 Welcome back to the joint hearing of hosts. We share the committee and house committee on corrections and institutions. And we're continuing to receive testimony on S195. And we have the pleasure of having Commissioner Dillon here to enlighten us on certain aspects of the bill. Thank you for being here. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Vic Dillon, the commissioner of the department of corrections. Appreciate opportunity to talk to you about S195. There's much in this bill that doesn't really implicate department of corrections. And then there's a few sections that clearly do. So I'll try to just kind of limit my comments to those sections and then happy to ask questions. In general, the three parts that touch on the department of corrections of the home detention program, which is currently administrative department. This electronic monitoring section, much of that work we do right now as well. This would be an expansion of that program. And then the creation of the pretrial supervision program, which would be a new feature in the department of corrections. On the home detention program, we did expand that program last year. And a law that went through the house corrections institutions committee. We administer that program, but largely the courts decide who comes to us for that program. I think last year when we testified on the program and made the changes with the goal of expanding the program, we had 11 individuals on that program. Believe today we have eight. So our goal of expanding is not working, but certainly the aperture is open for utilization of that program. Currently courts, prosecutors, the defense bar or the department can request that a review of home detention be made and folks could be sent to that program. For us, it's a fairly low drag effort, meaning there isn't a heavy administrative burden to administering the program. And so we can have many more folks on it if that is the direction that we go. I raised the home detention program first because it has an electronic monitoring component to it already. One of the burdens of that program historically was what we think of as active versus passive electronic monitoring. And I want to talk about that because it'll also come up when we talk about the electronic monitoring program itself. I'll caveat this by saying those are already a misnomer for what happens. So active electronic monitoring in the historical model was an individual would have an electronic monitoring device on them. If something happened with that device, it was cut off, it stopped working, it left a jurisdiction that it was supposed to be in. Our system would be alerted. That is basically a technological alert. Then somebody would call from the company who runs that system, our officer in the middle of the night, who would wake up, call his boss. His boss would then call a local law enforcement agency and potentially somebody would be dispatched, although not always. That is not active, in my opinion. There are still many degrees of separation between the event of the bracelet stopping and somebody actually being interdicted. However, that meant that our staff were having to be on 24-hour-a-day standby coverage. We were paying them around the clock to be the one on call for that under our state labor rules. We asked that the legislature change that to a passive system, meaning all those things still happen, but we pick up the alert first thing in the morning and then begin the process of pursuing the individual for cutting off or leaving their bracelet or whatever. Most of the time, it wasn't actually that somebody cut it off. It's that the battery's died or it's malfunctioning. It's very rare that somebody actually cut their bracelet and took off. By moving to passive monitoring, it allowed us to save a substantial amount of staff resources at a time when our staff resources are already heavily overtaxed. And particularly our field staff for probation parole and community corrections officers were the ones carrying that burden. And they came to you all several times in the last session really advocating that we try to draw that burden down. So that was one of the tools we used to draw the burden down. And I don't think we've seen any adverse effect of that change. And so as we look at electronic monitoring programs, I hope you'll keep that context in mind that active versus passive. As we look to, oh, yes, sorry. Yes, so just a question that sounds like maybe you're moving to the monitoring. So for home detention, that sounds like there's capacity there that if there were increases to the number of folks that were referred to home detention, I'm wondering if you can just provide a synopsis of what home detention looks like. Maybe from like, what is the interaction with staff? Or are they just checking on them once a day or how does that look like? It's really ensuring that they're complying with their location at the end of the day. There may be some other attributes to it, depending on an individual case, but at the very beginning, we would assess somebody for being eligible. Did they eat the statutory criteria to go into the program? And then we send one of our staff or a couple of our staff to a residence to investigate the residence. We then file that with the court saying, yes, this is an acceptable place for somebody to be or it's not. An example would be if you were charged with a sex offense, we may not want your home to be next to a school. Something of that nature would be a reason that we would say, or if you're accused of domestic violence and the victim lives in the home, could be another example of why we would not think a residence is acceptable. Then once somebody is accepted into the home detention program or referred there by the court, they would go to that residence, they would wear an electronic monitoring device. And so long as they've stayed compliant with those conditions, largely that's the level of supervision we're talking about. And that's all a pretrial. So let's talk a little bit about conditions. So what would DOC supervise in a home detention situation? Is it just that they were at the proper locations at the proper time or were there other conditions like alcohol intake or had to be at work or other conditions at the court? The court would set the conditions. The court sets the conditions. So what are some of the other conditions that you would have to, or is it just location? It's largely, for home detention under its configuration, it's largely just their location. There isn't, it would be difficult for a probation or parole officer to supervise whether they were consuming alcohol if they had an alcohol prohibition or doing something else that was nefarious, that was barred by their conditions because we don't have direct supervision in the home of them. It's really making sure that they're now leaving, essentially confined to a space. And why is it that we only have eight folks? We've been at that level. Home detention was first put in place back in 2000, 2001, 99, 2000, 2001. And the goal was that home detention would be used to take the pressure off our correctional facilities by having so many detainees. And right now we have state detainees about 360, maybe 380 state detainees. Why isn't it used more? And what are the statutory criteria that may be limiting who would qualify for home detention? Yeah, I mean, I think there's some competing theories on why that is and I don't have it pinned down exactly. I think there are other conditions of release that maybe judges are preferring to use that they feel appropriately managed the individual while they're awaiting adjudication. There are some statutory requirements that make it a little difficult. And without having to listen to the front of me, I don't miss quote, but I think the individual, there's a bail requirement. And I see the state's attorneys are in the corner and actually probably have a better read on this. But the bail requirement I think is kind of a hitch in the usage of the program right now. But beyond that, I don't, not really sure. I think the choice is really, is the individual appropriate to be in the community or is the individual need to be incarcerated? And where it has been determined that they can be in the community safely, then the home confinement criteria is maybe a little overburdened, so I don't know. But I think there is capacity. We can have more people in this program and it may help reduce some people from being incarcerated. But I think the state's attorneys for the judiciary can speak more to why the criteria do or don't influence how many people are in there. And how often does DOC ask the court for home detention? It's a very often. And number two, when you do ask, is it honored or is it denied? So this was something that changed last year when the law changed. Because the program was so small, we actually advocated last year that you dissolved the program. It just didn't seem like it was utilized. And so from our opinion, it's one more administrative task that we could have gotten rid of. You said to us, the legislature said to us, no, we're actually interested in expanding the program because it may draw some people out of incarcerated setting and move them into a home setting. And I think without speaking for the state's attorneys or defense bar, I think that was their opinion as well, that it should be expanded, not dissolved. So then we tried to assess how we could better utilize the program. And what we decided as a department is for any individual who met the criteria under the law, we would automatically, essentially pro forma, recommend that to the court. And then the court could decide whether they wanted us to move forward with the home investigation and then recommendation. And so we began that process and we've started doing that over the last year. I don't have exact number of how many we've recommended, but clearly the numbers of people actually in the program haven't gone up and I'm not sure why that is exactly. Yeah, okay. So I know what this part says, home attention, but we have a work shortage problem. Is it crazy to think that we could have two locations and one be at work and be able to monitor and help the workforce? I think under the program and individual, as long as it is accepted under the conditions set by the court, I think they can go to work or certain other locations, but they basically stealing a phrase from my old life, they have to bed down at a very specific location and be within the rules. So yeah, so if say they wanted to be, they wanted to go work at the hardware store, as long as that was approved by the court, I think they can do that on the program. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, Barbara then Karen. So my colleague's question made me think about the number of people that are unhoused that might need to be on home detention. And I'm wondering if that's, yeah. They would not qualify for the program because the residence requirement is very specific eligibility criteria. And when you were talking about ramping up the program once you realized the legislature did that, were there steps that DOC was taking to have that come about? Well, the only, yeah, the only thing that was within our discretion to do as one of the named parties who could recommend it to the court is make a recommendation. So we basically said, we believe the department believes they meet the five statutory criteria or whatever, we're pushing this forward for the court to decide because somebody under the law, somebody had to essentially petition the court and it could be the court itself, but somebody had to tell them that they thought this individual qualified. And those were people who were coming out of? They're individuals who are arrested pending some type of criminal custody. So it wasn't, I wasn't sure if represented them, it was talking about the number of people that They're detained. Just detention, okay, yeah, not incarcerated. Right, not everybody that we have detained today awaiting trial qualify for this program. It's a very small substance. And I'm curious if there were some people that qualified in every other grant except for their own hours, because that would also be pretty telling to look at, do I don't know if that's something you're aware of? I think it's possible, but I don't know that up the top of my head. Okay, because But I think the challenge there is fundamental, the fundamental design of the program is that you need to be confined to a specific space and if you don't have that space. But I think it just helps us think about ways that there are obstacles in the way and where there's sort of cross issues that keep coming. Yeah, yep. Yes, just trying to understand the staffing of this. So it sounds like it's current probation and parole officers that do this and is there a small group that is trained to do this or is it just depending on where somebody is located, they would be one of those officers there? The training requirements for administering the program are fairly low. It's really being able to use the technology that we have in place, largely the programs administered by community corrections officers, which are one of the types of folks that we have in our field offices. And they're often the ones doing field checks, home investigations, all that work. They also are the ones that traditionally monitor the program itself. So there's capacity across the state then? Yeah, and we don't have a case in every one of our district offices, but we could have cases in each district office. We have the capability to do that. So moving to the electronic monitoring programs, I don't have a substantial amount of commentary here other than to say an expansion of this program would require an expansion of resources to be dedicated to the program. So to give you just some context there, we basically contract out with a vendor who provides us the technology, the physical bracelets that folks wear and the monitoring technology. The way our contract works is when we use one of those devices, we can have as many as we want it. Once we use one, it starts the contract, it starts a cost to be incurred by the state. So say today we had 10 individuals on electronic monitoring, we'd be paying for 10 individuals to be on electronic monitoring. If tomorrow that number went to 100, we can do that under our contract, but we'd be paying for 100 people to be on there. And it slides based on the utilization based on the per person utilization. So if we were going to expand this program, that would result in a heightened cost. I was wondering about that number. So what is it per person, per day, or per batch? Isaac, the device is $1200, and then in the monthly fee. You know what that monthly fee is? We do. I mean, we don't, yes, we have the amount. We can show you, it's too bad because somebody told me yesterday. We don't have all the numbers in there. What did dollar do it a day? Per person. Per person. John, then Wayne. What's the system used for detainees and for parole conditions, possibly, or for law, are strictly detainees? That's just detainees now, I believe. So at the same time that we did home detention, we also did home confinement. And that was for folks who were actually sentenced, but that wasn't being used. And we did away with it after 20 years. And you didn't really want that to be passive. That wasn't passive. Right. On detainees, obviously they've gone, they've at least visited one of your facilities and they have been assessed medically since the proportion of people that were detaining at some addiction problem, would that prohibit them from being eligible for the system? I don't think so. I don't know why, I can't think of a reason that it would prohibit them from being. Well, I can't because you don't have any control over their usage. How do you mean? Opioid, opioid. Oh, well, yeah, the electronic monitoring when monitored them for their, exactly. That's right. I'm trying to get a hand on your numbers are so low. It'd be nice if we could scale it up to where it became. You're not even gonna be able to leave? That's an asset instead of a liability to the system. But if so many of the proportions of a number of people that are detained are having addiction issue. So just to clarify one point, we only have I think eight individuals on home detention. We do have significantly more on electronic monitoring. I think right now we have about 80 individuals on electronic monitoring and you're right. It doesn't, it only tells us where they are. There is something called the scram system, which is for alcohol use. That's slightly different, but it's not a device that helps us monitor other than where they are, any other conditions. Yeah, it's kind of a one for the problem. So in that regard, it's somewhat of a failure because you're holding people as detainees but they're continuing their addiction problem. I won't comment on whether it's a success or a failure but I'll highlight that for anybody who's released on conditions. What they do in that period, I think it's a big debate right now and there's different opinions. Our task is under the electronic monitoring program is to monitor where the individuals are, particularly to keep victims safe, things of that nature. And when we talk about the pretrial supervision piece, maybe talk a little more about what our role would be in monitoring other conditions. But it's, right now it's distinct from the way we monitor probationers, parolees, or furloughs, where we do have much more oversight over their other conditions that are set. Go ahead. Wait. I'm wondering, probably you can't answer the question, but whether or not some of these judges are concerned with putting them into this program is they don't feel that there's gonna be enough monitoring or accountability there. I'm just looking at the dog collars. We got dog GPS collars and such that can monitor their heart rate and various things about those. So you've got a vendor, but how have you looked at us to the board how many vendors there might be or different ones because some of the technology has been advancing extremely rapidly on this stuff. Everything's getting smaller, more capabilities. And we could find out if, in fact, the judges weren't putting people into the program because they didn't feel at a monitoring system. I would think with the technology today, if we aren't there, we should be pretty close to being able to have a system that would keep track of people and even monitor some of their body conditions so you can tell if they were not drugs here. There are certainly, I can tell you a certainty that there is technology, there's electronic monitoring technology that would allow us to track individuals like biometrics, medical biometrics. I don't know that we would necessarily be able to discern whether somebody was using an illegal drug or not, but we could see heart rate, things like that. There's a couple of challenges with that. One is cost, every kind of bell and whistle you add the more expensive the product becomes. And the second is the privacy data that we're collecting and how to manage that. The department has been interested in a while in electronic, not electronic biometric monitoring technology for inside the facilities to give us kind of an early warning signal if somebody is in medical distress. We haven't contemplated that for our external or a field of autonomy. Thank you. So again, my real concern with the electronic monitoring program as it's laid out here is not a policy concern, it's a resource concern. If we go from 80 individuals today to 500 individuals tomorrow, that is not budgeted floor and it would require a significant budget tail to catch up. And so certainly we can do it. We have the infrastructure in place. We have the contracts in place to be able to do that, but we do not have the resources allocated to this right now. So has there been an ask of appropriations in or since it was only in the Senate here, I guess appropriations, was there an ask over here and has the Senate Judiciary and Senator Citizens also on appropriations down there, do they understand? So there was a JFO, I forget what to call it here and if there are a level we call it scoring to where they assess the cost of the implementation and I don't know where that's at at the moment, but this wasn't a DOC initiative. And so we did not include it in our recommended budget. Okay, Troy. Can you just talk a little bit about, it seems like right now you've got the prerogative to report violations to the courts. Can you talk a little bit about how often that presents itself and how often you're actually reporting and how often you're just kind of handling things in-house? Here too, many of the concerns that we have around violations tend to be malfunctioning equipment, best dead batteries, that type of thing, but we do certainly have folks who cut their bracelet and go typically we issue a warrant for them or we file with the court because they're absconding at that point. I don't have the exact data, but it's certainly something we could pull fairly easily for you. And some of them are probably managed locally of individuals like my bracelet came off or we can work through that with them. It tends to be, I think, fairly obvious that somebody either was not complying, they were doing kind of non-compliant behavior or if it was just an issue with the person or the technology. Sure. Okay. And just to follow up, if it's non-compliant behavior, then it is reported to the court. Correct. That would be somebody cutting off the bracelet, leaving it behind, going to a place they're not supposed to, those types of things. Joel. I had another question. So a moment ago, you said that it's $1,200 per device and it wants to dollars per person per day. How many devices does the Department of Corrections presently own? And if this were to pass, how many devices do you think that you would need to purchase in order to meet the needs? The contract actually operates more as a lease model versus owning. And so we tell the company how many we need. We have some just kind of on hand. And then if we would need to scale up, we would tell them we need a hundred more units, whatever, and they would provide those. And again, then we are charged based on usage, not necessarily how many devices we have. I'm not sure how many we have on hand right now. I'd say well over a hundred, probably. And we could scale up to probably unlimited. The company, I think it'll keep supplying them if we keep banging floors on them. But we don't actually own the device, if that's helpful. So the only cost would be $1 to $2 per person per day. $3.20 per day. Use your $3.20. $3.20, okay, perfect. So the cost would be $3.20 per person per day for a million of those. If we, you know, whatever number we have, that would just be the cost. So it's fixed in that way. Yeah, I think, you know, if we were really scaling to a huge number, that might have some contract implications, but in general. In general. Okay, cool, thank you. I want to clarify that, because you said each device is $1,200. So you got to leave, that's the least cost for each device is $1,200. And then usage. And then the usage for each device is $3.20 per day. Correct. So when you say you probably have a hundred devices on hand, that's not just being used for folks in home detention. No, it's maybe 80 or so individuals under the electronic monitoring. And they would be what status, probation, furlough? Yeah, probation. I don't think we, I end up to check. I don't think we have any furlough use on electronic monitoring. Or furlough use, I'll say probation. I think it'd be mostly probation. So that's a different, that's very different. How would they touch? That's about $2,400 per year or per unit. Okay, I'll take your referendum. Isaac, then I'll, also that. Okay, that's quite good. Yeah, I'm just wondering, I don't know if you're going to come back in at some point, testify on this, but just wondering if you could bring a bracelet in with this so we could look at it. Yeah, and the technology, I mean, I've seen some of the ones that the representative was asking about. I mean, they are trying, and I think successfully, so to get them to be small and unobtrusive and more like a wristwatch, so that it's not a scarlet letter, if you will, big bulky bracelet on your ankle, which everybody would know, clearly they're on supervision. We're trying to make that, we are not. The companies are trying to make that as kind of standard looking, so it doesn't call somebody out for their justice involvement. I don't know if you've been able to do it or not, maybe it would give us a demonstration. I think we should put it on Kenny and see where he goes for, he has for today. If you get a shock call or what, you're right. Can I really ask for a job call? So, yeah, I think we're starting to bring in. Once we can get a look at him. Commissioner, I want to get into your finances a little bit. I'm going on page 16, line 17, 18, it talks about where the department could support the monitoring operation through grants of financial assistance. Is that feasible for you folks? Yeah, we're looking at that as well. I think that the, my guess is the thinking in that language and it may be a better question for literally counsel, but my guess is the thinking there was if we wanted to enlist the support of like a county sheriff's office or something to do the electronic monitoring, we want to be clear, at least under our current structure, we would administer this program ourselves. We wouldn't be putting out grants or requests for assistance. Yeah, Barbara. And I know in some cases people charge the person and I'm hoping that when they get options on the table, it's an individual incurring cost, but there is a right. No, it's paid more through the department. And about a year ago, please, we're between my house and my neighbor's house because somebody drove by and cut off their monitoring thing and threw it between our two houses. So it's notified when they get cut off. So the department corrections will get notified and then we'll do a call. Yeah, I mean, they looked around. Yeah. Interesting. Kristen. Thank you, Commissioner. I feel like this might have been covered, but I'm just trying to piece it together. And I might maybe not. So I want to ask is the administrative oversight, cost, et cetera. What is that consistent? What's it? What's it cost you administrative? Is that persons? And what is that? Really, the costs other than human resource time would be, as we were just discussing the contract costs. So it's a device, it's just contract administration. It's not, you don't have people sort of. So that's one side. And the only other piece would be the staff who are doing the monitoring or connecting with law enforcement when there is a violation. Any paperwork, violation paperwork would file at the courts, but that's generally captured in the kind of general course of business and of the old office. So is the staffing piece, I was really, I think, getting that. And so we don't need to increase staff for this. Correct. And that's because it's passive. And we as a committee did that last year, if folks remember, because it was active. And that's why DOC recommended in the budget for appropriations to zero out this program. And last year, we in the institutions committee wanted to keep it and we worked with DOC to have it become a passive system. So it didn't take so much staff for hands-on, which helped the budget. So where the committee that went to pass it? Right, to go to pass it. And I just sent the fiscal note for this bill to Taylor to put onto our website. And it helps to, our website. Is there any savings to the system that could help offset some of the expanse of expanded? I can't think of other than a little food. I just can't think of anything. And that isn't gonna show up. I mean, I think you could make an argument that if the decision by a court was either to incarcerate somebody pending trial or put in the model of trying monitoring, it theoretically is cheaper to have them in the community. Key word there, theoretically. Yeah, I mean, I say that because like we talk and HCI folks are probably most familiar with this. We talk about like what's the annual cost of incarcerating an individual, but it's a little bit misleading because those costs mostly are gonna be there whether the person is in there or not. And so, yeah, I think does it cost the state more than $2,400 to put somebody in our facilities? Certainly, but it also doesn't cost, actually cost $90,000 a year per person to be incarcerated. That's just basically us saying, here's the total cost of the correction system divided by the number of people we have today. But we think of it as like core costs. The core costs are there whether we have 1,300 folks or 1,350 folks. And then there's a little variance based on it. Actually, the math would probably all of a sudden, it would increase because your number of incarcerated people would go down, but the expenses would stay fixed. So, Eric, go ahead. Are you good, John? Go ahead. Yes. You've spoken on the act of an impasse of electronic monitoring. But would it be more efficient and appropriate to operate both in regards to there are gonna be individuals that may be placed on a home detention that need active monitoring. And there would be some that would be placed that could be effective with passive. And through assessments and case plans and the conditions are released, they would decipher really where that need would be met. I mean, I think that ultimately that's a policy question for the legislature to decide because there's a huge financial tail to going to active monitoring. And if it is determined that that's where the legislature wants to appropriate money, and it's important to you all that folks be on home detention versus be in a different setting or not in home detention at all, you could decide that. The difference between active versus passive monitoring is that at least one staff member needs to be on call being paid every hour of the day, every day of the year at every field office versus we check in first thing when we come in and we go through the process at no cost for the hourly rate in the hours that we don't have staff online. And that's happening at the same time when we didn't have the staff to do that work. And so folks were really significantly overburdened. And so there's a trade-off. And I think that's where the tough decisions get made. What's more important to you? I understand that, you know, the premise, again, I'm just coming out of a premise from I'd be very concerned if there was a very high risk individual that we are passively monitoring and that happens to occur. And then we are not able to respond quick enough to where the community is at risk. So I'm asked to say reduce costs and act passively in lieu of possibly more victimization. Now I'm invested into reducing victimization. That's just my premise. I think the alternative way to avoid that outcome though is to be very discerning about who you put in programs like this. So that's what I'm speaking. Theoretically violent individuals who are gonna, as soon as they get home, cut the bracelet and go for another act of violence. I wouldn't use this program for them. I would use something else. Okay, thank you. Okay, so this is actually where I thought we were gonna spend the body of our time is on the free trial supervision program. So in general here, a couple of thoughts. This would be completely new to the Department of Corrections. We don't do free trial supervision of individuals with the exception of some of the electronic monitoring. But again, really there, we're just making sure folks are on the system and not cutting off their bracelets. Home detention, we're making sure folks are where they're supposed to be. But we don't do supervision in the traditional sense as we do with probationers, furloughies, and parolees. This program would change that and give the department the authority and responsibility to administer a program to monitor some individuals who are under pretrial supervision. I think that the criteria here laid out make a lot of sense. Really, my belief is that the goal in this program was to capture those individuals who really are non-compliant or have a high risk of flight, who continue to rack up new criminal charges or have many dockets, they're kind of a waiting trial on. And I think, and Tim could correct me, but I think those tend to be, the focus anyway of this program is on those individuals who are getting like 20 retail theft crimes, but still awaiting adjudication because they're maybe not serious felony, so they're not getting moved to the front of the line. And so certainly I think this is something we could do if it's resourced properly. I think there are a couple of unknowns to us, like how many people are we talking about? I don't think anybody knows the answer to that right now. I know that the courts have about 8,000 individuals on pretrial conditions, of those, how many are non-compliant, how many meet this criteria? I just, I really don't know. And there's not a lot of clean data on that for us to look to. It's not our, we don't have any of that data in the Department of Corrections because it's at the judiciary. And so it's difficult for us to discern what the utilization rate of this program would be, how many people we would have under this program. We proposed that in order to administer this program at minimum, we would need 12. I think they call them pretrial supervision supervisors. We'd probably call them probation pro officers, but we need 12 because we have 12 district offices. So that would give us at least one officer in each office to manage this program. And then we asked for two additional administrative support staff. I think, I don't know if they're still in here. Originally it was contemplated at six with one administrative person. So I guess we should have tried a different negotiating tactic. But either way, unlike home detention and electronic monitoring, this would be a substantial increase in workload. And that's okay. If that's the decision of the legislature and the administration ultimately, this is something the department can do. We've not done it before. I think that we'd go through some bits and starts and recalibrations. But at the end of the day, it is pretty similar to what we already do in the probation for low police space. My caution here is that we need to resource it properly to execute the program as you intended. So I do know that they took positions out and they just have contingent on funding at this point. So that presumably will be decided in the Senate as far as whether there will be funding since the budget corporations over there. But I have Barbara and then Ken. Hello again. So if the current use of the electronic home monitoring is low, is some of the capacity of those people available to do the trial monitoring? No, that's a good question. So the electronic monitoring in all its formats, home detention, just regular electronic monitoring, very low dread. It's basically something just tack onto somebody's normal workload because it doesn't take substantial amount of work. This is true supervision of individuals. So it essentially be, depending on how many people actually fall into this category, it essentially be expanding the number of people that are under Department of Correction supervision. So can you give us a little more specificity of what that was booked like? Like when you said they would be probation or parole officers, that gave me pause because one of the things that I think I'm grappling with is pretty much the lines been pretty bright of like you have people once they're with the exception, I know. Yeah, a few exceptions. Yeah. So I just want to understand like what that program is about. Yeah. So again, conditions would be set by the court. So the court would tell, much like a probation condition, the court would tell us what the conditions are for this individual to be in the community. We would then monitor that individual based on our existing policies, procedures, training to make sure that they're doing those things. And when we found that they weren't doing those things, we would file that information at the court to determine. So is that like a home visit? And yeah, it could be in office meetings. It could be, but if they're home and they're on a rep. Well, this program is distinct from home detention. Right. Okay, yep. Yeah, so it would be our normal, you know, all of our practices at this point, and I think the department's done a very nice job over the last 20 years or so, all of those practices are evidence-based and they tend to be based on an individual's rate. And so when individuals present high-risk, they get met more often in different places so that we can really make sure that they're compliant. When they're low-risk, we can do different types of meetings, even some telephonic supervision, those types of things. And so it really would vary individual by individual based on their needs and the risk that they pretend. So what would the case load look like? Like, and wouldn't- Yeah, that's a good question. So I'll tell you, right now we have 4,000 individuals under community supervision in Vermont. The court has 8,000 individuals on while waiting trial for some crime around conditions of release, I should say. So the number is between zero and 8,000. I think with the criteria set in here that brings it down quite a bit, but I really don't have a good assessment. So on that, we probably will be able to get some better idea from the state's attorneys. I know that earlier when we were talking about retail theft, I think they were able to say, you know, we've identified six people and brought them, we're causing all the problems and so we can ask that of one person right next to you. Yeah, exactly. So can I ask one more? Go ahead and then- So for the home monitoring, back to that again, you said one per district and I'm wondering if it's passive and the case loads are low, couldn't there be, couldn't it be staffs so that somebody had three districts? Like what- We don't have one person monitoring home detention. I was saying we recommended pretrial supervision when we have one supervisor per district office. Home detention, we just add on to the workload and then it really under its current format is not. Exactly. Yeah. Like Kevin and Karen and Kristen McLean, the lineup, wow. So I'm trying to learn here, if we took and we looked at this new way of doing this for lack of better words, why would we need more people? Why wouldn't we use the existing people because we're actually utilizing and helping change people's lives, hopefully, without being incarcerated. I know it still costs us money but we would be utilizing this whole thing in a different format and I'm making myself clear would be- Do you mean why do we need more staff to do this work? If we go and we take a step back a different lens about how we're handling the corrections, how we handle corrections, right? And we're going to look in more so the supervision and all that stuff out there. And we have less incarceration, more people out and it seems like if we have less people in the prisons, we would need more people. So I think the pre-trial supervision program's goal is not to decrease the number of people incarcerated, it's to increase compliance with conditions of release pre-trial. It's trying to get people to do what the court wants them to do before they go to trial in that period before trial because I think the experience and this is outside the scope of the department but I think the experience of prosecutors, courts, right now is they have a lot of people that are released into the community because they have to wait a while to go to trial. And while they're in the community, they're not complying with what the court is telling them to do because nobody's watching, nobody's supervising the pre-trial release. That is I think the goal of this program is, okay, we're going to add a tool for the courts to use to ensure or at least promote compliance with the conditions of release. So it's pre-trial. Pre-trial, but that adds has the potential to add a substantial amount of caseload to probation parole officers, which is why we asked for the additional resources. So I'd like to look at this in a proactive way of somehow or another of a free training to get their lives on track to be help society, to better society. That's what I'm trying to wrestle with in my head. We'll make sure we invest in our public schools to have that prevention. Are you good with that? Do you have more questions for the witness? No, I'm pretty much speechless. Thank you. I'm interested in Wayne. I have two questions. I'm going to say them both because I feel like they might intersect with each other. So I appreciate this is a new program and that there would need to be new resources and to do this. So I'm also looking at the effective date, which says it shall take effect on passage. So like, how does that work? So curious your thoughts on that, of how much time and capacity you like? Well, I think they give us an out here. Oh, maybe I haven't seen that. They say the program is established from the section shall operate only to the extent that funds are appropriated for its operation. Okay, but even if funds are appropriate, I feel like there probably is going to be a lift in establishing things. Yeah, so let me give my other part of it is so in thinking of folks, when folks are in the criminal justice system, there is the thought that, you know, the levels of risk, but that folks who haven't been adjudicated yet don't necessarily want those folks connecting with folks who have been sentenced. And so it seems like there could be a benefit of really having two separate programs. Is that how you envision it or do you envision it that it would be community corrections officers that would be working with both folks who are post adjudicated, some pre. So I just feel like that goes into the vision and the ability to implement it. So we can do an often risk assessments at probation parole offices. So somebody doesn't need to go to a correctional facility to have go through a risk assessment. And by and large, you know, individuals under supervision, unless they're in subject to program, that requires them to congregate with other individuals, their supervision is separate and distinct from other people. And so there's not a lot of cross, you know, I'd say, sentence votes, preachable votes, et cetera. Did that answer your question? Yes, and then just sort of administering the program once it passes. I mean, I think that will be a heavy lift. And it's all new. So I mean, we would have to design policy, you know, so our officers know what to do, probably some training components to it. And then it'll take a minute for the courts to start using it as well. But yeah, I think that's a concern. Okay, that the, maybe shouldn't be effective on passage, the pre-trial supervision program. Yeah. That's the idea. I mean, I feel like that isn't setting us up for success. So I feel like there probably is more discussion to have to say how much time would DOC need in order to get staffed and trained in order to implement this. Which is also back to the chair's point, you know, a bit tied up in whether positions and resources come with the program or not. They don't. That becomes a lot longer row because we'd have to figure out how to staff the program. Tristan, then wait. I think this is more of a policy comment, but I'm gonna direct it to you because you know how it works. But I don't know if it's a real question. One of the not great things right now in our correctional system is that you've got folks pertaining to waiting trial in the correctional facility. And they might end up being re-lead, they might end up being adjudicated six, 12, 24 months into that period of time and then get released on time served. It's a fairly common scenario. And while they're detaining waiting trial, which could be quite a period of time, DOC isn't set up and isn't providing the kind of re-entry casework or sort of educational opportunities. It's more difficult for detaining. You can't sort of give someone certain conditions like anger management training if they haven't been sentenced or the crime that that applies to. So it's a bit of a, they're just hanging at stasis. And even in instance, if I can come on, even in instances where I think the department would be interested, often defense counsel advises their clients not to participate because there could be some implicit acknowledgement of guilt that they are in fact violent or, I think that's a big dude, yes, but. My kind of concern about what we're developing here is that we're developing what you have in there, what you have with detain individuals as a monitoring program. They're in facility and they're providing security and monitoring that, but they're not working with the most individuals. And that's sort of taking that practice and extending it out into the community. And that's just like not the best of what we can do. And I like to talk about DOCs, we like to highlight DOC's rehabilitative mission. So just, I think it's a policy not a concern about this not being just being monitored. It's not going to help. I mean, I won't comment in general on that policy, but I will policy comment statement, but I will say, you know, there's not a lot of good national data for trials for visual across the board on what works and what doesn't. But one of the findings that Arnold Ventures put out in a recent publication of a bunch of data on this topic was that individuals who are supervised pre-trial, do tend to comply more with court conditions. And I think the theory to why, hypothesis to why is that the supervising agency, in this case, Department of Corrections, helps them with some of the scheduling and staying on training. Hey, you have a court hearing coming up, make sure you go to that and kind of acts as a surrogate, kind of assistant or helper to do that. Now there's other aspects of pre-trial supervision that counter that and force people not to be as successful, but the data is not great across the board on what works and what doesn't. So in so much as we're helping people not violate their conditions and follow through with the court process, it could help people avoid further sanction, further criminal exposure, but these are a lot of like, could potentially, if we do this right, it might work. I think the state has to decide whether or not, so I don't know. Yeah. And one of the conditions can be to alcohol and drug treatment. So there is that kind of condition that we post. And presumably the DOC can help like they're getting to treatment and such. And that's something, we are very keen to address and help folks with because as somebody mentioned, so many of the folks that we have, that we work within our system have a substance use issue. I think the challenge for us has been connecting them with resources in the community to actually, provide treatment, but certainly we would be interested in helping folks get connected with that. Wayne, then Eric and Deborah. We've heard that Wayne, then the chair, that there's a problem. We've heard the numbers, 17,000, roughly unadjudicated cases. And you mentioned 8,000 individuals. Is that a match? They're individuals on free trial conditions of release. So basically a court has set conditions for them to be released that they must comply with in order to stay in the community or they'd be re-encouraged or encouraged for some. What I'm trying to get at is, of all the cases that are standing out there, clogging up the court system, how many people, we don't lose, if there's roughly 70,000 cases, do we have any idea of how many individuals? That's for sure. There's many more cases. So I was wrong, that number usually was 8,000. I didn't in any way to the 17,000. It's a good question. We got that data from the crime research group. So we can check that and get you an answer. Thanks. Yeah. Chair and then Erica. So I have a question on the page 19, line 731, where DOC would determine the appropriate level of supervision, which is based on evidence-based screening. So my question is right now, I believe we still have this in place for folks who are supervising folks in the field for your employees, your PNP officers as a caseload ratio. Yes. And for those folks that are high-risk and your PNP officers who are supervising high-risk offenders had a smaller case for a caseload ratio than others. How is this program going to impact those caseloads in the ratios? Do you think? Well, yeah, I think that's the question that really turns on what's the denominator? What's the number of people that are gonna be in the program? I think it could significantly exacerbate that number, although we are slightly under our ratios right now, which is good. We have a little bit of flex for the system. And I think it's a question of how many individuals will be put in this program who are high-risk. And I don't know that exactly. I suspect many of those folks are actually detained, but I don't know that. Determine that. But what are you? Or if the person met the criteria under law, it's a determination of whether they should be in this program. Eric and the barge. I don't know how this may pertain and it may go over some's head and you'll probably understand what's wrong with it. If you are supervising on detention upon their corrections and as well as the monitoring program and you encounter that there's a violation of it, what that individual be eligible for the rule 74? I believe rule 74 only applies to fair law. Okay. So no. Okay. Yeah. Barbara. So one of my concerns is, I mean, I love the idea of having treatment options for football. I am concerned about the counselor or the therapist being in the role of provider, therapist, and gatekeeper. And I'm just wondering how that would work because if treatment is going to really be successful, somebody's going to have to feel like they could be incredibly forthcoming and honest. And if they're worried like, okay, I share that I'm actively using that we jeopardize my, my status. I think in general, that's conversations between the individual and the provider would be privileged. The question that comes up, and we've talked with the Department of Health a bit about this is what if it's, how do we know if an individual is no longer participating in treatment? Does the provider notify the department? Do you know, does the individual self support? And there's some stickiness in there that I think would need to work out. But by and large, if you were going through treatment and you told your treatment provider that I'm using again, that's not something DOC would probably know. And they would not be your employees, right? Correct, the treatment providers are not our, nor are you paying for that. Is that right? I actually don't know who pays for it in a pretrial space. Okay, that's a good question. We don't leverage our financial resources to get information. Well, I just wondered if, you know, sometimes contracts require the provider to get access to the records, right? We're making sure the Medicaid is okay, you know, whatever, whatever. I'm definitely familiar with state contracts where people were looking at licensors or others, were looking to see how things were coded, what was going on. But there's the appearance of it being, like, so it would need to be so clear to the people in the program that, yes, corrections is helping you to get there, but it's not, this is not corrections providing the treatment. Like, so, yeah, so I'm just wondering as you look at designing this program, like how sort of the philosophy of like what would you give it to people so that, and I like that you're looking at the evidence-based, you know, research and the models, and I was trying to look up some free trial research too to see like, well, what are the best practices and how do we, if we're gonna do this, we should do it in a way that it's gonna be successful, but you know, sometimes people got corners and then we are like, oh my gosh, the results aren't good, you know, and so it would be really hard to hear from you all about what that would look like. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay, other questions and do you have additional? I think that's, that was good. I think we're gonna have a lot of questions if you, when you come in to our, I think you said it, yeah. So, so we're gonna do a vote just 10 minutes with him, leaders Dumont, because I see some of us are including me flagging a little bit from this past 10 days, but just wanted to hit, he wants to hit a couple of things and we'll have you back next Wednesday. So, well, hopefully that'll work. Thank you very much, commissioner, for being here. Where'd you get up and stretch? I don't think I won't be affected. So would you, of course I don't, I tried that, I'm not funny. Let's, unless it's at my own expense. Oh, good. So leaders Dumont, Department of State, Cernies and Sheriffs, and I'm gonna just briefly share my screen. I've never done this with my iPad before, but just to do a little bit of data that you can look at, keep you entertained for a second. Is that working? Thank you very much. I hope, maybe, maybe. That's buzzing, or I need new eyes. Bring it down a little bit, it's blabbing. Yeah, I think, here we go. This is, I think, in fact, on our website too. Yeah. I'll have to crack it down, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so this is on the website and I'll resend it afterwards, but basically just for some context. Back in December, I noted that there was 26,000 pending cases of that, roughly 22,000 were criminal in nature. And keep in mind, criminal doesn't include chance cases, which are like neglect cases, doesn't include youthful offender, which are criminal conduct, but being treated in the family court doesn't include extreme risk protection orders, which you all know all about, including firearms and dangerous weapons, doesn't include PCRs, doesn't include appeals. But just so you know that the kind of big number, and in looking at some data from March, there was, here, I think there was upwards of, here, there we go. So in March, so just last month, there was 14,368 pending misdemeanors and 6,658 pending felonies. Fish and Game were treated in the Criminal Division. There was 90 of those. I won't go into the family pieces, but. So before you go on on that, because can you tell us the difference between pending and active cases? Because the number we used that we got from the court, which was a number for February, was something over 16,000. And this is a bigger number than. So there's a bunch of different things. Appending is how I speak about this because it includes active and inactive. An inactive case may occur when a judge issues an arrest warrant for someone failing to appear for domestic violence event that took place last night. To us, that's a very active matter that could come back to court within a matter of minutes. And so active and inactive from our perspective might have some statistical assistance, but they are also misnomers in practice. And so from our perspective, the cases that we're actually facing is the total pending. So includes active and inactive basis. Also, compensation for a different day, not good for the end of the day, but the term backlog is related to dispositional guidance, which is a time that the court would like a case to be addressed. And those, I think they're working on updating those at some point a year ago, they testified to that. But I just wanted to briefly talk about the sort of repeat folks, because I think that's the major focus of S195. And so back in December, there was 13,216 individuals with a pending criminal case. And some of those individuals might be released on their own recognizance. So they actually don't have any conditions that have been imposed on them other than short court, which is one of the conditions when you have a condition imposed on you as well, typically, but then maybe that 8,000 number is people with a series of conditions, like don't go to this person's house, et cetera. And out of the 1216 that we're looking at, looking at that group of the repeat group, let's look at those with five or more dockets. We had 689 people with five or more dockets. A docket in case, so you could have five counts of disorderly conduct, et cetera. So they're not counts, those are different, but it's about 700 people with five or more dockets. Interestingly, you'll see S195 uses the five or more term as one of the things that judge could consider when placing someone on the new pretrial supervision program. So that's partly where that came from. So how many was that again? And these are people five or more, right? Five or more dockets, 689 people as of December 10th, and we're gonna do a new analysis that'll hopefully be out in January at some point. And so that's a group that's probably struggling with and it's taking up quite a few cases. As I testified to in January at that time, roughly 60% of all pending criminal cases were those with two or more dockets, that makes sense. So a majority of cases actually in our system relate to someone with two or more. Even though, right, 689 is a smaller percentage of the 13,000 with a pending case, that group is taking up a lot of time and space in our system. And if you look about the failures to appear, another sort of weather report, 5,000 failures to appear over the last 12 months. And just another sort of weather report and sort of drilling down a bit further, 4,605 individual counts of violation conditions of release as well. So hopefully that provides some context around this conversation. Troy, then Barbra, then Tom. 5,000 parts failures to appear correlates pretty strongly with the 5,587 pending dockets. Is that a reliable indicator of who's not appearing? So, and interestingly, my caveat with failures to appear, now we'll catch up in a second, is those are where an arrest warrant actually issued for someone not appearing in court. That could be for their arraignment, their status conference, their jury trial, et cetera. Sometimes a judge will say, we're going to issue an arrest warrant. Okay, news gets out, defense attorney gets all of their client, they show up in like 25 minutes, the arrest warrant doesn't issue. So it's an indicator of someone who really did not show up that day, probably where the arrest warrant actually issued. And if Tom Oliver were here, I'm sure maybe he's on there. He can tell you about some of the choreography of how those arrest warrants happen, sometimes don't get issued and then kind of sit there for a day. And often judges will try because you all have approved some good judges who have real experience. Hey, let's try to reset this person's case. They have a bunch of cases pending. So there's all these attempts that we've seen to get folks to engage. I just wanted to set some of these numbers out there so you all could digest them as you're thinking about the population that you're engaging with. And then maybe just for some table setting for the next time I come in, the way I view S195 is there's some contextual pieces, which is the data. There's some new, there's a new proceeding, which is the new summary proceeding that we can talk about. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Before you go, there were a couple other questions before you get ahead. I think it was Karen, Barbara, then Tom. I named him. All right. Sorry about that. Tom and then Barbara. Go ahead, Tom. Tom and then Barbara. I'm so glad you like this. I know I would tell, I'm flagging and flagging. See, I'm not the only one. Right. So the 5,000 plus cases, the no-shows, what's the time frame on them? Those are just arrest warrants for failures to appear. So they're, the person could have multiple dockets. No, is that the last day, the last week, the last one. I'm a little late from January. Good question. I'm also flagging January 1st of 2023 to December 29th of 2023. So I think there was a question that came up in one of the, and I, you know what, I'm getting tired of that. The dates went over my head. This is the last. Last year. All under year 23. All right. Just about. So any idea what those numbers were pre-COVID? I don't know. We could kind of drill down a little bit more. I could certainly, I could ask the courts, the judiciary about that. Be interested. I know it's probably trouble. Barbara again, the way. So we learned recently that the courts have the wherewithal to do the text messaging, reminder, court dates, et cetera. And I don't think that's started yet. I think they were checking to see if they have the technology. But I think they're, my understanding is that they're game to try that. And I know that's had really like, it hasn't made the problem go away, but it's made a dent in the problem in other states and jurisdictions. And so I'm wondering, like part of it seems like, shouldn't we see how that works given that that is a really low cost, low effort, like those numbers might go and have, which would change the equation quite a bit with that technology. Let's ask, make sure we flag what questions with Judge Zoni as well, as far as when that, unless you go when that went into effect. Oh, I don't, I maybe heard the same story, but I'm not sure. I'd prefer to have Judge Zoni trust that. And I'm assuming the state attorneys would be on board with that, right? Oh, any, I'd say, you know, any and all tools. I mean, I think there's no such thing as panacea for this sort of thing. And looking at the top 20 persons, which we talked about in December in House Judiciary, some of these have had cases resolved. So like some of these numbers are now dated, but there's a group of folks, the top 20 that represented about 600 dockets between them. There was a person with 74 pending dockets. Text messages, right, are gonna potentially not be helpful for the most acute cases. But whatever that is, when it's like somebody hears that there's a warrant coming, like that seems like, you know, the town crier or the megaphone or whatever, or Zoom meetings or whatever, like that's great. If that gets you going. Any and all tools, particularly. Yeah, I think I'd probably want to talk with the state's attorneys, but yeah, any and all tools would be helpful. Yep. Wayne had a question. Can we get a copy of your presentation? Absolutely, send it to me. We're gonna have him in. We'll have you in, Tim. Yeah. Yeah. All right, taking care of it. So you were gonna give us a preview as well before I... Without your offer. Oh, yeah. When we were delving into the bill, we were just talking about the data context. And this S195 creates a new proceeding that you'll hear from Judge Zoni about. And I think he's probably the best person that talk about it, but a new proceeding for individuals who are struggling with violations of conditions. Arguably, we can already do that under 7559, 13VSA 7559, which is how we file violations of conditions are released right now. When we file those, we can bring up to the court, hey, we should maybe amend the conditions. You could reconsider bail, et cetera. So I just wanted to flag, there's a new proceeding in here, which arguably we can potentially already address. And Judge Zoni will speak more to that, I think. Except the third thing this bill does is it expands existing programs, home detention, electronic monitoring, sort of being resuscitated and expanded in a way. And then it creates new programs like the pretrial supervision program. And then it has some legal tweaks as well. So those are kind of the five things that this bill is doing and probably this bill can be simplified in some matters. I'm just gonna say, I think there's probably some things you all can do to simplify it. But I wanna very much, I've been told lawyers say the word appreciate a lot, but I do appreciate the focus on this that the Senate had and that you all have had with this joint hearing today because I think it's potentially one of the more important things you could be talking about. And even just doing little tweaks here and there could potentially get things moving in the right direction. There are some things in this bill which may increase accountability but increase the number of case files. As I know you're thinking about backlog as well. So it's they're not always on the same page. And that's really all I wanted to say today and I can come back and delve into the page by page and to you. Yeah, I know that's very helpful. And we'll certainly wanna know where those balances are on page load versus accountability. And also we'll definitely delve deeply into that other new procedure and whether we can instead modify 59 instead of 12. Doing that. So I appreciate it. Thank you very much. So we are adjourned and we can walk back.