 Let's start with introductions and launch into the meeting. Welcome everyone to the May 2023 meeting of the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel. I will go around my screen and if people could just give a brief introduction that would be great. Aaron can we start with you. Sure hi everybody Aaron Jacobson from the Attorney General's office and specifically our offices community justice unit. Great. Chris. Chris for a loris research associate with crime research group here observing and full disclosure, I am an appointee to the Vermont Criminal Justice Council but I am not here in that capacity. My name is Elise and I am here on behalf of kids safe collaborative which is based in Burlington and chin and county. Welcome. Yeah. Derek. Good evening everyone nice to see you Derek me a deaf Nick he him pronouns. My role is the community and restorative justice executive with the Department of Corrections so I'm the designee for commissioner demo. Great. Thank you. Rebecca. Hi everyone, Rebecca Turner from the office of the defender generals off panel member. Great. Tiffany. Hi there. Hi everyone. I'm Tiffany North read I was actually. Hi there. I was invited to attend by Susanna. I will be working with her at the office of racial equity as a data lead, and I'm very excited about the work that's being done here and excited to support the efforts going forward so thank you for having me here. Absolutely thank you. Hi, can I jump in. I showed up exactly at this moment I'm sorry that I'm late I was next door at the state house trying to figure out some logistics. The. Yes. Hi welcome Tiffany. When you introduce yourself everybody's eyes got really wide because they're saying to themselves. Oh finally we got someone. Yes, everybody. Hi, really happy to be here as Tiffany introduce herself to you. She is the lead for the DRJS that this panel is responsible for creating. Her second day is today so be gentle. And we have already begun having conversations about work plan and visioning and MOUs and. She's got a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm it is both exhausting and exhilarating. Great. We are so happy that you're here on so many levels Tiffany thank you so much. Thank you. And I have a lot more I'm on public Wi Fi so I'm a little nervous about having the video on. Hopefully it will be kind to me. But I, everything is resounding with me everything that you're doing is is amazing. And I've just been doing a lot of background now, reviewing some of your reports and minutes and getting up to date but I, I feel like this is where I think where you're doing this is wonderful. And I see a good fit. I'm excited. I'm ready to meet all of you and to be a part of this. Looking forward to that. Welcome. Okay. Mark. Good evening, everyone. I am Reverend Mark Hughes, and I am the executive director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. I'm a Berlin Tonian. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Tiffany for sure. Thank you to Zana. And I'm, I'm also the, the chair of the Health Equity Advisory Commission so definitely interested in hearing more about some of the stuff that's going to be happening since we got Tiffany on the ground I don't want to like make you nervous Tiffany but we are glad to see. Thank you, Tyler. Good evening everybody my name is Tyler Allen I'm the adolescent services director in the for the Department for Children and Families Family Services division I am the commissioner designated appointee to this panel. Great. Jessica. Hi everyone, my name is Jessica Brown she her pronouns I'm an at large appointee to our DAP and I teach and work at the Vermont law and graduate school. Great. Thank you. Susanna do you want us, you want to tell the world who you. Yes, hello good evening everybody Susanna Davis racial equity director for the state. Right. Jeff. Jeff Jones panel member at large. I'm not trying to be cool. This time of year the sun comes over my thing into my eyes, and I can't see the screen unless they were at. Got it. Thank you. Sheila. Good evening everyone welcome Tiffany so happy to have you here. She last she her pronouns on panel member and executive director of the root social justice center. Oh, there. Jennifer. Jennifer Pullman, the director of the Vermont Center for Crime and Conservancy. Your audio is a little funky just so you know. Thank you. Thank you. Got it. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Ting Ren. I'm the evaluation and programming analyst at Shelburne farms. I'm a community member on the panel. Director of racial equity. And sorry I missed the last 2 meetings because I had a conflict and I can only stay for 45 minutes today. But I'm trying to keep up with the notes and also the 2 subgroups that I'm working with. Yeah, so, so glad to see everyone today and welcome Tiffany. I'm so excited about your new role here as well. Wichee. Hi, everyone. My name is Wichee out of 2 pronounced he him his executive director by the partnerships and data systems and health equity expert appointed to this advisory group by the office of racial equity. Great. Grant. Grant Taylor here taking minutes for the meeting. Great. Thank you. Judge Morrissey. Hopefully you can see my video on. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. So I'm Mary Morrissey I'm a superior court judge and I am the judiciary designate to this committee. Thank you. Thank you. And Matthew Vermont child advocate. You did it. Thanks. I'm Matthew Bernstein he and pronounce Vermont child youth and family advocate. Welcome Tiffany. I'm a member of the community and I am going to be cooking dinner and doing some childcare during this meeting so I will mostly listen, but I am here. Thanks so much. Oh, and Julio, you've just popped up. I'm Julio Thompson. I'm an assistant attorney general director of the civil rights unit. I'm here as a member of the public. Thank you. Okay, for announcements we had. Well, I'm, Susanna had the, like, you know, the big announcement that we have Tiffany now. Thank God. I feel like this is the culmination of an enormous effort, which I guess I feel that way because it is. But again, thank you. And the only announcements that I have are that Jen Furpo cannot make it. Chief Don Stevens will not be able to make it and Tim leader do Mont won't be able to make it he's ill. He was struggling and trying to come and I just sort of said would you please just go to bed. So, I think he did. And those are the announcements I have anyone any others. All right. I kind of have. Oh, go ahead. I kind of have one and I think you actually some of you may already be aware of it. There's a grant opportunity that was brought to my attention. So, I have the webinar on it today. And it's an inter juris multidisciplinary type of thing and I'm trying to find the. Oh, dear, the pressure. Sorry, it's a data visualization of structural racism and race. And I'm going to put the link in the hats. It calls for multi sectoral and interdisciplinary approaches. And it's from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And if anybody wants to review this and if you think that it may be something that we might be interested in or that our partners or that state government could get involved in then I'd be happy to support an application. I'm going to put the link in the chat. You're not getting anything in the chat. Email it to me and I'll email it out. Okay, thank you. Yeah, just a quick announcement thought the subcommittee that's doing the community safety reviews or reviewing them has met and we've delegated and we are hoping to have at least for our own internal subcommittee some ideas of what we're working with by the end of the month. Right. Thank you for that. That's good news. Okay, anybody else. No, okay. Then let us move on to the minutes from our meeting last month. Any discussion any corrections changes from anyone. No, okay. Then we would need to entertain emotion. And then we would approve the minutes from our April 11 meeting, I think. Yes. Got it. All in favor please shout or wave your hand or something. I, I, I. All opposed. All abstaining. Me, I wasn't there. Thank you. The motion carries the minutes are approved as submitted. Thank you very much. Ah, now, onward to the state of DCF requests of the our dad. You will recall that we keep putting this off because things keep coming up. But it is at the top of the agenda tonight because my God, we've got to look at this. You, the spreadsheet that was initially created by Susanna, Jessica, and Sheila, yes. Was the was sort of the seed for this. Elizabeth went on and went further with it. Everything is in SharePoint. We were to look at it. And each of us talk about primary concerns so that we could sort of direct the DCF people that would be Tyler to toward where they will where the our gap would like them to go. So I would like to do that now. I'd like to go through people's reviews of the of those sheets that information and put that forth so that we have something to give to Tyler. Can we do that. Okay, the silence is not making me feel very reassured. But if we cannot do that. May I ask what we can do. Rebecca. Hi. I'll jump in and be a start the discussion. Great. People can respond. But Tyler, thanks for being here. I'm going to direct to you because I, these are Elizabeth's recommendations that I understand she pulled. From other groups reports or conclusions right sort of a summary to give us. Is that right. Clarification these are these are recommendations summary findings, things that these are all the activities in the realm of juvenile justice or, you know, DCF that we've kind of pulled together these are. These are the things that have been going on in the realm of racial equity work. So there, there are many and varied some of them are recommendations some of them are findings they come from different reports, but we're touching all of it. So I'm kind of interested in feedback and a are there recommendations we should be like focusing more towards is there any concerns around any specific activities that we're starting to drive that we're identifying here. Are there any data points that are shared in that text that are of particular concern that we need to strategize around helpful Rebecca. I think so. If I if I'm going to take what you said and just maybe share what I took away as a high point. I didn't jump into correct, but I saw that there was some recommendations findings related to concerns about reporting to getting law enforcement involved quickly. There are various suggestions on how to deal with training, or perhaps data collection. That's also now merging with a second subject area which is addressing directly how to how to address racial disparities in the systems there was references to CRG's recidivism report, which connected to our work. There was a great work last month related to the big 12 offenses. There's, there's a really hard hitting fact conclusion buried in there about the racial disparities of is it 1618 to 19 year old black youth were excluded from this study that was, was being conducted by CRG's recidivism study because they were charged with a big 12. So there was a split note in there and they say that 14% of the 18 and 19 year old black youth were excluded 14% of 18 and 19 year old black youth were excluded from the study because of the big 12 ads compared to only 8% of white defendants who were similarly excluded because they were charged with the big 12. So to me, what a big takeaway here that feeds into our concern last month was a significant damage that youth experience really when they're thrown too early into the criminal justice system but the racial disparities, which was discussed by Marshall last month about overall statewide arrests being somewhat with 300% greater than white youth but here we have this figure in terms of the big 12 itself, right 14% versus 8%. So I think that's an interesting theme I see coming up here again tracking data in terms of I know there's suggestions here on how to get databases to capture race and ethnicity data here in the court database system. And we know that there are other other efforts in the judiciary trying to fix that but I am interested to hear about DCS particular tracking of race data, particularly in terms of racing at the same day or not just of who's entering, not just the youth themselves, but who's making the calls to report who's taking the intake. Who's making the charging decisions like just sort of the whole picture of race and ethnicity. And I wondered if, if there's anything there. Final that. That's what I saw but I also have another suggestion of should I just stop but I have another suggestion that's not go go. I've recently been made aware that Sarah George, and will Gradella who's a prosecutor working in Sergio's office and shitting dead has initiated a project I think not quite a year old. And it's focused on chins, so not juvenile delinquencies with chins, child neglect petitions, and they were concerned about the significant racial disparities in that regard in Shinden County and so they initiated a project. Again, last summer, where they, they included on the legal team third party screeners to be the first to receive the allegations the affidavits to scrub them as I understand it. So any identifying facts or information related to race for ethnicity. And once that was scrubbed I understand them they brought it to the prosecutor to then make the, I think the hoped for assessment of more of removing biases or trying to remove some of the biases that could come up into the affidavits. I thought that was fascinating and perhaps we might want to hear from her how it's going. But that's the chins but whether or not that could be a suggestion that we pursue to address directly the discretionary biases that creep in at the prosecutorial stage for delinquencies. Okay, thank you. Tyler you. Oh, go ahead, Aaron. I need to bring up new proposed priorities if Tyler wants to respond to what Rebecca just said. Okay. I mean I think some of this I'm taking notes on all of the things that you're putting out there Rebecca is like these are, these are potential areas of exploration I think they're all good ones everything that went in here is stuff that we're working on. I do appreciate the fact that chins that might be I don't know if that's considered outside of the scope of this group, or within it. It's, it's not the juvenile justice system we're talking about so much, but it's certainly an area of disparity, and it's certainly an area of exploration. And I also would be fascinated with the findings on what happens when they, you know when when they're looking at scrubbed scrubbed cases so I'm interested in that data mapping, there's several complications that come up with DCF. One of the most significant complications we have is this we have two systems that we utilize to hold all of our, all of our data in the primary one is I believe from 1979 maybe 1982. It is very I think it's like a C++ sort of system, it is one of those that it is so aged that anytime we want to try to put in a new field or gather a new data point. There is risk that the entire system collapses that's what we call the SSMIS system. So we have been that that's been one of the things that DCF has put forth for the past couple years. We've been able to put a little bit of money into it every year legislation the legislature has awarded us some money that will receive a federal match towards the development of what we call the CWIS system, which is comprehensive child welfare informational system which has greater capacity to communicate with other systems so on and so forth. That's a multi year project to build such a system but I think that'll integrate nicely with the work that Tiffany's doing. It should be able to speak to other systems it is the standard that all states are reaching Vermont is I think the farthest behind when it comes to child welfare systems in terms of tracking data. Every other state has at least what's called the SACWIS system, which is kind of the precursor to see with and what we have is the precursor to SACWIS so there's a big limitation in terms of how we can hold demographic data. That being said in the juvenile justice realm a lot of what we rely on is data that comes directly from the courts. And so these report findings are coming from court data around it and often the court data is reflecting data sets that are incomplete if if we you know and I think we've talked about this quite a bit in this group in years past, about how if a law enforcement officer does not identify the race of a youth. At, you know, at the starting point that that kind of proceeds quite a ways down the line as just a na, which is problematic for us. There's a lot of questions about it but we, we've been really pushing forward we want to on data is only valuable if it's, if it's under, if it's consistent, or these data is valuable with its consistent so we can try to make assumptions about some of those data sets but we, we can't conclusively say that everybody that's marked as an unknown is a as a youth of color, for example, but we can probably make some assumptions about that so these are the data questions that have driven this group a lot. And I think that's very interesting, or that's very worthwhile conversation, although I don't want to bog down this group too much. And lastly, the big 12 conversation is, I think we'll talk about it more when we talk about s4 and how that's going. I do, I think it's very interesting. And that is a very relevant and very important data point of which youths are going kind of direct access to the adult criminal justice system when they are by age eligible to be going into the family system so that you know that's a very timely and relevant conversation so these are all good starting points. Great. Thank you, Aaron. Something that's of interest to me and is kind of squarely within the work that will and I do at the Attorney General's Office is regarding diversion and pre trial services. I know there was a CRG report about disparate access to diversion and pre trial services or I guess I would say folks of color being referred to diversion or pre trial services less often than white participants in that system. And so the diversion program has done a lot of work on its data collection. And so we could probably pull some of that and provide some of that information to our DAP and or the legislature. I would say that that's not, you know, having the data is important but the other part of this is really with the decision making that goes into who gets referred and who doesn't buy prosecutors so that's another piece of the puzzle to take a look at and then connecting that to youth and the alternative justice programming that is available to youth but making sure that we're tracking who has access to those alternative programs who doesn't and connecting that to the it looks like there was a response juvenile justice state advisor advisory group funded the Burlington Community Justice Center to do statewide training on the benefits of pre charge restorative justice programming for youth. So that is a that's a really potentially exciting place to be making a difference in that not everywhere around the state of Vermont has robust pre charge programming pre charge being when law enforcement just refers directly to a restorative justice community center and the participant has the opportunity to just stay out of the criminal justice system entirely, not every jurisdiction has that so it's, it's new. And there are a lot of exciting conversations around trying to codify pre charge, making that a more robust and streamlined and consistent opportunity. But because it's new, then we get to kind of design it from the ground up and of course that would involve data. So, it's a, it's a great opportunity both for trying to help address the issues that kids are experiencing that might lead them to being involved with the criminal justice system, but also in thinking how we design those alternative justice programs from the get go. Tyler, do you want to respond at all to that or respond so much as to say on that note about the pre charge training. That is underway that activities underway I know the state advisory group has not yet had an opportunity to as a whole group meet together and go over any preliminary findings associated with that work effort. But as they do, I will ask that group if that's something I can share back to here maybe bring representation to share it Elizabeth actually would be phenomenal to present it when she's back this should be the last month that you're stuck with just Tyler without Elizabeth because she is due to come back at the end of this month God willing. And, and so that would be that I think that'd be fantastic. Sheila you had your hand up before do you. Did you. Did you want to take it down. I wanted to sort of make a comment but I didn't and then I changed it sort of changed my mind so I did take my hand down thank you. Okay. Okay. Great. What are the first results. Tyler, for the. It's in spite of the fact that it sounds absolutely pathetic. I would look at Rebecca and go, what she said, that's where I went. And one of the reasons I went there was also partly because of the article that will a feral sense to us that I sent out to the panel. which was that study from Northwestern, I believe it was Northwestern, having to do with how black and brown youths who were charged as adults were, I don't remember how many times more likely within 16 years to die of a gunshot. It was fascinating, but it was profound in the sense that it shows the resonances of such decisions that these high impact, high discretion moments that we've already identified have even further impacts that I don't, I at least personally did not suspect. And so that was part of what gave a lot of energy to what my choices were, even though they really mimic what Rebecca was doing. But it was partly, I really, that gave, that supercharged my concern around those areas. Anyone else? Rebecca? I'm not gonna join on my own back in Van Wacken with your commentation on, but actually I'm getting a separate request because I referenced a CRG recidivism study that was referenced in Elizabeth's additions to her. And I know, Chris, you're here not in the capacity of CRG, but is there a way for you, because we're trying to link those into the docs. I don't see that CRG recidivism. Yeah, right now I'm in the process of sending those to grant. I don't see it, I guess there's no chat on Zoom. I'm not a Zoom guy mostly, so. Correct. Well, there's not on this particular version. Hey, Ton, who would you permit me to send it to? You want me to shoot it to grant right now or is there somebody else you want me to shoot it to? This is the report from CRG. Yeah, the two of them. The recidivism analysis, DCA. It would be nice if you sent it to grant and if you sent it to me and if you sent it to Mark Hughes. Perfect, I'll do that right now. Thank you. I don't have the capacity to send it to everyone at our DAP or I would. No, that's, if you'd send it there, I can take it from there when I have a moment. It's hard to facilitate the meeting and email at the same time, but I will get there. I will do that. And A-Ton, if you forward those to me, I can put them in our SharePoint so at least members can easily access these reports. Will do, will do, yes. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else? Tyler, just go ahead, Rebecca. Well, I did want to just flush out a little more why I think this is the natural next move. We've done data to death, I feel like, on this panel. And we know it's not finished. And Tiffany, I'm also gonna say welcome. We're so excited you're here. But I think that also what we've identified is the discretionary decision-making points. And I think that I would love to see this panel now go to the next point, which is how can we try to check, make recommendations to the legislature on addressing directly how discretion is exercised? And so I think that whether it's, we invite Sarah, George in to talk about this one particular project or go elsewhere and see what's going on nationally in terms of directly addressing these critical decision-making points. But I would really love to see this panel go to this, I think natural and critical next level. Okay. Tyler? Just wanna say I really support all of your instinct on that. That's something that's really, not just interesting to me, but as we think of these discretionary points, I think there could be some value into just mapping where discretionary decision-making points are and understanding it. I had this awareness, somebody was asking me a question about a certain data point it had to do with youth of color entering into adult criminal charges or something like that from a report we had. And I kind of had this thought to me as I pin it out and said, this doesn't concretely say where the discretionary point is, my guess is that there are a multitude of discretionary points and every time they compound against each other so that when you're starting to measure at the highest level of impact of this is a youth who's entering into the adult criminal justice system, there's a number of decisions that have been made starting from this is a youth who had more policing activity in their neighborhood that turned into this is a decision of a law enforcement officer to kind of to not divert, to this is a decision made on how to charge this youth and it kind of goes up and up and up. This is the, you know, this is denial of seeking a youthful offender opportunity or whatever it is. So the higher that impact is, the more compounded the potential is and it would be really good to see, is it an even increase? Is it just one point that is there's huge disparity? Is it, you know, where does that lie? And then that could really bring focus to what work needs to happen from an intervention standpoint to kind of minimize that entire curve. Great. Susanna. Thanks, I'm gonna add to what Tyler just said. I think that once you start getting at those questions, at what point did some of the bigger impact happen and where the discretionary points that have moved the needle more in a person's life than others, that's where you're really gonna start to see the different systems at play, right? Because some of these decisions have to do with things like, hey, my public housing complex has a clean halls program, you know, and then before you know it six months later, a coy girl is getting chumped, right? So I think that that's when you're gonna start to see those non-criminal justice systems. And I know that this group is pretty squarely focused on criminal and juvenile justice, but I think if we really wanna start looking at those and talking about discretion, we have to be willing to explore other topics like housing insecurity, like food insecurity, like educational attainment disparity, discipline in schools, IEPs, and students living with disabilities, et cetera, because I think those are some of the decision points that are feeding into the decision points that we're talking about exploring. Okay. Anyone else here? Rebecca? I just wanted to bring in, because I've been on this panel for so long that I realize not everyone has been, but Tyler, you asked this question of charting out the various discretionary decision points in the delinquency system, right? And the criminal court system. And there was, and Jess, I'm really hoping you'll remember, and others here on this panel, we mapped those out and whether it was ultimately at the beginning and then we included and built upon in the data entity project, but there is something with this panel's work where we tried to address those. So I just wanted to make that, share that with everyone. We did do that, because I remember, we were at the law school and Jessica wrote it on the blackboard. You remember that too, Suzanna? Okay. I wanna know where that went. That was a long time ago. I mean, was that pre-pandemic? If we were meeting in person at the law school? It was pre-pandemic. It was around August or September of 2019 because I remember I had just started. So it was my first art at meeting or second one. I don't throw anything away. I'll look through and see what I could find, but there was that. But I appreciate Suzanna's point and critical point, which is I know what we did not do. We think we started it from point of initial contact with the system that we identified. And Sheila, you were great to point that out. It was school systems, where we were thinking beyond just law enforcement as initial contact. But who was reporting the kids to law enforcement? I remember that, because Sheila, you were talking about guidance counselors and such. Yeah, and I think the reason why I haven't said anything is because I think I said my things at our last meeting, if I'm not mistaken. And one of those things I thought that I brought up was mandated reporting. And specifically, we often just think of the school system, but the school system in itself is just enough to think about and how that's mandated. And what's like going off of what Suzanna said, I mean, we're talking about, when we talk about those identities of those youth, those are also typically disproportionately the youth art who are entering or getting reported on in terms of going into DCF as well. And so I'm not only curious about within the schools, but the whole conglomerate of people who are mandated porters from people who are running organizations that are housing youth to the counselors, to whomever. There are so many people and what does that mean? And from what I've heard and understand, there's an over-reporting and that disproportionately affects youth of color. And then once the youth of color enter the system, I mean, that's all the conversations that we're having. So I'm very much think that's a priority for us to be talking about that. I also just wanted to bring up, because Rebecca, I don't want to, but I'm trying to figure out what space it would be that wouldn't be this space to say this, because I wanna make sure I'm understanding what you're talking about with the Chin's bias and scrubbing cases. I felt the reason why I raised, well, the reason why I raised my hand is because I felt something, a reaction when the scrubbing of cases, using that language in the actual act of scrubbing of cases because it was like a yes and, and I wanted to make sure in this space that I said the and of that. So as I understand and see the relevancy of having scrubbed cases, I kind of wonder how far that goes because I'm not really trying to create equalness or being equal and trying to create equity. And I'm trying to create visibility. I'm trying to dismantle white supremacy culture. And so in those things you actually see me and you actually see my race and I'm actually represented and in an equitable way, I'm actually then given the resources I need and not in an equal way. And I just think I don't wanna speak for, but I know Chief Don Stevens isn't here. If we think about the Indigenous people, the Native people, I think this really, really pertains to, they have some separate rights as well. So we can't deny their culture, their race when they're entering, even though maybe others would. And so I just wanted to be careful that I'm sort of curious of if that was something that our adapt choose to adapt or want to go further with, then my hope is it would be like, not like a game, but like a tester of like, okay, we presented it as your scrub, but actually guess what? These people are this. And then we proceed accordingly based on who they are, but don't continue on the scrubs thing throughout the duration of whatever needs to happen. And I just, I don't know if that's clear on here for people who might be tuning in on video. I don't know what their reactions, but I had a somatic feeling to being scrubbed and being invisibilized, even though we know that's what's currently happening for us as the our adapt to actively suggest or participate in it is something different for me. Yeah. Rebecca. Yeah, no, I appreciate you sharing that here Sheila. And I think that what I was referencing that I understood the project that Sarah George is implementing in her office is the internal office decision as to whether to charge a particular youth with an offense. And and and also or no, not not it's in the Chin's context. Sorry, she's doing it in the Chin's whether to file a Chin's petition against parents, right? To get that family pulled into the child welfare family court system. What's intriguing to me is she's doing that in the context of address disparities. And I too have concerns or questions as to how she's doing it, what she's, what she's, what they're focused on removing from a defender's perspective. I see police affidavits loaded racialized language where you wonder how much police officer suspicion is being going towards criminality versus completely innocent conduct based on the race, ethnicity identified by the affianthal law enforcement officer. You can see it throughout in terms of are you hanging out in front of a store window. It's a suspiciously, what is this? Everything, all this innocent activities is all of a sudden criminalized, right? And so to me it's an intriguing idea that some prosecutors offices around the country are trying to do some self-reflection internally to address those disparities. I've seen some prosecutors office like Sarah George do it by bringing in sort of removing, trying to remove that subjective bias that they're worried about in the charge. They don't, that the prosecutors don't see it from because they're reading it in the affidavits, what's going on and how, if that approach is working, what is it based on? So for me it's, I shouldn't have suggested full, I want us to make that recommendation. To me it was interesting to know we have a prosecutor here in the state doing something similar, how she got there to learn from her, whether she has any results since she's almost a year out from implementing this project, whether it's useful what she's learned. So I thank you for letting me clarify that but I think it's an interesting idea. Lots of potential problems with that for sure. Thanks for your response, Rebecca. Anyone else? Judge Morrissey. Hi, thank you. So can I just ask when you were, when you did the exercise in 2019 about trying to identify the decision points, what did you then do with that information after you did that? Did it go further than that where somebody actually took it to the next step to see what was happening at those decision points or did you just identify the decision points? Cause I think that's a really interesting exercise to do and I think it may be worthwhile to do it again because I do think that having floated through now three counties during the pandemic, I think that the pandemic did result in more counties using alternative ways, alternatives to the criminal justice system and it may be worth doing it again. So I'm just curious as to what happened after you did that. We, in the end, it morphed into one of the two reports that came in, I can't remember if it was 20 or 2021 where we identified the high impact, high discretion moments and put those out for the legislature to consider. We found that there was tremendous variability in what actually got looked at. I mean, some of the areas that we identified, there was no data or some important organ in the criminal justice system didn't have the data, others did, it was very uneven. If I'm wrong on that, would someone correct me? But that's my memory, but that's what it morphed into in the end. And do you know whether or not after the report was generated, that resulted in people looking at those decision points or did it just get introduced and then it just kind of stopped? If I weren't so doe-eyed and optimistic, I think I'd say it just stopped. Okay, all right, thank you. Sure, I don't say that happily. Understood, understood, thank you. Anyone else? If possible, I've been taking all the information in, but I would be interested in seeing that kind of that conceptual mapping of those decision points because I think it- Of course. It could lend to finding data to support maybe understanding that better and figuring out kind of where to target efforts. I really think that you could have the potential for a kind of analysis where we could look at, depending upon the data, we might do a multivariate analysis and see which one of those decision points has a stronger impact. And generally we would say, okay, we will look at what they might call a coefficient of variation and we could really map all of those different decision points and see which one comes out to be, to have the most influence or could even somehow rank them, depending upon that. Now, it gets a little bit complicated, I think. And maybe this is where we kind of get together with the different departments and see what data is available because I know that depending upon the question that we're asking, the level that we're looking at because there could be potential to link it, to link by individual, but I doubt that that capability exists across departments. But we could, it could be an ecological study to start where we could look by county. Maybe we're not linking individually, so it could give us a rough idea of where these different decision points, how they're operating by county level. But it's very fascinating, I think this discussion and it's given me a sense of where the needs are. So hopefully that helps a little bit. We'll have to get those reports to you, Tiffany. So I'll have to get your email address and so I can forward those to you. I'll do that. Thank you. Mark. I'm just gonna keep my video off because things are pretty goofy over here right now, but I would just add to that, to the whole conversation that it's important that what we're focusing on is this high impact, high discretion decision points. Because there are a lot of decision points and this goes back to the conversation that we were having about five years ago, we're having the same conversation. But those, I think with data and I probably would get an agreement for most everyone on this is that we don't want all of the data. We want the most, we want the data that's most significant, right? We want the data that's gonna be, that's gonna serve the highest utility and make us most impactful. So just a caution on decision points, high impact, high discretion is what I would be looking for. Okay. Thank you. Whichee? Going off of Mark's point, I do agree that we don't want all the data and that we should be selective. I guess my question is like, who gets to say where those impacts are and how, or like those like selected areas and how were they decided? I guess that would be my follow up question in support of Mark's point. Rebecca. So quick responses and a suggestion that next month we put on the agenda, try to dig up that history of discretion and decision making points to just share and whether we want to spend five minutes or longer on it, we can have all be on the same page and then go from there. But Whichee, I think I'll share this much of my recollection of the 2019, 18 period or where I can see us in that classroom in VLS. My recollection, we were trying to land on with our expansive mandate, where we should prioritize our efforts for recommendations. And so we wanted to first understand, we knew as Mark said, we need could, we didn't want all data, we need to address high impact, discretionary decision making process. That's where we could have the greatest impact if we address those, right? And so, but to get there, we had to identify everything. And Whichee, as you asked, how do we go about identify the high impact? We literally, if I recall, sat there and grouped them in terms of general places, pre-charge, charge to conviction, conviction to sentencing, sentencing imprisonment, or, you know, and then post sentencing. And that was just criminal and that's missing 10 of them, right? And then I think we got to a point and others can correct me. My recollection is really, well, among the high impact decision making points within those major parts within the criminal court system, the criminal legal system, juvenile legal system, we thought it all compounded, right? As Sheila was saying, going even before the arrest. And so we focused on the beginning and we've spent a lot of time at the law enforcement initial contact with law enforcement, not before law enforcement, not the mandatory reports. I think also the discretionary decision making points came back in when we were at the subcommittee level, at the data entity planning level, where we were trying to figure out, Tiffany, we identified all the places where we should collect, ideally, we did a idealist recommendation of raising that this data. And we wanted who was making the discretionary decision making points at the high impact ones. And so we identified that in one of our appendices to the report. So recommendation, maybe next month we can pull all these old pieces together. Get on the same page. Sure. I also remember after we did that, we gathered, we sat there and we had so many moments as Mark is alluding to that we had just ridiculous number of moments of discretion. And then we picked the top five, if I'm not mistaken. We picked the top five and we relied on, which this is getting to your question. We were relying on everyone who's on the panel who has experience with this at which those top five, what those top five moments would be, how impactful, how important. Again though, this sort of calls forth. Sheila's concern, which has been a constant here about it doesn't just start with law enforcement. I mean that it goes to the schools. And that did not get fleshed out as well as it ought to have been. Sheila, what is that emoji? I think it's a crying face if it's not my bad. I wasn't sure why it was doing that. I'm sorry. Because it's only been like actually seven years, it's been five plus years of just bringing up, right. I think that we're talking about it now. I also want to add a double crying emoji because of all the things that we did in the processes to get there, we've only even just begun at the beginning part of the discretionary decision making with the law enforcement contact. And as now is coming out tonight, we weren't even complete in that effort. Forget, we haven't even gotten to the part of charging, you know, pre-trial, right, diversion, you know, Aaron, what you talked about. So yeah, talking about the triple emoji crying. Elise. So I'm not pretty to everything that you all have talked about in the last, however, many years you've been doing this committee, but Sheila's point just made me think of something in a very unofficial capacity. My organization produced the current mandated reported training. My understanding is that DCF is going to potentially be creating a new one. And there might be opportunity with the new training being developed. And somebody at DCF probably knows way more about this, but to utilize some of the data that you're talking about to impact the way in which the training is developed before it is. So that's a word on the street that a new mandated reported training is coming in the state of Vermont. And I'm not sure if you all knew about that or not. Are you saying this is new curriculum or somebody knew who's going to lead it or both? I have no idea about the curriculum because I don't believe kids safe collaborative is going to be a part of it this time around. If you watch the training now, that was directly produced at kids safe. And I don't believe we're going to be doing it this time around. I think it's going to be mainly out of the DCF offices. And I'm not sure how far along that is. I'm just saying it's something that should maybe be kept on the radar and looked out for. But we wouldn't be a part of it this time around. So it'd be a new group producing it. Can I just respond to that? I think that's really huge. And I don't know if that's in Tyler's wheelhouse or somebody else's wheelhouse of understanding, I know that we've made many presentations around the DOC and things of the Academy or whatever of what they do. I would love to know that about DCF. What a little bit more about, not a little bit more, a lot more about the trainings, about all the things, all the things, just like they came in and told us all the things about the adult stuff. Like I want to hear a more presentation about what is all the things? What is the training? What are the hours? What is the curriculum? How do you choose? All that stuff is really interesting to me. So thank you for sharing that. And I apologize if I wasn't supposed to. I just know that it's on the radar to be redone. I can respond to that, but Erin, you've had your hand up. I'll go ahead, Tyler. Yeah. Please respond while we're on this topic. Of course, Sheila, it is outside of my wheelhouse. We're talking about mandated reporters, all of the things. Some of that is in my wheelhouse. DCF is obviously responsible for a lot. And so when you're talking about trainings, or you're talking about the trainings that we provide for family social workers, our foundations trainings, how we're on board of that sort of thing, or you talk about training specifically for mandated reporters, which Elise, I will commit to getting some more information about what that is and what's going into that. I don't have anything to say right now about it, but I can bring something back next month about what the intention is, how to make that a better training, a more purposeful training. So I mean, I think all the things DCF is many varied. There's a hundred different policies that we can kind of go through. I am the older youth, which in part is juvenile justice, which is why I'm a representative here. But it goes far beyond that to your points earlier when families become child welfare involved to Rebecca's point about this is a chin's case. This is the family who becomes involved with DCF. Is what type of correlation do we see between children who go through the foster care system and other outcomes, their involvement in juvenile justice, criminal justice, so on and so forth. So I think we can ask lots of those meaningful questions, but in terms of bringing what goes into the work of DCF that is a many varied answer that would probably be best done, probably by multiple people. Erin. Thanks. Just to add another layer to the conversation around discretion points and high discretion points in particular. I think it will be so fantastic to have this information shared next month and it will be illuminating. And then we will also have to think about when we identify those decision-making points that we might want to try to do something about. For example, put some parameters around. How can we do that? Who has the authority to make the decision and therefore who has the authority to perhaps limit the discretion or add instruction about the discretion? It's kind of a legal question, but we can't assume that the best approach would be the legislature because the legislature might not have constitutional authority to tell prosecutors what to do. So I just think that's another layer we will have to think about it. Once we identify those decision-making points, what are our recommendations for how to provide some parameters that we think will make a positive difference? Okay. Sheila. Tyler asked what points or what would it be? I guess my response to your question is I don't know what I don't know. So I can't fully answer that question without saying yes and so the yeses I want everything because I don't know what I don't know so I don't know what to ask. In the focus of the conversation we're having right now is those high discretion points. That can be the start of the focus. So if we think mandated reporting is a high discretion entry point, then I would want to know what type of trainings, what type of policies, what type of things, what type of change avenues do we have to change mandated reporting? And any of the other high discretion points that we identify in the juvenile system, whether they're connected to you or not, maybe they're not connected to you, but maybe you're connected to the people it should be connected to that you could say, hey, this isn't my wheelhouse, but this is so-and-so wheelhouse. If they're not on the call already, maybe we can get them on the call. But that I guess to focus it, it's like I want everything, but to focus it for this group in this conversation, high discretion points. Thank you, Sheila. I just wanted to, I guess there's, Vermont is unique in that juvenile justice is managed in the same agency that the child welfare is managing. And so when we're talking about mandated reporting, we're talking about cases that are opened up for the purposes of child welfare, which it is a discretion point, but is it the same discretion? How is that related as a discretion point to a discretion point around somebody getting involved in juvenile justice? It would be potentially there's a link there or a correlation there, but it's quite removed those two things because they're very separate actions. One is introducing into the justice system for an act, a delinquency. And the other one is a question about, does this youth remain in this home with this family? And I don't know that I could speak to, so that's kind of what I'm, that's why I'm a mandated reporting is a discretionary point that has mitigating variable on the other end, because all mandated reports are then addressed by DCF in a uniform way, and the majority of them are screened out because this doesn't rise to the occasion where there's concern of safety in this environment due to X, Y, and Z factors. And so I guess that's the context for that. That being said, who decides to call in on a mandated report or as an unmandated reporter, absolutely there's discretionary, there's discretion behind that, but that's data that can't be tracked necessarily because those reports can come from anyone for any reason, some of which might be just overt in their bias, which would lead to a screen out. Are you making the claim between people who are actual registered mandated reporters versus somebody who's just making a mandated report? Is that the differentiation you're referring to in this moment right now? In this moment, I'm just saying a report can come through by anybody. If there is concern of abuse or neglect occurring, any person can call up the hotline and make a report. Here's my concern and why. Mandated reporters, are there certain people that should they not report, should they see something that is of concern that they are liable? They have to report that because they're mandated. So this is educators, doctors, there are lots of different people. So that's a report is not necessarily by a mandated reporter or a report can be from anyone. Okay, so yes, okay, so I understand that. And I think that that's part of the narrative of what we're talking about. I think being for myself and maybe this group to understand the complexity in the spectrum of mandated reporting is part of, I think educating us or informing us of this so we can figure out what to do. But I think what I'm asking is, any and all of that that leads back to DCF? Any and all of that that leads back to the juvenile justice system? It's a yes and it's all whether, I mean, you just said that all under, it's funneling through the DCF and all these other things. And so if that is the case, that is what I'm asking for. I'm not saying the group, we have a common consensus of the group we're asked for. So I'm saying, I would like to see more of what that means whether it's somebody and maybe even those numbers because even whether you're a mandated reporter, legally quote unquote or not, it's about the final outcome. And we're talking about disproportionately youth of color entering into the system and then what happens to them therefore on. So yes, how they got into the system, yes, but we're also talking about that outcome. So that's a discretion point, but it doesn't eliminate the outcome that we're talking about. So it doesn't matter whether it was Sarah or whether it was Joe who made the report, both of those kids ended up disproportionately of kids of color ended up XYZ. And that's the point that I'm trying to get at. And so if it's not your dad or not your info, it's not. But if it is, that's what I would like to see. Witchie. I have two comments. My first one is based off of Aaron's point. And I'm trying to remember what Aaron's point was. So I can remember what my point was. I'll get back to that one. My second point was based on this note about mandated reporting. And I know this is not exactly what, which all we're referring to, but I do want to sort of like remind us of that duality of like reporting of like, reporting it can be God to know more information. And also on the other hand, it increases labor cost, right? And adds bureaucracy, just sort of like reminding ourselves of like when we add a report, it doesn't mean that another type of reporting has taken out. And also that resources are gonna be spent by that organization or department trying to take care of that reporting. So just really thinking, just being cognizant of that. Aaron, do you remember what your point was? Yeah, sure. I was just saying that once we identify some of these high impact, critical decision-making points, another question will be how, what our recommendations are that could affect those decisions in a positive way. And because it's complicated in terms of who has the authority to make the decision can sometimes affect then who also has the authority to say, but we're going to put these parameters around how you make decisions. Right, thank you for reminding me that. I guess my question, it's more of a question than a comment. And I guess maybe more to Aiton than the whole group, but we are technically a legislative advisory group. So we're advising the legislature, but that doesn't necessarily mean that if we have recommendations that not necessarily the legislature can take up, but maybe different agencies or different branches, could we still make those recommendations and have them be noted to those parties? I don't see why not. Okay, thank you. I don't see why not. It's going a little beyond, but I like going beyond. Well, it's also to the point that I think we're all making that things don't happen in silos. No, they don't. No, it's important that when we look at things and we note that there are things maybe outside of our scope, they are noted to whose scope that does belong to and sort of given context from our perspective. Absolutely, I mean, that was Susanna's point when she was going and talking about, we have to talk about housing. We have to talk about all these other parameters. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I wanted to just point, pull in here that one of the reasons that we, and I remember this, that we didn't go before, there were two reasons that we didn't go before the criminal justice encounter in those, in the sketching, I would say, of the high impact, high discretion moments. The one reason was, it's about the criminal justice system. So, I mean, that's our purview and we were being very strict then. We don't have to be, but we were. The second point was, we were really having a hard time figuring out how to get the information, for instance, about mandated reporters, about anything that would happen that would be high impact, high discretion, that happens in schools. We weren't sure how to get that. Part of that being that there's a confidentiality issue, and we looked at that moment and quite honestly, and I don't say this to punish us, it was so complicated and so twisted that it was actually, I would say, a relief in some ways that we were, our purview is the criminal justice system and we just stayed there because we could and we also were just overwhelmed by, I mean, you know, all of you who are here, what we went through to get that table done that exists now. I mean, the data, it was so imperfect. It still is very imperfect. It's incomplete. Some data just isn't collected. It's nowhere to be found. And so when we got to talking about things like schools, we kind of went right or wrong. I'm not putting a value judgment on this. I'm simply acting as a historian at the moment that we went at that moment and went, let's start here. Let's start here. Mark. Yeah, I think we can say that we're further along than we've ever been. And I think we can stop punching ourselves in the heads and talking about all this regret. Stop it. So I think the other thing is is the, it's also the juvenile justice system. Yeah. And the juvenile justice system is very messy. Yeah. That's what Tyler is talking about. Whether it's like here or I'm at, it could be Burlington School District. They're on a DEI call right now in the other room. And, or it could lead all the way to the doorstep if it's a truancy thing and maybe even involved a parent for that matter in terms of incarcerating a parent. And yes, it has happened. I've seen it. It could be DCF, whether or not the child moves over to the justice system, whether there's a removal, whether there's a TPR, whether there's an adoption. There's all kinds of stuff that can go in different directions. The community justice center comes into play. The state's attorney's office, the police can refer the child directly into the community justice center with high level, high impact discretion, law enforcement, corrections. The list goes on and on and on. And I just said that to say this is that, you know, it's complicated. With the juvenile justice system is much, it's not linear. The criminal justice system is not linear. The juvenile justice system is less linear. Quite a bit less linear. But I can't help but to go back to what Tutana was saying is it's just, you know, this is a systems game that we're talking about. Whether it's, you know, as we're in, maybe later on, if there's time for a public comment, I can tell you more about some of the stuff that we're doing in this area with support and assistance to at-risk and justice impact that youth and young adults, just things that we're talking about doing because there's more than one way to skin the cat if you're in the cat. You know, in terms of just how to address, how to mitigate this, the impact of the systemic racism that we're seeing across these systems. And we gotta get outside of the governmental hat that we're wearing with police and thinking about, oh, well, we train people and there's all kinds of ways, you know, you got inside and outside. There's folks that we're doing stuff out here too, so I can tell you more about that. But, you know, the movers and shakers, you know, whether it's DCF, Howard, VDH, MHD, Correction, State's Attorney's Office, the list goes on, a lot of moving parts, Judiciary, CJC, United Way. There's a lot of folks that we're, you know, kind of navigating to address some of these outcomes to include the school district, to include, you know, like Capstone or CVOEO or CHT or Community Health Centers of Burlington. And, you know, again, the list goes on and on because there's a lot of resources that are out there that need to be navigated. And I think a lot of folks that are engaged, that are either at risk or just as impacted youth or young adults, part of the challenge that they have is they just don't know how to navigate these systems. I'll leave it there. And if there's time to talk later, I can come back and talk more about that. Thank you, Mark. Witchie. I have two things. The first one is just sort of lighting the mood, a little light humor here. Mark said, waste the skin of the cat if you're into cats. Just want to say if you're into cats, you probably don't want to hear about skinning cats. So I just thought that was funny. The second thing that I wanted to say, just to sort of, for me, you know, with a background in technology engineering, I feel like whenever I've had something messy, I kind of go back to start and I'm going to be a little naive. So if y'all permit me to be just a little naive, you know, if it wasn't messy, if it was a simple process, what would we want that to look like, right? Like, are we saying that we do want the juvenile system, right? Do we want the incarceration? I feel like, I feel like I'm maybe skipping ahead a little bit, but I guess my point is that when I think that there's something messy and there's a messy concept, I kind of almost want to step back and away from it and just think sort of being an ideal world of like, what would we want it to look like? What is the simplistic version of what it is that we envision and then start applying the layers that exist? And I think we might find things that we don't need to look at or things that we would want to look at more into or even, you know, redundancies in the system or places where things are just missing. So I just want to kind of like encourage us that when we get to the place that we're feeling like things are messy, things are too complicated to sort of grab, to sort of just do, sort of like a re-initialization kind of process. So I just want to throw that out there is something to think about as we try to wrap our brains around the system that's been around for hundreds of years and hundreds of years complicated policies and biases have seeped in. Okay, I want to make, it's 25 past seven. Tyler, the point of this was initially to give you enough to work on. I, about probably 20 minutes ago was hoping that you had enough. And now I'm kind of hoping that you don't want to kill yourself. I've just decided I'm never coming back at all. No, not at all. No, this is really, really good conversation. And I appreciate it deeply. And I think the starting point, the first handful of notes I took are based on this. There's a lot too. I think this conversation opened up tremendously because we are considering DCF in entirety as an agency. And DCF really, I see it as there's kind of two sides of the shop. One of those sides has to do with juvenile justice and one of them has to do with child welfare and which isn't to say that child welfare is the wrong place to be setting our eyes, but it opens up lots and lots of new questions, entirely different discretionary points and it's in juvenile justice, it's a little bit easier to say, well, we can agree on a common truth here is that we want to see less youth involved in juvenile justice. Like we can say we wanna see less adults in the criminal justice system that's a uniform which isn't to say that Derek doesn't provide incredible work to adults going through the criminal justice system in terms of rehabilitating and supporting their many diverse needs, but generally speaking, we can say less of that. With DCF it gets complicated because it's this huge range between preventative services to families reaching out for support services, to protective elements to it. So it's not as concrete as saying if somebody is involved with DCF that that is in and of self an outcome to step back from necessarily, it doesn't mean that there isn't disparity we should be addressing. Like where are we seeing to Mark's good point? Where are we seeing more terminating parental rights and so on and forth? So for the generally speaking, I can assume a termination of parental rights is something we wanna see less of in our state. Although typically when there's a termination of parental rights, it's because there is a egregious concern that should that not happen that somebody will die. So there's a different flavor and a nuance to some of those conversations. And so as we unpack that stuff as a group, depending on how far we wanna go down there, it really opens this conversation up. And I don't wanna shy away from any of those conversations. I just wanna paint a realistic picture of what that looks like. Then for the next meeting, I'd like some direction as to what, where this particular topic, now I'm not saying this right, what regarding this should go on the agenda for the next meeting? I would just suggest that Rebecca's good point before in terms of dusting off that discretionary point table that was defined, the charts where the data is and stuff like that. I think there's a good starting point in there. I think certainly there's plenty of fertile ground to talk about juvenile justice because we've avoided juvenile justice a little bit because juvenile justice, we have confidentiality questions. I think if nothing else that Tiffany is among us now, she's one of us. Oh, I don't know if she's still here, but the Tiffany's here, that's gonna be really, really relevant to, I mean, she's representing the agency that's gonna be pulling together data from multiple places and hopefully we can neutralize some of the confidentiality challenges. Okay. Rebecca? My suggestion is the juvenile justice subcommittee meet before next month and using this, the notes and our memories of what came out of the discussion to organize the fine points and see if we can sort of put an outline and suggestions to bring back to the group. Does that work? And Tyler, is that, I volunteered to join you the last one. I think we had some others. I'm hoping we have others, but... I would love it if you joined us, Rebecca. Okay, I'm in. And I'm hoping, Rebecca, that you will find this in your papers. That I'm so glad you don't throw anything out. Or anyone else, Sheila, Jess, Susanna. Right? Erin. I just have a quick question if Matthew Bernstein is still here about what is the mission or the charge of the office of the child, youth and family advocate? Do they have a charge to be thinking about disparities in the child welfare system? I wouldn't wanna take up somebody else's work if someone else is doing it, then it might not need to be a focus of ours. So just curious about that. He's not on anymore. Okay, I'll ask him. All right. If we can sort of close this off and get on to the other issues that we have on the agenda, the one thing I do wanna close this with though is a reminder and the person who I remember putting this forth over and over again as well as Sheila is Jess Brown about we don't necessarily need the data to know that something's not working here. And that has been a theme that we've had running along for the past few years. But I, you know, again, we were charged by the legislature to put together eventually the DRJS, which is about data. That's what the D stands for. So we very understandably got that to that point. But I do not want us to forget that really, really critical notion that we don't need the data to know there's a problem. That's all. All right, next was the update, Aaron, are you right? Update on the bills, the fear of you bills with which we've been involved, frankly, this session. Can I give it over to you, Aaron, to sort of fill us in on that? Sure, and I'll try to keep it brief in case folks have questions or if they want to bring up other bills, maybe that they are interested in talking about or worked on. I'm just going to talk briefly about S4 and S14, because those are the only two bills that the RDAP was asked to weigh in on by the legislature. So the first one that we were asked to testify about was S14, which is an act relating to a report on criminal justice related and investments and trends. And ATON did testify on that bill when it was in Senate judiciary. At that point, it was a much more specific and smaller bill than what it ended up being now. It used to be called something like an act relating to justice reinvestment reporting. And it was really just supposed to be about the entities that get justice reinvestment ramp funds to report about essentially what are they doing with the funds that they get and the effects that they think those funds are having. It was pretty simple. Justice reinvestment funds are supposed to come from DOC's bed savings. So in other words, when DOC saves money by not sending folks to out-of-state private prison, DOC is supposed to take those savings that they would otherwise have spent on that and use that money for justice reinvestment initiatives per the justice reinvestment one and justice reinvestment two reports that the Council for State Governments did with various government stakeholders. And the community-based organizations that get some of that money include community justice centers who are doing restorative justice work, the network against sexual and domestic violence and some others. And they were just supposed to basically report about what they're using the money for. It turned into a much into a bill about a much bigger look at the entire criminal legal system. And it's basically a two-part bill. The first part is what the Senate passed out. And it's basically Christopher Loris' homework bill, which is the CRG crime research group that has to take a really big look at basically the entirety of the system working with other stakeholders and reporting to many, many stakeholders about trends in the criminal justice system and essentially like how are we spending our money and is it working? Should we be doing something differently? And there's two reports due before the bill would sunset. One is November 15th, 2024. And the next one is three years later. And that second one is supposed to reference the first report and kind of like, okay, what are we doing differently? How are we making improvements based on this first report? It's really quite, it's going to take a really big broad look at the criminal justice system. Lots of data collection going on and analysis and reporting. That's what passed out of the Senate. And then on the House side, things kind of shifted because in part, there were some people that were, some entities that were very frustrated with the process around how it is decided who gets the money, the justice reinvestment money, the bed savings. And there were lots of concerns with how that process worked this past year. And that led to these wide ranging discussions around, well, maybe we need some kind of a special fund that will support community organizations. Maybe there then needs to be an advisory council that is directing the legislature about how to divvy up the special fund. That whole thing was scrapped. Now where it stands is DOC is just setting aside $900,000, which was an estimate of bed savings. And there's all these, there's is an advisory council with many stakeholders who are supposed to be recommending to the legislature by September 15th, I think about how this $900,000 is spent. That S14 has passed the Senate, not, no, passed the Senate, passed the House, but the Senate hasn't passed the amendments that happened in the House. And I don't know if it will do that before Friday when the legislature wants to wrap up. There's a conference committee right now to see if lawmakers from Senate Judiciary and House Judiciary can agree on some kind of consensus bill. If they can, then that will go to the floor and that could be voted out, we'll see. Okay. Any questions about S14? Aaron, if I'm not mistaken, that $900,000 is not expected to be a perennial annual amount for reinvestment, but is just the most recently calculated amount from FY22, I think, right? So that the monetization of our out-of-state bed savings is a variable amount from year to year too. I think that's right, that's my understanding too, Derek. Thank you. And I would say therein lies the rub for a lot of community. Yeah, how do you build a service infrastructure on the vagaries of one-time funding that may or may not be available and may or may not be available authorized on a subsequent year for that purpose, yeah. Right, and there were a lot of conversations too about why is it just these government agencies, primarily executive branch agencies, deciding who gets the money and for what purposes. And so that led to some interesting conversations about maybe there needs to be an independent agency, like an office of justice programs or something of that nature, but that did not come to any kind of fruition or anything close to it. But this is a bill that has led to a lot of interesting conversations and hopefully will, at the very least, lead to some good data analysis and collection and conversations around our spending priorities on the criminal legal system and how to do better with that. S-4, I think you should all be familiar with S-4 because that is the bill that we discussed last month that led to really important conversations with this group about how nobody had asked RDAP to weigh in on S-4, which is titled, well, it's the juveniles. I call it the kids' drugs and guns bill, but it's not called that. It's an act relating to reducing crimes of violence associated with juveniles and dangerous weapons. And you'll recall that Marshall Paul from the Defender General's Office came and presented to us some concerns that he had observed arising in the Senate that regarded racial disparities for youth of color that could flow from this bill if enacted. And we were concerned about that, but also just the very fact that we were not asked to weigh in despite our statutory charge to be advising the legislature about racial disparities. And so then also, as I think you all know, some of us did provide testimony once the bill got to the House side. A-Tom provided incredible, sorry, I was just pausing as I was thinking back into your testimony and trying to think of the adjective for it. It was incredible. It was really compelling, really persuasive. And it changed the tide on S4 on the House side. And so from that point on, there's just been a lot of negotiations between the House and the Senate Judiciary Committees about what was going to remain in S4, what wasn't, what language changes, what was going to be modified. The, you know, the cheap concern that Marshall Paul raised about S4 and it is like this multi-part bill, but Marshall was raising the concern about adding a whole bunch of crimes to the big 12 that would allow meaning that if a youth is charged with a big 12, then they can be adjudicated in adult court. S4 no longer adds any offenses to the big 12, except for all of the big 12 offenses that currently exist. Also adding to that is an attempt to commit any of those big 12s, but that according to Marshall Paul's testimony in the House would not actually really change the way those cases are handled now. So as it stands in S4, there are no new crimes added to the big 12. There is a Sentencing Commission Study Committee that will be charged this summer and fall with providing recommendations about whether a whole huge list of offenses should be added to the big 12, but as it stands now those would not be added upon the passage of S4. A whole bunch of other changes happened. The two committees have not agreed on them. This bill has not passed the House and the Senate. We'll see what happens. If anyone else wants to add anything to that, help me out, I'd appreciate it. Thank you, Rebecca. Yeah, I just wanted to add, congratulations RDAP specifically, like I, we, the Defender General's Office has been tracking this from the Senate side of S4 introduction when we became very alarmed at sort of the summary disregard that we were getting. The reception Senate tradition came to you and specifically as Aaron said, you heard from our General Defender, Deputy Defender last month on the specific disparities. And as Aaron referenced, but I cannot stress enough having, was in the room in House Judiciary, but for RDAPs not just requests to come and testify, pushing our way in to make it clear we should have been invited at Senate Judiciary, we're not. And we should be heard in House Judiciary and the Chair, Chair LaMonde being very gracious and inviting for sure, giving this panel the space, but it wasn't just A-Ton. It was panel members here who shared specific comments that A-Ton could share, but it was the letter writing campaign that I know we got from key community members that heard about this, that was instrumental. And, and Susanna Davis to your testimony before House Judiciary on the racial disparity impact of adding to, keep calling the big 12, it's the big 12 felony offenses list that makes it so that a youth is presumptively charged one of these big 12 offenses goes right to the criminal justice system. But this panel helped to stop was adding to it three, at least three more offenses where we knew there were already racially disparate numbers. So I just, I want to say, A, we should spend a moment, we had tremendous impact last month. And I know we haven't, it hasn't been voted on, I believe Aaron out of house, yet, as for. So we don't know where that's going, but where it stands as Judiciary really pushed back against the Senate version. And that was because of the testimony and the letter. So thank you everyone for the last minute scramble, but very tangible results. We'll see what happens, but. Yeah, I really want, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, sorry, I was just gonna say, I think it passed the House and now the Senate has to consider the amendments. So it's really close, but the question is, of course, what is the Senate going to think of this? Because they were the ones that did not and by our DAP, or I don't believe Susanna didn't get letters from the NAACP, didn't hear from us. So it'll be interesting to see what they do with it. But they did, in the end, get letters from the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, from Mark Hughes' group, and from both chapters of the NAACP. It was quite a brilliant letter. And I know that that was profoundly impactful. So stuff happened. Jennifer. I think I can follow on this as well on the record next to me. But I just, I don't want to be, I mean, I don't know how I'm gonna get any time. I mean, you're gonna be still coming here. You sound like you're in a tunnel. I don't think so. That's weird. Oh, there, that, well, not now. There was a moment. Oh, I really wanted to hear what you have to say. Oh boy. All right. Sorry. Anyone else questions or comments on this? No. I just want to add, and I know I expressed to you personally, Aton, I appreciate your testimony too. I thought you were magnificent. I really thought you represented this group really well, very articulately and held a nice line of expressing the outrage that I was hearing in this group last month, but also doing it with a sense of decorum and you were well, well received. And I felt a really palpable kind of impact from folks in the room. So I thought you did a really nice job in there. And again, kudos to the panel for providing all the feedback that was provided. Yeah, I did want to add, I thought in the latest version I saw, this is kind of a minor detail, but that the attempteds were retained when Marshall came and talked, he was comfortable with it. But there was two big 12 offenses, not attempteds, the aggravated were included with it. So if there's a, I can't remember what the two were, but adding an aggravated to the offense type essentially means that there was a firearm involved, there was a bodily injury, so on and so forth. It's a more kind of severe version of the same charge. So I don't think anybody had any problem with it. I think there was an assumption, murder, yeah, yeah. So aggravated murder as opposed to just murder, right? So I don't think anybody pushed back on those elements and sexual assault, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Those were the two new additions, but they're really not, they're not substantively different. They're legally different. And I think there is a version where they are wrestling with the question it's not added to the big 12, but wrestling with the question of carrying a firearm in the commission of an assault, but it is not included in there. It would be something to be considered by the, this case if it was a juvenile, it would go directly to family court, but it would be at that family court setting, they would make a determination whether or not should immediately move into criminal court. So if this was a felony offense that involved a firearm that that question would be asked in the family court. So again, it would not be originating in the criminal court as it would have if it was a big 12. Right, the compromise was for 16 to 18 year olds for there to be an expedited process for some of the crimes that could now under current law put them from family court into adult court, but just to expedite that process for some offenses. And this was a compromise from the house to the judiciary to say, we heard what your concerns are. Here's a process that we could do now without adding to the big 12 right away we'll let the sentencing commission delivery about the big 12. Can I try one more time? We can hear you. Okay, I'll be really quick. One piece I thought that this group would like to know has been added to the charge of sentencing commission is to explore whether or not big, whether or not burglary into an occupied dwelling should remain as a big 12. Because certainly there are times when courts have basically taken a really expansive view of that. So it could not, it might not even be a house. It might be a barn that's on the property. It might be a shed. So at the time when this was put in to my understanding it was contemplating that somebody would actually be in that dwelling. So now not only does somebody not even have to be in it but it can be an outraged dwelling. So they want the sentencing commission to see if that should remain as part of the big 12. Great, great. And I was trying to compliment you, Eitan. I thought you did an amazing job. You certainly had had everybody riveted. And I really think, I don't think, I think for me what they learned is that they didn't think about it. And I think that the Senate didn't think about it but I think the House didn't either. And I believe that if we had gotten the attention of Senate judiciary and I'm glad Marshall did bring us to the group that I really believe that Senator Sears would have heard this. Juvenile issues, if you know Senator Sears, those are really near and dear to his heart. So I think the learning for you all as our DAP is that start knocking on their doors and they'll let you in and they'll listen. But I think both bodies really realized like, whoa, we totally dropped the ball. And I have been, I would thank you for bringing that up, Jennifer, because I have been starting to talk with various members of the legend, particularly at this point, Nader Hashim, who's Vice Chair of Senate Judiciary and also of course with Representative Lalonde, who is Chair of House Judiciary about needing to construct a pipeline so that this panel is kept aware of racial justice or bills that concern racial justice. I mentioned the equity impact tool that the Office of Racial Equity and Susanna have put together and have sort of said, I don't know why you aren't using it. There are a lot of the rest of us who are and you might want to think about that. So that conversation has started, I'm pursuing it just so you know, so that this situation would just stop because they were kind of like, oh my God, you should, I mean, it's on the agenda. I said, yes, and everyone has a job. You do too, and your job is the legislature. So let me add something to your job, which wasn't the happiest thing, but they heard it, they heard it, they understood that there's a problem. And so we're trying to work on what that would look like, just a utilitarian plan. So there it is. If there's nothing else, I'm gonna just shelve that last part of the agenda. I just, what I wanna just put out here and I can sum it up very briefly is, I would like the subcommittees to start thinking about drafting paragraphs. Okay, just that, start drafting paragraphs because we really do have to start thinking about a written report. So I just wanna put that out there generally to everyone. We can talk about it in more detail next month, but I would just like to ask that that be really kept in your mind at this point. Witchie. Yeah, I just wanted to note that at the Community C2 Review Subcommittee, we are hoping to provide more than one paragraph on our stuff. If you have a specific type of outline, you would want us to write that with or, great. No, just do it. We'll worry about that later. All right, maybe add some pictures on flowers on the frame. If you're so moved by God, I do, but make it feel good, yeah. This has been a very interesting, Mark, go ahead before we stop. Thanks, A-Ton. I'd like permission to get on your agenda for next month to talk about credible messengers and just basically supporting and assisting at risk and justice impact of youth and young adults. And I can talk about what we're doing on that and where we are on it. And I think- Would love it. This place is about the best place. And yeah, I just want to second what folks were saying about your testimony. I hadn't heard it, but I heard a lot about it. Oh, thank you. Thanks for that as well. Thank you. And thank you for your letter. So- Actually, I was, you know, I was in DC. I was traveling and I think Tabitha did mostly everything. I'm not, I don't think I really did hardly anything except for just reviewed it, but it was a good, you know, collaboration exercise. Yeah, yeah. People came together and I was really, it was lovely, actually. So I'll plan on coming back next month. Yes. And I'm going to invite the RDAP to Burlington. And I know at some point or another, if you guys are, we're gonna start doing more community engagement and trying to get community. I'm sure you don't want to speak too quickly for Sheila, but I'm sure Sheila would probably be willing to host down at the Root Social Justice Center as well. That would be a good opportunity. And Sheila, by the way, it is good to see you. I'm thinking Sheila and Rebecca, I'm just giving y'all special shout outs, you know why. So, okay, so Mark, you and I will be in touch then. Thank you. Absolutely. All right. The next meeting is the 13th of June. And I'm looking forward to, I don't know, all sorts of, Tyler be in touch about what you would like to do going forward as well. That would be helpful. And I think that's it for tonight. Thank you all for a riveting conversation, actually. And this is the moment where I say I would entertain a motion. You know about what? I'll move to adjourn the meeting. Thank you. I will second that. Grant, all in favor, gesticulate in some violent way. Aye. Aye. All opposed. All abstaining. Motion is carried. Have a lovely month. See you all in June. Good night, everyone. Good night. Bye, everybody.