 So we have a number of witnesses this morning and what I would like to do is offer each of them in turn an opportunity to speak to the committees. And I would hope that we can do a little bit of follow-up as well and have some question and answer with the witness. I think we've got plenty of time to do that during the joint hearing this morning. And so if you can give me or Representative Emmons a wave with a hand, we'll get you in the queue to ask questions. I think what would make most sense is to let the folks who are here with us as witnesses, you know, share their thoughts with us and we'll hold our questions to the end so that if there's clarifying questions that you want to ask or if you'd like them to expand on anything, please, please drop that down and we'll do that at the end of each witness. So let's start with our first in-person witness, Michael Groner from the Southern State Correctional Facility. So welcome and please join us. It's kind of a long distance and so I've been told I'm very loud. I suspect you won't have any trouble projecting. So I got to put an earplug in. Yeah, you guys might get sick of me really close. Good morning. I prepared something because I tend to wander so if I could get through this and then bear with me for a few moments. Perfect. That's a good idea. Let me start out by saying that I'm here today as a private citizen on my own time. I'm not representing the Vermont Department of Corrections in any official capacity. My thoughts and opinions and ideas are my own. I'm only representing my personal views. I'm on leave today. The Department of Corrections is not paying me to be here today. I've worked for the DOC for 15 years in a variety of roles and locations. Currently I'm a Correctional Services Specialist at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vermont. Correctional Services Specialist is a fancy term for caseworker. You've probably heard that before. Before I talk about how things are in the Department today, I'd like to talk about how we got here. From my point of view, I will try to keep it short because I think to address the issues that we have today, we have to understand the cause, the root causes of how we got here. Prior to 2019, the Department already struggled with staffing due to the nature of the work. It's a difficult job in dangerous conditions and frankly it's not for everyone. Along with the nature of the work, DOC leadership at the time prior to 2019 was not exceptional. There was a lot of nephatism, good old boy networks, and retaliation from the top back. It was a toxic and abusive work environment. Then seven days broke the story about the horrendous allegations at the women's facility in Burlington in December of 2019. Rank and file employees were ashamed, embarrassed, and disgusted by what was in that article. Finally, as the story continued when it came out, the DOC leadership was informed about these issues months prior by rank and file staff and nothing was done. Trust in DOC leadership was fractured. March 2020. The pandemic arrives in Vermont. The DOC undertakes extraordinary measures to protect those in our custody and our employees from COVID. Working in a prison during a pandemic is scary, stressful, and exhausting. Staff burnout and turnover went through the roof to levels that I had never seen in my career. But those who stayed, we kept at it. We continued to adapt on a daily basis against the threat we could not see. Doing things we never thought we would do in our lifetimes. Morale was low, but we stuck together the best we could and took the challenges as they came at us and we continue to do so to this day. Then nine months into a once in a century pandemic from the Downs-Racklin report in December of 2020, which, at its conclusion, places all the blame of the women's facilities issues on rank and file staff, completely absolves management and leadership of any responsibility for what happened in Burlington and recommends, among other things, that DOC employees need to take random urine tests to retain employment. Now I understand that not all the recommendations in the Downs-Racklin report came to fruition, but that report still exists. Those were their recommendations. This all came out while staff had spent a summer wearing full PPD in un-air-conditioned prisons, while probation and parole staff had been removed from their work sites and reassigned facilities due to staffing issues. And staff had been continuously tasked with more and more duties due to COVID and short staffing. It was just another hit to an already exhausted and overworked board of employees. In early 2021, the pension issue comes out of nowhere and blindside state employees across all agencies. The Department of Corrections sees a large uptake in senior staff retiring rapidly to avoid any negative impacts to their pensions. Those of us who can't retire yet, myself included, have one more thing to stress over, along with short staffing, COVID, the Downs-Racklin report painting us all with a broad brush as some kind of subpar corrupt employment employees. New staff that had just been hired prior to the pension stuff hitting the news are now reading that they might have to work 40-plus years to collect their pensions under the proposed changes at the time. They just up and quit. They just left. I realize that the pension issue has been somewhat resolved, or at least the draconian changes to the pension first suggested have gone away. But at the time, it was another body blow to a department that was already bruised and battered from years of issues and pandemic burnout. So where are we today? I sound like a broken record. I am incredibly proud to say that the Vermont Department of Corrections is the only state level Department of Corrections in the country that has not lost a single person in their custody or a single employee of COVID, which is great. We are also the lowest paid Department of Corrections in New England and New York. We're the only Department of Corrections in New England and New York with a 30-year pension. All other surrounding agencies have 20 or 25-year pensions with full benefits. Staffing is still an issue at all the facilities. It varies from site to site, but none of them are in good shape. Turnover continues. Last year, our turnover rate for CO1s was 44%. Our new Commissioner, Mr. Demmel, appears to be taking the issues confronting the Department head on. I have high hopes for him. What he is saying and doing is slowly starting to repair the trust and leadership that has been continuously eroded for the past three-plus years, but there's only so much one man can do from a Commissioner's position and it's going to take a long road to fix things and to repair the trust that's been fractured over the last 36 months. The DOC needs a 20 or 25-year pension that is just as good as the 30-year one currently in place. Asking people to work 30 years in a prison is not a sustainable model. That's why no one else in the country does it. The DOC needs to pay its employees more. Vermont prides itself on implementing first-in-the-nation progressive correctional practices. If you want a nation-leading Department of Corrections, you need to play your employees like they are nation-leading employees. Thank you for listening to me and I am open to any questions or letting Leona or Will take the limelight from me. Let's give the committees an opportunity to ask some follow-up questions. Representative Hooper. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chairs. How many hours a week are you working overtime? This is Dory, everyone. I've worked overtime every week from the last 15 years. Some of it's mandated now that I'm a caseworker and I'm not on the order list, a lot of it's voluntary to help out the guys in uniform. I can work 12 to 16 hours every week if I feel like it. Uniform staff are consistently pulling 60 to 70 hours with no end in sight. I would say that again, please. Uniform staff currently are working anywhere from 50 to 60, 70 hours a week with no end in sight. Representative. Scott Campbell from St. John'sbury. Michael, it sounds like you worked for the D.O.C. for 15 years? Yes. All in the same facility? No, I've bounced around a bit. I started in Rotland. I spent some time at Windsor before it closed. I worked at Springfield P&P for a short while, but the majority of my career has been spent at Southern State. And you worked as a corrections officer for a period? Yes. I've been a CO1, CO2, a shift supervisor, transport team, professional officer, caseworker that I've been all over the place. So just how many years were you sort of frontline staff? Well, I still consider myself frontline staff, but if you mean uniform. Okay. Let's see, I'll make a case. 11 years. 11 years of uniform. Yeah. And do you see differences between the different facilities around the state? Anything worth noting about that? Well, from my perspective, right, because I'm down here on the ladder, each facility has a different mission, so to speak. Newport does a lot of, they have a lot of job training in Newport, right? They have the wood shop, the print shop. They do all of our, the majority of our risk reduction programming up there. So they sort of have a different population. A lot of those fellows up there kind of get into a routine. St. Albans does our sex offender programming. They also have some job training up there. They also house the majority of all our federal inmates. St. Johnsbury has the work camp. Rutland, excuse me, Rutland's original facility. It's, in my opinion, it's similar to a jail. Springfield's kind of the catch-all. We take it, or at least historically, we have the mental health units. We have the elderly units. We have the biggest infirmary. We have the largest segregation unit. We took every, every specific issue that you could have in a correctional system, and we put it all in one facility at Springfield. Springfield's an interesting place to work. Sounds like they're hard to compare that. So, yeah, it's difficult. Each, each facility has its own, its own culture. It's, they're all a little different. Yeah. So you're talking a lot about frontline staff versus central office. Same feeling, or how would you characterize the, the relationship between the staff and, and the local, the superintendents, local administrators? Put me on the spot with that one. Historically, I would say that there's been a pretty large disconnect between central office and frontline staff. You wouldn't see them often, right? They were just kind of like gods up on Mount Olympus. You just heard their names. When they did come to the facilities, they very rarely went out back and talked to frontline staff. I would say that that appears to be changing under Mr. Demmel. He really seems to grasp what the issue is, or the current serious issue is with the department. He understands that staff don't feel value. They think that they're, the higher ups don't care about them and he's, he's making, he's doing things to address that. Change takes time. I've said that before. It can take a month to go from really good times to really bad times. It takes years to repair the damage that's been done over the last three years. It was just, it's just nonstop. We just got browbeat. It was like every other week we were in the news for something terrible that none of us had to do. There was a period of time where I wouldn't even tell people I worked for the department of corrections. I was so embarrassed by what was out there. But it had nothing to do with me, right? I'm getting browbeat and people are asking me questions in baseball games. Like, wow, did you see that news article? I don't know, man, like I just work at the prison. I don't know anything about what goes on in Burlington, but now I feel ashamed. And the Downs-Rackford report for better or for worse left the terrible taste in rank and file staff's mouth. Yeah. It just, it absolved, it was just all about us, what we didn't do, what we have to do, how we're dirty, how we're corrupt, how, and none of it's true. It's not accurate. The whole reason that Burlington came to light was because rank and file staff reported it. But to end on a positive note, I do, I'm beginning to see a change in how management is dealing with staff. Will it last or will it continue? I can't say. But I will say that the signs are promising at this point. So what I was getting at was local management. The local superintendents, do you feel like they're more in touch with what's going on? I don't know if they not be, but do they have your back, I guess is the question. They have your back until they don't. That's the best way that I can put it. And I think if you asked a lot of long-term employees, they'd say the same thing. As long as you're making them look good and you're not causing them any issues, they'll back you. The minute something goes sideways, it rolls downhill. My local management team who might be listening, I love that. But it's a bureaucracy. It goes downhill until it does it. But I think that the superintendents and the assistant superintendents in the middle management, I do think that they care about their staff. But I think that the problem with how staff feel after the last three years is so massive that it's difficult just to tell them to fix it. I swear, if we have one more pizza party at work, we might all revolt. You know what I mean? Pizzas are not going to fix this thing. This is going to take some serious heavy lifting from people above the superintendent level and even above the commissioners level. But they do care about us. So I think that's a good point. Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks for coming in. So I've got a lineup of folks who'd like to ask questions. I want to remind folks at that end of the table, it's easy for us to remember to project because we're asking a question of someone who's sitting very far away from us. But as you're asking questions, please remember that we all would like to hear your question as well. So they're not yelling at you, Mr. Groner. They're just... No, it's fine. All right. So I have Representative Dolan next. Yes. Thank you. So thanks so much for coming in today and sharing your perspective, your experience. And kind of highlight how it's a challenging situation working in the Department of Corrections like it was before, and it's been exacerbated by COVID and current conditions. I have shared with my committee before, growing up I have family members and my parents worked as correctional officers and so understand that it's been challenging for many years. And so I guess I'm trying to see, if we're looking at it through the lens of recruitment and retention, I hear the piece pay and benefits. Like that's a piece of it. Like let's make it more of an incentive to work there. I also, when I hear that, see that that's one piece of it because we want to throw money and benefits into a system that really isn't working. Like the structure isn't setting us up for success. So I'm curious your thoughts, because you've been there for a while, have there been conversations about this? Like making the job more appealing, making it easier. Are there ways to do that? Have discussions come up? Is it changing the dynamics of the job? Ships. I don't know what it is exactly, but what is your understanding of what's happened before in that area? Well, we have suggested that we add additional ranks, right? If you look at uniform staff, which is like the majority of your DOC employees, there's only like three ranks. There's CO1, CO2, shift supervisor. And that doesn't, I mean, if you look for just for instance, Sergeant Baker, but if you look at the state police, right, they have true preferred, or second class, first class, corporal, sergeant, captains, captain, I mean, I understand it's a much more paramilitary organization, but there's more room for advancement, right? And every time you advance, that's an acknowledgement of what you've done, right? So if you just jump straight to CO2 three years in, you're just going to be a CO2 for 27 years. But there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of lateral or vertical movement in the uniform ranks. And we've suggested in the past, VSEA has suggested that we add a rank, right? We extend it as CO3 or something along those lines. I think that would go a long way in getting folks to think of the prisons as more of a career. Because if you worked in the prisons for any length of time, you're just, you get to a point where you're obsessed about getting out. You want to go work in probation and parole, or you want to go work in central, like you just want to get out of the prisons. I think that would go a long way. I know Mr. Devil has talked about incorporating, you know, planning out or putting on paper career paths. Like this is what you have to do to move forward. And I think that would go a long way in getting rid of the idea of like nepotism and good old-boy systems, right? If you gave people, like you need this training and this training and this training and then you'd be eligible for this rank. But we need more than two ranks. As far as, you can't really change shift work, right? Like we're unique. Whereas, you know, law enforcement agencies in the community, I think Brattleboro experienced it recently. They were short staffed so they cut back on their shifts, which is not a good thing. Like it can at least save your officers from burnout. We don't have that option. We can't just not have COs in the prisons on third shift that just like see in the morning, like we can't do that. We have to staff it nonstop. So I don't think changing the shifts would help things. And it's a whole, it's a can of worms because if you change how the shifts work, you have to address the leave accrual rates and I don't see how we can change shift work. The best way to make shift work, you know, reasonable is to be staffed, is to not be held over or called in early every day. That's the best way to do it. You know, a number of years ago when I was a shift supervisor, Southern State was incredibly violent. It was constant. You know, it'd be nothing for me on a Friday night to have three or four incidents, the uses of forces and self-harm. The last couple of years, whether it's COVID or not, things have dramatically calmed down at Springfield. And I keep saying to everyone who listened like this, wouldn't be a bad place to work if we could just get people to come here and work. But when I go to the Jiffy mart around the corner and they're hiring at 16 bucks an hour, or O'Kemo is going to pay $20 an hour. And we started in 1936. I hate to, you know, beat a dead horse or to speak with the pay, but I don't know what else there is to do with things. Like little kids don't usually say, oh, I want to grow and be a correctional officer, right? I want to be a fireman. I want to be a police officer. I want to join the army or whatever. You don't rarely ever hear kids say, I want to grow and be a CEO. It's not a glamorous job. And to get people interested in that, you have to make the pay interesting. Thank you. Representative Taylor. Yes, I'm wondering if you've seen any difference in the recruits that come in and the kind of training that they come in with over the years. Do you find them better trained or less trained or trained in any different ways? Would you have any suggestions regarding the training of people coming out of the academy? Well, it's been a long time since I've been through the academy. It's absolutely different. We, you know, through, you know, statute or what have you or directive changes that the training in the Department of Christians is constantly changing, but the length of the academy hasn't increased. I want to say it's five weeks. I would encourage all of you if you have the time to go up to Lindenville and see what the Correctional Academy looks like and then go to Pittsburgh and look what the State Police Academy looks like. And then you can ask yourselves who's turning out the more prepared officer. And this isn't an indictment on our academy staff. They're wonderful. They're hardworking. Our trainers are some of the best in the state, and I'll stand by that. But the physical plant of the academy does not promote professionalism. We really should think about, in my opinion, working with the folks in Pittsburgh about possibly going back there and utilizing their space. And I know that's been talked about before. They come out of the academy about as well-trained as they could be. It's a really learn-on-the-job kind of job. We can give you the basic tools on how to talk to people, but until you talk to a guy doing life for murder or until you talk to somebody who has a severe mental illness, the training doesn't really translate. But they do come out with a good understanding of what needs to be done, but it's turning that into real-world interactions, which is the tricky part. Let's take an example. Say, ability to de-escalate a situation. That comes with time. You don't think that... Could the training help on that at all? It's difficult, because what I could say to one guy to de-escalate him might wind the other guy up. It's a people business. The training in the academy gives you the first building block. If you're building a state house, we give you one block. The rest of it is all... You build relationships with the guys as you work with them. You get to know them. They get to know you in a professional setting. That's how you de-escalate folks. Nobody who's worked up is going to listen to a rookie. They're just not. It's just the nature of the job. They're going to say, go get me the shift supervisor, and they're going to do it. But it does provide them the training on how to handle that situation. But as far as resolving it, probably not. Do you find any difference in the attitude of the people who come in as recruits? They're a lot less cynical. They're brand new. They don't know what they're getting themselves into. As comparing new members, maybe they're all not cynical. I guess what I'm getting at is the difference between a social worker and a cop. And coming in from the Academy, are they more social work oriented? Or are they the same sort of attitude that they've had before? Do you see what I'm sort of... No, I see what you're saying. Are they coming in more like what you see in the movies for a CO, or are they coming in more like a social worker? I think most of them come in kind of like a blank slate. They come in and they're just big sponges and they absorb, and a lot of it has to do with the further training they receive in the facility, the culture of the facility, the attitudes of the officers that are assigned as their field training officers. That's really what molds the new guys. They come in wide-eyed and they come in sort of scared. It's scary to work in a jail. But every... And then you're dealing with like, you know, everyone's personal bias. Some folks come in thinking that they can take that social worker role. Other guys take the job because they want to build a resume before they go out into, you know, outside law enforcement. It's not a blanket, I'm sorry if I'm being vague with your answer. It's just if there's so many different variables. But, you know, I would say that these days new officers come in with a good understanding and in line with the department's values and mission at this point. How that matures through their career, that's an individual career journey and how they work. I mean, you could be two weeks into your career and get assaulted. That's totally going to change how you view the job and you view the incarcerated individuals. Representative Emmits. So I'd like to pick up a little bit of Taylor's questioning. And I would assume that for a correctional officer in a facility, your primary concern is security. Security of the facility, security of the residents as well as staff. That's your number one priority. Is that fair to say? Oh yeah, absolutely. And then you get into the human level which remains to the training level as well. So you've been involved with corrections for the last 15 years. Have you seen a change, a difference in the MA population now than 15 years ago? And if so, what is that change then? And then how has the training of the correctional officers through the academy, how is that reflected? We know that the inmates now that are coming in have much more severe issues than in the past. And is that what you've seen and does the training help correctional officers deal with those situations beyond the security issue? Well, I have seen a change in the population. In my view, my perspective, it seems a lot less violent. Personally, I think that has a lot to do with the MAT program. And this is a, you know, I'm not saying anything bad about the MAT program, but I think historically, if you look back in corrections to the beginning of the opioid epidemic where we didn't, we tried to arrest our way out of that issue and penalize people out of that lifestyle, a lot of the violence and this is just anecdotal, right? Like, I'm just, this is just my observations. I have no data. A lot of the violence in the prisons was because of drugs, lack of drugs, the drug trade. People smuggling drugs are not paying debts and then violence breaks out. I think the introduction of the MAT program has taken all that away. It's pretty much destroyed the black market on drugs. There's very little strong arming or coercion. And I would say that as far as the people coming to jail, I mean, sure we still have violent offenders to come to jail, but I don't see the level of violence in the prisons that I used to. Whites every day, assaults on COs. It's just, things have changed. And the DOC has made a concerted effort, this was prior to the pandemic, to change how we resolved issues in the prison. We used to not we used to not take such excessive steps to avoid a use of force. Now that's the absolute last thing that we try to do. We try to resolve everything through verbal interventions, which is a good thing in my opinion. But as far as why that's happening, I'm not sure. And as far as, again, I can't speak specifically to the correctional academy training because I haven't been up there to train in many years. But I will say that when the new guys come out and they come to the facilities and they see senior staff resolving issues in a certain manner, through verbal interventions or the least invasive way possible, then they see it and they say, okay, that's the way we handle things. And then from, once you get past the security point of view interacting with them on a human level, that takes time. That's the only way to do it is you have to interact with the guys in your living unit and then word gets out, oh, Gronar is a decent dude. You can talk to him, blah, blah, blah, or Gronar is a jerk. Don't give him the time of the day, stay away from him. It's like working in a big, giant, crazy high school. There's always rumors and opinions and everything flying around. Like this building. But that's the best way that we deal with folks inside is just by building professional interpersonal relationships. But I will say I've seen the change in the last four years. Representative Anthony. Thank you, item chairs. And thank you very much for coming in on your own time. I appreciate it immensely. Not being terribly familiar with corrections because obviously that's not our traditional focus. I want to ask two questions. One that you touched on which is the financial incentive you mentioned that the the reward upon retirement is not as competitive as you think it should be. That is to say you talked about the years of service I'm referring obviously to the pension terms. The other though side of that is the dollar today which is to say you sort of touched on the fact that a pathway presumably including raises has to do with ranks and you said that this is too, this is an organization at the on the ground level that's too flat because they're not enough ranks. I understand that. How about though the competitive wage at any of the ranks that you would think should be there or are there now in terms of New York New Hampshire, Massachusetts etc. How would you characterize that? I'm trying to get at the attractiveness versus the attractiveness of continuing to serve and obviously the dollar today and the dollar tomorrow are if you will both considerations in that that's my first question. I have a structural question to ask after right so the end result of our pension 50% of our annual financial personally I think that's fine. The problem is the length of time it takes you to get there that's the issue when you look at all the other states in New England and New York where the only department of corrections that asks their employees to spend 30 years in a prison. And I understand that every other Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut have different financial obligations. They have a much larger tax base but it's unsustainable to ask folks to work for 30 years. If someone comes and joins the department at the age of 30 years old you want them working in a prison at the age of 60 before they can take their pension? Like I don't see a lot of 60 year olds at any of the prisons I go to and I'm not trying to be age discriminatory I'm just saying that that's a wild ask for someone of that age to work in a jail full of you know maladjusted violent young criminals. So I just think we have to figure out a way to make it a 20 year pension because that's what every other state offers. Additionally every other state pays everybody more. Whether it's the starting correctional officer or the other states use a more paramilitary rank structure right? Whether it's a sergeant, a lieutenant, a case manager everybody around us is getting paid more. But they're they're all working a type of corrections that is not as intense as Vermont. A lot of states are not direct supervision they don't have a CEO in the unit 24-7 they just go in and do a tour every 30 minutes or an hour. They're entirely different systems. I think the system we have in Vermont is great because with direct supervision we can have those interpersonal relationships and we can do the kind of work that you folks want us to do. But I think there needs to be some recognition about that the work you want us to do is incredibly difficult and more difficult than what our surrounding states are asking their employees to do. And I don't don't know the historical if you will transition to the place of corrections in state government but I do know enough that corrections is part of a rather large agency. And I guess my question is and your perspective from where you sit is it true that the structure of corrections that is the place in state government as a secretary with a commissioner does that structure allow the claim on resources to be as direct and as useful to the mission that you see the department has. And I say that because there are a lot of layers between yourself and the governor or even the institutional head at Springfield or whatever. And the more layers and the more difficult it is to reach the secretary of administration or the governor generally means that it's more difficult to put your finger on a resource need. And I guess I ask that because over the last 50 years that I've been around and looking at state government obviously the place of corrections and its connection to the top of state government is very different than it was 50 years ago. And I don't know if that's good or bad but I want to pose the question. Thanks. I think that the way the department of corrections is structured leads to that feeling of disconnect from rank and file staff. I think you know when I watch Mr. Demmel testify or anybody else from central office I don't feel like they're testifying for things that I have any idea what they're talking about and maybe I don't need to know where I am in the rank structure but I feel like we're talking about things that people on the front line that are expected to implement these practices have no idea what's going on. I will say that it's impossible for VSEA to get any time with the governor. I don't know what's going on. People are hiding from us or I don't know what it is. We can't ever get a minute with other guys time. I don't know if moving us to the department of public safety would fix that in any way. That's kind of out of my wheelhouse. There's some big picture stuff that I'm not real read up on. But I will say that it's given the layers in the department and the access to people above the commissioner it's difficult to get our concerns heard. By the time it percolates up there it typically gets whitewashed or ignored or pushed to the side. But maybe Mr. Demmel is going to change that. He keeps talking about transparency and everything else. I have high hopes for that. Thank you. Representative Colston. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Garner, thank you so much for your testimony this morning. And thanks for your service. I appreciate that. So what would an ideal work culture look like that would inspire you and others to make a career in the department of correction? So not to my own horn but to think back to when I was a shift supervisor when people work at a place of employment whether it's a prison or a hospital or any place they have to work if they want to make money the trick is getting them to want to work for you. That's a leadership thing. Your staff has to feel invested that you care about them. It has to come from the top down. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? What are your goals? I just want to work here for four years and go become a cop. Let me help you achieve that. If that's what you want to do then I'm not going to try and change your mind. But in those four years if I invested in that guy maybe I would change his mind. It's about training, it's about investment, it's about compensating people at a rate where they feel appreciated. It's about backing your staff. It's about standing up for your staff. It's a cultural thing. We've lost that over the years and I'm going to try and make it quick as I explain it. Back when the prisons were violent there was a very us versus them mentality. Red team, blue team. Uniform staff versus incarcerated folks. But now that's gone which is good. It's great. I'm not saying I missed that at all. I thoroughly enjoy the lack of violence. But that's what brought people together. You could hate your co-worker. You could have political differences, whatever. But when the ships were on the floor, when things got crazy, I could rely on him and that built morale out. Those instances, they're not gone, but they're few and far between which is good. But we have to figure out a way to replicate that kind of togetherness again without bringing back the things that four or five, six years ago the level of violence and everything else. It's a leadership thing. We were in the department while we still had troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and a lot of my supervisors were prior military or they were in the guard. I never served. But those guys were phenomenal leaders. They understood it. They understood buying into their staff and building them up and challenging them in ways where they could succeed. And I think that the department needs to make a serious decision on what's a mistake misconduct. If someone makes a genuine mistake you don't need to put them under investigation for it. Look at the totality of the circumstances. If the guy was just doing his best and he made a mistake you don't need to treat it like he willfully disregarded work rules. Then that takes away everyone's initiative or motivation. They don't want to do anything. They're scared of getting in trouble. You need to support your staff. That's my ground level view. Thank you. No problem. Representative Coffey. Thank you Madam Chair. And thank you Mr. Greta for being here. You know I have to say it's so wonderful having you here. I got tired of Zoom calls. It's really wonderful that you're here in person and I also want to join others in thanking you for your service. And I've been on the corrections and institutions committee for only for four years. So when I started you know we were hearing about the crisis the worker shortage. And I know that's really you laid it out pretty clearly in your remarks about all the contributing factors. So a few other folks have asked some of the questions I want to ask you but one of the questions I had was one of the you really spoke to a PR problem with the Department of Corrections because in a way that is one of the biggest obstacles in getting people to come to work in the department. And as you're sitting here with us today I'm thinking it's like for people to see people like you actual people who work in our facilities and who are doing the good work. I've gone and met with my people and I've been really inspired by their commitment to the work and what they're talking about. Your ideas that you're giving I'm taking pretty copious notes here because they're really concrete ideas and what we can do from our legislative position to help. And I just I guess I have a couple questions but I just want to say this idea of transparency and support for our Department of Corrections is really one of the things that I think is really important and last year we set up that oversight commission which hasn't really gotten started but I think the spirit of that was to give support like you know to help the public see and give some more transparency after the stories that came up in the press about what happened at the women's facility because it was hard for all of us. You know very much I can imagine for you all but it was hard sitting where I sit and I think that I hope that that commission that oversight commission can be seen as like this is a way to have more transparency and openness and actually to educate the public about what goes on within our Department. So one of the questions I had for you is you know you've been based at Springfield and we at the top of the session heard a lot about the PRIN report and it was an interesting approach this collaboration between the University of Vermont and the Department of Corrections where they interviewed both incarcerated folks and staff and what was remarkable to me was like kind of the alignment of concerns and well I don't think it's like this is a five year project but do you also see some possibility in there to build on and you know the Springfield and then my second part of my question is at that facility should there be more different kinds of programs? Should there be improvements to the facility? It's one of it's a facility that in some ways didn't get finished like it's one of our newer facilities but there are aspects of that facility that did not get finished so I want to throw all those questions at you but you know I want to say my comment is like you have some really concrete recommendations that I feel are really helpful to me. Well I'm glad. Yeah so PRIN, so maybe PRIN and the facility and maybe what do you think we could do to improve the PR of the department? Oh boy. And I know we have other folks here too. I'll try and keep, I am glad you brought up PRIN because I was going to bring them up out of the blue. So for those of you who don't know PRIN stands for research initiative network. It's a thing from the Urban Institute in Washington DC and Vermont is one of five states enrolled in this. And it is a collaboration between UVM, Urban and the DOC and it's a four or five year research project. It's a research project to look at how we do corrections and to implement change. I will say that PRIN is a five year research project. It's not a quick fix. We're going to try things and see if they work and if they don't then we'll stop doing them. We'll try something else. And the changes come from the incarcerated population and the workforce. It's really a unique way to look at it. I'm on the executive committee. I'm very excited about it because I've never seen this before. I said this a couple of weeks ago. PRIN is a long term project. We can't wait for PRIN's results to address the issues that are facing the department. I put it like this. If my house is on fire, I'm not going to go build a fire truck. Building a fire truck is PRIN. We're going to look at new and ended ways to fight a house fire. That doesn't stop my house from being on fire. I need to call up the old 1985 one from the volunteer department to put my house out. So we have to address the current issues before we can get into what PRIN wants to do. I do see a lot of opportunities with the PRIN project. I know it's been very educational for the UVM researchers to get an insight into corrections. I know the incarcerated population is pretty excited about it because they haven't really had this kind of opportunity to tell their side of the story outside of prisoners' rights or anything. I do see a lot of promise with the PRIN project, but I do think it's going to be long term. It's going to take a while. The other question was how to fix up Springfield. PRIN I was going to think about the facility. It's a facility limiting. I think you probably followed our committee recommended about AC Air conditioning. That was Shawanda here because she loves talking about. Springfield is the newest prison. You're correct it's not finished. fourth living unit with another 150 beds that was never built, although there is a pad with all the plumbing and electrical conduit in it. So you could build it if you wanted to. But again, I don't know if you'd have the people in the Springfield area staff that person if you added 150 inmates. As far as, like it's tricky, like, no one under DOC supervision, right? Whether they're incarcerated or on their parole or on probation, by and large, no one's happy about that situation, right? If you're broken down by the side of the road and the state trooper pulls up and helps to change your tire, you're happy to have that interaction with the state police, right? If your house gets burglarized and the state police catches the guy, you feel some kind of closure to that issue. Most people who are under supervision aren't pleased to be there. They typically don't have nice things to say about the department, because we just spent the last amount of years telling them what they can and can't do. If we could find a way to highlight folks who have had a successful period of supervision and they can say, oh, my PO was wonderful. He helped me turn my life around or, she helped me get out of a dark place in my life. If we could highlight those stories, I think that would be positive PR for the department. As far as positive PR for a prison, that's tricky. It's just the nature of the environment, right? It's not Valley Vista. It's not Serenity House where people are choosing to be there to better their lives. They're made to be there. I haven't met anybody in my 15-year career that wakes up and says, whoo, excited to be here today. So, but as far as positive PR for the department, I think with some of the things Mr. Demos proposing, right in the career path, building up the special teams, building up trainers and just the overall changing the culture of how we treat our workforce, I think that will write its own story and provide its own PR. Mr. Baker always used to say that, every employee of the Department of Corrections is a recruiter. It's on us to, you know, spread the good word. And Baker asked me once if I would ever recommend the job to a friend. And I said, only if I hated him. Like, you know what I mean? Like, only if the guy wasn't my friend would I ask him to come work at the prison. At least today, right? Like, I'm not saying forever. Years ago, I told people to sign up nonstop. It was a good time. It was a good place to work. But the last three years have just been brutal. So you brought up the seven days article. Quick, I want to share, my wife could not finish that article. She couldn't physically couldn't fit to this day. I don't think she's read the whole thing. She's going to kill me for mentioning her on YouTube, but she could not read it. It upset her that much. So like, I get goosebumps thinking about that article. I can't stand it. I read it last night before I came up here just to remind myself it's disgusting. It's embarrassing. It's horrendous. But a call could have been avoided if, you know, people had listened to rank and file staff. Representative Bihovsky. Thank you, Madam chairs. So I have a couple of questions. So I'm getting back a little bit to the training piece. We know that a lot of people who are incarcerated are struggling with mental illness, have histories of their own trauma. Do you feel that CEOs have the adequate training to understand the impacts of trauma and mental health issues and how to engage in that in a way that's trauma-informed? I would say in the last few years, the department has definitely shifted to a more trauma-informed approach across the board. How we deal with incidents is how we train staff. As far as addressing the root causes of trauma or the root causes of mental illness, I don't think the training addresses that. And frankly, personally, nor do I think that it should because we're not licensed clinicians. I will say at least in Southern, I've noticed that the level of mental health care over the past two years, especially under superintendent lines has increased dramatically. We see a lot less guys with mental health issues deteriorating, right? I don't know if they're improving, but they're maintaining, right? They're not spiraling down into crisis. And when someone does move in that direction, at least in Springfield, it's a rapid response from our mental health staff. So I think we're moving in the right direction, but as far as front lines, correctional officers sort of like digging at the cognitive roots of mental illness or trauma, I don't think we're at that space. And I don't know if we should be. But you do feel like there's an underlying sense of being trauma-informed and just- Oh, yeah, absolutely, yes. This is very true. I think that I believe, I mean, don't quote me, although I might get quoted. I believe that started before Mr. Baker's tenure. We started moving towards a more trauma-informed approach. And I think maybe that's one of the reasons we've seen less violence and mayhem sort of speak in the prisons, is I think we're moving in the right direction with that. As a follow-up to that, are there additional resources that you feel are needed to provide adequate care to the people who have that history of trauma and are incarcerated or who have mental illness? I mean, if you ask somebody in the Department of Corrections if we need more stuff, we're always gonna say yes. It's difficult, right? Because I don't work in that building, right? I work mainly with general population guys, so I can't say definitively. I think there's, the folks that end up in our mental health units, right? They're there because no one else can deal with them, right? I don't wanna use the term dumping ground because it's sort of disrespectful to those folks with mental illness, but that's kind of what happens. The state hospital doesn't wanna deal with them, right? Outpatient providers don't wanna deal with them. They deteriorate in the community. They pick up a criminal charge and they come to us. And it's tricky to be rehabilitative in that sort of setting, right? It's not the state hospitals or the secure mental health institutions, right? Where everyone who works in Middlesex or Berlin is a licensed clinician, right? Or a mental health nurse to the best of my knowledge, maybe, I don't know. But I would say that we do the best we can with what we've got at Springfield and we could always use some more clinicians for more one-on-one work or group work or anything like that. And are officers trained in vicarious trauma? Seeing as how I don't know what that is, I'm gonna say no. Okay. Pretty blunt. And then my other question is around de-escalation training and what's provided. Well, since my time, we have a course in the academy and then we have to get re-certified every year. It's called advanced communications techniques and it sort of gives you a very, like if you have no ability to talk to people, right? Which is not something I suffer from, but if you have no ability to interact with anyone, ACT kind of gives you like a very basic foundation on how to interact with folks and try to redirect them away from, you know, disruptive or crisis behavior. But it's very pedestrian to tough work. It's very basic, right? It's not anything you would see like with a mental health counselor who rides shotgun with a state trooper or a Burlington PD officer, right? It's nothing on that level. Like I answered earlier, when we, to de-escalate these guys, it's typically the interpersonal relationships that you've built with them over the years. I mean, there's guys I know from my rookie year 15 years ago, right? They've been in and out, in and out. And when they come back in, right? Their lives are turned upside down. They're scared. They're worried about what's gonna happen next. And then they see, you know, a guy, not me specifically, but they see a guy like me that they've known professionally for 15 years and I'm a guy they can talk to, right? Leo and our anybody is, I know this person for 10 years, I can vent to them. And then if they go into crisis and the person who knows them happens to be in the area, I've walked into situations where guys are ranting and raving, screaming, throwing a fit. I walk into the unit and I'm like, what are you doing? And just he comes right back down because he just wants to talk to me because he feels like he's not being listened to. But I've never been trained, right? That's just me having relationships with these fellas. Which is another issue about the turnover is if we continue to turn over staff, no one ever sticks around long enough to build those interpersonal relationships. And this is sort of a broad question, but from your view, are there changes to the overall structure and our culture of corrections that would improve the work environment? I'd like to see uniform staff have more chances for advancement. I think that's a big one. I'd like to see an additional rank added to the uniform staff. We ask a lot from those folks and I don't expect you guys to know the day-to-day operations of prisons, but one day you could be working in the mental health unit with that set of skills and then the next day you're working in the segregation unit utilizing a totally different set of skills. I think it would be good to be able to acknowledge guys that have been in uniform for 15 years with an additional rank that doesn't necessarily have to be shift supervisor. I think above the shift supervisor level, the hierarchy is fine. I just think there needs to be a top-down flood of investment in your junior state. Like we're not turning over anybody in central office, right? We're not gonna see the turnover up there in Waterbury. I don't even see the turnover in superintendent offices in the facilities. It's, or P&P, there's no turnover at P&P, although maybe the owner's gonna correct me, but it's the prisons. It's a difficult job. We need to just flood them with support and investment if we want them to stick around. Yeah, and I guess my question is, is there a way to make the job less difficult? Is there a way we can shift culture, shift larger pieces that would make it a less difficult job? Provide different supports? I don't know. I mean, speaking from Springfield specifically, right? So I don't work in Newport where there's a lot of jobs. Springfield needs employment for the incarcerated individuals. There's nothing for those guys to do, nothing. It's like the kitchen and that's it. There's an idle hands, you know, that old adage. And it's true of Springfield historically. Springfield over the years was behave or else we just dropped the hammer on you, which that's not, you know, treat them like kids, they're gonna act like kids. Silly. You gotta give them something to do that's productive, that they feel some kind of self-worth. They can leave their period of incarceration with skills or a certificate or something like that. That's specific to Springfield. They need something to do. They're just sitting around, you know, either thinking of ways to get one over on us or not being productive. They're just bored. I can't even imagine, it's miserable. We gotta keep them busy. Just like anybody's got little kids, you gotta keep them busy, not that they're little kids, but it's the same mindset, right? If you leave a four-year-old alone, they're gonna draw on them, they're gonna draw on the walls. If you leave these guys locked up in a living unit for days on end, they have to get their energy out somehow and if you don't have a pro-social way to do it, it's gonna lead to issues. Thank you. No problem. Representative Lefebbe. Thank you very much for being here and for being so candid and confident with your responses to us. I think it makes a big difference to... Boy, Steve likes me. So this might not be a popular question, but from me, what I've heard from you is there's a lot of things going on in the morale that like legislation, we can't fix that. I can't, we can't write a lot. It says like, you have to be supportive of your coworker and quite frankly, we shouldn't write that law. But is there anything that we have done here that has made your job harder? Is there legislation that we have passed? I've heard you say that you have heard your boss testify where you didn't even understand what he was talking about and you're the boots on the ground. So is there things that have happened because of us that have made your job harder? There was a lot of legislation passed pre-pandemic. Like there was a lot of changes to the department in a rapid fire manner, right? The MAT program, Justice Reinvestment Act and I don't know if they made things harder, but it was a lot of change system-wide. And it was just, oh, here's this new thing we have to do. Here's this new thing we have to do, here's this. And that's completely within your authority to do and I'm certainly not gonna come into your house and complain about it. But it adds a challenge, right? Corrections is not a system built for change, especially the prisons. It's very regimented, we do this, we do this, we do this. And then when you throw new stuff in, it just makes for a stressful environment. I told Ms. Eamons this some time ago, I was like, you got Justice Reinvestment Act in, the MAT program has been running. I sound like a teacher, like leave us alone for a while. Like let us figure this out, streamline this, no more new things. I see Justice Reinvestment working from my point of view. Guys aren't coming back as rapidly from supervision, right? We're being a little bit more understanding with those type of violations. It's tricky, like you're asking me to talk like I'm in the break room and I'm not in the break room. I'm sorry, I don't mean to put you on the spot, I'm sorry. It's, change is just difficult in general. Yes. So I don't wanna say you've made my job harder, but I do have more to do. My days are busier. As from a caseworker point of view, there's a lot more boxes I have to tick off for every guy that I see. PREA is a good program, but it takes up a lot of time. It, some days it feels like it's all consuming, doing PREA stuff. And when people talk about caseworkers in the facilities, sometimes people have this idea in their head that, or this vision that we're like counselors. I'm not a counselor, right? Like I'm not trying to give myself, like I don't have time to sit there and have hour long chit chats with these guys and life choices and kind of guide them in the right direction. I am constantly pushing paper. I'm constantly writing reports. And that's the job. Like I don't have a choice otherwise. I mean, I try to have those conversations with the guys on my case load when I get an opportunity, but I can't, I just don't have the time and the day to sit there and be like a social worker, because I have so much paperwork to do. I will say that's one of the things that we've talked to essential about is, when you add something new, if there's some antiquated thing that you can tell us to stop doing, like kind of reevaluate the, and I can't say if they're doing that or not, maybe they are and they can't take anything away, but the workload continues to increase. And that cuts into our time to be able to have those types of conversations with the people in our custody. Thank you. All right. And the last question goes to Representative Lecler because we do have a number of other witnesses who are with us. And this has been very helpful. So thank you. And I hope we'll stick around so that we can chat afterward if... Oh yeah, sure. Don't get to back to you. It was me lunch. Excellent. Perfect. I have a couple of questions and we'll do the social distancing thing from afar here. I heard a lot of what you had to say today and I guess a couple of questions. One is are you covered under a collective bargaining agreement? Yes. You are. And things like starting pay, are those covered under the collective bargaining agreement? Yeah, I mean the pay chart is contained within the CBA. And the positions that you have there, are they under the collective bargaining agreement? Yes. Is there anything in the collective bargaining agreement that allows for merit pay or anything outside of the negotiated salary that increases and percentage of increases? It's funny you brought that up. Yes, there's actual, well, it is contained in the CBA and there is HR policy. Don't ask me for the number. I'd have to Google it. That specifically speaks to either merit bonuses or merit step increases. Those are few and far between. Sure. And last is the pension, like you refer to, is that covered under the collective bargaining agreement as well? No, the pension is not bargained. The pension is up to you folks as far as I know. Very good. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for being with us. Please stick around because there may be other follow up questions for you after we've heard from some of our other witnesses this morning. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. So committees, our next witness is with us by Zoom, Leona Watt. Welcome, Leona. And it's very nice to see you again. Hello. It's nice to see you again, Sarda. You're like a little dot now. So you just heard a lot from Mike, who is incredible, Mike Groner, from the Springfield facility. So my name, you just heard is Leona Watt. I'm a senior probation officer at the Springfield Probation Office. And I did for really sort of a brief time work with Mr. Groner. And I just, do you just want me to start talking or do you guys have, what would you like me to do? Well, I would love to hear you just share some reflections with the committees, maybe leaving some time for questions. What we're trying to understand is sort of the challenges on the problem from several different perspectives within the correctional system. And tomorrow we will be hearing from some of the department heads. And so we would love to just hear the employee's perspective on what's working, what's not working, what do you want policymakers to know so that we can be focused on helping improve the situation. Okay, all right. Thank you. So I will just start off. I have been working with the Department of Corrections as a probation officer for, and I hate putting this out there because this, you know, that time thing about how long have you been working? For about 18 years come July, it'll be 18 years. I've been a probation officer in the last two years. I've been the senior probation officer for my office. In my duties in the almost 18 years that I've been with the Department of Corrections I have seen many, many changes. And also I am a trainer for a lot of different programs for the Department of Corrections. And just in the last week, I am back in the office, but I spent all of last week at the Academy because Department of Corrections is trying to make sure they don't pull staff from the facility. So they ask those of us who are in field offices to come to the Academy to fill those roles when facility staff are not able to participate in the trainings there at the Academy. So I helped deliver ACT training. And I think Mr. Groner mentioned that. And it's a week long program and it is really about communication skills and it is very involved. And I enjoy that opportunity to meet the new cadets, the new recruits to the Department of Corrections to give them a little life of what it is like in the Department of Corrections. Also over the last year, I think it was July, I spent over seven months with some of you in that room regarding the pension task. I was on the pension task force via the VSEA. So everything I'm saying today is on my private time. I've taken leave from my job to be able to speak to you today. And I'm speaking as a private citizen and who just happens to work for the Department of Corrections. And I am very excited to tell you what has been going on in our office and how we're impacted about the things that are occurring at our local facility. So one of the biggest things that we are experiencing is we are a backup to the facility. So if there is a need at the facility, they call us in. So lately over the last year, feels like more than a year, we have been doing the hospital coverage. And it is a huge burden on us. And I don't like sin burden because there's no issue with helping the facility because they are our coworkers. We're all in this fight because of the pandemic. It's led to a lot of different things. But Springfield just happens to have one of the bigger infirmaries. So they, and they have an elderly unit. So they have a lot more incarcerated individuals who could end up in the hospital. So it's very interesting days when they have someone two or three who are in the hospital at the same time. And our office is in action. They call us in and we're providing hospital coverage and that's shared amongst all the local probation offices. So we have Battleboro probation, Hartford probation. They've added in Rutland and soon in April, they're adding in Bennington probation and parole to help alleviate the strain that can cause on the office because some days we'll have just our administrative assistant sitting in our probation office because all of us are at the hospital because there are that many patients in the hospital from the facility. And again, we are all part of the Department of Corrections family. It's just a strain when you have, we're working first, second and third shifts at the hospitals. So we'll work that until 7 a.m. Then we come in to work because we still have clients we need to see. We still have supervised individuals that have programming that we have to talk to them about and we still have a job to do in our probation office but we also provide extra work with the hospital coverage. And that is a very, it's a big thing because right now we have two people right now in the hospital that my office and all the other area offices are covering. And that means you're pulling people out of the probation office and sending them to the hospital to help out because the facility is not able to provide staff to do the usual thing they would do with hospital coverage. And Springfield facility happens to have more than the usual number of people who could end up in the hospital because of the demographics of the people that they house. So those are the biggest things. And I know that one of my coworkers, one or two of them, they also, and he's incredible, he does at least over 20 hours a week working to help out at the jails. When they need it, they need to fill a gap. He volunteers. So on top of the 40 hours he's given per week here at the probation office, he's working 20 plus hours as well at the facility to try to help because I listened to Mr. Gronar and I've heard being on the pension task force that enabled me to receive a lot of feedback from people all over the state in the Department of Corrections. And I've received emails from many, many correction officers, case workers, supervisors in the facilities telling me, do you understand what's going on, Leona? I was listening to Mr. Gronar talking about how that's just one more strike when suddenly they heard about the pension issue. I've heard about that over the last year. And believe me, I share that with, and I thank you so much for being open and listening. I've shared that during our meetings over the last, during those seven months from July to January. I shared that with Representative Copeland Hanses and with Senator White and with all the other, and Representative Gannon. I shared with them some of the things I was receiving from those who are working in the facilities about the strain that is on them. And we're currently working on the SEA and we thank the legislature for giving us this opportunity to still work for Group G for Department of Corrections and those who are eligible for the carve out that is already in place. We're working on a Group G for the Department of Corrections because I think that was a mention about, we need to be comparable to other states in regards to the 20 or 25. We're seeing how that can work and be budget neutral because we're not looking to add to the deficit with the pension liabilities, but we're saying that needs to be something for those who work in these type of jobs that are very hard and you're dealing with an increased strain, especially when you add in the pandemic. That just added so much more. And it's been a very interesting year. And I have heard from many, many people just in the position of, you know, Leona, you are doing this. And I'm like, well, we're not doing it. We're trying to come to a reasonable solution. And having the opportunity to sit at the table with many representatives and senators that have the legislature, it was a great opportunity because I started to see a more in tune mindset of what you guys deal with and the type of decisions you have to make and how hard it is because none of this is simple. So I'm just, you know, the field offices, we don't work per se in the facility, but we do provide support to the facility through our hospital coverage. And let's say that something happens at the facility and they're down, like they go down 50% or whatever, they will call us in from the field, that's happened up North, where they call people in from the field offices to work in the St. John'sbury facility because they had some issues. So they had issues with COVID and all of that and they had a lot of staff out. So they call people in from the field offices to work there until things leveled out. So we do provide support to the facility. We're glad to provide support, but it's been over a year and it's sort of, it's a hard process. And the recruitment and retention, that's a piece that is huge. And I am happy to say that, yes, the new commissioner Demo and all of those who are part of his team, they are making that laser focus and I'm hoping for good things in the next year in regards to recruitment and retention. I'm hopeful. And I think Mr. Garner said that, we're hopeful that that will be a shift. Things don't happen in the blink of an eye, but I'm hopeful that in the next year, there will be a more concentrated effort regarding recruitment and retention. We're already saying that for a lot of the facilities. And I'm very excited because when the facility is strong and healthy, it helps us, those of us in the field who are also receiving those incarcerated individuals when they become supervised individuals and we supervise them in the field. So I'm just really, I'm excited because I've been at the academy. I teach at the academy and I see the new recruits and you try to share as much information. And I think you, some of the representatives were talking about what type of training are they receiving at the academy? And in fact, I just recently returned. So I have the whole curriculum over the five week academy and there is a lot of emphasis on mental health and whatnot. But I think there was a mention that we're not counselors and we do a lot of referrals. We have the mental health unit who you can refer them to if an incarcerated individual is suffering from a mental health crisis. So I think it's just a huge lift, but I am hopeful and I'm one of those people. I'm very optimistic. I am optimistic that the changes that are being enacted right now will be helpful in the next year. There's a lot more to do, but I am hopeful that the pension issue comes to a great conclusion that is voted through. I just have a lot of hope and I'm happy to put in the work. I'm happy to help the facility when needed, but it is a lot when you're working until 7 a.m. and then coming into work and it's a long road. And I know a lot of my coworkers are a bit getting to that point of burnout because you're working 40 hours and then you also add in some more work. And we love to support the facility because we're all on the same team. It's just, it's been over a year with the hospital coverage. And I'm hoping that the recruitment and retention efforts that have been enacted already and that anything else that like Mr. Garner suggested will be enacted to help alleviate the issues and help more people in the community find that working for the Department of Corrections would be an attractive prospect. Thank you for being with us this morning, Ms. Watt. It's very good to hear your perspective. Committee's questions for Ms. Watt, Representative LeClaire. Ms. Watt, I kind of have a chicken and egg question here for you. You referred to recruitment and retention several times. And if you had to pick one as being the priority initially, would it be the retention or the recruitment? Because obviously they're both very connected. They are very, very connected. And I think I've seen this in many emails. They're like, Leona, you need to focus. So retention is basically keeping the people you already have, right? Keeping those who have been in the trenches for the last couple of years during the pandemic who are still in the trenches because we still have the recruitment issue. So retention is key. But you're not going to retain staff if we don't have enough staff coming in to fill those spaces that are empty because it's a strain. They're working impossible over time. And I'd say impossible over time because they're going to do it. But who suffers the most is their families. Those who haven't seen their, they don't see their wives. One gentleman told me, it's like, I haven't seen my wife in two days because I come home, I sleep, I get up and I'm back at work. So retention is key, keeping the staff you do have but you're not going to keep them until we solve the recruitment crisis and having them come in and then retaining them once we have them. So it's, I can't say one is the key key because they worked so in concert with each other. Retaining, yes. Recruiting so we can retain. It's not enough to have the, like I told the cadets last week, those who are coming into the private corrections into the correctional facilities is great that they're coming in. But the key is to keep them. We want them to stay. So what can we do to retain the new staff we have coming in and also keep the staff that who have been working all along? What are the challenges that you run into on the recruitment side of things? I mean, is it the starting compensation? Is it the perception of the job? Is it a perceived lack of career opportunities? Well, I'm going to be honest. I've heard, like when I was at the academy last week I heard from two new newly hired department of corrections employees. I heard from them, they said, you know, I am really concerned about coming in here because of the pay because I could go to New Hampshire or anywhere else and get more. But my family is here. So I'm going to see how this goes. We had two people who previously had been in the academy like for one or two weeks and left because they're like, no, I'm not being paid enough or whatever. And they were coming back and they were back in the academy. And they said, we're hearing that things are going to change in regards to pay and the work life in a facility. And I was like, okay, that's encouraging because the message is getting out there. Department of Corrections has that. We have that recruitment and retention. I called the team, but it's a team, people who are dedicated to that. And so it's great to hear that, that people are coming back even after they left the academy previously. They're coming back to the Department of Corrections because they hear things are changing and are getting ready to change in the next year. So that's encouraging. But again, I don't expect things to suddenly rapidly change in the next year, but I'm glad that there's some trickles of things changing in the next coming six months to a year. That was one more. Of the recruits, is there any particular skill sets that you look for or are more complimentary towards this job? I mean, does somebody have to be just a high school graduate or do they have to have some college? I mean, what kind of skills, what kind of qualifications does somebody have to have to be considered a candidate for this? So from what I, and I don't know for sure about if they can have a GD, but I know that they have a high school diploma. Everyone, I've been teaching at the academy since 2018, 2019. And I do know that they have a high school diploma. I'm not certain if the Department of Corrections accepts a GD. I don't have those statistics in front of me about that. But I know that there's a high school diploma element there. They're able to, and they go through, I call it that Friday, the last day of our academy when we're doing the ECT. That's that de-stress day because they do a lot of written tests and verbal test outs. And it's a lot of information. And that's another pressure point of, are they able to learn all of these different skills? We have some skills. And I think somebody did suggest going to the academy because it is a different environment. But after a week, they really learned a lot of material. They learned a lot of skills. And you really see, it's the second week usually when they have ECT because it's an entire long week. You usually see after that week, if they're going to be able to move on because it's a lot of information, a lot of information they learn and absorb during that week. Thank you. Other questions from committee members? Representative Dolan. Yes, thank you, Ms. Watt for this follow-up to the training piece of it. And I might not be remembering correctly, but I'm curious how the training format, if I think it's like a week long and you have to go off site, maybe you can help give a little bit of like the training format and how that helps or hinders recruitment of having to go through that process. It does, does it affect it? I just know like that that's a time intensive piece. And how does that affect recruitment? So from what, and I think you'll hear from the academy director when you have more testimony I think tomorrow next week, but from what, from when I am at the academy, it is, look, the academy in itself, you're away from your family, right? So the academy is Monday through Friday and then they are able to go home and then they're back Monday through Friday. So it's five weeks, Monday through Friday, they are staying in off, not at the academy, but off site at a hotel during the academy. It's not easy on any of them. We have many of them who have children and it's hard to be away from home. But I think one of the things they realize is part of the process. And I don't know how to say this, but they appreciate the fact that we're there with them because we're away from home, you know, we're like, we're here with you. We just want to make sure you have this information so you can take it back to the facility. A lot of them have had shadow weeks before they attend the academy. And shadow weeks just means they go to the facility they've been hired at and they spend some time with an officer going around and just going through a shift so they can see what it is to be in a facility. So I think the shadow weeks are very important. So they get a little taste of what it's like to be in a facility, to work in a facility. And then they come to the academy and learn a lot of skills. And it's a lot of background information. And we had some people who have been on the shadow weeks and they're like, oh, this ACT skill that we're learning right now, I saw a correctional officer doing that. Now I get what they were doing and it helped de-escalate a situation with an incarcerated individual who was upset. They were able to pinpoint that's what they were doing. So it was exciting to me because I'm like, oh my gosh, what we're doing is exorbitant through their heads. They're getting it. This is something that they will actually be able to use and carry through when they work at the facility. And they start their on-job training, which is after the academy. So I'm very excited about what they're able to absorb, remember, and then take back to the facility when they start officially working there. Okay, so it sounds like it's a worthwhile, like the time is key. I'm just trying to look at it from the perspective of somebody starting a career. If we're hearing like the pay isn't great compared to other states, the benefits aren't great. The hearing like, oh, the culture at DOC is not so great right now. And then I got to do this five week program away from family and coordinate all of that. Not to say it's not worth it and it makes it, but I can just see in this type of job market how that's hard, be like, do I want that? I really wanna have that job versus something else. So thank you for that perspective. Okay. All right, any other questions, committee members? Excellent. Thank you, Ms. Watts so much for being with us today. It's very helpful to hear your perspective on recruitment and retention and if you have time, we would love to have you stick around for the rest of the witnesses in case there's some follow-up questions that are sparked by other people's testimony. Okay, thank you for that opportunity. Committees, I'd like to take a 10 minute break right now and let you stretch your legs and then we'll come back and we have two more witnesses.