 Welcome to the April 2022 meeting of the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel meeting. We will do introductions but I'd like to do them a little differently because there's someone who I would like to introduce to everyone who I was going to say if you look at the square which doesn't mean a thing in any event on our call is Grant Taylor and Grant is our new he is basically the secretary of the panel people like he's gonna take notes and keep order and things of that nature and guess you are Grant just say yes and we are very we are very fortunate to have him it's been a while Aaron helped enormously in getting this set up and I just wanted to let you all know he is and other than that I grant you want to I don't know is there something you'd like to tell us about yourself or anything I just I mean I just want to say that I've been interested in the work y'all are doing for you know over five years and I just feel super privileged to be able to work with you guys a little bit now really well welcome and thank you can I just say something also Grant thank you so glad you're here so very glad a ton I did not put in his contract that he's keeping us in order so not okay and it's not possible anyway so don't worry Grant also don't take an example from me on dissemination of the minutes which was to a ton yesterday late afternoon don't do that sorry a ton and to the group for getting those out so late and maybe we can all review them before the next meeting and what I will do is I didn't want to send them out to everyone what turned out at about one o'clock this afternoon that just felt really evil so I withheld them I will send them out tomorrow we're just gonna let it go tonight and as Aaron says yeah we can just review them and do it all for our next meeting but I didn't want to just sure I didn't want to just give you great so let me go down the list and everybody can introduce themselves uh Abigail Crocker hi I'm Abby Crocker I'm at the University of Vermont thank you Tyler good evening everyone my name is Tyler Allen I'm the commissioner designated appointee for Department for Children and Families uh Chief Stevens hi Don Stevens Chief of the Nohlegan Abenaki Tribe and Executive Director of Abenaki Health and Abenaki any slides down mountains uh Chris, Chris Loris yeah Christopher Loris uh Research Associate Crime Research Group here on the behalf of Karen Gannett and Dr. Robin Joy full disclosure I'm also an appointee to the Criminal Justice Council thank you Susanna hello Susanna Davis Racial Equity Director for the state great Jen Furpo hi Jen Furpo Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council great uh Aaron hi good evening Aaron Jacobson Attorney General's Office Community Justice Division great Jessica and it's good to see you I wasn't expecting you hi everyone um unfortunately I won't be here long I uh double booked um but um this is Jessica Brown she her I'm a visiting professor of criminal law at Vermont Law School and a former public defender and an appointee to the ARDAP thanks thank captain Kessler hello Barb Kessler and I am co-director of Farron and partial policing with Vermont State Police along with Atom Kevin hello my name is Evan Meenan and I work for the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs okay Elizabeth Morris Elizabeth Morris I'm the juvenile justice coordinator at FSD and DCS thank you Pepper yeah it's James Pepper um I'm the chair of the cannabis control board just uh coming to you as a visitor today great Ching Tsingran Evaluation and Program Analyst at Shelburne Farms thank you Sheila uh Sheila Linton she her pronouns a community member appointed by the Attorney General and representing the Root Social Justice Center great Julio I am Julio Thompson Civil Rights Unit the Attorney General's Office I'm also here as a visitor because Erin is our office representative on ARDAP great thank you Rebecca hi everyone Rebecca Turner from the Office of the Defender General and um panel member great and I guess I I am going to be very embarrassed I don't know how to pronounce VRJA Gail it's good uh it's the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance um Gail isn't that funny I could have guessed that thank you um is there anyone whom I've missed this is your mom and this is yep uh this is Wichita to pronounce him his I am a data systems expert and a social justice advocate appointed by Susana Davis and why I always miss Wichita I do not know but this is like the fourth time Wichita I am sorry it's all good I'm just that special so it's all good you're just that on the list I don't know who else that I miss it's me Monica Weber from the Department of Courts there you are hi oh I know who I missed Judge Zone I don't think you scroll it down to those of us who are at the end of the alphabet we're always just no one loves us anymore no no no I it just doesn't it doesn't go oh look at that no never I never I've got something weird anyway well you're on Tom's own a chief superior judge thank you oh god all right well I've done this well tonight uh anyone else okay great um there a couple things there are announcements um um first off I normally we don't have new business but we do tonight there are two issues that um we need to bring up one um Wichita you you don't know this but you you brought up a really great thing in your email about making some invitations to people who were connected to the Brattle Bureau report um and so I thought we should discuss that um what was the second issue there's another one it will come to me oh I know um Pepper is here to talk about a request a possible request from the cannabis control board um so those two things we'll have for new business so when we're done discussing don't don't just jump up and leave witchy go ahead there was something that also jumped out at me that I'd like to talk about and I don't have to take up a lot of time but um on stage two there was a talk about the um traffic stops and data collection and I recently met with the with Sheriff Anderson from Wyndham County um and I've noticed some weird stuff on data so I just wanted to maybe seek a little space to ask questions about it great okay thank you cool so we'll do that new business that's all right with you to do with that okay good um then the last announcement that I would have actually I would see this to Erin about per diem payments for community members Erin can you do your you'd like are a wizard at this so I just thought I'd let you I mean you you got witchy his money God knows that was like pulling teeth so I thought I'd leave this to you well thank you I don't think I'm a wizard it's just bureaucracy um that we have to keep up with so for those of you who are non-state employees or not paid to be at these meetings through your employment you can get reimbursed at the rate of uh it's at the per diem rate is $50 but in order to get that money you need to fill out a reimbursement form and then email it to me then I approve it then it goes to my business office then my business office should send you a check that's how it's supposed to go if there's a delay please don't hesitate to bother me about it and I can check on it I did give everybody the reimbursement form via email um earlier no last week Wednesday April 6th upon a request from Sheila Linton for that form um but if anyone wants me to send it again or perhaps paste it into the chat I can do that and if anyone has any questions like I can try to answer those as well okay thank you great and then um moving right along to the real body of the um meeting which is a discussion of first of all that wonderful document that the I have no good name for the quote-unquote subcommittee I just kind of went the Jessica Rebecca Zuzana subcommittee they were looking at the report that we wrote in 2019 um um pardon pardon pardon okay um and they were looking at that to again discuss future directions for us um uh you should know that I mean Evan and I were a different little subcommittee and we were looking at um our obligations that were written into the enabling statute for the panel as a whole we sort of backed off on that because there was feeling if you remember last month that we were spending a lot of time focusing on law enforcement so the um jrx subcommittee um presented us with this truly wonderful compendium I have to say this document that just kind of goes through all of the issues that not only were came up in the 2019 report but that have come up since then around the state in a variety of documents um I just want to take a moment here to just publicly say to the three of you thank you I mean really deeply deeply thank you this is really magistral I it's just it's very concise it's very organized I love the links it's just it's all right here um I hope people have had time to consider it and I'm going to cede the floor to the jrx committee to um lead us through this and talk through where we go so there you are you guys Duzana is is just already gone I think she is sorry to miss her she unfortunately said she had double booked and she only had like 20 minutes at most yes all right so uh duzana do you want to give three remarks about this or do you want me to I don't yeah I mean it you know pretty much um it very straightforward pretty much the same thing that that etan said um Rebecca actually was the chief organizer of this effort and we just pulled together recommendations and also ancillary I don't know dicta or whatever from different reports that were relevant to the rdap subject matter expertise and so what we ended up with was a collection of recommendations that had been made from other working groups and from this working group but also a bit of a nod to other topics as well like for example school discipline or language access which are some ongoing work streams that may not have come directly from report recommendations but that are relevant and are being worked on right now so that's that's what you see there's also a lot of links directly to the source materials and um and believe it or not the recommendations listed are not even all of them we just didn't want to overwhelm you so some of them are just summarized but um yeah that's that's what I got and I would add too that um certainly this list isn't comprehensive and um if for those of you who went through this and were like wait what about that one and that one I was hoping to see that one like please after tonight um send them to etan send them to to me to to zizana to all of us so that we can consider this sort of a working document I I think the experience I had sort of working on this subcommittee this past month and sort of our efforts were a again our objective was if rdap is is next was looking up you know we've just done this fabulous data project on the shelf right what what where do we want to land in terms of addressing racial disparities in the criminal juvenile court systems well it made sense to us of course to look at our previous recommendations um it was interesting because you know our work at the time in 2019 we came up with those recommendations I certainly felt like there were not a lot of people out there thinking about these things and in a way that we were as a panel in terms of producing reports of sort of that policy level scale big system level scale in vermont on race what was exciting with this project was to see how many more have been thinking here in vermont right our allies people who are here tonight I tried to send out invitations of our meeting tonight to the people through the reports we've included here um if they're not here I know they were excited to have their reports uh included here and I like that effort of sort of building upon recognizing our work within so much other organizations and activists community groups just so many more I didn't even get the interfaith um interfaith alliance just produce something on on community building and working with law enforcement from from the county level in vermont and they just did that last week so so please consider this like a work I think it's very not comprehensive but I think as susanna pointed out what we tried to do was organize them based on categories it's it's not a perfect fit as you'll see some of them overlap some of those um we've been we've had presentations from csg through the justice reinvestment um project reinvestment two recommendations you'll see in that chart we split them up based on their recommendations into the sections I think before we maybe dive in and I don't know how you want to talk about it I I wanted to share some old like some overarching themes that I picked out is that is that okay um you know you talked a ton that you and evan sort of realized that we've we've been focusing so much on police what I might take away of looking at the comprehensive takeaways of the recommendations the work uh the conclusions is that you can't remove law enforcement from the equation that any focus of any next drop-down project would be incomplete um and so that was a takeaway in fact when I started seeing how how um jumping to the decriminalization category approach and really it was finding the work recently done in the massachusetts criminal court system working with a harvard folks I don't know if you guys saw that report they pulled together sort of some concepts around addressing racial disparities by addressing the criminal code itself uh and looking at the various ways that that can be done I thought that took in a way a lot of different pieces um and put them in a framework that you could see how many different layers are involved again um addressing both uh direct contact initial contact into the system that's often law enforcement police right and then how do you deal with the charging charging discretion of police officers they're individual prosecution officers that are are implementing their own policies to effectively do a de facto decriminalization their localities right whether it's chitenden um or massachusetts now she's the us attorney uh rachel wallins others right then there is at the legislative level we are seeing efforts this year through sentencing commissions work where judges are nice the chair and i'm vice chair and we've talked about that work of reclassifying uh criminal code um offenses to put them into different sentencing schemes to lower the maximum um the effect is to lower the maximum sentences in many instances there is an h505 girl that's going through the legislature on drugs that is uh i think a direct impact result i think of csg's recommendations to legislature which was when after they presented that racial disparities report uh finding the drug offenses prosecutions and charging rates in this state being extraordinarily high 14 time full difference for black defendants to be charged with felony drug offenses in this state as opposed to white defendants 14 times more likely to just be charged with drug offenses so the legislature took that and looked at the drug offenses and applying that reclassification concept to to dropping maybe some felonies to misdemeanors or lowering the misdemean the sentencing um schemes so i thought that was interesting to see sort of pieces that we have seen in various groups in vermont policy committee levels and also in other states where it's coming together um but the massachusetts report was interesting because the their point was this any one target just wasn't enough the ones the jurisdictions the states that have are ahead of us and decriminalizing certain types of offenses they still see racial disparities coming up and so the current recommendation from that harvard study out of massachusetts was that you can't try to target just sort of the lowering sentences or declination of prosecution whether it's individual prosecution offices or objective criteria the prosecution offices then without also getting to the heart of it because police will still stop and that was looking at dr sanguino's recent reporting right from 20 uh the the covid uh traffic stop drops right and that confirmed what's happening elsewhere even if the stops drop the distracial disparities within still exist right so i think there it's an interesting confirmation of of the the very critical important data that we're seeing in little pockets is being confirmed in other jurisdictions so i'll stop there i want to share those those highlights for me anyone i i have to say i was really delighted that the non consensus recommendations made it in because a lot of what was in everything it felt like in some ways those were umbrellas and i was just sort of struck by that just going through it slowly that those recommendations that we as a group came up with which it's really kind of amusing to me in a way because some of it was pretty contentious when we were coming up with it and now i think a few years later it's not looking quite as contentious at least if we look broadly at the united states um so i i was sort of focused i was personally intrigued with um and i don't know why i would go here first i there's no reason for this i was particularly moved by the idea of expanding the list of offenses that qualified for diversion um i i i think partly that comes from a lot of work that i've been doing with people who are involved in restorative justice and such who are concerned with that right now and that sort of struck me as somewhere to go um in terms of next steps for us but i'll just stop there others erin you're muted i just want to echo aton's gratitude for the three of you putting this together because i'm kind of new to the scene and i just keep getting this feeling like so much work has been done and there's so much work being done and so many different groups thinking about so many different ways to keep moving the work forward but it just seemed so kind of like in my mind hard to keep track of and um this is just so helpful and it's i really also appreciate your thought rebecca that this could be a living document and so it's just kind of this beginning of this compendium that we have that we can add to um i love that idea the one thing that i noticed that's not in here or maybe i just missed it um was there's a lot of um recommendations and work that's gone into thinking about the the front end of the criminal justice system like enforcement policing um changing the criminal code defalinizing decriminalizing making more crimes diversion eligible that kind of thing and i i love that good let's do that yes but also i'm thinking about like what about all the harm that's already been done and thinking about people that are you know enduring long prison sentences um and what about efforts to get some second look legislation in vermont thinking about clemency or pardons those kinds of efforts on the other end of the criminal justice spectrum and i'm not trying to like add to everyone's plates it's just it was just something that i noticed um wasn't in the document or maybe i just didn't see it thank you chief stevens i just wanted to oh sorry who did i interrupt oh i'm so sorry i know you're probably calling sheila i switched over to the to my phone um i'm sorry chief did you want to go before me i know i i can't see people's hands so i don't know go ahead go ahead yeah all all i wanted to say was that yes did i do what you just said like how do we move forward without recognizing the harm that we've done and where do we set in those policies or those um apologies or or what do we do about that because i think that's a real issue is that you know this has come about with like the marijuana laws right that there's yay now that a bunch of white people can profit it off of marijuana all the black people who were incarcerated are what's happening with them and so i really really like this point and i know that it might be in addition to what we already have um in the document but i i feel very strongly about that last point that um i i didn't catch who said that thanks sheila chief yeah i was just going to echo what sheila was just saying she she just basically was um saying what i what i was thinking was that especially with uh and maybe it's a more of a question for peppers that we know many states have legalized marijuana we know that you know vermont's you know going through this whole process which will have growers um you know and how do we look at the people who have been penalized over the years um and also because it is a illegal through the feds but it's it's not through the state like where's that line of you know has the kind of the feds kind of looking they're going to look the other way based on other people's who have legalized it and or are they going to just if you get caught they're going to compound it with a federal charge instead of a state charge i mean where's i don't know where all that mixture comes in when it comes to what we're trying to do in vermont compared to the federal what the federal people are doing and if they're just kind of deferring to the state in our process to kind of go through um this whole process especially around marijuana and other types like sheila was just saying how do we how do we go back and do things and also protect people in the future going forward so that that was just a question uh i i love it erin and sheila and chief the um that is a huge gap in this that i realized after sending this out i was like wait and and it's funny and and and judge said i will probably be chuckling because i'm i'm heading up a subcommittee on second look legislation on the sentencing commission and so it's just the nature of these things where it's just like the deadlines and so second look being of course for others who may not be as familiar as or that how we turn the term of terms of art of this second look sort of a broad way to think about the various ways that um legislatures are currently thinking about billing into this post sentencing how to build in literally a second look after even sentence you know tweaking current laws that already have that right we have a sentence reconsideration statute right now that permits within 90 days of um being sentenced in a conviction and sentenced becoming final you can submit a motion for sentence reconsideration there are lots of ways that that can be tweaked to be actually a more robust look right because it is it you know what what can you look at is 90 days unbreakable can we think about expanding that right what are the standards of review what can be considered at that small period then there are other states that are implementing particularly for the longer sentences in fact they're targeting the super long sentences of putting in mandatory looks at certain stages once you're so many years in um and whether or not those second looks work or happen automatically or have to happen um with the prompting and filing by the person incarcerated right so there's lots of different ways that we can look into if we if there if we want to look into it certainly sentencing commission know that we are looking into and trying to develop recommended language for the legislature to consider and I almost see a wonderful marriage here of similarly interested panel members working with the subcommittee on sentencing commission because right now that is um I think Evan you're on that I believe and and bori tibo and I forget who else and so there's that the other ways that you can look at at at correcting the harm right because you're right that just addresses people are not yet in the system um expungement efforts and and the legislature certainly and Aaron knows grappling with expungement uh review and and tweaking our current laws we can always we can jump in and weigh in what we think right as a panel but we think how the land should particularly land there are a lot of people who have already brought their viewpoints to the table many of them here on this panel but we certainly as a panel member can do that and that's so important how to sort over right who can look at it um and then I think the justice reinvestment two recommendations amongst them were uh related to sort of a second look concept but not just for the incarcerated but for people who are on probation uh monica I don't know I don't want to put you on the spot but if you have anything else in there to throw uh in on that side of the house well I think on the probation one the second look I believe you were talking about is what they're doing for the midpoint probation reviews right so and they they did change that statute last year and they're actually modifying it again this year so you know that's in progress um and there have been people who have had their probation reviewed at their midterm and Evan and judge zoney and other people have been involved in the revision of that as well so department of corrections witchy all right so I'm gonna take you like through my train of thought to sort of help give context to my question so I'm gonna take off my rdap hat for a second put on my farmer hat so um one of the things sort of like uh you know as as chief Stevens is talking and that sort of came up to my brain is like um all the nitty gritty details that come with like the different policy decisions that we make and sort of the unintended consequences like for example um you know like growing personal weed and getting nrcs money is like all of a sudden if we there are because it's sort of federal that they're sort of like federal guidelines and I have to like it actually costs more money now for me to produce like you know stuff like weed or different stuff like that so it's just like thinking about like who am I who could I complain that to right like who do I talk to about that especially as like this farmer in this like small 400 person town um so taking that hat off putting back the rdap hat so I want like I'm very curious if we if we have sort of like a assist organ uh assist their advisory panel or um a subworking group and maybe susanna and rebecca maybe this is what you're doing but really thinking about what are the policy decisions that we've helped push for what was the intended impact right doing that impact analysis uh and sort of are were those the they didn't actually have those impacts and what were the impacts it didn't have and are their channels for people on the ground that are impacted by this policy to be able to give us feedback so then we can keep thinking about where all the different holes instead of just like pat the like going off to like new policies and forgetting about the old ones making sure that we close the loop holes and patches on things that we've done that didn't have the intended consequences or having nitty gritty details cost more barriers for people chief I want to say one more thing to rebecca when it comes to the second chance thing I'm not sure if you're thinking about this but I think if things slip through the crack maybe a mandatory review at parole time like if somebody's going up for parole uh you know that it's mandatory review of these types of second chance policies that because because they don't have to do that right but maybe it should be something written that you know not only do they look at expungement or or diversion but if people are already in jail and um and they come up for you know parole or some other things that it doesn't just get denied and moved on to the next year or there's some look so I just want to at least mention that if it hasn't been so thanks I have a thought slash question of my um sound kind of funny um but you know how um employers have to hang up those laws like labor law things in your office couldn't we have those things with within the incarceration system like in the jails but say like when a new law pops off it goes into a nice poster that's huge where everybody has to see it and let you know basically these are your rights guess what we legal and if you are arrested you might want to check into this is there's some kind of tool such as that that we could also be trading to inform inmates that um things are shifting and things are changing and what their rights might be with regards to the shifting either in policy or law I imagine so anybody else I know witchy wait one minute I just want to finish up on this does anyone want to weigh in on that who's actually working in the criminal justice system I mean I'll say there's you know there's certainly lots of efforts um that have happened within a in a incarcerated setting on a variety of topics and I'm going to use voting as an example right so a lot of people um may not recognize that they have the right to vote and so when elections cycle comes around a lot of times there are volunteers who will come into correctional facilities and help people register to vote right and I think like there's a so there's mechanisms like that for people to come in and then there's also ways in which the department distributes information um to people throughout the system including tablets um we can push out memos and information yeah every if you want in a tablet you can have a tablet you're not required to have a tablet but you know people get tablets and that's how they we can send memos or information or letters to people as well. Sheila this is Rebecca to just add to what Monica said and to answer your question from uh again I'm not an attorney in the prisoner's rights office but um my understanding is what you're proposing or what you're suggesting isn't done uh right now which is what I'm hearing you is like is is is relevant new legislation or laws that come in like right is it posted somewhere publicly by DOC not that I wear is it available otherwise if there's some digging in the law library you know if and when you can get there yes right is there is a possible to be able to consult with uh you know an attorney at the prisoner's rights office or to talk with an investigator about some questions yes but your specific question right is no I don't think there is anything like I think it's a great idea how to get the word out right sort of a newsletter. Monica are you following up on this? I am following up if you go for it that sure yeah which I think these are really great and interesting ideas um that the Department of Corrections could certainly work with people on and you know recent example when Justice Reinvestment brought up a few times here Justice Reinvestment had an enormous impact on people who were being incarcerated and we we did and so maybe this is a lesson for us to learn um create documents that we then were able to either post in units or push out on tablets for people to say hey this is what this statute means there was a lot of conversation around earns time and how earns time was going to work and you know so why people could get it and not get it and we had to you know explain all of that in materials and we were sent that out to people so that they had the information um and so um there are situations where that's happened and it seems like we should start to create more situations for that to happen witchy yeah I'm I'm sorry to uh switch out of this topic but I'm just I'm I asked the question I don't think it um it got caught so I'm wondering what kind of feedback mechanism exists for us with the policies that we push and I understand that we do like Justice Reinvestment right and we look at the big pictures but I'm wondering if we do any like policy specific analysis on things that we've pushed and if they're having the the intended impact I think that's probably partnership that's good for the racial equity office especially the research and policy analyst and also with maybe with DPS um only because I know that they already have a legislative team that does have a deep focus on matters related to DPS matters so I think it's probably a combination of touch points for the ARDAP okay I appreciate that information can you clarify what DPS is yes thank you it is the Department of Public Safety thank you so is there uh oh sorry it's just I have a follow-up question then it's like that's that's good to know that there's like these different pieces that we can piece together but someone needs to piece it together and I'm and I'm guessing that what you're saying is your policy person slash team it's a people to piece out together and to be our go ahead yeah I would I would definitely say that um yeah I do think that that's one good person to um to to work to make these connections and I'm also now thinking of more people beyond us like I see Evan's hand up and I'm thinking what about AGO um the Attorney General's Office and the Human Rights Commission um because there's a lot of high-level policy analysis having to do with equity and uh just outcomes that touch on criminal justice and so I think your question is a great one I don't know who is the the central person to do that or to convene it maybe um maybe it's me I'm not sure okay Evan I was muted there for a minute I think witchy's point is a really good one because it will not only help the us but also the legislature and the state as a whole understand whether past efforts have had the desired effect but also what future efforts are warranted to address some of the issues that we all seem to be concerned about I don't know if there is an entity that is doing this from like a qualitative uh perspective but I think that the department's hope has been that from a quantitative perspective the Bureau of Racial Justice Statistics would go a long way to doing some of this work assuming that age 546 passes and that there's sufficient resources to enable that entity to do its job successfully so that I think is there's an opportunity there but I also think that we need that might my hope all along has been that that bureau will also assist all of these other entities who will have to report out data to develop the capabilities to do that in a successful way because the results are only going to be as good as the inputs and if we have poor inputs we're not really going to learn the things that we're hoping we will be able to learn let me take this moment to just address age 546 I should have done this in the announcements but since it's come up here this is a good moment I have been asked to testify in front of remember Senate judiciary thank you thank you yes tomorrow morning in fact the information that was filtered to me after their last meeting had to do with a concern with the advisory panel that we proposed in the report that made it into the bill that there is sort of we're back to I mean of course crossovers happen so it's kind of groundhog day and now we're being asked again about why can't the our gap do this I wanted you all to know that if you all have anything you want to add into this please let me know before nine o'clock tomorrow morning I'm feeling pretty confident about knowing the position of the panel but that I have been told is coming up again tomorrow that that is another issue about why we have to have yet another body when we have all of us who have nothing to do with our free time other than you know spend more time on data so just wanted to say that with as little bitterness as possible Evan yeah I had a I had a bit of a chuckle today because I was listening to Senate government operations talk about the bill and Susanna you were you were there and I was watching your testimony and some folks were talking about whether or not our depth could fulfill this role and I was just thinking about our conversation from our last meeting about how our existing legislative tasks are are are big and demanding and we haven't even had time to tackle all of those yet given the time and other resources that we have available to us so you know we might be asked to take on this additional task which will force further difficult decisions about how we prioritize things that we're going to work on but but assuming we get this task we should probably you know that that is going to dictate things to a degree you know how much are we going to be forced to refocus on the data component which maybe we thought we had checked that box off of before before turning to other items but we might have some big questions we're going to have to answer in order to help the Bureau do its work thanks Evan witchy I would I would first have like a clarifying question can you explain to me what kind of support you're looking for witchy who's you you aton thank you okay I'm sorry thank you I was like is it the French who or you know what are we doing yeah what the support I'm looking for it that's why I sort of said this issue's coming up again if you have a sense of just your own personal sense of what that feels like as a member of this panel to be required to fill this role given the amount of time we have each month um given the work that we've done on data thus far um and I would also say with reference to our enabling statue um I please send me a sentence two sentences a paragraph something like that and I I have read things that people have written from this body in as testimony before and I'm perfectly jazzed to do it again because uh we clearly have an issue here that's going to continue to come up um I mean what Evan's saying is I kind of wish he didn't say it but he's right um that I'm really sort of frightened by the there seems to be a sense that we can do this and I have said repeatedly over the last 18 months um not just on my own but as chair of this body we are not the our depth that does data that is not what we are um we've been asked to address data we've done that in my opinion rather exhaustively um but we've got some people who don't agree go ahead witchy and can you clarify clarify for us when you say the advisory council is this the council of uh like directly impacted folks like victims of crime and and stuff like that or you're talking about the the governance uh the other part what I was told was the the the uh former sending you an email right now I am looking forward to it thank you sir anyway that was a little bit of a digression but it fit in at that moment um I think so anyone Rebecca so um moving off of that I don't know if anyone else had wanted to talk about five four six before I did all right um not that I see we're almost an hour in and I wanted to also highlight one more thing that we haven't talked about on this report and and you probably have seen it but I wanted to highlight it for a different reason this is under Susanna talked about this report including some of the miscellaneous recommendations that we picked up here and there uh and focusing specifically on access to justice and in there we have language interpreters uh and language issues non-citizen issues issues that have come up you know specific recommendations were different in our our ADAP report in 2019 but we had touched down upon those subject areas in different ways a new subject area that I wanted to make sure caught our eyes just to make sure we know and think you know it's it's a new issue I think for us because we certainly it wasn't there for us in 2019 and that is about access to justice and remote proceedings and um this is there has been a lot and I know that the judiciary has certainly um been spending a lot of time within with with both having committees bringing in a lot of the attorneys from from different areas practice areas as well as internal and judge zone a certainly you know we'd love to hear uh you talk about that or to to think you want to share but what I wanted to highlight here uh in terms of the context of how this intersects with disparities was how a recent report out I think it was last month March um um thinking about how remote access to courts that have become the new norm not just here in Vermont but everywhere in the US uh during the pandemic how that is played out uh for people who are um you know historically disadvantaged and for purposes of our panel you know the black and brown and um you know BIPOC uh defendants witnesses complainants victims children families how all of of the people who who are impacted by the systems we're looking at criminal juvenile justice systems how how remote proceedings have have been for them right so much the focus about remote proceedings is oftentimes about how it works for the attorneys or the judges right how does how is it actually working on the ground for people um well certainly people who are sitting in jail pretrial waiting for a hearing or those who are not or in civil cases waiting for their case to come up right and how has had their case has been prioritized a lot of those there's been a lot of focus on that what this report looked at was the technology side of it and what it means when we you know do you have a computer do you have the broadband bandwidth to access the court systems if there's funding available to support uh households to get that kind of broadband to access the courts through this new remote system you know is accessing these these programs these financial assistance programs uh readily available um even if you can access it and get it into your house uh do you have the technological wherewithal to do it all right do you know how to press the right button and access and and so the skills training and what it means at every layer of that and how it's compounded and and uh and how it impacts these particularly communities the BIPOC uh communities in these systems and I thought that this report doesn't just focus on race but the way that it focuses on the disparities of people who have traditionally been disadvantaged in these systems how it actually has a direct effect on on on the people we are considering and looking at so I just wanted to put that that report at the forefront for us because we've never thought about the remote court system in the context of racial disparities I want to add I want I want to put a couple people on the spot here um one of the abiding concerns of our panel through I mean from the beginning at least from my beginning of my tenure to now has been a feeling that we have not done as good a job addressing the juvenile justice system as we have the adults criminal system so what I would like to do right now is put both Tyler and Elizabeth on the spot and go what are you not seeing what are you seeing that does work um I kind of just want to hear your feedback on that given our history don't hate me too much I could never hate you a ton thank you so yeah I guess I didn't have as much time as I wanted to to kind of go through this over the weekend but I did kind of look through and I think Elizabeth and I had a little bit of a conversation that it is relatively light um when it comes to juvenile proceedings it seems the emphasis is largely on criminal proceedings and I think a lot of our conversation historically have been in that arena I don't I don't think I have an answer to your question right now about what I want to see in that but I you know already have made a note of that that you know I need to be Elizabeth and I could sit down but uh talk through a little bit more of where where could we fill this out what what activities do we have that we could speak to that we maybe could add into this um and so I love the the concept of this being a living document because I think there could be um there could be some addition okay Elizabeth do you have more concrete thoughts than I do at this point I think the biggest thing that I would add is when it comes to the JJ system historically it's been really hard to um grasp exactly how big of a disparity problem we have given um the court system data has historically a large percentage of unknown race and ethnicity for juveniles um and my understanding is that that's stemming from the form 101 um that often does not have race or ethnicity filled out in that um and I I guess my biggest recommendation and I know we're not as you were just saying Aton we're not the entity that does data so we'll grab a sip before I continue but um I think it's hard sometimes to assess exactly where we have problems in the JJ system if we don't even have a baseline um in engaging a lot of these pieces when it comes to the JJ when it comes to youth so that would be the very first thing and I know that um there's been some work um in the family rules um to perhaps give courts the ability to reject form 101 if it doesn't have race and ethnicity filled out um so that's the first thing off the top of my head but I'm also happy to connect with with Tyler and come up with some more concrete things um in the report that will specifically speak to youth one thing that I do just want to mention and this is a super technical piece so feel free to to tell me that I'm getting a little bit too in detail but we do use the term offenders in this document um and I we just shouldn't be using that when talking about juveniles um so I just want to preface that that if if that's the language we're going to use for the adults we need to at least be adding in um some additional language um if we are talking about both systems got it great thank you thank you both um if if you do give it a look over it would be really great to just plug stuff in um because I'm not sure I'm not sure all I know is that as I read through it I had some concern about where where that was and where the where that uh that being issues concerning the JJ system so I just if you're gonna do that I'm looking forward to it Evan thanks Aiton I just I had several thoughts flowing into my head listening to not only your comment but Elizabeth's and Rebecca's um Elizabeth in regard to your comment about the form 101 Dixon Corbett who is the Orange County state's attorney and is on the family rules committee has recently flagged this for all of the state's attorneys to make sure that they do a better job of relaying race data to the judiciary and seeing as we're in the process of updating our case management system we're having conversations internally about making those mandatory fields the sort of do not pass go fields when you're filling out electronic forms to make sure that that data point is more consistently reported so hopefully that will have an uh a positive effect on that front um both both of those two conversations and then Rebecca in terms of your con comment about uh remote hearings it reminded me of a an effort in the legislature just recently um not not directly involving defendants but but victims uh and an effort to make it easier to apply for uh ex parte relief from abuse orders remotely when the court is open in addition to when the court is closed and so that that comment from from you in conjunction with your comment aton made me realize that in all of these conversations I think we we perhaps need to do a better job of not necessarily not restricting our consideration to whether or not there's racial disparities when it comes to defendants in the criminal and juvenile justice system but to also make sure that that victims are not being left out and that we we we make sure that whatever data we're collecting and whatever quality qualitative stories we collect it's not just from from defendants involved in the system but victims you know for example the victims have the same technological abilities that uh we would want defendants to have in order to accurately and and consistently participate in court hearings for for example thank you Tyler uh really appreciate your comments there Evan especially that last comment I was kind of snapping to um I I would uh follow up question to what you're just sharing around making sure some of those fields are mandatory fields do you have a sense of um where the data that would go into those fields how that's acquired and we've had some robust conversations internally at fsd is this something that we are asking people to report directly on on their race are we making assumptions about what their race are based on how they look um I'm my only worry is if I have a state's attorney who's going to fill out a mandatory field because they need to advance forward on it that if if if they don't have that data or they don't have the opportunity to ask the person their you know race questions that they will um defer to other or some or you know or or just put white in or or whatever that is so do you have any sense of that it might be too detailed of a question that's the exact question that I asked uh that I that I flagged for our IT person who is who is helping us uh I mean we and we're in the beginning stages of of of acquiring our new case management system but but that's the very question that I flagged for him because we don't obtain this data directly from the individual the data is most typically relayed to us through law enforcement so if law enforcement is um not consistently collecting and reporting the data to us we don't necessarily have the data to relay so I think that there's going to have to be some coordination with law enforcement as well to make sure they understand the importance of this particular data point and do their make their best efforts to collect it while at the same time respecting the privacy rights of anybody who may not want to provide it uh to law enforcement so I think that there are some potentially tricky implementation questions like that that we're going to have to iron out but at a minimum I think we can take steps to make sure that that we report it on a more consistent basis so well I can pipe up on that too uh currently the past version of the big uh I'm sorry of the judiciary miscellaneous bill as in section 31 report by the chief superior judge on collection of racial data in civil court filings and so I'm charged with coming up with a report uh that shall describe whether and in what manner data about the race of parties in civil court actions including eviction and debt collection proceedings is collected by the courts in Vermont and other jurisdictions the report may include recommendations for future practices and strategies to collect racial democratic data for civil matters and a copy of the report is also going to be sent to the woman who is right in the center of my screen at the bottom susanna davis uh executive director of racial equity so that's that is a task that I have that is due by December 1st great thank you so much for that anyone else wanting weighing in on any of these issues right now rebecca responding to some of things people brought up um Elizabeth the language you were you that got your your back up a little better i mean that's the wrong way the offenders i just clarified that um the language in the compilation of the reports was taken from um most of this was taken from the reports directly so uh and i'm not saying that i didn't put that language deliberately but if i did i don't want i want to be attributed as a final because i agree with you it wasn't scrubbed or presented as a way to indicate it was any of our personal uh viewpoints it was a way to share where this you know where these where the recommendations were from those individual reports oftentimes that language was taken from there lifted um in terms of of of hearing about um evan the prosecutors um collecting race data and now grappling with the the very critical next question and hearing Joe joining with the legislation on deck on the civil side i just wanted to you probably already know of and certainly uh the work the data the subcommittee for the data project we grappled with that very question right um who who was who was sharing oh you talked to monica's talked about it in terms of and the doc side and it wasn't just the subcommittee on data reporting modes come up in several different places and times on our panel what's the best approach i recall people coming and presenting to us um experts who research a abbey if it wasn't you maybe doctors anguano or someone else from crg or maybe all three about what has been done and their respect reporting so i think these are critical questions um lots of that i think where our subcommittee landed was like well that's that's we can provide some input but ultimately what you're trying to get at the other side of it sort of drives the question of from whose perspective is reporting identifying the race right um and evan i just wanted to point out like as as your as your as your touching down in terms of identifying race in your data systems what i also have liked is this consideration within certain prosecution offices to strip police affidavits of trying to present it and as much of of eliminating references to race so that it can be when considered by the prosecuting attorney at the time of charging um trying to again a theory being that can we remove some of the biases that may be implicit or explicit entering into the equation of what charges to charge based on if there's an obvious race because it's clearly identified or implicitly identified in in the materials that go into it um so i don't know if that's been part of the discussion of then i like that that is that race consciousness is entering i just think it's it's a start and there's a lot of interesting thoughts about it being proposed and all these are prosecution officers i'm sure you're familiar with again another subcategory of our report that we shared with everyone witchy yeah sort of just like a note that i um and and i know we were going to discuss that during new new business but that's sort of like considering you were talking about data collection and police and stuff uh something that was brought up to me by uh sheriff anderson in windham county is how that how law enforcement is collecting data um and very specifically citing um and forgive me i do not know how to read act names but 20 vsa 2366 if that means anything to anyone but essentially it's it's the it's the bill that's supposed to like have law enforcement collect data and stuff around race and ethnicity and specifically they sort of showed me that the way that they're collecting race and ethnicity first of all is only uh the drivers um and second that they're not allowed to ask for uh race and ethnicities uh and third that then um what they actually put into the system is their perceived perceived race and then that that is what is sent uh to get analyzed and that's sort of there's a lot of red flags for me there i said i just kind of wanted to point that out and i don't know if it's worth bringing sheriff anderson in to to give us a presentation on it or whatever but um but that's sort of that was brought up to me so when we talk about analyzing and having law enforcement uh collect uh race and ethnicity data i think that like i'm not sure if we're trying i'm just not sure if anybody has reviewed it from that point of view well wishy it's it's come up actually a fair amount but i and it continues to come up um what the issue being that the person in power who has the power to detain um to you know to arrest you all those things is the person whose biases are under are being questioned and so that is one of the issues that's come up around um the race data collection certainly around traffic stops um how one self identifies is another issue because you're not giving yourself a ticket right i i think i think sort of my my worry is um what so if we're asking police officers to perceive and assume the race then i feel like that's an exercise in reinforcing biases and if it's to collect information about biases then there's sort of like some possible thing that we can explore there but if but if we're consistently asking them just guess the race then it's literally just like reinforcing here's an exercise and you have to do your biases over and over and over and over and over and then not create some sort of like some my feeling is that that's how you train someone to have biases so i just i have a really big sort of red flag about how that what kind of implicit training that is providing for a law enforcement to have those biases that's that's my concern richie i just want to say thank you i have been saying that for like four years apparently i've not been articulating it the way that you have but yes yes yes and more yes it needs to stop anyone else okay can i sorry i'm sorry can i can i just ask a follow up question i'm not what is that data then used for that we collect on that perceived race what what is analyzed on that it is possible at that after getting that data to look at individual officers who may have may seem to have no whose work evidence is disparity so in other words they seem to have pulled over or whatever an inordinate number of people of color have perhaps ticketed them have searched their cars have looked for contraband any number of those things if those when those people are identified they have been um then called in to speak with the majors at these and i'm speaking here about the state beliefs about why it is that the disparities show up because disparities do not immediately equal racism um and there is a further investigation based on the data that we're talking about into why those disparities show up in certain people's work got it that is insightful and it's and it's and it seems like the bias is used to monitor bias that analysis may make sense it in my brain um and having and and that issue that i brought up is also an issue and i would i would recommend that either us or a subgroup or something i'll take a look at sort of is this the best way to collect the data to monitor that bias and like thinking about just just thinking about that that that impact that we're having um and addressing it that that that's it for me i swear thank you okay chief quick question to follow up on that if if somebody i mean if you're thinking common sense wise if an officer is called into an office because he's indicated race a lot you know like it's might show bias wouldn't officers pick up on that pretty quick and stop saying putting race or put unknown or just put something because they know that if they stop too many people that of a certain race are going to be called into the office in question i'm just thinking like from a common sense standpoint i mean it doesn't take rocket science figure out that if you're called into an office because you're checking race too much that that might i don't know i'm just i'm just asking is that is that an avoidance of are we capturing things are we actually capturing the things we need because is everybody filling that out is that a mandatory um type of feel you know it is mandatory all right i was just curious because you would think that officers would catch on after a while that people are getting pulled in the office saying why are you biased because you've stopped too many people of this cut that they would stop indicating it or they would or they would i don't know i don't know i was just curious okay when you said when you said that's what it's used for i agree that you know they should be questioned but i'm just trying to figure out how accurate that would be that's all bar yeah so a ton and i actually go over that data multiple times during the year and uh it's a sworn document so they have to fill it out correctly um if they make a mistake in perception that's one thing um but there's there's also uh a checks and balances type thing so those tickets are entered into our lekkers management system and there are people who go in and they actually look and they make sure that um the race is going to match what or the race ethnicity category is going to match what also is in the computer for previous interactions or post interactions like that so but but it is a flawed system because it is based upon perception and that can be really wrong but um we're at kind of at a loss of how to fix that because then you know do we put people in the uh situation of asking and then you know how does that create a confrontation in itself and so we're really trying to figure out a best way to do that and if anybody can figure that out or help us with that um that's something we'd really really be open to because we recognize it's a very flawed system but it is a sworn document and they have to fill it out correctly thank you for clarifying that I would have I would thought that maybe a system that if someone is charged they either have to go to court or not that at the time of court they could indicate what the race is that removes it from the officer and I mean the prosecutor and or defense attorney is going to know what race that person is um and then it removes it it's a more accurate accounting of what that what the person's race actually is instead of the officer trying to determine it and then the data could be backfilled from those those uh those court records or whatever that uh whatever that happens to be that removes it I just thought that that might be a more accurate um way of getting race and and anyway thanks you answered my question thank you yeah actually um it's only for the traffic stops that it's a perception um for custodial arrest uh that's part of what we have to enter into the system um so I I don't know about everybody else but I always ask because I ask like hair color because it could be dyed I ask about eye color because I could look at somebody and think hazel and it actually is green or um you know some kind of brown or whatever but I always ask and I think that's usually what uh most of our troopers do I'm not sure about the other officers but when you're doing a custodial arrest it is different it's that's when you're able to inquire Evan your hand was up and then it went down do you really want it down it was an erroneous button click on my part my apologies oh okay um what I would like to do at this moment given that it is 725 it we have thrown so much out it's like it's all out there what do we need to do for next meeting have we identified any really really vast areas areas that we need that we want to look at more specifically I mean one thing is clear that this I mean as Rebecca has said this is a living document people should be adding to it and that should just be a task that is ongoing I would suggest um but I would all and certainly it will be as this biennium comes to a close um but uh certainly the issues around the juvenile justice system it's a big area um that needs to be addressed um what are other areas right now that we what where do we want to go for may 10th given what's gone on over the last hour and a half where do we want to go for may 10th we are hearing rumors that by may 10th the legislature hopes to have wrapped up already so by our next meeting it is possible that any pending legislation that affects us will already have passed which means we should have a concrete understanding of where our limits are what we're willing to do what work we're not willing to take on etc before our next meeting because we won't have a chance to provide further input by the time that happens sounds good so I would perhaps just waiting is not a bad idea I would also throw out there that that it seems to be developing um at least it sounds like multiple multiple areas of interest are are being discussed and I wonder if focusing more on the structure of things that we we can land on agreeing to set up subcommittees around these uh interest areas and then use the next months or more for those subcommittees to go deeper on those subjects and I was here you know Julio I'm going to credit a conversation we had earlier this week or last week I can't remember now um we were talking about sort of and you've brought it up Julio and other meetings here at the panel bringing you know bringing in experts on these subject matters maybe they'll they'll come and talk to us for free maybe we can find some way for the AGO to fund this for their travel to come talk to us maybe we can get enough people together so we can actually combine this um with a conference again not my idea but I will share it here because I think it's really a great it's a smart idea and the point being is that these subcommittees can spend more time go deeper and and find out more like great where's the thinking where's the spread um for me I you know I'm already working on the second look stuff for sentencing commission so I'll throw my hat in and signing up and suggesting that category of subcommittee here on this panel um great um Grant wherever you are because I can't see you make sure you've got this written down because I'm going to really need to know who's doing what um again I feel like I'm volunteering people but um I guess Tyler you and Elizabeth Elizabeth you and Tyler we're talking about looking at this and plugging in the stuff around um uh good god I'm having an aphasia moment here the juvenile justice system absolutely I would say that that's one other subcommittee here absolutely and I would just say I mean I know this is a PDF document um but uh if if if somebody can pass off a word document to me I can edit and I would think that anything we add would probably be in a distinct section of its own because it doesn't necessarily doesn't necessarily fit into any of these categories but we might have some ideas in any given one great so we've got the second look we've got stuff up JJ system Erin I'm wondering do we have an RDAF website other than what's our public facing website where we post minutes and and members and agenda agenda no I think we need one if we're going to have living documents that we all want to add to and maybe subcommittee folders and whatnot um aton would you like me to make like a SharePoint site where we can all have access and add to documents and whatnot and and people from front that are not in state government have access to SharePoint as far as I know anybody that you invite to the SharePoint uh place can as long as you tell them that it's an external SharePoint site and you're going to have okay yeah okay thank you Monica I mean I'll get help with this on my from my office as you can tell I don't even know what I'm talking about other than um it'd be nice to have a place in the cloud where we can all have um share and add to documents and materials I just want to say from having access government SharePoint files from not being a government employee it's really finicky and I'm going to tell you right now a bunch of people are going to have a lot of problems if you're okay they're not state employees um and are there any suggestions for a better way I don't I really don't know it's not my area of expertise I don't got solutions just problems for you Aaron well we've had this conversation before and one of the problems is that we're um people recommended Google Docs which is problematic for those of us who work for the state who are technically not allowed to do our work on Google Docs so that's where I run into a challenge and I know SharePoint's finicky for people who work for the same too Richie so everybody gets to have that pleasure what about uh what about like we are on a team's meeting we're all putting stuff in a team's chat we can have a team and you can post documents to your team or teams it's even harder for outside people because then you have to have sorry sorry I wish I didn't know no I'm glad you know it for teams outside parties have to have a part an app partner account at this date which is even harder so SharePoint's easier to get external people into than teams okay it might have to be SharePoint and but I'll look into there's a better smarter easier way thank you Aaron thank you okay so we've got a couple subcommittees going on here um I mean and then there's of course Evan and I are still I mean we're sort of holding back but I mean we're gonna I would imagine Evan am I speaking for you but that we're gonna keep going with what we were required to do as a panel in regard to the criminal justice council um by act 54 of 2017 so I guess we're gonna keep going with that now yeah yeah I mean I'm I'm happy to help with that I think it might help to brainstorm how we proceed given you know what's going on with the council I was not able to attend the last meeting I understand one of the things that was supposed to have been discussed although I don't know if it was was the the recommendations from the training advisory committee concerning level two certification requirements and some of those training things so I think that the council is moving forward with its reevaluation of its basic training and certification requirements but not in the method that I thought it was going to be I think it might be a a subcommittee led approach okay but we can maybe maybe you and I can connect and figure out absolutely and as well figure out what's going on with that and whether it makes sense for us to continue down this path or or to or to back off okay absolutely um that's a fair amount of stuff right there um what I will do is get when I when grand gets the minutes to me I'll send out an email about which what subcommittees exist who's sort of the coordinator for them and then I'm gonna leave it to all of us who are panelists to plug ourselves in to help okay um please don't leave people hanging just don't don't do it don't do it there's a reason that not only do we have a panel but that the panel has been expanded so just I'm not trying to be admonishing I'm just begging um don't don't leave people hanging everybody is so overworked um I know but um it it we really need to have a collective approach to all of this um is that all right can we leave that issue now all right pepper my friends hey um if you don't mind I might just join on my laptop I was on my phone so I apologize um let me just take one second here if you don't mind no that's okay um sorry about that um so uh can everyone hear me okay yep okay great um so just uh once again it's James pepper um with uh I'm the chair of the cannabis control board um I used to have Evan's job and was a longtime member of the racial disparities panel um and um there's an issue uh that's come up um with the cannabis board that I wanted to run by this group just to hear your reaction essentially um you know it's not something that needs to be resolved tonight by any means um but it is something that I think this particular panel has um expertise in so I figured I'd run it by by you all um and it's ties in a lot of the kind of considerations and thought processes that I've heard tonight um and I know uh that you guys grapple with every month uh and in between so essentially um one of the tasks um that the cannabis board has been presented with is um trying to um use our authority uh in the cannabis industry to promote social equity um and social equity has been defined for us by the legislature um they said that social equity are social equity applicants which receive certain privileges under the cannabis laws are um people um individuals from communities that have been historically disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition or individuals directly and personally impacted by cannabis prohibition and so um they left it to the board to develop the very specific criteria um as to how we define a community member who's been um uh disproportionately impacted or someone who's been personally disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition and um if you qualify um as a social equity applicant um then um essentially you get expedited review by the board um you get prioritized by the board for review so essentially we kind of stop our standard review whenever we receive it an applicant an application from a social equity applicant and move them to the top of the pile um and um we're allowed to wave and reduce our licensing fees at the board for social equity applicants and um we uh there's a community business development fund that's been created it doesn't have a ton of money in it but it's something um it's got half a million dollars in it and there's going to be additional contributions to that fund um over time and um so the folks that have access to that money for kind of revolving loans or grants um what have you um are the people that qualify as a social equity applicant so um you know when the board uh in dealing with social equity um in this kind of definition which is kind of a foundational question for us we tried to kind of engage with community members we formed a social equity subcommittee we held town hall meetings around social equity um we eventually came to well I should say the second prong is relatively straightforward people who have been personally directly impacted by cannabis prohibition so on that criteria specifically we said if you or a family member has been incarcerated for a cannabis related offense and that can be relatively broad um then you have been personally or direct and directly impacted by cannabis prohibition so so that's kind of how we dealt with that second prong um but the first prong is you know again individuals from communities that have been historically disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition that gets a little bit more challenging to define what is a community and how does a community kind of evolve over time um and so other states have tried attempted this uh same exact task um they've come up with something called disproportionate impacted disproportionately impacted communities um or disproportionately impacted zones essentially they've looked at historic policing data and um they've tried to go down to the kind of policing district not just kind of a broad zip code and looked for over enforcement of drug crimes and said anyone who lives in this policing district you know we've seen disproportionate outcomes on drug crimes from this district um you qualify as a social equity applicant um we did this analysis in vermont and it was not very fruitful um essentially because of either the historical lack of data or the quality of the data um or just kind of maybe small sample sizes we were saying just broad swaths of the state being disproportionate impact communities we couldn't get down to kind of the either the zip code or the kind of policing district level uh it just you know all of adison county all of bennington county all of chitinon county are all you know disproportionate impact communities whereas no one from you know essex county or washington county is so it just didn't make a whole lot of sense for us to use that model it was both kind of over inclusive um in that it included a lot of people that of course never have been impacted by cannabis prohibition and it excluded a lot of folks that probably would have been um we looked at economic opportunity zones um this is a federal tax incentive program um that was created um you know a few years back i can't remember the exact date but they essentially you know the legislature and local communities developed these maps of areas that needed development you know maybe because of socioeconomic reasons and you would get tax federal tax incentives for investing doing projects in these in these areas again a lot of arbitrary line drawing that was going on when we looked at that those maps um you know essentially everything kind of south of main street and berry is an opportunity zone whereas nothing north of main street is and it just didn't make sense and it leads in other states to a lot of gamesmanship you know a lot of policing districts that maybe historically um had over policing now have been gentrified and now no one who currently lives in those districts actually has ever had any sort of disproportionate impact um from the war on drugs so we did um something that uh probably you know might not be wise um in the long run but we did what we felt was right which is we you know from my work on this panel from my work um with the state's attorneys from my work on the kind of justice reinvestment to working group we've seen sufficient data in my mind that um black and brown communities have been disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs um and we see it with the arrest decision um whether to arrest or to cite um we've seen it in charging decisions we've seen it in sentencing um in incarceration lengths um and you know for drug crimes and cannabis crimes so we said for that first prong that if you are a african-american uh hispanic-american or um you come from a community however you want to define that that has been disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs by cannabis prohibition then you qualify as a social equity applicant and so the reason i'm here tonight is because we wanted to include that kind of catch-all language because we know that a lot of people have been harmed by the war on drugs or come from communities that have but we don't have necessarily the data to withstand a court challenge to that um you know whether it's lgbtq ia whether it's women whether it's um uh indigenous americans first americans immigrants um it just it we we didn't include a lot of demographic groups um because we didn't feel like we had sufficient data to really demonstrate that disproportionate impact but we left this kind of this kind of pressure release valve you know this ability to um to become a social equity applicant if you can demonstrate that your community has been harmed and the definition of community is kind of will make a case to the board um what is your community and why has it been harmed um of course the board is a three member unelected body and it felt wrong for us um to be sitting in judgment on this very important issue um you know and have essentially not no other set of eyes on this um so you know i put together a list of potential um groups that i thought might be a good kind of second review after the board has kind of done some initial work that might be able to kind of be the final word on this or you know however we want to sequence it however whichever makes the most sense you know i thought about the um well i thought about um susana's office i know you know your capacity is very limited everyone's capacity is very limited but you know your capacity is certainly very limited um i thought about the racial equity task force um i thought about just kind of assembling a private not private group but just kind of a just interested stakeholder group um but then you know i really thought that this is the body that when i served on it and you know what i've seen here tonight that really understands the disproportionate impact on um racial minorities and other communities um and i thought that uh perhaps i would pitch to this group that um either you as a whole or maybe you as a subcommittee might be willing to review these kind of that third criteria if you know someone who's not african-american not hispanic american but comes from a community and they're going to be presenting evidence these applicants as to why their community deserves um to be considered as a social equity applicant whether someone else in this group in particular or a subgroup of this of the rdap would be willing to kind of help the cannabis board review some of those applications for that third prong it's a lot of information i just laid out there um and i'm happy to answer any questions about cannabis cannabis policy where we stand right now but um i wanted just to take the opportunity um tonight to just throw that idea out there and see just what the kind of gut reaction is um and if this is a path that we can pursue pepper are you more helped at this by lawyers than you are by those of us who aren't i would almost you know it's always good to have a diversity of opinion here i almost when i originally pitched this thought that only the community appointed members would be the right subgroup but then again um uh i i'm not i'm not tied to that i you know i i i know that everyone is overworked i know this is a volunteer organization i know that you guys have you know the weight of you know if you just look at your enabling legislation you have a monumental task um and it just feels like however um i can engage with this group uh or sub subgroup i feel like it would be a benefit to the board it would be a benefit to the entire social equity kind of aspect to what we're trying to do with the cannabis board so the answer is whatever whatever help you can provide we would take it okay chief um i personally pepper i would not be on one of those boards because uh how do i tell my constituents or the people indigenous they have not been harmed enough or it pits one minority against another you know like i'm making a decision on who has been harmed enough or who is or who isn't which creates animosity amongst the community um because whatever happens here also spirals out into the community so i'm just saying is me i wouldn't put myself in a position of judging who could have this license and who couldn't that's of another race or even my own constituency to go back and explain that they're you know they don't qualify so i'm just saying is for me being in my role i would not be on that board personally um and i don't know anybody in my community that would want to do that so i'm just giving you my feedback um because it it does cause i don't want to say race issues but we're already having enough problems in vermont already we don't want to you know divide people because of that does that make sense it makes total sense and it was the biggest reason why i felt like maybe this is not the best approach to take when we came up with the kind of race-based criteria or non-race non-ethnic neutral criteria was at very point um it just i mean the legislation is what it is it says people from communities who have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis and every other kind of attempt at defining that did not actually capture what the data shows and so it's a very unfair i agree 100 percent that we're we were kind of in a bad position here that might have the unintended con consequence of inflaming um kind of racial tensions um or ethnic tensions and i and i i recognize that um but um i would just say that harm and community those two words um there's a lot of there's a lot to unpack there and hearing people's individual stories on this you know isn't meant to kind of inflame that but i i understand sitting in judgment and saying no not enough harm there or that's not really a community uh you know is going to be tough rebecca upper it's so good to hear you i'm glad you're here tonight and and sharing these these um these ideas um so welcome back anytime we we miss you uh but i'm with the chief here and uh certainly as a panel member i i would i would just be opposed to us sitting in judgment it sounds like that's the role you would want us to play in this sort of a second reviewer what you're proposing sounds like you're putting the burden on the applicant the person who is purportedly of these historically disadvantaged communities to prove themselves to be a part of it which is a premise that i don't even i understand your challenge and what you're asking us but to me if it sounds like you're you're if you're looking i would just approach it from how to how to get the most broadly defined um definition that you can be um that's consistent with the statutory language and and go from there but i certainly don't want our dap to be to be in that role uh aton you know i between pep's proposal and senate judiciary's and and the legislatures insistence that that we default to our dap to do all these things i am starting to shift my position on this maybe we should embrace and turn our dap into a government and some kind of entity independent entity and just get the funding and resources so we become fully permanently staffed so we can maybe quit our jobs and and can join this maybe that's we should embrace this if everyone's pushing this on to us whether it's i'm joking but i'm sort of not my point is is that like we need a prom if we need our dap to be a permanent entity because increasingly we are being this useful um and then then perhaps that's what the legislature should do but uh thank you pepper for kavi thank you rebecca sheila um thank you aton um and hi pepper how you doing um yeah i just wanted to basically say i agree with the chief and i agree with rebecca that's all i was going to say because i was um waiting for people to talk because i was trying to figure out like more than just showing up what do i have to do for me in my community like i i just like mind boggling because i mean i mean i know that there hasn't always been that representation for people to understand how certain communities have been harmed and i also feel like some of that is common sense and um so i just feel like i feel very similar to what rebecca and chief said and feel like as a person who identifies as a black person like more than just showing up what do i have to do because uh i mean i just i just i don't really understand the assignment i guess you know in a way because it just sounds it sounds i i'm appreciative of the work and the thoughts and the creativity and i'm just like i'm perplexed by um how we keep finding our ourselves in those spaces that i'm going to go with unintentionally has a problematic purpose of creating more harm yeah i mean honestly if the if the charge was only you know look for people that have been directly personally impacted by cannabis prohibition our job would be a lot easier it's the second prong that really you know makes things very complicated um and you know you're right that it again it has the possibility of further kind of it moving in the wrong direction um and we're trying to kind of think about how to alleviate that or throw that needle okay chila no i was just trying to take my hand down oh okay okay um pepper i think i think oh chief go ahead one quick thing i want to mention to pepper that it's not really my place to say this um but you may want to change the definition from african-american to black because i've been corrected many times by saying not everybody is of african descent they could be from another country or jamaica or some other i just want to that is kind of a minor thing and it's not my place to say it but i'll leave it up to the uh communities here at large if they how they would refer to that because sometimes language matters and i just want to make sure that um like i said that i i apologize i had a time for speaking you know where it's not my place to speak so jing yeah i i agree with what everyone already said i just wanted to kind of it's not really a suggestion but more like a question is that possible just to make a case to whoever you need to make a case to by extrapolating the research or data from other states to um vermont although we you know we our data here is there are a lot of issues with you know the sample size and you based on what you already did um but like it's it's really like a common sense that people color work um are or our people color communities are generally affected more by the drug war and so i i think it's probably okay to just extend it to the whole bipod community of vermont well given that we already what we already know and also vermont has a very small but currently very small bipod population so i just i'm just wondering um how many more applicants that like how restrict the resources is to in order to serve the whole bipod community here instead of dividing up like which groups and which which areas are eligible to apply it's a good question yeah so we did discuss that and just um just one thing that i would mention also is that you know while you have to be a vermont resident currently to own a vermont cannabis license you know you can establish residency very quickly so and we can't exclude out of status from this so you know if we say bipod here it's bipod for you know anyone who applies um but uh you know the and i don't want to get too kind of out of my depth here but really you know someone's going to challenge this determination in court someone's going to say that they were harmed by not being a bipod member not being um not being in a black american a spanish american um and they're not being a social equity applicant because of that and really you know what we have to demonstrate at the board is that there is a compelling government interest here to that we are trying to correct and unfortunately you know i we certainly would accept any data from that's national data um that shows that other you know indigenous groups first americans uh southeast asians anyone um has been harmed um by the war on drugs but we need to be able to show that there is this kind of compelling government need that we need to alleviate um that we need to kind of that we can make certain privileges in order to um kind of to kind of change um so while we certainly um are going to that third that third catch all categories you're from a community that's been harmed is meant to kind of bring in folks um that have been they can demonstrate this harm but um you know as far as i can tell the kind of overwhelming data suggests that black americans and um kind of latino latino latinx americans have been there's there's at least compelling data there that can help demonstrate this government interest witchy and i'm just letting us know it is eight o'clock um maybe another uh point that you could come at this from um and i'm sorry if this got set already uh but is comparing um sort of race and ethnicity for incarceration um regarding drug use um or even other other categories for drug for drug use or distribution to to sell um compared to uh what who was able to open stores and join in in that industry in places that have had this because for example uh coming having come from massachusetts i know like right off the bat that type of person that was able to get in that door to have that so i think we're looking for a government for a reason that you can convince the government to incentivize that correction it could be looking at what's already happened and how uh this this disparities have led to sort of more of a uh disparity i don't know if that made sense i'm sorry no it is helpful yeah it's on i recognize the time um what i would just say to anyone is if anyone wants to just share their thoughts or you know it sounds to me like it's probably not gonna work out to kind of have um you know or to take this on and i know your hands are completely full at the moment but if anyone has any thoughts or things that they want to share with me you know it's just my first name dot my last name at vermont.gov or you can always call me i'll i'll put my cell phone in the chat great thanks pepper thank you okay um the other issue i i'll handle by email i'll just do it by email it's it's fine i'll deal with it that way you'll all get an email next meeting is the 10th of may um you all know what you're going to be doing for that um may we adjourn see i wasn't doing roberts rules there i was just asking you may we adjourn yes rebeck it's not thank you all right we're like what do we do i know it's our president we were all really confused um i've been getting yelled at so i thought i'd like get done with it um everybody bye talk to you next time emails coming be well thank you all for just amazing work and i really want to again say the jrx team you guys rock um produce this beginning of a document is just awesome so thank you and thanks to everybody else for the um really productive conversation and all the work that everyone's always doing thank you have a good evening thanks everyone bye bye