 Good afternoon. This is the House Corrections and Institutions Committee on Tuesday, April 5th. It's already April. Wow. So in here this afternoon, we're going to be focusing, I have a conversation about community justice centers. This is not in relationship to any specific piece of legislation that's before us, but it was more of an opportunity to have a conversation with some folks from our community justice center. So I want to welcome, I want to welcome Jill Evans from the Essex Community Justice Center and Lisa Cipriano from, did I get your last name pronounced correctly, Lisa? Yes. Oh good, from Bennington. So, but first, how about would you, you don't, you have, I remember a few years ago, was so helpful to me as a new member when you all came into our committee. And so maybe it might be worthwhile for the committee to introduce themselves to you so you know who's here in the room. How does that sound? So when you start with Kurt, we'll go around the table. Kurt Taylor, I'm representative from Cold Chester. Michelle Bosling, Westminster, and I actually used to work at the Brattleboro Community Justice Center. So I think I've been on some Zoom calls with you from a couple years back. Yeah. I'm Sarah Coffey. I represent the Townsend Guilford and Vernon and I'm the Vice Chair of the committee. Karen Dolan from Essex Junction and I'll share. I have the privilege of working at the Essex Community Justice Center. So I'm looking forward to today's conversation. Larry Leverton and Morgan. Scott Campbell from St. Johnsburg. Mary Morancy from Bennington. And for full disclosure, I have been on our Restorative Justice Board of Trustees for a number of years. And Linda Sullivan from Dorset. Well, great. Thanks, everyone. And welcome. We wanted to just have an opportunity to have a conversation. Some of the committee members wanted to have a better sense of the landscape. But I think you might have some questions for you. So I think Jill, if you want to start, if you could just introduce yourself with a record and then we'll turn it over to you. Okay. So my name is Jill Evans. I'm the director of the Essex Community Justice Center. And since we're disclosing things, I also worked for the Department of Corrections for 30 years before retiring in 2015. So I was working for corrections when the community justice centers were created. And you want me to just talk about what the community justice centers are and that kind of thing? I think that could be useful because a few new members of our committee and we focused, you know, this is the second year of the biennium. We're familiar with corrections policy, but community justice centers are very much part of our work with the Department of Corrections. So I think that could be really helpful if you wanted to give your sense of an overview and your role with the community justice centers. So there are, I think it's 17 community justice centers at this point. And they were created over time after there was a public opinion survey that was done by the Department of Corrections in the early 90s where the community was essentially saying they didn't trust the Department of Corrections and how they handled crime. They thought people were going to jail who shouldn't be going to jail. And the thing that was most interesting was that they wanted somehow to be involved in their own communities in crime and conflict. So it evolved over time. The original model was that there was this status created called reparative probation. And there were probation officers who were trained to recruit and support community volunteers that were geographic and people who were sentenced and placed on reparative probation would, in addition to being on supervision with the Department of Corrections and having a probation officer, they would also go before this community reparative board. They used to be called initially. And then over time, that started evolving into the Department of Corrections shifting their sort of philosophical foundation and that being that it shouldn't be connected to the Department of Corrections. It shouldn't be DOC staff that was doing it. It should be actual people in the community. And so community justice centers started getting funding. And the original model was that they would be located in municipalities. And so I think Burlington was the first one to come on. And it was sort of organic. Different geographic areas of the state bought into this at different times. I think one of the newest CJCs that came online was the South Burlington one. Essex has been around for like 23 years at this point. So the model became the Department of Corrections providing funding to municipalities to recruit and train volunteers to work with people that were referred to us. Initially, those were all cases that were sentenced and placed on probation. Then I think maybe you have this because I wasn't around. When did we start doing the re-entry work? I think I think it was in the early 2000, like 12, 13. There was additional funding that came through the federal system, which is when the Community Justice Center started looking at doing re-entry work with people coming out of prison. And that funding was time limited, but it got us up and running in having what's called the COSA program. And so community justice centers were both working with people who were sentenced and placed on probation to do a restorative process with their community and providing re-entry support and circles of support and accountability for people coming out of prison. And then the Community Justice Centers had both of those kinds of programs in their house. And a third component of what a Community Justice Center was supposed to be was an entity within the community that engaged community members and that held community dialogues, community forums, trainings, that kind of thing to address issues of crime and conflict in each town as each town wanted it to happen. It was very much about the local growth and definition of how they wanted to work. So then over time, you know, practice has kind of shifted in terms of in Chittenden County in particular. We not only get referrals from the probation office, but our state's attorney starting back when T.J. Donovan was the state's attorney in Chittenden County started wanting more cases to be referred to community justice centers from the police and not coming to the state's attorney's office and going through the criminal justice system. So that was very much dependent on the leadership of our state's attorney. And I know that you all are talking about geographic equity and are concerned about that in this committee. And that is that that's sort of the crux of the issue, I think, for at least the direct referral issue is that it depends on who the state's attorney is, whether or not cases are being referred to community justice centers directly from law enforcement in Chittenden County. That's almost exclusively what we work with. We also get referrals now from schools, from sometimes landlords. So in Chittenden County, we are we have a really robust direct referral program that is because of Sarah George now as our state's attorney. So that's one thing that's a little bit different across the state. And then, you know, court diversion, I think existed before the community justice centers. And letha can talk about the court diversion piece of it. But so there was this other entity in each community that was working with cases that were diverted out after they went to the state's attorney. But CJC's and court diversion programs weren't connected or they got separate funding. What has happened because of the local control or the local influence on how services are provided is that some in some areas, the municipality stopped being the entity that that got the funding and housed the community justice centers. Some of those turned into nonprofit organizations because it worked better for whatever reason there. So the CJC's received funding from the Department of Corrections. And some CJC's also received funding from their local municipalities and other entities. And that's inconsistent across the state. So just in Chittenden County, two towns contribute money out of five that the Essex CJC serves. So it's a sort of a combination. So some of the, yeah, let me just, I didn't, it's hard to interrupt you. It's hard when we're not in the same room together. But as you're talking, I'm wondering if the documents, you sent a document to our committee that's on our committee page. And I think because what you're talking, there's a lot of complexity. And that was a good, to what you're saying. And that that document might be helpful. Did you want us to be looking at that while you're speaking or should we pull it up on the screen? I just was offering that as a way for us for some of the, for some of the, especially the newer folks who might not be as familiar with the structure of the, how the funding works. Yeah. So that document shows what programs are funded by which entities being the Attorney General's Office, the Department of Corrections and the Department for Children and Families. And it shows it in a geographic way, like which agencies are doing what I think it will be helpful to put it up maybe in a second. The other thing I wanted to say is that in the progression of time in local areas, not only did some of the municipality based CJCs become nonprofits, but some of those nonprofits then joined with their court diversion program in the county. So at this point, about half of the community justice centers are also court diversion programs. And about half are nonprofits and half are of the ones that are not part of court version, half are part of municipalities. So that's what I would say from the Department of Corrections funding perspective. I mean, the CJCs are essentially the programs are, there are three programs, reentry support, which includes COSA, restorative justice panels, which is an alternative to the criminal justice process, and the community dialogues. I think where the document got really helpful is because court diversion has a number of different programs on top of their restorative panels, but they're funded from a different entity to the AGO's office. And the AGO's Attorney General's Office. So why don't we pause here. Thank you so much, Jill. Are there questions that the committee has of this before we before we shift over to Letha, who I think will be talking about restorative justice centers as well. Maybe I don't see any right now or Kurt, go ahead. Has there been discussions about ways of simplifying this? Have you come up with some ideas for changing the funding of all this or to make it a little more coherent? So not, I wouldn't say in a very organized statewide way. There has been, I think, in different regions, conversations that have started. One of the things that makes it get kind of complicated is that at a statewide level, you might look at the fact that there are four CJCs in Chittenden County and wonder why is that and why is there a court diversion, which now is part of the Burlington CJC, but it's as simple as it can get for us, because I actually work for the town of Essex and the Essex Police Department is the one that refers our cases to us. So there's reasons why in Chittenden County anyway, things actually work pretty well because of the way that we're structured and the support for there to be the local, you know, we hold panels in the communities of Milton and Colchester and Essex and we use volunteers from each of those areas and those panels. Because Chittenden County remains a municipality based model. There had been discussion about merging at least the administrative component of the community justice centers into one entity and then keeping it at the four regional like satellite offices. And then that conversation didn't go anywhere. And then, so that becomes different when you're part of a nonprofit versus being part of a municipality and thinking about how you might merge and what that might look like. But I guess that that's all I would say. But at the moment, it seems to work fairly well, at least in Chittenden County. So another question, is there an umbrella organization? It seems to me I heard there was where do you CJC directors get together and statewide and talk about these things? So there was an entity that was an umbrella for us that was called the Community Justice Network of Vermont. And Court Diversion has an umbrella as well called Backdab that Lisa will talk about. But the Department of Corrections funded a nonprofit called the CJNBT to act as an umbrella for us, but then they cut the funding. So that entity doesn't exist anymore, but we as Community Justice Center directors meet on a monthly basis to stay a network and collaborate and work towards consistency and improvement and that kind of thing. So I believe we have a bill or working on a bill or working on an idea that would where a representative of the Community Justice Centers would be chosen and serve on a work group of some sort. So that's something that this group meeting monthly could do is select somebody to do that. Yes. And Lisa and I are both on a legislative subcommittee of all the CJCs and we're aware of that bill and the purpose of it and the membership that's been proposed. So. Okay, good. Thank you. That's great. All right. Well, Lisa, why don't we turn it to you? I'm sure there are going to be more questions as the conversation comes up. But welcome. And if you could just identify yourself with the record and we're happy to have you here with us today. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. My name is Lisa Cipriano. I am the Executive Director in Bennington at the Center for Restorative Justice. I have been here 17 years as the Agencies Director. I also serve as the Chairperson for VACTAP, which is known as the Vermont Association of Court Diversion Programs. And I've been the Chairperson for three years on that group. I'm also on the Legislative Subcommittee with Jill as part of the CJC subcommittee that we keep an eye on legislative issues happening that will affect us. I'm also on another funding legislative subcommittee of directors that oversees the barge programs as well. So why I thought it would be helpful to go second to what Jill is saying is because we were one of those entities that came on board after the birth of CJCs with the municipality sort of as the focus of how to get community justice centers happening in each community. In 2010 we were approached by Hans Johnson who was with the Department of Corrections at the time because Bennington was one of those communities that didn't have a justice center and he really he wanted to retire. But I think before he left he really wanted to make sure that every community in the state had was represented with a justice center. So we started in 2010 with a small grant to start running cognitive self-change classes with probation and parole. Fast forward a couple years later that we became we started getting funding from Department of Corrections to run all of those programs that Jill is talking about which are the community that we call community justice center programs. The difference for my agency is that we are a nonprofit. We began as a county court diversion program in 1982. So this is our 40th year that we've been in existence. We started as a court diversion program only. When I came on board in 2005 we only had a very small barge program at the time and over the past 17 years and Mary can attest to this what we started to do is responding to the community's needs we became sort of a full service one-stop shop in Bennington. We offer everything from school-based programming with funding from schools and private donations and foundation grants to attorney general funding programs to run court diversion the youth substance abuse safety program DLS programs we get funding from the department of children families to run barge programs which works with at-risk youth either they're adjudicated or preventative programs for youth at risk and then of course now we get our funding from Department of Corrections to do those programs that Jill talked about that talk about reentry and our reparative probation and our community work. I think what makes it confusing is since things have evolved over time you have programs like Bennington and I believe there are five of us in the state and I could be wrong but I believe there's five that hold all of those grants so we are like the one-stop shop and it really became and I think it just happened because of responding to the community's needs that we didn't have like Bennington didn't embrace the municipal they didn't jump on board when that funding became available for municipality to begin a justice center. We came on board a little later in the game but as a result what we've been what we have been able to do is create sort of this one-stop sort of shop here and it really you know works well for our community we serve the entire county which we cannot even be compared to what is happening in Chittenden county because we are so very very different but but we do we respond to what our community needs we work closely with the state's attorney we do pre-charge programming from the police and the police state's attorneys we work closely with probation and parole and DCF as well. So I mean I think if I could just add my my opinion on why there's confusion is because over time what began as a community justice center was more of a brick and mortar facility I think of it as a center you think of an agent's a facility when really the CJC funding now represents a group of programs so like so those programs are housed in facilities that look very different although the programs are being offered in every community it just might look different so like in Bennington for example we may we serve 1500 people a year we from everything from kiddos and truancy issues in school through re-entry work but it might just look very different in another community but our brick and mortar what we look like it looks very very different so I think that's the confusion and I I'm looking forward to the committee and I am well aware of the legislation that kind of came from your committee and I think it will be really interesting to delve into this and I I think it is very complicated and maybe there is no simple answer to how how it can be fixed or streamlined I mean I have personal suggestions as an entity that holds all of those grants because I have to I have different reporting requirements for every single one of them each pro each of those funding sources asks for different reports financial reports there the data systems are all across the board every single one of them is different and so it becomes a logistical nightmare for an entity that holds all of those grants and I think the last piece I really wanted to share was how can I say this we are not just some I think we are an integral part of the justice system we are not just an offshoot of a nice little community center that just does nice little things for for folks to get them on their feet we are embedded in the judicial system and and our work is critical to our partners and and if I could take this opportunity to put a plug in when you ask whatever our challenge is every single year we we fight for our lives to scrape things together to figure out how do we keep our doors open we year after year have been faced with level funding which means a cut because our health insurance goes up every single year we want to give pay increases to our staff every year our operating costs go up but we aren't looked upon like government entities that have built in cost of living every single year and we as community providers that are part of the justice system I would love it if somehow we could have legislation that says you may not be a state agency but you are integral to our services so your cost of living we're going to build it just like we do for our government entities we're going to build that in for our community partners because without us the system would be broken so anyway that's my plug for that is what we need and and we're fighting right now I'm fighting in several different committees right now for each of our programs to have our programs recognized at least cost of living increases each year so I open it for questions Yeah so thank you Lipa and I think the we've heard the metaphor used that like our community our community and restorative justice systems is like a old Vermont house that's been added on to over time with additions and over time so I think it's really it's time for us to like look at take a look at and I think that was the intent of it's not necessarily a bill just to be clear for all of us in the room but and also for anybody who might be watching there was language that this committee weighed in on it was added to the appropriations bill that would recreate our restorative justice working group and there would be membership from the different kinds of restorative and community justice centers as well as other folks in the criminal justice system so and I know that you were we were members of a few members of this committee work closely with a member in appropriations on that and this committee did see that language so it's good I think this is timely to hear I know that you've been involved in weighing in on some of that so I think this is good timing because I think we'll be we'll be looking forward to what that group does and some of the recommendations which include you know looking at what are what's working what's not working what are the recommendations like you're suggesting I'm hearing of course that somebody who when I ran a non-profit we had grants and the reporting you know as the different kinds of reporting and different data that's not in alignment can be can be it just can be a lot you know when it's asked for a different way so things like that I'm here I'm already hearing coming from you and hearing loud and clear about the the level funding and how that for since I think it was 2014 that does translate into cuts we know that because for I know that from my local community justice center how that's been a challenge and and and this committee was happy I think to support that some of this one time money could go to community justice center so we hope that that will make it through the senate as well so I just want to thank you for being here and I just wanted to really open up to questions this this this will be and it will get a lot of recommendations in a report from this working group in January is our hope and so but this is good to kind of lay the foundation and here here from you right now so I just wanted to add one other thing that I think leads to confusion and that is that and what the document tried to do was to show that the funding that comes from the attorney general's office the department for children families and department of corrections funds the exact same programs and services in each county of vermont and they all are happening so there's no equity issue around that the thing that gets confusing is that like litha has a team clothing swap program going but that's not funded by the attorney general's office department for children and families or the department of corrections so the layer of confusion sometimes also comes when comparing one restorative justice entity to another if one has additional funding beyond the state funding and they've added new programs and services in chitlin county you know we have spectrum youth and family services who's doing the truancy work and the clothing stuff or whatever so that's just another element of what gets confusing when you hear like well how come they're doing that there but not here the stuff that the state is funding which is in that document and color coded for your convenience is all happening in each county and it's all being funded the same way so if you wanted to put back enough i could explain that but i just thought i'd add that that's that's helpful to know because we do i think that was some of the intent was around centering restorative justice and understanding getting some clarity on you know what's available in counties throughout vermont so that there is geographic geographic equity so i know that representative dolan had a question or wanted to chime in here thank you both for being here and sharing it um i i'm curious if each of you can share kind of what do you see as the outcomes of community justice center work like why is it important obviously i have an understanding of why it is but i feel like in these types of conversations it's important to say what are the outcomes like why do we care about community justice center work what are the what are the outcomes of it and i think if you can share anything around the geographical justice piece um i would direct referrals or pre-charge if that would be helpful and i think having the committee get a whole understanding of that so jill or letha which one of you would like to respond to that letha do you want to say um jill when it used to i mean that's a loaded question you know whatever again i mean outcomes are basically um i mean as a partner in the system i mean i just keep going back to um like if we're just talk and i believe you're referring to the three programs funded by department of corrections and again um so if you wanted to break that out to say the re-entry programs for example what are the outcomes of re-entry programs because again when we say the word community justice centers it's misleading because i would prefer if we could call them doc funded programs in a justice center like my agency's called the center for restorative justice um but i only count the programs that are cjc or community justice program um the the programs that are funded under my department of corrections grant so um so to be clear on if you're talking about like what are the outcomes and what do we hope re-entry programs are to accomplish of course it's supporting our probation and parole offices helping folks be be successful when they re-enter the community and we don't and i think our impact on re-incarceration is is huge our cosa programs are evidence-based and have proven to um have a direct impact on keeping folks from re-entering facilities i would love it if there was a cost benefit analysis to show and i don't know if we have any true data and i think we've tried this before to show what impact we are saving on our entire brahmans judicial system by keeping folks from re-entering facilities re-entering the courts we have a program we're instituting with um under our DOC funded programs it's called graduated sanctions it's how can we embed restorative interventions um when when people out on furlough may have a violation back in the day those folks were sent back to facilities um right now we're we're exploring the use of restorative interventions so when there is a violation of furlough that that our programs work with those individuals through restorative justice intervention to help them figure out what it is they need to do to not keep re-offending and ending up back in facilities so i think our outcomes are um directly related to cost savings keeping people back in living successfully in the communities um keeping our community safe jill feel free to to weigh in on your outcome thoughts yeah um i you've mentioned many many of the ones that i was um going to talk about as well uh the public safety being the the main one at least from the department corrections perspective uh and that is as litha said that if you provide support to people coming out of prison who would otherwise be marginalized and stigmatized in their communities they're less likely to reoffend so um we have a direct correlation with the services we provide around the entry with recidivism rates and reincarceration rates um and then in terms of like the notion of restorative justice and restorative programs and principles those are really about the fact that a community is stronger the more connected its members are and in looking at crime and conflict in a community where community members want to be involved with people that are their neighbors or um in their church or whatever they want to be involved in giving people second chances and in keeping their community safer restorative justice provides the opportunity for community members to be involved in their local communities addressing harm um that is caused to people by those who commit crimes and um also in a way that holds um people responsible for the harm that they cause in a much different and we think better way than the criminal justice system so when somebody goes to court the victim is pushed over to the sidelines and it becomes a crime against the state and the person who committed the crime doesn't ever have to say a word he gets a lawyer or she gets a lawyer and they can you know 98 percent of the time they're going to resolve the case by plea agreement never having to say they committed the crime or or you know explore the impact of their um choices or their behaviors and so the questions are what happened who did it and what should we do to them in restorative justice it's what happened who was harmed how were they harmed what is it going to take to make things as right as possible again and how can we make sure that this doesn't happen again and so um the person who causes harm who commits the crime has a much more accountability based um process that happens where they literally have to face their neighbors you know three to five of their people that live in their community and really explore their choices the actions the impact of those actions on people in a ripple effect way not just the victim but their family the rest of the community so um the outcome for me is about a a philosophical shift from punishment within the criminal justice system to communities um becoming stronger by dealing with crime and conflict within the community thank you that's great and and and the other piece of that that I just to highlight is that like I said the victims get lost in the criminal justice system and in CJC's with the funding that we do every single person who was harmed by the crimes of the people that were referred we like we do outreach to them so that makes a huge difference so I have a question um and I'm curious this is probably best answered from we've passed some legislation um in the last couple of years that is you know justice reinvestment to um which is the two meaning that the follow-up in back in 2007 we put in place the number of policy changes to really channel people away from being in a constitutive setting and and I'm curious with the recent initiatives that we're they're passing they're just you know beginning to be rolled out they were just really beginning to be rolled up as COVID was hitting but I'm curious like if you have any thoughts or can say how has that work impacted your work as restorative justice centers community justice centers um I think your perspective could be helpful to this committee if you've seen an impact of you know positive negative or different kinds of folks or a need for different programs or if the programs you have are sufficient and how that is how that is working for you Lisa do you want to go first or you want me to go um well the first thing I would say is that no one has brought the community justice centers to the table in the justice reinvestment work which has been unfortunate um because I think another outcome that has proven itself at least in Chittenden County is that if you look over the past 10 years the numbers of people who are under supervision have gone down to the point that there have been cuts to probation officer positions in our local probation and parole office so um there's less of a demand within the criminal legal system to have um larger you know groups of probation officers to supervise these people because they're being dealt with in the community by the community justice centers um so we think we have a huge role in being able to help divert people out of incarceration and divert people out of off of supervision um are we have not gotten any increased allocation to be able to do justice reinvestment work specifically even though we're being asked to do it and we are doing it so uh when the justice reinvestment work highlighted the fact that technical violations were resulting in reincarceration at an alarming rate and the council for state governments wanted the department of corrections to find a way to deal with things without just reincarcerating everybody um the community justice centers now get referrals to deal with those situations where they would normally have been reincarcerated but now they're coming to the community justice centers for a restorative process so um we are as letha said fantastic community partners who even that we'd like we are stretched thin um in my office we're all part time like it's not even that you like I don't have health benefits that go up because we can't even afford to to employ people full-time to have benefits and yet we still have to cut stuff because of cost of living increases so um I think that we could be a huge um partner in that but but capacity would have to be addressed so are you saying that like the contracts that you get through your grants are not based on numbers of people served or you know it's a flat it's a flat there there doesn't appear to be any kind of a formula for how they're funding across the state the the outcomes that the department of corrections tracks our numbers like they don't that's the we have to say how many people we served and what status and that kind of thing but our funding isn't connected to numbers going up or down we don't know the I mean I'm imagining it's based on something um but we don't see the formula but um just to sort of piggyback on what Jill was saying about the justice reinvestment um the only piece I can relate to that is our work with the graduated sanctions piece that we talked about is that we really haven't been brought to the table fully and I think we really see our role um could play a vital role in in helping um and again we started this whole graduated sanctions program we started talking about which we believe is a super fit um restorative justice is certainly the the tool we would want to see employed for dealing with those issues however like we mentioned our level our funding has been level and when you keep adding on and adding on and it's level funding something's got to break and and a lot of us are at a breaking point um as Jill said I mean unfortunately we can offer benefits but again it's because our funding is so diverse um we're able to spread a lot of our overhead costs in a different way whereas you know smaller entities are really faced with uh you know running a really tight ship and um so having an increase when when new mandated programs fall on us um we would like those to be followed with an increase in funding well that's I mean it seems like there's a real possibility for growing that partnership and strengthening that partnership um and uh because your key key partners community and I know you know I'll say for myself I'm hopeful that the this working group I think the intent was with that working group was that that would be a space and a place to bring folks around the table to really you know of all of all the system that we have to fit with what the current day realities are um and and because it did come I think it was initiated in connection with a request for an increase um increase in and uh and funding for the CJC so hopefully you know I think we're hearing you we've seen that there's nothing going on around the table but Miss Michelle did I did you I mean I have one question I guess that I'd be curious to ask I know when when I worked in uh Brattleboro I was on the reentry side of things and one of the things that at times I had confusion about not personally but in working with parole officers or uh case managers who were prison who were bringing people into Brattleboro sometimes they assumed because we were a CJC that we would be providing housing that we had access to housing through our CJC because some of the CJCs do have housing programs and I guess I'm just wondering now a couple years later how many of the CJCs do have housing as an option because that is one of the things that our committee has looked at in terms of some of what we fund is housing for people when they're moving back into the community and how much of that is being offered by CJCs right now because it seems like it's a huge huge need well well every community has transitional housing funding they just that the funding might not be housed in a CJC like for example um in Bennington money for transitional housing goes to an organization called Pathways we don't get that funding um whereas another community it might go to a CJ it's a separate grant so the CJC has to apply for that it's a competitive grant so it's not that the person coming out to go live in Brattleboro doesn't have access to transitional housing money they just may have to go to a different entity to access that money Jill right I totally agree with that and that's where the it's the same thing as like but how things have grown in a local way like we also don't want to duplicate services so in Chittenden County there are a number of housing organizations who have the expertise who have the infrastructure already like there's no reason for the CJCs to get involved in housing that we don't that's not even our expertise area it's better served by people who do housing so they get the transitional the funding um and in some parts of the state there doesn't exist that infrastructure of housing um programs so the CJCs took it on to provide some transitional housing in those areas so same with the the funded programs for court diversion for barge and for the CJCs there is funding for transitional housing across the state and but it's provided by different entities depending on what that local community strengths and areas for you know need of gaps of services are other questions folks in the committee I would also add just so you know that there is less transitional housing available in Chittenden County now that the Department of Corrections shifted their theory around congregate housing to scattered housing we have such a housing crisis that the people that are getting money to do the housing like pathways like the Burlington Housing Authority they can't find any apartments so our number of beds actually have decreased not increased so other thoughts comments well I think this has been this has been helpful um and we want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy days to be with us and and we look are we you know hoping that that the working group uh the language that that comes makes it through the legislative process so that this working group can go deeper into some of these issues and bring some of these recommendations back um really looking forward to helping and supporting um our restorative justice centers and programs um and doing this work and you you do you're doing just want to say thank you um the work that you do is really paramount um to this you know people succeeding as they're re-entering our communities from an incarcerated setting but also to help people before you know to avoid being incarcerated and and just want to thank you for your work really appreciate that and thank you as a committee for making space to learn more about us and understand us more that means a lot feels very supportive and um we are happy to do anything we can to support the work that you all are doing at the state house and I know you're really busy for this hours and thank you for for Zoom I mean who would think I would say thank you for Zoom but you saved me a two and a half hour drive all the way up there so although I would love to see you all in person so but thank you all very very much well thank you and I hope yeah I know that some years there's a there's a day where we have there's a focus on community justice centers and restorative justice and looking forward to that returning um next year um and having folks come in because it is it is always really educational um to have um to have to hear the stories of people and the and the folks who are doing the work so thank you again thank you bye bye bye bye thank you so um we are scheduled for a little break um so I think we're going to go we're going to take that break and we'll be back at 2 15 um and where we're going to be focusing on the community high school of Vermont and have a few folks in from the Department of Correction so I think we can sign off