 Good afternoon and and thanks for being here the group you see before you today has come together for two reasons really one is to object to the governor's proposal for a 900 plus bed mega prison complex but a lot of people are complaining about that actually um what we're really here to do is to say okay so we're all against this what are we for what should we be doing instead we all know that there there is work to be done with some of our facilities they need to be upgraded we need to do something with with the adolescence facility we need to do something in the way of a front a small forensic facility for mental health patients those things need to be done they certainly by the way do not need to be done by an out-of-state corporation we're we're very firm on that but what we really want to focus on is what we should be doing instead to support people who have been incarcerated for a variety of reasons bring them back into society help them with rehabilitation and jobs and training and in fact in many cases to do some prevention but also to address the systemic issues that that cause uh the uh the amount of incarceration that we see in this state including systemic racism which we have to grapple with um but also as I said we need to find other ways to get people out successfully into the community so you're going to hear this afternoon briefly from several people who have much more direct interaction or experience with the corrections and incarceration system to it to touch on some of the issues but what our coalition in the end is asking for is that the legislature create a commission not a study group not some flash in the pan take a look at it but a commission that will actually comprehensively address the issues that lead to the incarceration problems that we have in this state uh and that that commission could last even longer than one year could last for a while because the the the issues we're dealing with are extremely complex and there are many of them and so that's that's what we're asking for is to get to all these issues I'm going to turn the microphone over to some other people and let them tell you their perspective on the issue and the and the work that needs to be done to address it mark thank you Patrick my name is mark Hughes I am with the um a racial justice group called justice for all which I'm the executive director of and co-founder of we are also the anchor organization of the racial justice reform coalition that coalition was the coalition that put forward last year what became act 54 racial disparities in criminal and juvenile justice advisory panel and also put forward this year act of our s 281 rather which is a systemic racism mitigation panel or or commission rather as well as a h 862 which is the same and justice for all last week for today we stand strongly against any proposition for a construction of you know any type of new prison particularly at the size of of this facility I believe it's somewhere around 925 beds I think it's just it's just a bad idea it's it's just bad policy as you know criminal the criminal justice system and the whole mass incarceration of or disparate mass incarceration of African Americans they've been inextricably bound sadly for forever all right so there's a lot of the motion and there's also a lot of concern from people of color and communities those are from our migrant communities those who are people of color throughout the state as well with the proposition now let me just say that the the whole idea of of constructing a prison you know to put that out in front of the idea that we may just have too many people incarcerated it's just ridiculous understanding that there's probably somewhere in the area of our three and maybe even up to 450 folk in prison today who are serving pretrial time and what that means is they haven't even seen a judge and in Vermont that's particularly troubling because we don't have local jails and what that means is that these people go directly to prison and what our constitution says criminalizing or constitutionalizing the slavery of criminals in our state it says that they are slaves so i think a lot of a lot of what we need to be looking at is yes some some some criminal justice reform but also some racial justice reform i think we need to be taking a strong look at you know how we might go about in since next year's 2019 also how do we go about amending the constitution to make sure that that constitutionally slavery is prohibited once and for all in the state of Vermont as well and finally i think on the back end of the system you know it's important to understand that we've got folks who just can't get a place to live right by as defined by the the criteria established by the department of correction so we're looking at upwards of 150 maybe even a couple hundred folks to who the only reason why they're incarcerated in prison today is because the department of correction says that the place that they found to live is not suitable and that's just not acceptable so to build a 950 prison 950 bed prison to solve this problem just doesn't make any sense we think it's nonsense all the way around particularly in light of the fact that we have better solutions again racial disparities in the criminal justice system are inextricably bound to this mass incarceration issue we have as a nation we're offended at the proposition that it would even be brought out as a possible solution and we stand firmly behind an alternative solution that's being put forward by this group thank you hello my name is Ashley so i'm an advocate for social and criminal justice reform and i am formally an incarcerated woman in the state of Vermont i serve time in the chitin and regal correctional facility for several misdemeanors and two felonies all property fraud crime basically my response to the prison plan is that it is very out of proportion so the female population while chitin does need repair and it does need better services that's the point the female population almost 80 of them go into corrections with trauma-based issues and mental health disorders the corrections and being incarcerated further exacerbates those conditions for women and there is no treatment provided we do not have access to even some of the small amounts of treatment provided to our male counterparts so basically women are being sent to prison in growing numbers exponentially in this state and we are then not being treated for mental health addiction or any other underlying issues the programming in chitin has been cut so work programs have been cut and reentry programs have been cut for women so this plan presents several problems but it also presents solutions we're asking the questions why do we need to build a 925 bed prison when numbers have been trending down however there are systematic problems in the correction facilities themselves and how the department of corrections is treating them and handling these problems so we support an alternative approach for incarcerating more people and also for providing them with community-based treatment resolutions which has been proven and research has been done and data collected provide better outcomes and lowers recidivism rates that probably will still pick up I'm Ed Pequen tonight the director of disability rights Vermont we have been working for years with inmates and prisoners who have to a large part we have been working with inmates who have serious mental health issues we will absolutely acknowledge that there are problems inside and outside the prisons but what we are looking at here is a massive proposal that turns us back away from a system that's modeled on the idea of keeping people close to communities the communities to which they will return in all but a very few cases and so that's that's a fundamental problem we have we see in this proposal a large institutional solution for a state that has successfully to a large part treated folks in the community there is nothing in this that addresses what we are not doing in the community and so you'll see in the questions we ask and in the proposals that we make that we look at the community situation as well as looking at what is available for mental health treatment within the prisons as was just pointed out as one of the things I think that is worth pointing out here if you look at our proposal most of the second page of the proposal comes directly out of current statute and it more than in visions it laid out the vision for our system some 30 years ago and that was to have regional capacity so that prisoners would be going in staying relatively close to their families relatively close to their communities where they are going to eventually return and giving them the kinds of support that they will need to successfully return there's a there's a requirement in there that within 30 days of sentencing plans for reintegration begin and I can tell you from our experience that is not a central feature of our system today our system is so crowded that we move them from one location to another out of state then back in state then to a facility where they'll do some programming before they're finally released well that should be part that should be built into the front end of the system and in the interest of time I won't go into the needs the mental health needs which have just been alluded to so I'll leave it at that turning back the clock to an institutional system that costs tens of thousands of dollars I think the number was something like $75,000 annually for a person in the women's prison would buy a lot of services in the community that could be prevented of incarceration in the in the first place so I am Trisha Long I'm a clinical mental health counselor I've been doing that work for 30 years I'm also the adoptive mom of two kids now grown both of my kids experience significant trauma early in life and they have disabilities and they are people of color so what we're talking about today is very close to my own heart I also am the director for resilience beyond incarceration I've been doing that for the past 10 years we are an organization that supports children and families who are impacted by parents spending time in prison this is a phenomenally successful program and I know that because we've been collecting data for the past 10 years and we have successful outcomes only well 94 percent of our participants avoid criminal justice involvement so six percent of our people are staying out of jail and 80 percent of our kids are graduating from high school the parents in our program have very low recidivism rates and they all are showing significant gains in things like economic stability and employment mental health recovery and sobriety so our data demonstrates these successes but I also see it on the faces of the children that we work with and the faces of their parents and grandparents and their caregivers this alone would be enough but successful healing and rehab also saves all of us money and that's a vitally important consideration especially today it costs about 200 dollars a day for a mom or a dad to be in prison our program costs six dollars a day for our participants that's about 2400 dollars a year and we work with our families for about a year maybe 18 months we believe children should not be made to suffer because of their parents crimes and we also believe very firmly that nearly all parents want the best for their children and with rehab treatment and support these parents can heal and change and develop the skills they need with appropriate intervention today we prevent tomorrow's tragedies too often the debates about incarceration leave out the stories of the children and their families and these are stories of loss tremendous loss for all of us including our communities the us centers for disease control and prevention study population health and attributable risks the cdc epidemiologists report that 61 percent of the entire incarcerated population in our country is attributable to ACEs ACEs are adverse childhood experiences things like toxic stress poverty and trauma trauma isn't new it's as old as time itself but what is new is the knowledge that we now have about how trauma shapes the brain and what we can do to heal it and the way that trauma shapes the brain does lead to the types of social problems health and mental health problems and incarceration that we're talking about a huge prison complex isn't part of the solution for reducing ACEs and trauma the opposite of poverty is not wealth the opposite of poverty is justice if we were to reimagine justice what might we see we'd stop criminalizing mental illness and addiction we would not build a huge new prison complex we would invest instead in treatment education and affordable housing we would reduce trauma we would revise policies on bail probation and parole we would not be compromising public safety we'd consider modifying the criminal code and the sentencing guidelines so we would be incarcerating only the people that really need to be in prison and fewer kids then would experience the trauma of losing their parents to prison how many kids are we talking about in vermont six thousand a year that's two thousand on any given day one in seventeen six thousand that's the same as the number of babies born in vermont these kids experience trauma and adversity at a much higher rate than kids whose parents aren't in prison these kids our invisible orphans of justice are three times more likely to suffer serious physical and mental health problems to suffer learning disabilities and school failure to eventually drop out become engaged with delinquency and eventually end up in prison themselves the faces of these stories are haunting they stay with you desperation fear confusion rage hopelessness but there is hope there are ways of working with this population we can change things we will shift this trajectory for the better but it won't be by building a brand new prison complex in closing i just want to share a memory of a child and his mother who i met many years ago when i first met five-year-old zack we were walking by the river next to his house and he told me he wanted to slip away under the river and never come back five years old his dad was in prison his mom was opiate addicted selling her body for drugs and he was very often left to care for his two younger siblings at one point in our journey together with his mother she came to the recognition and was ready to go to treatment in braddle girl i drove her down there very late one night and left her at the door when she said goodbye she pressed into my hand a small charm and on the charm it said be the change we wish to see in the world gondies quote and i said okay i'm going to hang on to this until someday you ring me back and you tell me you're in you're in a good place and then i'm going to give it back to you she said yeah you keep that for me because i'm going to ring you someday and just recently i did get a call from her she said hey i'm doing really well i've got an apartment i've got a job i'm taking classes she found her way through it and i said all right i want to meet you and i'm going to give you back that charm and she said no no i want you to keep it and pass it on to somebody else who needs it i think we all need it i think together we can be the change we wish to see in the world i don't think it will come with building a huge prison complex but i do think it will come if we together address the questions that need to be asked thank you thank you all very much are there any questions well my my response is that the the report does not pay anywhere near enough attention to what everybody up here has been talking about which is prevention and rehabilitation housing jobs the things that prevent reincarceration and in many cases prevented in first place the report is not focused on that the report is focused on facilities and that's the wrong message and i actually think that some of our leaders don't really appreciate and understand that Vermont for years decades has had a philosophy of trying to keep people in the community trying to do things in the community as much as absolutely possible we are getting away from that and as ed bakewood mentioned if you go to the statue that defines corrections in the very first paragraph that's what it's talking about we've gotten so far away from our original policies that's the point is we need to go back and and go over all our policies on incarceration and corrections again and let's make sure Vermont knows where it's headed in the next decade not more facilities text the ones we have we do need to fix the ones we have that's generally admitted there needs to be work on on the prison facilities as they said earlier there's general consensus that the adolescent facility needs to be repaired we do need i believe and and i was the commissioner mental health after i read and so i had a lot to do with designing the mental health system that we had then i will say publicly now i think one of our the short comings in that plan was we didn't deal with the forensic issue and in mental health and so i think we do need to do some of those things so let's let's be a little more subtle in our approach let's do the things we need to do around the buildings but let's really focus on what we can do to incarcerate fewer people and get more people out any other questions if not thank you all very much