeah, one was whether they took a plea because they couldn't afford bail. So if they were offered bail and couldn't afford it, so they took a plea. The other one was re-incarcerated due to parole violations versus new crimes. Just because we know that a lot of people might break parole for some small minor infraction or something and they get, then they have to serve the time in jail. So it's just seeing where that falls into, if it's the new crime or if it's a parole violation, which might cause some reform for the parole process. So thank you. Those were considered as well. And they are in the tables that are part of the appendices and also indeed in the body of the report as in the list of priorities and prioritized concerns to look at most immediately. Sheila raised a very important question regarding a glossary of terms used in the report in the spirit of transparency, that the idea that those acronyms, and I have to say, oh my God, one more acronym and I'm going to screen people, that comes out that nobody knows what they mean unless you're an insider. And that's immediately an issue of transparency. Further, can we break any of those terms that are very high legalese down into something that other people who are mere mortals can understand? Four was a description of the current data flow as an appendix. That was that really fascinating flow chart that is in fact suitable for framing. And we discussed whether or not that should in fact be in either section three or indeed as an appendix. Five was to include as an appendix as the acts that were used to create the data body in Connecticut. I sent those to you this morning. They were sent to me last night by Sarah Friedman of the Council of State Governments. Likewise, acts regarding, this is point six, actual data collection. And that I sent, I believe forwarded to you earlier. And then the last point was modifying the charts that we currently have as the appendix having to do with the data that exists. You'll note on the draft of the report, section three is blank. And it says to be completed by CRG, crime research group or something to that effect. What they have now done is in fact modified the charts that we've already had and included in the chart as yet another column information about what data exists and what do not. And that is what the subcommittee did between one and roughly two thirty this afternoon. So what I'd like to do now is hear from the full panel. We need feedback, comments, concerns, all of that. The other thing that I really want to note at this moment and I'm doing my best to take notes and we all know how well that goes, but I will do my damnedest. The statute 148 is quite clear about including dissenting opinions. So far we've been really good with consensus. We've done really, really well to body with it. That's neither here nor there. It's just a fact. I would say let's put it all out right now because this is the time to do it. So given that preamble, it's time for everybody else to weigh in. And this could be short, but don't make it short just because I said that. I'm just saying if you don't have anything to add, don't feel you need to. I am scanning for hands. This is a crazy way to proceed. Somebody had a hand. Ah, yes, Don. Chief. Yeah, I just wanted to say I don't know if this is the only dissenting. It's not on the report, but it's the lack of funding to do these things. I mean, I don't know if that's a dissent or not, but I mean, we're always working under the auspice of where is this funding going to come from? Not that that may be our issue, but it would be nice to know that the legislators were actually committed to potentially funding what we're doing, the work that we're doing. So I don't know. That may not be a dissenting thing, but it's just more of a statement than it is anything else. I don't know if it should be included or not, but I've got it down. There is some language in the report about the draft of the report about a commitment not merely to create this body to analyze the data, but to be open to creating and considering legislation down the line as its needs develop. Does that help you? Yeah, I just, if you were looking for any dissenting things at all, I was just thinking that would be the area of my concern is actually the resources and commitment to follow through with recommendations, which has never been given. They asked us to do a lot of work, and we even produced the report, which they seemed like they didn't read the first time, that is a commitment on their part to provide the resources necessary to make this successful. And whatever form that may be, that is my only comment. Great. I've noted your comment, and I'll write some copy about that and get it out to everyone. Sheila. Hey, everybody. I just had a clarifying question and two things. Clarifying question for Chief Stevens is are you talking about attaching the financial resources to what we're asking the legislature to make sure that they're able to complete it? Because that's the other way that I interpreted what you said. And that was something that we brought up in the subcommittee this afternoon. And so that is, I'm assuming, again, just reiterating that this takes money to do and that we have to make sure that we're creating, letting the legislature know that we're going to have to put money to this and creating maybe avenues in which other entities have sought funding to be able to do it. But my comments was, I sent out to you, Tom, with my comments in the draft and it's around the second paragraph before the section five and just around that paragraph I had questions around whether that was implying around most impacted people. It starts off, let me see, it starts off saying this body work should be guided by an advisory organ consisting of stakeholders that concerns itself with the collection of the analysis data pertaining to, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm wondering if that is, if it's saying that what I think the way I'm interpreting it is what it's saying is that we want those who are most impacted by these issues to be at the table and to be the stakeholders and having their opinions and voices at the table. And so if that is what that paragraph is supposed to represent, I would like to put more clear language to represent that, such as most impacted communities and name some of those what some of those are. Those who are formerly incarcerated, black and brown communities, those are psychologically labelled juvenile youths, like to be very explicit in that because when people are choosing to have stakeholders at the table and what they consider diverse or reasonable groups of people, the way people think of diversity is very interesting and it is not clear what we mean by the directly impacted and or what we really mean by the stakeholders. So I would love that to be more explicit and to be fast out. Got it and noted and we'll work on that as well. Thank you. And Sheila, to answer your question, I don't know if we have the information to be able to include to suggest an amount, but I know in all of our reports that we have submitted there has been the Human Rights Commission has said they needed an X amount of people to be able to do their work. We've had people that said we need X amount of money to capture the data and it sounds like just in general to implement whatever that money turns out to be, which may be unknown at this time is more of a commitment to provide the resources and actual to do the work instead of just creating committees to study something to do recommendations that don't get done. So it's easy to create a committee to push the subject down the road to kick the can down the road to study the issue and provide recommendations, but I feel that if we have at least some kind of statement in there or something that they should provide resources necessary to make this successful, whatever those funds may be. And if you guys have that, great. On the flip side to Eitan, I just wanted to say I applaud the people, the subcommittee that busted their butt doing this. They did a great job, fantastic job. And I just wanted to say that. I just think you guys did an admirable job on this. Great. Thank you. Anyone else here to weigh in on that they needed the report? That's why I sent it out early, was to get this kind of feedback. The one thing I would say actually to Chief is that the question of resources certainly came to my mind, but I don't, I'm not and no one else that I've talked to is in a position they seem to be to say, I mean, we set three positions. That's in the report, right? I'm not in a position to say at such a step level in the state and so on and so forth. I, that's just not, I'm not sure that that's our job, but that's, that may be a form of detail that we're not really, I don't know, that's my assumption. Monica. Hi, thanks. I mean, I agree with what you're saying, right? We don't know because we're not really sure if they would even entertain the idea of this entity, but I was curious just, and maybe our friends from the Council of State Governments have the answer to this question as to when this body was created in Connecticut, what type of appropriation or the process in which they received their appropriation, you know, how that developed, right? Because we may want to be a little bit more clear in here that that's what we're expecting is some sort of appropriation and using sort of the words that legislators are accustomed to hearing. I feel like Monica is kicking that to me if it's okay if I respond a ton. So I can definitely reach back out to Connecticut and look up what the initial appropriation it was for this body. But what we do know right now is in Connecticut, they have like staffing this, the Criminal Justice Policy and Research Division out of their Office of Policy and Management, which is kind of serving as the model. They have a policy person at the head of it and two researchers and they're looking to staff a third. They're hoping to hire a third. Now I do want to note just to be clear that as the subcommittee heard last week in their meeting when the three staff members of this organization spoke to the subcommittee, they do more than just racial disparity research. They're producing, you know, criminal, they're doing a lot of criminal justice analyses and collecting data from a variety of agencies and producing regular reporting about the criminal justice system writ large. So I think, you know, what's being proposed here is like a little bit different, but I think, you know, kind of serves in many ways as the same purpose. And I think there's some mention of those regular reports in the current draft of the report that Atan sent around. But I mean, I'm happy to reach out to them and figure out what the initial appropriation was. I think that this was developed something like 15 or 20 years ago. So it may not exactly, you know, that first appropriation may not exactly reflect what they are now, but we can look at what their budget is or something like that. Great. Thank you, sir. Rebecca. So I'm guilty because I'm one of the drafters of this report and particularly the chart. But I have an 11th hour suggestion that was made to me, which I thought was important enough to bring to this panel. And it's just adding a data point in our chart, which I thought was pretty comprehensive. But here is in our chart, we asked to collect information on counsel, specifically prosecutors and defense attorneys. It was pointed out to me that we were not collecting similar data related to judges. And so I just want to make sure, A, to highlight that we collect demographic information on judges like we do above, but I wonder if it's worth throwing in a separate line or within counsel and court. I guess it would be judges related to, you know, here we ask about number of years of experience as a defense attorney and prosecutor, whether we want to collect similar data related to judges. I know that's an 11th hour addition, but I thought that was a gap here that we're missing. And certainly judges are a key part of these decisions that we've identified here. Rebecca, can I ask you in some way to note specifically where I'm going on this so I can write something in? Sure. Specifically, I'm looking at page four, I think. I guess that would be part of the prioritized list. But David pulled that from our appendix to our broader chart. But you see there on page five, page four, there was a road titled counsel. Yes. So somehow insert something there, maybe right below it or above it, relating to judges, right? Got it. One bullet there is, I don't know if you want, I mean, Judge Grierson, I don't know if you want to weigh in years of experience as a judge. And what else we can do there? I'm not sure. I mean, beyond years of experience, I guess I'm not sure what you think that data would reveal. In other words, years of experience, you could have somebody, there are judges who are appointed, they may have a year on the bench, but they may have 20 years as a defense attorney or prosecutor. So to say that, you know, a decision was made and this judge only was on for a year doesn't really tell anybody about their background. So I understand why they want to include it in there because everyone else is being asked their years of experience. But when it comes to judges, it may not be all that relevant. I don't think it's going to tell us. Actually, your point about their background as being prosecutors or defense attorneys or something else in the legal profession was actually another suggestion for a collection point on judges. So length of time on the bench, judicial background professionally, whether we want to track that. Are our judges coming from what background? How many years on the bench? How many years before they were on the bench to capture that? I throw that out there. I'm interested in collecting it since we have it similarly for counsel. Yeah, I'm just not sure that data, even if you collected it, it's going to have any real meaning. In other words, we don't control who a governor appoints to the bench. Then our obligation is to train them for the various dockets. Hey, Judge, along with Rebecca, would there be any way that we could kind of tell what the judges typically do for decisions? In other words, I don't know if what you're trying to get at, Rebecca, is how much decisions either when it comes to if they're swaying one way or another. You know what I'm saying? Based on their experience, I don't know how to quantify that. Do they set more of a sentence this way than that way? Is that what you're kind of asking? Like nine out of 10 times, the judge rules this way? I'm not in a judicial arena, so I don't know if that's set basically by the court or if there's a lot of discretion, right? So I'm not sure what, if someone tends to give more of a sentence than others based on somebody's brain strategy or what the crime is, is that what you're trying to capture or just experience? Yes, no. Judges have considerable discretion in all sorts of these decision points that we're collecting. And Judge Grierson, I take your point in terms of they're locked into the system in a sense, right? Once they've been picked. But I think that the issue of rotating judges to within counties, it'd be interesting to see you have a judge move from one county to another county, and all of a sudden you see different bail decisions coming down, different sentences, right? Whether or not there's a link to racial demographics of the defendant or not, right? But it would be, I think, I think potentially useful for collecting this for the defense attorneys and prosecutors. I don't know, it seems like why not? We have everything else we're collecting. Yeah, I, you know, all I'm saying is that you've just said it. We're collecting it for others, so why not collect it for judges? That's fine, except if it's not going to help us understand the decision-making, then you're just collecting data for the sake of collecting data that may or may not have any relevance to it. What you're asking is completely different from what the chief was referring. And I look, I'm supportive of gathering data, but I think we want to gather meaningful data. And as far as years on the bench, all you have to do is look at when they were appointed and you can find out how long they've been on the bench. All I'm saying is that the years on the bench is only one small piece of whatever goes into their decision-making. And so it's just data. If you want to gather data for the sake of gathering data, then include it, but I don't think it really has any real relevance. Whereas you can still, you can already track when the judge goes from one county to another. As you know, every case is fact-specific, so it's even hard to compare a sentence. And certainly those concerns were raised when we talked about defense attorneys and prosecutors. How does years of experience translate to what we're supposed to take away from it? And I think we settled on that last bullet in the council row, which says other factors relevant to case outcomes and legal representation, sort of other relevant factors to be teased out later, knowing that this was just one piece of it. Maybe that's some language we can adopt there, too. Well, my suggestion would be to put that point in the chart and also note that there is some dissent on this. We're not going to work this out between now and age. So that would be my recommendation. I mean, that's fine by me. If you note that I don't think that years on the bench is particularly relevant. I mean, it's there anyway. That's all you're looking for. I'm sorry, there's a pause. I'm writing down what you're saying, Judge Grierson. Thank you. All right. Other points. I know everyone's tired, and I'm like being a slave driver, but if there are not, then what I'm going to do is take, oh, no, Representative LaLong. Yeah, I did have one point since everybody else was done who were actually part of our DAP. So this is actually as much kind of a comment for Chief Stevens as well, and I'm not sure how this could be addressed or not, but it's not just, of course, the legislature that has to decide on funding and oftentimes a budget that comes over from the governor, if he has some priorities in his budget, it certainly can help move things along. And I know that there are several, there's representatives from several executive agencies within our DAP and within this group, but I don't, I mean, unfortunately, or maybe it's fortunate because I had lots of opportunity to make clear in the actual legislation that it should be provided to the governor's office and also justice reinvestment to working group, but I don't see any reason why this courtesy copy cannot be sent to those other entities. And maybe that isn't appropriate, but I think it's fine because if we get the governor to put something like this in his budget, that certainly goes a long ways towards this happening as well. I mean, there's multiple parties, you know, figuring out what the budget's going to be, and it'd be best to try to cover all the bases. So that's the only comment I have on that. Hey, Tom. Yes, go ahead. I just want to respond. My question then is if our mandate is to provide it to the legislators first, can we just put a footnote in there based on what was just said that we recommend that this also go to these other agencies? I just don't want to step on, I mean, I don't know, I just, if our mandate is to send it to the legislators and they haven't given us permission to send it somewhere else, I just want to make sure we're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot, then they get upset that we've done that when we could recommend that they send it to them. I don't know, I'm asking Martin. I don't know what. I think that that would work, even having a recommendation to the entity. That takes care of that issue. I had that question as well, Chief, about that. And I think that that would be completely appropriate, that there'd be a recommendation that this also be provided to the justice reinvestment to working group and to the governor. Hold on. I'm writing it. Okay. May I add something, Aiton? Whoever you are. Sure. I would just say to follow up on Martin's point is that I would think that the executive director of racial equity would be interested in this report. And while I'm sure she'd read it on her own, but if you're making a list of people, she makes these recommendations to the governor as well and has input on the administration's budgetary process. Okay. I don't think you need to do that because she is a member of the group that's under section 19 of the justice reinvestment. So she, I mean, that might actually take care of the getting it to the governor if it's, if she is actually, she's part of this group that's looking at this. But so wouldn't hurt to at least recommend sending it to the governor and to the justice reinvestment. And Susanna is saying in the chat thing. Yes. Monica. Well, maybe it sounds like you've covered it all. But of course, you know, once, once we submit it to the legislature, it's a public document. We can pretty much do whatever we want with it. And we may want to have a conversation around whether or not we want to publicize it beyond just submitting it because we knew last time a lot of people didn't know it was there. And then we had, you know, just recently a press conference. So perhaps that's something for us to consider once we get the report sort of in its final shape. Great. I got that too. Thank you. Anyone else have something they would like to weigh in on this? All right. What I'd like to say then is I will, I will do an amalgamation of all of this sometime between now and late on Thursday and get this back out to the entire panel for commentary and consideration. I would recommend that you not copy edit it. I will do that at some point. It is one of my few pleasures in life, certainly in a pandemic to be able to copy edit something. I love looking for periods. And so I will get there. And Chief Stevens. I just want to know, Etan, if you think it's appropriate that since we're not going to meet before this report needs to be submitted, would it be okay since we can't have any formal votes after tonight? Well, I was just saying, could we take a vote that you or the subcommittee has the authority to submit it? I don't know what the motion should be. Well, Chief, I was going to say that what I was going to do was do what we did with the report last year and do an online vote like we did of everybody. It's just going to be online. If you remember, we did that with the report we submitted in December and we just did it that way. I didn't see any reason to do anything different with this one. Okay. The only reason why I'm asking, because obviously it's not a public meeting or whatever, it's just a vote. So I just want to make sure that we're following the rules. Like if we're making an official vote outside of a public meeting, if we're not going to have any more, that if it's okay to do that, you get our input to do a vote so that way it can be submitted. That's the only question I had. Okay. Thank you. We did that in December of last year and David noted it in the meetings that we then looked at the following meeting. Okay. I'm cool with that. Thanks. Okay. And that was, I'm glad you brought that up. That was where I was going next was that that would be what I would send out to everyone who is actually on the panel as well as the, well, no, I'll send out the version before it needs to be copy edited. You get it back to me. We'll do it again. We've got enough time to do that. All right. Any other comments or questions or anything from anyone? Sarah Friedman. Hi. I'm sorry. I was a little slow to the draw earlier with raising my hand remotely, but I did want to note that the work as Representative Laund mentioned, the Justice Reinvestment Two Working Group is meeting two more times scheduled. They'll be meeting throughout 2021 too, but on November 24th and on January 11th. And Aetan as a Representative of RDAP is definitely welcome to present at the January 11th meeting, which will be the first meeting after this report is submitted to update the Justice Reinvestment Two Working Group on the work that this group is doing. So it seems like there might be consensus that that makes a lot of sense and to make sure that that body that kind of was the creator of Act 148 knows although good work that you all have been doing around this. Thank you. Anything else from anyone? All right. Then I would like to entertain any new business that people may have going once, going twice, sold. Okay. Next meet up. Sheila, you just got in under it. Sheila. Yeah, I'm here. I am so sorry. I just want, I'm sorry, I'm having like lighting issues and I don't like being able to talk without people seeing my face. There we go. So I just wanted to know if there was a possibility. Again, it comes back to accessibility. When you were talking earlier, it's about transparency, but also about accessibility. And I was wondering about this group's ability to have documents and have folders for that to be accessible for us and for the community. So for example, having a folder with RDAP and then having the subfolders of all our meeting, all of our genders in there, our meeting notes, then the videos, then any bills or legislations or materials that come to us. I've just noticed that being on this panel and how we receive information can be very overwhelming and daunting. We get it from many different people and resources and a lot of that comes to you and then out to us, but it's not necessarily in a, I don't know if it's all kept in one space or place. At the moment, it's all on my hard drive, but yeah. And so I was just wondering if there's somebody that is working with us that would be willing to, outside of the normal panel members, if there's somebody that'd be willing to work with us, to create sort of a folder so as people are trying to access this information and gain accessibility and better understanding and the history of this group and what's taking place, as well as for us just on the panel to be able to refer back to that bill or that article or that document. I would love to see that moving forward with the panel. And then I was just a little bit curious as well, if this is the third year and if so, when do our appointees end? I got a little bit confused on that. I will find out. Thank you. Sure. David. So just in response to Sheila's point, some of the stuff can, we can put on an attorney general's office website. We have in the past, I admit during the pandemic, we have not been good about keeping that up, but we can try to catch that up and at least get minutes and agendas up there and a link to the Orca Media page to whatever extent they have their stuff or they have our stuff posted. In terms of a broader sort of shared file that would have other documents that might not, we might not post on that site, I can think, I can ask our IT people if that's something that we can help out with, it may well be. I just have to do some inquiries on that. So I'll check on that. This might also fit in. You all should know that I've been having conversations with David about someone who is actually just the note taker. It may well be David that what Sheila's asking for, we really could use that person to sort of be in a sense a dedicated sort of administrative assistant in a way for this body. Someone who not only take notes, but to whom I would forward everything that comes to me, they would then compile it in such a way. Yeah, that would be enormously helpful. We'll keep figuring that out. Does that seem reasonable, Sheila? Yes, that would be really, really great. I just, I'm currently trying to dump things into a doc and it's just over the work that we've done, we get so much correspondence of information. It would be really useful for me as a panel member, and I'm sure extremely useful as the community is trying to figure out what information and what articles and resources we're using to form our decision-making. Great. Okay. Any other new business? All right. The next meeting is scheduled for the 8th of December. We will have submitted this a week prior. My sense would be pandemic, not withstanding. People may want a month off. It's not like there's going to be any pressure to get something in because we will have just done that. This is quite a push, or at least it is for me. People may want to have December off and that we come back fresh at the beginning of January. We did do that actually in January this year because December, we were still trying to get the report together that was due in 2019. So it's not fun. I don't know. Is there any other discussion on that? People would, and let's not go too long on this. It's not that important. Hey, Tom, I'll make a motion that we don't hold a meeting in December and unless you call one. Okay. Is anybody seconding it? Yes. Can I see by electronic hands all in favor of this motion? Great. Thank you. All opposed? Okay. The motion has carried. We will not meet in December unless, as the Chief has proposed, something has come up and I will then call a meeting. Okay. The next motion would be if someone would like us to adjourn. I'll move that we adjourn. Okay. Anybody like seconding that? I'll second it. This is just. Okay. Thank you. All in favor? Let's yell. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. All opposed? All abstaining? We are adjourned. I will be in touch by email and I will see you all after what I hope is for all of you a safe and healthy holiday. Happy holidays, everybody. Thanks. It's fun. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye. Good work. Bye. Thank you. Bye, Sheila.