 Great. Good morning. This is Giant Justice Oversight Committee and we're meeting this morning. Our first item on the agenda is an update on Department of Corrections Justice Reinvestment 2. Our first witness is Mary Jane Ainsworth, the director of the parole board. So Mary Jane, if you could kick it off, give us an update on where we're at and then we'll hear from Jim Baker. Good morning committee. Thank you. This is Mary Jane Ainsworth, executive director of the parole board. I'd like to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to go first as I am double booked this morning. The parole board is currently working on updates to our policies and procedures to incorporate the changes established in Act 148 specifically around parole eligibility. There was a change to the initial eligibility of the presumptive parole section and also a slight change to subsequent reviews and interviews. We have increased our board member staff meetings to monthly since the pandemic because we have now have the opportunity to do these meetings virtually. This allows Chairman George and I to discuss the changes with the board members more regularly, provide progress updates, and seek inputs from members. We are meeting regularly with DOC and the Council of State Governments regarding the implementation of the parole aspects of the Act and to discuss cross-training opportunities as changes to DOC policies occur in regards to supervision of parolees and responding to offender behaviors. This also gives us the opportunity to make sure that we are all working together to ensure that these changes go as seamless as possible. DOC has also invited me to their weekly parole working group meetings. These meetings provide opportunities again for us to collaborate together. In addition to the above the parole board is regularly meeting with the Council of State Governments to talk about policy review and feedback. They are providing assistance around best practice and assisting us with finding more evidence-based training opportunities for board members. This will assist the board to adapt with a shift away from furlough. Council of State Governments has also included the parole board and the behavioral health working group as it's evident to CSG members after observing our hearings that the individuals being brought before the board mostly with violations have significant behavioral health issues. Also, they started to examine our data with us so we can ensure that we're collecting the appropriate data to meet the CSG technical assisting grant. So that's really the bulk of where we are at and we are making headway every day and we will be ready to implement these changes when they go live on January 1st. Are there any questions for Mary Jane? Why don't I start off Mary Jane with a question regarding the mental health issues? They've been consistently problematic throughout our system. Jim, you can chime in as well. How are we moving forward on this? It's a national problem as well. I agree. It's a significant issue. Many of the offenders that come back have the significant mental health issues and being in a pandemic it's been a little bit harder because a lot of the meetings are done virtually but it feels as though the board is really struggling especially responding to these behaviors of what do they do with the offender because incarceration doesn't seem to be the place for them to go. But there's no treat. There doesn't seem to be viable treatment options or residential options out in the communities and I know Commissioner Baker has stated this many times. I've heard him speak about it that it just there's a community struggle and lack of resources and some areas are much better than others for sure. You mean geographically? Yes. Can you at our next meeting maybe if we could devote Peggy a significant amount of time and ask the Justice Center to join us on this particular problem and Mary Jane if you could let us know what areas of the state where we're lacking adequate help. I know we're deficient everywhere but other particularly glowing problem areas and I think it's I don't know if I have a bill but it should be I think it's a part of Justice Reinvestment too is that we struggle with this problem. I would like to devote some of our time and maybe have some of the officers who Jim if you could help us with some of the field staff who are dealing with this. I would love to hear from some of them even if you'd like Mary Jane a parole board member who might be able to talk about that or Mr. George. I'd really like to devote some time to understanding the scope of the problem that you folks are facing. Senator Lyons as chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee is always interested in this issue. Very much so and I'm really glad that you brought it up. I guess as we're looking at this it might be helpful to have the broaden the context and to look at where things stand with the contracted health services as far as mental health goes and then I know that we had a report on better integration of health care services within the community and I don't know whether that report I remember getting the report. I know we have it. It's not fresh in my mind but it would be helpful to know what came of that out of that and we've also looked in health and welfare. We've taken some time to ask for where the needs are in the community. So by geographic area so Sarah Squirrel may be helpful as well as some of the Washington County Mental Health or Howard Center or some of the other folks who have been collecting that data so our community services. I guess Senator Sears I guess I'm asking can we or should we expand this conversation at this time and open it up to the broader sort of the healthcare. I think at this point I'd really like to focus and obviously whatever the committee wants to do but I'd really like to focus this on those that are being re-incarcerated who are either on parole, furlough or probation because that was the focus one of the main focus areas of Justice and Investments who is to reduce the number of people that are re-incarcerated and the numbers who are exhibiting mental health issues and get re-incarcerated and it's not solving their problems. So I would kind of like to focus on that but if the committee wants to go deeper into it I'm happy to do that as well. I don't know I think that sounds really good. Having a look see at case management issues and how folks are handled when they leave corrections and then how they're followed in the community so that they don't re-enter and what happens if they do. Yeah I mean if the services aren't available then that becomes problematic and I know that that's been true and as the Department of Public Safety moves to embed officers into barracks are we going to run into this problem geographically as well. Anyway I know you've doubled book Mary Jane I don't want to keep you but I would if you can work with Peggy on some of those to help us understand that. Though I'm particularly like to focus unless the committee wants to go broader on those that are being re-incarcerated who are on furlough probation or who never get to you because in Jim's perspective those that never get to you because they're unaligned mental health issues are not enough. Thank you. Any other questions for Mary Jane and the horrible. Thanks very much enjoy your next booking. Happy holidays to you. You too thank you. Commissioner Baker, interim Commissioner Baker would you really use that term. I do Senator with great glee so. Nationwide you know most corrections commissioners don't last as long as you have. I don't know what that says about me senator but by the way of introduction this is Jim Baker the interim commissioner of the Department of Corrections. So just let me let me make two comments about the conversation that was just going on. We will make line staff available for the next committee hearing. I think it's incredibly important that you hear from some of the folks in the field. I believe tomorrow's the day for the next working group meeting for reinvestment in a conversation with the staff from CSG on Friday. I think you're going to see a slide in the slide deck tomorrow that is pretty compelling about the statement you just made about focusing on folks going back into facilities that have underlying mental health and or self-sabuse problems. To reveal all my sources Jim I had access to that. I'm sure I'm sure you did senator this week. Yeah so you saw the same slide that I saw that I had the advance notice of and you know again what I'm about to say is not a reflection nor do I want to call out services but I'm going to say the same thing I've been saying for a number of months and I think Monica and Dale will touch on this shortly. We are very concerned about the level of services throughout the state when it comes to dealing with the population that we deal with. You know it's a struggle you know the mental health services are a struggle especially in this environment with the pandemic but it's especially a struggle to get the services we need to support the type of population that we're supervising co-occurring problems mental health, self-sabuse, criminal thinking. It's a dangerous combination that's very difficult to find those services and Monica and Dale will talk a little bit more about that in a couple minutes. The other thing senator that I'll that I've talked quite a bit inside corrections about and I'll just plant the seed because you brought up the point about the collaboration between commissioner Scherling and commissioner squirrel and embedding the the case workers inside the barracks around the state. As you know from from visiting project vision that's a model that was in that was embedded in the police department at Rowland and I've talked with staff a little bit about what would that look like if we embedded that type of services inside our district offices to better help the probation and pro officers manage case with that and I don't know it's one thing to say it it's another thing to think through what the potential impact would be. I do know that even if you had those type of services inside the district offices if there isn't carry forward services to support the workers inside the district offices I don't know what the outcomes would be but it's clearly a challenge for us. I'm just going to make a couple more a couple more comments and then this has been a very heavy lift and I have to recognize particularly Monica for the work that she's been doing leading this effort there's three to four meetings per week with different business groups within the model that they've been working on this and every other week there's a briefing on Friday afternoon from all the groups that I try to attend and the depth of the work here has been unbelievable especially with the backdrop of the pandemic that takes a lot of our resources every day to manage the pandemic and I've got to call out Dale Crook and Monica Weber for the work that they're doing. The other thing Senator you and I talked last week you know I think when we measure the progress of reinvestment too you know there's a lot of backlash from victims spending I've had conversations with victims families that felt like they didn't see this coming on the good time so I have to put that out there because I promise those families I would you and I spoke on on Friday I believe last week about this and I continue to talk with in particularly the Winter Bottom family who lost their daughter in 2004 to a dishes homicide in Burlington. So Representative Emmons and I also beyond the agenda for the next meeting is a discussion of this you and the department as well as we thought the Attorney General, State's Terms and Victims Groups Network and the others. For those of you who are not matched the good time being afforded to offenders who've committed extremely serious crimes or have been convicted of extremely serious crimes and they're the victims are received a mass blast email from the department informing them of this and there have been some pushbacks. There is no bill right now but it's something that will have to be dealt with moving on. Thank you Senator. I bring it up out of respect to the victims. Representative Sean, I promise I might win. Thank you Senator. A question for Jim for Commissioner Baker making more of a comment. I too like you and I'm sure others of us have had some pushback on the good time piece from folks that were victims of previously sentenced inmates and they're having some struggle with that. But one that clearly caught my attention was the gal told me that when she talked to the victim's advocate within DOC, the person she talked to gave her unknown to my caller gave her some incorrect calculations based on the available good time for the incarcerated person and actually after I thought about it for a while that person started calculating the release date of the offender based on starting in January 2021 when clearly that offender's good time wasn't going to start until 23 and it made a big difference because the offender's release date was is 25. Can you comment on that or are people confused about it? If you could get specific on that Representative Shaw, when we take this up next week, is it next week? December 2nd? Yes. Again, Representative Shaw, it's hard for me to not knowing what the case is. But in a general comment, like anything that's as complicated as calculating good time, it sounds like it's simple. I don't think we're there yet in educating the staff of fully understanding what the calculation is because that's part of what the working groups continue to work on. Monica, do you have a comment? Did I see your hand, Monica? Yeah, I just I wanted to make sure I understood Representative Shaw correctly. I think I heard you say that good time, you didn't think good time was going to start until 2023 when in fact good time will start January 1st of 2021 and people will be able to start earning their good time and it will be applied to them beginning in February of 2021. So my thinking is clouded, Monica, and thank you for bringing that up. I had that confused with presumptive, presumptive parole, I think. Right, the presumptive parole in 2023 expands to people who have committed. I'll have more detail with that request of Senator for the next week. So in respect of time, those are just my opening comments, Senator, and I'll give my time to Monica and Dale. They do have in the document they gave you a chart that kind of lists what some of our concerns are as we sit here right now. So I'm going to I'm going to turn over my time now to them. By the way, I see Matt Valerio in the audience here and he will definitely discuss it next week. So there's no more questions for me Senator, I'll turn it over to Monica. Monica or Dale or both. Would you all like me to share my screen to go over the report? Because we're not able to draw the committee documents today. I will. Let me just share my screen first and make sure. Okay. Are you are you able to see it? Yep. Okay. So the last time we met, Dale and I were able to go through the first part of this report. And so I don't know if you'd like us to review it again quickly and get to the area where we where we stopped or if you want us to get to where we just review quickly and then get where but focus on where we stop. Okay. So as the commissioner mentioned, we do a every other Friday meeting update and we just use this project report status report. So we summarized everything for you. The top of the chart just sort of let you know who are the main people who are involved in helping us implement the project. And we also added what the overview of the project was just basically saying that it is just related to implementing all the strategies related to Act 148. We began implementation of the project. I think actually before Act 148 was passed and signed. I don't remember the exact date the bill was passed, but we really organized an implementation team in June identified some very expertise in our department in each contact area, content area around these areas of presumptive parole, furlough, all of the things that are related to the changes of furlough and the earns good time rule. We enlisted a lot of our staff, our senior probation and parole officers, caseworkers, victim service specialists. And as the commissioner mentioned, there are multiple meetings every week to really nail out the details of this effort and make sure that we're getting all of the information documented so that we can basically do the training and reissue all of the policies for staff. So that's been happening. We also have regular meetings with the council of state governments once their technical assistance grant was approved by the Bureau of Justice Administration. They've been coming to our meetings. They've been looking at our policies. They've been looking at just about any document that we create providing feedback to us helping us identify best practices from other states and incorporating that into our work. I won't go into all of the details around the significant changes that we're making to our offender management system other than to say that it's very important that we put some effort into making sure that our offender management system can capture data because as you all know that a big part of justice reinvestment is reporting out and having the data we need to know if the strategies were effective. So we are spending a lot of time working on modifications to our offender management system and we'll have to continue doing that into 2021. We have some things that we know need to be done by January 1st. We won't have the capacity to get everything organized by then so we'll just continue implementation into next year. As far as you know some of the major policy revisions of course we're looking at our conditions, standard and special conditions of furlough. These really relate to the aspects of technical violations and returns. Looking at contact standards and reducing or modifying those so that it's based on risk and not legal status which is something that I think they've been that way for quite a while. Dale can talk more about that. We obviously have rules and guidance to implement the earned good time program. We're looking at incentives and sanctions also as part of the statute. Really looking at sanctions and when someone should be returned particularly in light of the new definition of technical violation in Act 148. We're also engaging with the community justice centers to have them help us develop strategies for addressing technical violations and incentives. We know again we've been talking about this our community partners are going to be very important for us moving forward helping to manage cases in the field particularly if we're unable to return people to incarceration. They've developed a theory of change. The community justice centers and our housing and restorative justice unit a theory of change around meeting housing needs for people who are in transitional housing that is really holistic in nature and we're preparing an RFP that will go out in January 21st to really change I think the type of transitional housing that's available in the community right now. We've put together a process to really review and address significant violations that could result in a furlough interrupt or a revocation of more than 90 days again that is related specifically to the requirements in Act 148. You heard from Mary Jane Ainsworth we're working very closely with the parole board to make sure that that parole process and the presumptive parole eligibility process is smooth and that we give the parole board the information that they need in order to make their determinations. We know that there's an impact to over 15 department directives and rules the more I dig the more I find some additional changes that need to be made. In addition we are I guess boy starting in a couple of weeks we have a number of different trainings that are scheduled for our staff on each one of these topic areas. We know that we are going to need to continue working with them throughout the course of the year. Dale and I have been saying that January 1st is a start of something it's not the end of the planning that we're doing. We're beginning the implementation and we expect that we're going to you know have some bumps along the road and we're going to need to continue to support staff and perhaps modify some of the processes that we're we're developing but we do have some trainings scheduled right up until Christmas week I believe where we will be giving more information to staff about the specifics in terms of how they need to do some of this work. So that was a brief overview and Dale you wanted to go through the risks and issues right you want to take over here. Yes I can go over the risk issues. Hi for the record Dale Crook I am the director of field services for the Vermont Department of Corrections. During this process Monica and myself and our team kind of identified issues or problems or risks that we face during this implementation. The first risk is really the reinvestment funds that are recommended by CSG were not appropriate. You know I know the commissioner has said this multiple times that without the community supports in place we don't think that justice reinvestment is going to be able to achieve its goals. You know the department is fundamentally changing how we do supervision from January 1 and how we respond to technical violations of probation in parole and furlough. Those offenders we will not be responding nearly to the degree or the level with incarceration as we have in the past. That's one of the goals of justice reinvestment is around technical violations. Without having the resources in place we'll be leaving the concerns that will be leaving individuals out in the community without the appropriate resources that are in a state of chaos or technically violating their conditions. We don't have an appropriate response of incarceration and there won't be an appropriate response in the community so that is one of our big concerns for implementing JRI and having the outcomes that we all want. A second issue or risk we've determined is the short time frame for the implementation. They go in effect January 1. Really as you kind of saw from what Monica presented this is a major change in the department. Every part of the department has been impacted by justice reinvestment from the facilities to the case works to reentry to victim services community supervision to parole to policy major changes are occurring within the department. While Act 148 has some specific changes it's kind of like throwing a rock into a pond all these ripple effects you know we're an integrated system you can't really change one part of our system without having impacts on other parts of our system. So the short time frame is leading us to have kind of a rolling implementation. January 1 will have the statutory requirements in place that we have to. What's going to be happening is we're going to have other components that are connected to justice free investment updated policies and practices and like that that will be implemented post January 1. But as I said the requirements that were specifically laid out in Act 148 will be in effect January 1. It's just a short time frames trying to implement everything with the training and the offender management system updates was that was we were really limited in the amount of time that we had to do that. One of the things we've requested was additional sentence comp staff through the process with the increase of or the addition of earned good time into our system. There is a lot more work that our sentence comp unit is going to have to be responsible for reviewing and updating sentence comps on a much more frequent basis based on good time and without the additional staff. We have concerns that there will be more errors. It's all human base. We have individuals working very difficult complicated situations where they try to implement different sentences together and we'd be worried that with the increase in work and without having the appropriate staffing levels we could expose the department to more litigations and lawsuits by having incorrect sentence comps. Obviously COVID-19 has kind of had some major impact on the department and the implementation as well. We can't meet in person. We're trying to develop training practices for staff that aren't we'll be able to pull it together. We'll be doing everything virtually in addition that we're kind of we're implementing some things for the future even though like right now for example how can I explain this in a good way. So right now we're operating under kind of COVID-19 protocols and community supervision. We're reducing our contacts. We're reducing exposures to our staff and offenders that we supervise trying to make sure we maintain good social distancing that we try to follow the guidance of the CDC and the governor and all the policies that are coming down around COVID-19. So that has really impacted how we do supervision in the community and so we're trying to implement something where we're really not going to be able to implement the way we want to come January 1 because we're still operating under kind of our COVID protocols right now. So that's been kind of tricky and then and then all the resources and exhaustion that just goes with dealing with COVID-19 just you know our department every department and basically everyone is having to deal with. There is you've started to see some lawsuits filed in court regarding reintegration furlough because as of January 1 reintegration furlough stops and earn good time starts. There are individuals, offenders that we have that were sentenced prior that feel that they should be earning their reintegration time. So those will be playing out in the courts and we'll have to figure out you know respond to those whenever there's rulings based on those. And then we had the you know this was brought up a little bit earlier. There's been a lot of input from the victims regarding the rulemaking process of earn good time you know very difficult very emotional responses that were going through the rulemaking in the in the comment period that that there be just a lot of the victims felt that the first time they were aware of good time was when the department reached out for their input on the rule. So as we can all expect there will probably be more follow-up regarding the victims and in future processes. Those are kind of the the impacts that we've kind of identified now you know I'm fine to answer any questions we have regarding the impacts or just what we're done with the justice free investment but that's that's kind of a report that we presented. One comment Dale and you may want to be prepared for this next week is one of the complaints I heard was from victims. The victim from the Center for Crime Victim Services was the way victims were notified in a blast email rather than being notified. Yeah I can I can certainly comment on that. Yeah I mean I mean it's just next week when you okay that may come up when Chris Fennell touched on this. Sure. Would you all like me to stop sharing the screen now or do you want me to keep this fine I think I don't unless somebody wants to. Peggy did send out an email with all the documents on it so we do have access that way but it's difficult to keep track of that plus the agenda. Other questions for Dale or Monica about the Representative Hooper and then Representative Lyons. Senator Lyons excuse me oh my god. Thank you. The statement is made in that last slide that we saw that we didn't appropriate the two million dollars for justice reinvestment. Can can you help me understand where this is falling apart for we did make under the circumstances fairly significant investments in transitional housing tried to push some money to CJC's did some money to domestic violence or diversion plus added allowed the department to retain the savings and out of state beds all of which amounted to more than two million dollars I believe I totally get the issue with CRF money and the limitations there but we need to be so help me understand what the flaws were and what you should be proposing to us in the next budget to implement this. I'll take that Representative Hooper you just touched that right some of that money was mixed in with CRF money which has significant limitations and the investment in the justice centers and so on. It really goes back to and again the funding that went for domestic violence went to the folks that are providing the domestic violence programming it goes back to the issue of we deal with and again tomorrow during the presentation of the working group you're going to see a significant number I don't have her here in front of me for some reason it's 57% sticks in my head I could be wrong of the people returned have underlying mental health and substance abuse issues and greatly appreciate the support on the housing but we've got to rethink our housing just giving transitional housing and the funding doesn't free up the housing you know we still have people living in situations such as hotel transitional housing type environment we have to rethink and come up with a better model of transitional housing especially around the issues of self-subuse when people fail and they just don't go back into the facility so when we talk about the areas where we need help it comes back to community capacity again that's that's the area where we need significant help and you know dale said it and I think he was pretty clear on it if we don't resolve the capacity in the community to provide those services and again I don't want to be generalizing in being um attacking the folks that do the good work in the communities but but a lot of folks don't want to work with the population we supervise we have to work through that if we're going to be successful so those are the areas that we're concerned about and you know again where does that funding come from is the question about where it comes from I do think some of its coordination which is starting to happen inside AHS so thank you for that I appreciate and I hear what you're saying we need in my view we need significant guidance from from you because you all are the experts in building these budgets so that we have something that is appropriate to the need otherwise we're just going to keep flailing around and appropriating money in the way we have in the past so I just I've said this before and I look forward to seeing a budget that stands up these services to implement you know the change that we're talking about here thank you thank you uh represent a senator liens what am I doing to you I don't know I hear you're promoting me again what's going on I don't know you'd certainly be a strong leader in the house there they're having a race so listen um thank you for that my question it really is also around transitional housing and the nature of the RFP I attended a meeting on housing on Friday and of course the needs are significant across the state you know for those who are homeless those with mental health or substance use disorder and also those coming out of corrections and we've been after this for I don't know how many different election cycles we've brought up transitional housing so your comment about a new model I think is important is an important one but also the linkage with VHCB funding and I don't know if that and how that is happening and then the underlying suggestion of how do we get at the the need-based services and need-based housing so I'm just going to throw out that general those general comments and and see where you folks are in terms of working with others in AHS or VHCB or community partners to build the model that you're talking about yes I'm sure go ahead yeah go ahead so I mean we we procure transitional housing through an RFP process and and we have looked at how our transitional housing has played out over the last couple of years and we've made some fundamental changes that we're we're trying to implement through the justice reinvestment and through changing our transitional housing through our change process to really spell out the services that we want you know where a lot of the rub kind of comes down is with substance abuse for example and transitional housing places and and it's not a right or wrong it just doesn't meet our needs when someone comes up and they test positive or they use a substance the transitional housing or the organization that manages that house is looking at the house as a whole so if one individual is violating the rules or coming up you know are using drugs they view that that is risking the other nine individuals so they've set up their systems based on that those systems don't work for the department and the population that we deal with so we're putting out RFPs that will better address the needs and the look at the population that we're dealing with so come you know sometime in January they'll be going out hopefully we'll have some good competition out there as far as responders but but there there is a risk that we won't get the plethora of housing options that we need or would like so it's it's really you know crucial that we can get out there and match the needs of our population with the housing out there we have very high needs co-occurring substance abuse transient you know a lot of criminal thinking so they're very complicated individuals and and we're looking at how we provide those services you know just having a sober bed per se it's not really working I mean I think we've have enough enough data that says it's not working it it actually kind of stimulates our churn because they go out and they get violated and they lose their housing and they go back to jail for violations that the department wouldn't be responding on otherwise so we're looking at other models like that that will support the offender that will not you know more of a risk harm model than an abstinence model just just in order to maintain stability out in the community we're hoping we get some more we're looking at more of a housing first model as well for example pathways as a housing first model those services seem to do pretty well with our population or better than just traditional transitional housing so so in essence our our proposals are going to be this is a this is where we need to spend our money and hopefully we have a lot of good competition to provide those services but there is a concern that that some areas might not be as well represented as others so senator sears I have a question can I just just very briefly so in terms of the availability of transitional housing I think as part of the question and how that is being resolved in terms of working for example as just one example working with vhcb or or others I know and so availability of housing but then as you have suggested lack of availability of counseling and and other treatment I mean that that's absolutely huge and particularly now with covid so the model that commissioner baker suggested the new model I think is probably an important consideration yes I agree I understand that that there are so many moving parts with justice for investment it's like trying to align all the stars to hit a home run right so how the department supervises how our reentry services work is changing how our transitional housing will coordinate with the probation officer new reentry plans how our community services and providers will provide the services that's needed you know how the courts will change their conditions or their sentencing or their sentencing structures how the community is going to respond to the behaviors of our population and what supports the community can provide so it's really trying to coordinate like the whole village has to come to play here you know the department it can't do it all by itself it's it's it's we can't control all the parts that we need to do to make justice free investment really deliver on the way that I think that that vermont wants senator that senator hooker the by the way congratulations on your election as the majority leader of the senate thank you better known as the whip I can see it now thank you senator I just I'm wondering if we have a spreadsheet or something that shows how many people in you know in areas of the state are in need of more permanent housing I know that Rutland is suffering yet again of an instance where there's some transitional housing that's you know there's been another tragedy and I'm really concerned that we get a handle on the numbers of people that we need to put in more stable housing in each area because right now and I know that it's fluid I know that it changes but you know we were really proud of what ahs did when when the pandemic hit and we were able to to house 2000 individuals or whatever upwards of 2000 but now you know how many of those people are still in hotels what are we looking at and and who are they how many of them are people who have been released and and just needed a place how many of them are families I mean these are things that I think we need to look at and I'm very disappointed that some of the money that we received here isn't going to be used or seems not to be able to be used before the deadline for CRF money being spent and I'm hoping that the federal government comes up with a plan so that we can continue to move forward in utilizing that money for more permanent housing but do you have any you know data that would show us geographically what we're looking at so we'll be able to show you where we have procured beds across the state that necessarily doesn't line up with the need as we have to basically we have to put beds out there proposals and we and we kind of coordinate with whatever providers is out there some areas are better representative than others but if we put out an RFP and and no one beds on a proposal we can't provide and procure the services for that area you know one thing to understand is is we will probably be looking at a portfolio that includes less housing but more services per bed so we're going from like a mass mass housing to more specialized and focusing is is how we're going to try to turn because the churn is not helping we need to get people out and more stabilized um and have better coordinated services with our with our partners out there to to to get individuals out and stabilized the most uh riskiest and challenging time for our offenders is the first 90 days they're released so the better we can have them release into a stable place and connect to the services that we need the better their chances of staying out are you know the longer an individual is out post release the chances are that they get returned drop you know there's a drop after 90 days there's a drop after six months there's a drop after one year so getting individuals out and getting them stabilized for longer periods of time will reduce their um propensity to go back to to jail based on violations or new behaviors or criminal behaviors um so it's it's really it's really important that we get the correct services and housing partners matched up with our population if if I could follow up and then Senator Hooker and Dale one of the and perhaps next week is a good time for that discussion but in obtaining those services to keep people from being rearrested or be incarcerated um we need to know where the lapses are and those services in the community I think that's you know the basis of of our concern um I think we're all at a point where we want to see the people that are dangerous locked up but not locking up people that are not dangerous um you know I I remember Peg Flory getting the nail on the head years ago with her statement that you know we need to lock up those that we need to you know be afraid of but not those that are paying the neck and I think the I I certainly have my share of pains in the neck in my area and everybody else goes in theirs but should they be locked up and I think that's the concern so maybe comment on that too I think it's very possible it's definitely that we can talk about it uh at the next time um and we could probably bring in some some of our um you know Kim Bushey or Amy Ramiziano who who they really know the the mental health and the substance abuse and are working is a lot better than I do um but one thing that we that you know that's glaring on their end is the fact that the services out there aren't really geared for the criminal justice capable uh system so you know there's a big difference been um you know someone that is a substance abuse user and they choose themselves to get clean and they go for counseling in the service they want to get get help as opposed to someone who is in essence being forced you know jail or treatment so you go to treatment and and that's a different population to work with they're more manipulating sometimes they you know they they've managed there's trauma geared with them that they have to be able to address better um so that's a different population that that I think is one of the biggest weaknesses that we see in our system um is that we don't have the providers out there that are specifically geared toward our population or as a commissioner said that wants to deal with our population um but I think the questions that you're getting from the committee are geared toward what do we need to do to get that service available in the community that's geared to your population rather than geared to and by the way not necessarily easy for people to you know but other groups I mean I don't want to suggest that it's easy to change the lifetime of addiction and and you know even though you're motivated but I think that's the real basis of the question is how do we get those services that you need in the community available to you and not necessarily I think that was the hardest senator um hooker and senator lions questions or how do we get those services that you need not necessarily the services that a program wants to provide can I just quickly insert as a follow-up to my previous questions comments that is um the the integrated system the new system would have to take into consideration new needs and some of those new needs I'm I'm thinking have been identified within the ahs and so one of the comments that we heard from the commissioner was um that we do need a new system so am I I'm going to go back and ask my question again of the commissioner because I think how are we approaching this and who is at the table to build that new system and understand the various counseling or significant housing needs that are out there across the state so that's my question so but but let me answer that senator um and and we will come back um next week at at the uh next week's hearing to talk a little bit more detail about this but I'm just gonna you know um this is what I hear from staff and I'm just going to be frank about it that the designated agencies do not have an interest in working with the population that we have I hear what you're saying and we all know the challenges around mental health and there is a there is a work there is a designated person inside ahs that's working within the framework of the working group for reinvestment along with csg I just had this conversation with csg last week that they're helping with the conversation uh inside ahs and starting to identify the processes moving forward but but candidly we just haven't had a lot of time to do that inside corrections um there's a few things going on and uh you know we haven't we haven't had time to to really focus on rebuilding the ship because we're focused on other areas of trying to stabilize the ship and so um I appreciate um the questioning and I understand where you're going um but but um there there's a lot of challenges in this area of getting people to understand that someone who comes out of jail into the community um needs to move further up in the line of getting services and when you hear me talk about a model I'm gonna go back you know again I don't like to keep going back to this I know Senator Hooker likes there but you know what we're really talking about is a project vision model the opiate addiction model is the model we need when when we trans you know when you when you keep asking what should it look like we transaction some we trans um transition someone to the community out of a facility that has underlying mental health and self-sabuse issues it should be all hands on deck with all services in the community it shouldn't be these one-offs that are occurring and I feel after being here 10 or 11 months there's a lot of one-offs I hear people competing for dollars right this group wants money because they need more money to do more work what really needs to happen is the same thing that happened in my days in russia um we have to figure out if there's enough money and capacity in the system to collaborate the way we need to collaborate to wrap ourselves around those people coming back into the community but quite frankly in the community it's not a real um in many cases it's not a real good feeling supporting those folks coming into the community because the services are going elsewhere and so what the message we're trying to deliver here is that that level of collaboration um in some ways is out of the control of the department of corrections but it's in control of the people who funnel money to those other groups and I'd love to have you know a longer conversation about this because again my vision for this is it's it's all hands on deck when somebody arrives in the community with the element of holding them accountable for their behavior and their impact on the community so that's the reason why we're doing the work with the national network for safe communities out of john j college with the domestic violence piece but it's going to take time to bring these things together um and there is work going on and the conversation is happening but I would urge folks that sit on the steering committee for justice reinvestment too um to pay particular attention to that point when those conversations come up tomorrow so I don't know if that makes sense for you senator no I think you're on the track well I don't know what's happening in my body um but I do know that representative hooper has been patiently waiting to ask a question but I think you really have hit the nail on the head here about part of the problem is the services in the community not matching the needs of the offenders who are returning to the community representative hooper thank you I agree with this conversation but I want to maybe complicated some more um yes we need to do a better job of matching um and asking for those services to be where they are but given the challenging nature of some of the folks who need services as well as you know trying to provide these services across state government I mean across the state of vermont I wonder if we need to also be having a conversation about um about alternative ways of delivering the service rather than saying how do we put more into the community and how do we build better wraparound services should we also be having a conversation about transitional services that are under the control and operation of the department of corrections so that you are running the DOC is running um a transitional facility and able to bring those sort of services directly to a population of people I'm not disputing the fact that we need to the more we can push out into the community the better but it strikes me that there is a group that we're not going to be able to serve appropriately and instead of saying darn it why can't we do it in the community let's figure out a different way to approach that I think there've been conversations at least in house institutions about how to do that but so I just would be interested in quick response to that thank you so you're talking oh go ahead so you want to be clear so you're looking at the department actually running the transitional housing themselves I mean about that and I believe there are models in other parts of the country where um you have a step down facility or an alternative set of services that can be provided to people um as they get ready to come out into the community rather than just going directly from prison to community no I just wanted to be clear I understood the question so so there are um you know a lot of other systems have halfway houses that are either public or private so right so some of them they contract out like we do some of them the departments themselves run um I you know this is really you know difficult can it be done we probably could do that um but that those all those processes um you know we have difficult times now providing services and getting community input and community buy-in where we place you know housing we used to 15 20 years ago have F they call them FSU apartments but we provided apartments for our population um and we've you know got a lot of negative commentary about that because we would put individuals in these housing and neighborhoods that were really impoverished because that's you know that's um where we could afford as far as the state and the outcomes weren't really that that great um you know the benefit is is we control the housing and once someone was able and able for release we had a place we can put them um so really I don't know if you really gave us the outcomes that we were looking for and that was also based on you know from 20 years ago and a lot of change in and how we do things from 20 years ago um but you know I think the commissioner can weigh in like that's a conversation um you know with um a huge community impact that's going to have to be navigated um uh moniker did you want to respond to that and then representative Emmons has a question oh I just wanted to add a little bit more information I think uh representative Hooper did mention that you know this this conversations happened a few times and at least in my tenure at the department of corrections we've we've submitted two different reports to the legislature about different types of um reentry facilities you know one was around repurposing um the southeast state um property to a facility and the other one was just around a maybe building one um and what that would look like and the cost that might have been associated with that um so there is some work that the department did put into that that we've provided to the legislature in the past that might you know serve as a starting point for a conversation representative Emmons did you have a comment or question yes I'd just like to weigh in a little bit on this um you know one I go back to what representative Hooper started her first question line of questioning on the budget and coming in with the plan on how you really address this in the whole and I go back to what commissioner Baker was saying that everybody is looking at protecting their own budget and um the issue is we deal in silos and in the budget making process everyone is out there protecting their department or agency or agency but particularly their department I think that gets right back to what representative Hooper was saying when a budget is being proposed to the legislature it needs to look a little different um in terms of not having all the silos and people protecting their department and really looking at this particular issue in a cohesive manner so that's one of the things that I was thinking about and it builds a little bit on what commissioner Baker was talking about project vision that you really look at this population and you get around a table with all the departments and entities because the money is there it's just you have to redirect it in a way that is more effective than protecting people's budget that being said I'm also interested in what representative Hooper was talking about about different initiatives to help people transition into the communities and I think back to the old days when the men were in Chittenden they had work programs that they had a unit in the Chittenden facility that the inmates that had earned it and were getting close to their re reentry date could go out out into the community and work and then come back to the facility at night we also had the Windsor Correctional Facility as a minimum security facility about 25 years ago where folks were getting towards the end of their sentence still needed more support than being out in the community and they would go to the Windsor Correctional Facility to learn some trades and get ready for reentry there's also models that we've been looking at in Maine and the Hampshire at the women's correctional facilities for for women to transition within a facility or within the complex to a less secure building and more supportive in terms of their treatment and I think that's the issue that representative Hooper was talking about more so than just having apartments and buildings the DOC puts money in their budget to pay the lease that we have a coordinated approach while a person is still within an incarcerated setting to help them transition to the community while the services are being provided to them probably more with DOC in a way but I say that hesitantly because I think what happens within the service community because no one does want to deal with this population they say well corrections can deal with it so corrections is always the fallback and I don't want corrections to have to deal with this totally on its own but that's that's just some of my thoughts that when when representative Hooper mentions about a DOC providing more support it's not necessarily out in the community it's before the person transitions to the community so those are just some of my thoughts anyone else with any further questions if not would I think it's time to move on to the next agenda item representative Hooper did you have just one comment about the availability of staff to to staff programs like this I mean corrections has an issue with staff now and how do we facilitate that and what representative Hooper said about sort of strategically targeting in the budget where you would want the money spent so we need to have a clear indication of that I think so that we can have a conversation that solves some of these problems one of the realities we need to actually understand is that we've reduced by about 500 people those that are incarcerated we have invested heavily in pre-trial diversion and diverting people from the criminal justice system so that those that are now under corrections are different than those that were years ago in the community correctional centers and working their way out yeah but what we've tried to accomplish we're to some extent accomplishing where we have much more violent population where a much more difficult complex individuals were incarcerated so when I was first entered into corrections I remember a comment from Warden Smith of the old Windsor prison who said to Governor Snelling I think it was or Dean Davis I guess if you want a better prison then send me a better class of prison I do think that we have really made a lot of accomplishments so those that we're dealing with are much more different Senator I know you want to move on but I just I feel the urge just to close out the conversation by saying to folks that there is a lot of creative thinking going on inside corrections you know we're rethinking the high school to turn it to a much more therapeutic quality school type model you know we're in conversations with developing skills these things take a lot of time to move away from what the other models are and again I appreciate everyone's comments about you know we have made a lot of progress that we made because I'm new here over the years but this population is very difficult to deal with and there's going to be mistakes made things are going to happen in the community because they're a different a difficult population and so I'm hearing what everyone is saying and we're going to take it back and process it and continue to develop but we the Senator Hooker's point we we can reallocate staffing inside the agency because the security side of the house is one thing where the shortages we have capacity to change the way we supervise in the community with what we have for staff in the field we have that capacity so I'll end it there senator because I know you want to move on thank you for a longer day no human matter scheduled for 1130 on the report of the death of kennis johnson and maybe we'll move that to about 1115 if you're both available centurion we've reached out to them but they have not as far as we need to justify which is probably no surprise so we're going to move on to uh david chair and matt raymond who are here from the attorney general's office there was a bill at the end of the august session regarding the sexual exploitation of children that came from the house judiciary committee through the house and those of us on the senate judiciary committee were dealing with it there was a lot of concern about the first amendment and and other issues and we asked the attorney general for a report on the sexual exploitation of children the attorney general has provided that report and has david sure is here the assistant general assistant attorney general and as well as matt raymond and why don't you present the report then if there's questions we can move from there david thank you for joining us thank you senator and thanks for having us today Mr. Raymond and I were thinking that might make sense for me to do a very brief introduction of the topic and then let him talk for a few minutes about what the internet crimes against task children task force does just to give the panel some the committee some general and informational background and then i'll jump back on and go a little bit into a little bit more detail about the law if that is okay with the committee sounds good to me i was muted all right thank you so as the members of the committee have received we did submit a report focused heavily on the question of constitutionality regarding the proposal for outlying simulated depictions of simulated sexual conduct in child sexual abuse materials which formerly were referred to as child pornography and the as the senator sears noted this was there are some issues of concern around the constitutionality of that the report that i submitted goes into that in great detail and i'll go over that not in quite as much detail as the written report but i'll go over some of the highlights of that after the committee gets an overview of the practical factual side of this which i think will be very helpful to provide the context for why we're making this request and for those who may be watching who did not receive that in the email the report is available on the vermont legislatures website at the reports section of it so you can access that there with that i'll turn that over to investigator matt raymond who will talk a bit about what his unit does and a little bit about the practical side of this request before matt the basic issue and i think it was senator beruth that brought it up and senator judiciary i could be wrong but um was the depict when you have a movie that depicts a child we've had movies like a taxi with jody foster that that was the one that came up she was playing a prostitute at the age of 10 years old in the movie that was really what led us to this question and that's what the report tries to um recommend language for a bill that would in terms of the simulation that's right senator you correctly stated that senator beruth wants to defend himself i i think that sums it up it was uh you're the defender of the first amendment well also marshal paul testified that he had uh in his own library at home he had three films that he thought contravened the proposed language and nobody wanted to uh believe that it could possibly be worth criminalizing those films so we kicked it as i remember to this committee that's right and the proposal uh we believe would plainly not criminalize the examples that uh deputy defender general paul brought up last uh earlier this year um and we crafted the language carefully uh using new york state law that has been found to be constitutional and and for a little bit of broader context this the outlawing simulations along these lines in the way that we are proposing is something that is done by about 44 states the washington dc and the federal government so we're not uh being legal adventurers in this in fact um we are very much in the minority by not outlawing this and as i'll go into in a little bit more detail in a few minutes uh the way we're crafting the proposal put some safeguards around it that would not outlaw artistic expression of the type that marshal paul was was talking about thank you matt did you want to tell us a little bit what's happening yes i'm the commander of the vermont internet crimes against children task force which is a task force made up of local state and federal law enforcement officers um and we focus on the sexual exploitation of children by people that use the internet or um technology to do so we um traditionally have been uh there's like three legs of the icac there's investigations forensics and education um and this obviously deals with the investigation side um and we've done in the past both proactive and reactive investigations but quite frankly over the last year or a little more um our proactive side is pretty much uh you know not being utilized because we have so many complaints coming in on the reactive side we get uh the majority of our complaints from cyber tips from the national center for missing exploited children who um electronic service providers like facebook yeah who google you know any type of um interface um send complaints to nec mech when they find child exploitation on their sites um and that can be their child pornography or lowering an enticement of a child and um then they the nec mech sends those to the correct icac there's 61 icacs across the country vermont there's one that that goes across the entire state we get those complaints uh and then review them and to see if we're accepting them for investigation and we've been just absolutely swamped the numbers of these complaints just continue to skyrocket um and we just can't can't keep up with them as part of that um we see uh we've seen quite a bit uh uptick on the simulated sexual conduct and um it's kind of harsh to say but uh what we're talking about is usually a clothed child um that is um a lot of times this is a young girl um you know preteen very young um in front of a naked male uh where you can't tell from the camera angle if her mouth is actually touching his penis or not but it's so close as as to if it may be um and currently that is not uh considered child pornography under vermont law but it is in most states and the federal government um and that the original request was to fix that issue um we have these cases pop up all the time and um it seems to be a loophole uh that people can get away with uh you know the exploitation of children with and I was hoping that uh we can get that fixed thank you very much uh investigate and obviously if folks have questions for questions for him feel free to uh jump in at any time or or jump in at the end here I'll I'll just give a brief overview the of the report that I submitted it goes into great detail about the legal issues and arguments but I'll try to give you the main concepts here and then I'm happy to answer questions uh and uh clarify anything that you might need um the basic proposal we're submitting I'll just read it out loud it's it's fairly brief it would be to uh make one additional subsection in the statute under vermont law that defines what sexual conduct is for the purpose of child sexual abuse materials um and the additional section would read the following it would be at the bottom of the um the list uh that defines what sexual conduct is the very act the various acts that define what sexual conduct is and this was what it would say and this can be found on page two work for those who may be looking at that uh it says any simulation of the above conduct purposes of this chapter simulated means the explicit depiction of any of the conduct set forth in the subsection which creates the appearance of such conduct and which exhibits any uncovered portion of the breasts genitals or buttocks uh two things I want to note initially about what this does uh and how it interacts with other aspects of the law in terms of the behavior that it might criminalize one is that this is more narrow than the proposal that our office brought forward to the judiciary committees earlier this year it was narrowed by including the requirement for there to be some nudity that's visible nudity being defined as uncovered portion of the breast genitals this would eliminate a lot of hypotheticals you might think about involving a young person in a more sort of what we might say artistic presentation around uh dealing with young people and sexuality uh because if there's no if there's no nudity of the type that's defined in there simply wouldn't be covered by the law the other thing that's important to note is that all of the crimes that apply to require there to be an actual child involved in the creation of the depiction in other words you could not it would not be the case that if there is an actor actress over 16 under vermont loss 16 is the cough um if there's an actor actress who's over that age who is pretending to be younger that would not qualify as a crime because that would not be a child by under vermont definition so I think that those two things are important aspects to understand and to clarify with respect to this constitutional issue we are not talking about simulations that and it would not be a crime for simulations that involve an actor or actress who's over 16 and it is not a crime when there is not the nudity that is defined in this subsection so those are I think two key things to understand and again the nudity piece is something that narrows this proposal and I think would eliminate a number of quite a number of hypotheticals that one might come up with with respect to the legality of this under first amendment law again as I mentioned before this is the majority position in the United States the great majority even vermont's very much in a very small minority and not having a statute on the books that is similar to this the supreme court in a series of cases that I've outlined in the report outlined the rule and the basic rule is the following and I'll read this off the report it's not too long a depiction of sexual conduct that was produced using an actual child involved in the conduct whether the conduct was simulated or actual is not protected speech under the first amendment and it may be criminalized depictions of child sexual abuse that were not produced using an actual child in other words virtual depictions perhaps that might be computer simulated or something like that those are protected speech under the first amendment and that again that was sort of it comes from a series of cases ferber ashcroft and then this williams case which which I would say the williams case clarified some of those earlier laws it didn't particularly change it but those are that are actually that is the basic rule here it is law it is within the bounds of the first amendment is acceptable to outlaw depictions that are that involve an actual child in their production and that that is not protected by the first amendment virtual imagery that does not involve an actual child is not sorry is protected by the first amendment and what we propose here today is very much within the within the lines of that rule the vermont statute as I just mentioned already limits what is outlawed to depictions involving an actual child and when we introduce the simulated language that does not change it will still be a requirement that there be an actual child we are not proposing to outlaw virtual what it says is not allowable and just briefly I'll note the sort of seminal case and we had some considerable considerable discussion about this case earlier this year but the seminal case on this is actually ferber versus new york and it's important to note that the language we are proposing here is very close to a copy of the new york state statutes and that was a a considered decision in that the new york state statutes were themselves litigated up to the united state supreme court and the u.s. supreme court did hold them to be constitutional so we you know we're very much within the pattern of something that the supreme court has already found constitutional there are other statutes including the federal statute frankly which are a little bit more loosely defined than the one we're proposing we are really on the cautious end of this in terms of making sure we are writing within the lines of the first amendment I think we're well within within those lines and ferber basically does say that child pornography of course is not protected speech under the constitution and that it is even it is less protected than other materials that might be considered to be obscene and the reason it says that is because the state has a extraordinary interest a compelling interest in protecting children from the type of abuse that is involved in producing these images so they have less protection than the sort of normal obscene material that might be considered not protected by the first and they did ferber does know ferber does make a distinction between it notes that simulated material is in fact something that is not protected by the constitution it notes with approval the new york statute that defines simulated to be simulated activity to be unlawful and it even has a brief discussion in there about the fact that if you need to if there's some lawful purpose artistic purpose or perhaps scientific explanatory purpose there are ways to do that that are that would not be outlawed so ferber really contemplates this and discusses this this line drawing between unlawful simulated activity and portrayals that may actually have merit in ways that should not be outlawed and they note that that can still be done you can still make those portrayals under this law and it'd be protected by the first amendment ashcroft then steps in a couple decades a few decades later and i know a couple decades later sorry and makes us makes a tweak to that and says virtual images images that were that where there was no child involved in the production are in fact protected by the first amendment and the reason they say that is because the reasoning underlying ferber the policy reason the underlying ferber is that you need to protect children from the grave harm that results from the from the production of these materials and if there is no child involved in the production then that harm has not been perpetrated and the interest involved in pulling something outside of first amendment protection has disappeared and for that reason those virtual images are going to be protected by the first amendment and again we were very careful in this statute to make sure that we are not falling afoul of ashcroft and again i would note that this is not an unusual thing to do as i said before 44 states dc and the federal government do what we are proposing to do with respect to having senator ruth as you're muted senator sorry david didn't mean to interrupt you but i i did want to ask this this looks much uh i wouldn't call it a no-brainer but it seems a much easier choice to move forward with i note that um the defender general's office was in consultation with you is would that be marshal paul because you two were the uh you know interlocutors on this in our committee um is this a joint effort from the both of you it i i did consult with marshal uh it is not a joint effort as i noted in the report the defender general still is still their opinion that this is unconstitutional again i think that we disagree with that and we think the law is quite clear on this it's it's not a it's not a stretch at all not only is it not a stretch i think the law is quite clear that this is constitutional or proposal is constitutional but i did note in the report that um the defender general's office still disagrees with that and i'm sure when we discuss this further they will bring forward their arguments on the other side okay well at first blush and reading through your report it seems to meet my objections to the to the previous language i did have another question for you about the last point you made on ashcroft where you were talking about virtual conduct and the the judgment of the court being that there was no crime committed because it was merely virtual so uh when um matt raymond was talking about proactive uh attempts to catch these sorts of criminals one of the things i've always wondered is that unless i'm mistaken there can be a a sort of virtual situation where a police officer in a barracks pretends to be a child and then a child predator um engages in a in a colloquy with them and then they agree to meet and that's regarded as a crime and i've always thought that was interesting because there is no child involved at any stage in that it seems a simulated child in both cases what makes one legal and the other um not legal i can i'll give a brief answer that and if uh matt raymond wants to jump in and provide a little more context he's welcome to do that as well basically we're talking about different crimes here uh and when you're talking about the situation you mentioned with uh somebody who's actually an officer uh eliciting uh uh or you know interacting with somebody who demonstrates an intent to do something you're talking about an attempted offense uh of course in in those cases there may be no child sexual abuse material but talking about an attempt to commit essentially a child sexual assault um and as as long as there's uh evidence that's garnered to show that this person really did take a step towards doing um then the crime of a of an attempted um child sexual assault of some type and there's different types of categorized under or attempted lume lascivious conduct that's where that type of uh behavior will fall into the criminal code okay so similar to a conspiracy charge where you have to take one one concrete action toward toward the commission of a crime but not actually commit the crime um yeah similar to that in that if you're a member of a conspiracy uh it's conspiracies with slightly different analysis but i i think that your basic comparison makes sense uh in that there has to be you have to have participated in a conspiracy in some way sufficiently to show that uh you actually did mean to uh help commit the underlying crime it's not exactly the same uh legal language in terms of how we explain those two things but there is some conceptual similarity where a prosecutor has to show sufficient action to prove the attempt or in the conspiracy case to prove the uh that somebody was part of the conspiracy okay thanks very much if i may so the protection against the anime or the virtualization of children you have to realize that's nothing more than a a drawing right as there's no real kids involved so it would be criminalizing a drawing or a painting not you know obviously uh that's protected uh free speech and that that's why but in the case of the luring where they um you actually are charged with luring a child whether or not there's a child there and it's not not just an attempt but it's an actual luring charge um because the person believed they were luring a real child um and that that's where the difference is uh simulated stuff again uh even though it's done on a computer it's really just a drawing a painting um there's no real children involved and everybody knows that from the onset where the luring the law was actually uh crafted to include a person that they believed was a child at the time whether or not that person is a child and that law has been uh challenged uh for in Vermont on that and that has withheld the legal challenges so so it's two completely separate separate animals there i i agree with senator berlouf that this is i appreciate the effort here that's a big improvement and um it keeps coming in my mind is sexting um particularly if the uh one of the children sexting is a minor and the other one may be 16 how does that impact in this at all or does it that would not be implicated by this proposed change that's if if anything um it would be it could potentially be more along the lines of the luring a statute maybe um but we also have protections in other areas of the law so that we're not high school behavior things like that um but yeah that that would not be implicated by this proposed change and then i do want to thank the skater even for reminding me about the luring statute which is where um these uh the particular hypothetical that senator berlouf brought up that is where that's charged and um the luring statute does essentially criminalize what we would commonly think of as an attempt although it does not um phrase it that way um i appreciate the effort here and and um matt i appreciate the work that you put in um every day i i always wonder how you do that it's gonna be very difficult i know you have a beautiful dog behind you so yeah he's a uh he's actually an electronic detection dog that helps find the thumb drives and sd cards and stuff that we search for so right now he's snoring hopefully not too loudly all right no um any other questions uh brin i know if you're on board here and i put in a drafting i'll put in a drafting request for this but it may be that the house takes it up first and any other senator that wants to join me in that would be happy to have you on board just let you know senator berlouf senator line senator hooker i i've put on i've put in a request as well um on the house side and so yeah and um and uh representative bird is also very interested in this is sponsored the bill it was one of those zoom bills that um it's unfortunate that we've seen an increase due to the pandemic in this baby and uh it was a timely bill in my mind any other questions on that i wonder um mike if you could help us um i know matt's here if we took a break until 11 if we could start up on the johnson case um with matt and jim baker if he's available at 11 we said 11 15 but matt are you you're available at 11 okay great why don't we take a 15 minute break till 11 and uh we're gonna start with jim baker and matt valerio the issue is the death of mr johnson who was a house dad uh offender who died um it was an investigation done by down's rack i always get down's wracklin and martin um former federal prosecutor chris often who did the investigation along with someone else um we asked centurion to join us today to their report is highly critical of centurion but they decline to join us with that i would turn it over to jim baker and mike has put the report on maybe jim specific areas of the report you want to go to i can't open it either having technical difficulties here at the state house you know center i thought the way to address this is that um you know i i would go to the recommendations if that's okay can you go to the recommendations mike i can i'm not familiar with this report so a page number would be helpful if you have it in front of you but mike i think is page 29 um that starts the recommendation conclusions um conclusion a here no correct and then if you just direct me i will navigate from there correct so um again for the record my name is jim baker on the interim commissioner of corrections and um so i started i think where i'll start is is is what i've said in the past um this i would consider downs wracklin martin's um investigation the administrative review um of the incident involving mr johnson i've spoken to this many times um both here to the media and otherwise and um i'll i'll say what i've said many times that this death was preventable you know this is one of many reports driven did a report secretary of state's office did an investigation the defenders general's office prison office of prisoners rights did an investigation there was a medical review a peer and peer medical review by program for quality healthcare ink state police did an investigation an untimely death investigation uh the orlean state's attorney's office reviewed that investigation and now we have the investigation done by downs wracklin martin and and for the record i think it's important that um that the committee knows that um corrections cooperated 100 with drm in uh in all the folks that they were interested in interviewed uh were cooperated if they were interviewed um you know i i think for us it was important that the investigation from the outside was done um because of um clarity and accountability and you know the important the important question for me as the commissioner is less about uh what happened because um you know i think through these investigations for me as the commissioner i'm pretty clear on what happened and uh someone died and i think the more important piece for me is um what what is changing and i think the recommendations break down uh the conclusions and recommendations break down the three principal sections uh medical policy and culture and included in that culture is comments that are made by drm about um about implicit bias training and i'll touch on that in my comments about the things that we're addressing that we're being addressed um prior to the report and have a renewed focus in the report um the first the first conclusion is that um dlc officers and healthcare providers should have done more to help mr john and um i i don't dispute that nor should anybody in corrections dispute that um that um things went wrong and um some of the things that we have focused on in the medical area the changes um you had mentioned earlier that the former contractor um would not come to the committee centurion we have changed contractors um providing healthcare in a correctional setting is a challenge to begin with and um there's a lot of stuff that has come that has come out of this that in areas that we're focused on one of those areas are paying attention to acute care even though this particular report does not single this issue out um this is a theme that was unspoken in many of the reports that i picked up on which is um how we pay attention to the acute patients within our system those who require a higher degree of care and how they're seen within the facility and how they get that care outside the facility by specialists and i think in mr johnson's case um this was spoken to in other investigations but um getting to see a specialist has been a challenge in the past getting people out of a facility to see them and there's a there's a new level of coordination with our new contractor vital core when it comes to that to that effort um there's also work being done on a daily basis with um our part time medical director and our our medical team and working with vital core um i believe there's a better tracking right now of acute care patients in the system and a conversation daily on the status of those acute care um patients in fact i just before getting back on to the zoom meeting i saw an email that came out about an acute care patient that i'm now included in those emails and i can ask questions about the level of care that's going on there we're working on a better level of communication between us and the health care provider with vital core having a leadership structure in the state now on the ground and tracking of those acute care and as i said we have a part time medical director now is that good enough no um but we've had a challenge trying to find a full time medical director and we will continue to work on that but um having a part time medical director and Dr. Scott Strenio has been a big step forward in the collaboration and the coordination of medical oversight of patients in the system and um you know i'll come back to this later but in this section of the report that leads up to this conclusion there is conversations about the threat of discipline against Mr. Johnson by both the nursing staff and DOC staff and i'll come back to that a little bit later when we talk about policy the other thing i want to point out is that we have opened up an office to deal with constituents and those constituents can be parents or loved ones that have general concerns about the loved ones in the system but we spend quite a bit of time with folks that reach us about the medical care and well-being of folks in our custody in facilities and i'm happy to report that that office of constituency is doing a lot of work where we can chase down information to make sure that um concerns of loved ones um are answered but it's also uh turning up and creating conversation amongst staff because there is a concern about a loved one so i'm hoping over time that that becomes an avenue for family members to advocate just like someone to advocate for me health care on the outside trying to create that same situation when there's advocacy for loved ones inside the system so if uh james if you if you move down those are um some of the points as a result of the recommendation uh in conclusion a kind of if we if we don't if we don't it be before you go there um commissioner i have a question and it says that uh mr johnson was not transferred to a hospital and um which was a short distance away and should have been transferred right when you discussed what we're going to do in the future um it would be interesting it would be important for the committee to understand why he wasn't transferred and how we can be sure that if a similar situation arose in the future that he would be transferred yeah i was going to touch on that further oh i'm sorry i didn't realize i'll do it i'll do it now senator is your question um look what i got what i gather from this is it goes to the cultural piece um where um sometimes there's a disbelief by staff in the medical staff when people present with complaints around medical and you know i think this came out clear in all the investigations that um there there is a certain amount that goes on inside the system where people try to get outside to go to uh outside medical care um and there's a belief within certain mindset within our system that um that um they they are doing that to to play the system and that's a cultural thing and it's it's about the humanity um as i've testified before so when you ask that question about what are we doing in the future um part of the review that we're doing a policy is right now it's confusing as dmr has stated in the report about can correctional staff overrule medical staff about making a decision to move people and um we are we are having an outside review of those policies now to try to determine what's the best policies around the country when it comes to how you manage those conversations inside the facility i'm of the belief at the end of the day that i hold the superintendents of a facility accountable for what goes on in that facility and they should have the final say in deciding what happens with an individual even if a medical provider is is advising against it so i don't know if that answers your question or not to the extent yeah i mean i i certainly understand that's a manipulative manipulative group and we talked about that in the previous correct correct on the other hand you know we can err on the side of caution and and i don't know you know i was 60 years old was there on detention um and um 60 years old to be incarcerated i guess yes it is and uh so all the signs were there this wasn't a 20 year old um putting problems otherwise healthy person yeah and um you know you heard me say this before when i talked about this prior to the dmr report you know a review and video was hard to watch because um i don't think it needed to be a medical professional to see um how how labored it was for mr johnson um to catch his breath so i think um in the future and we've already talked about this short of waiting for a policy review which i'll talk about in a few minutes that um i expect that the jail staff who are ultimately responsible for the safety of the individuals in the facility will weigh in more about what they believe should happen with individual being taken out to an emergency thank you is there any other questions on that piece about you know i'll just wrap this up by saying again it's um you know it's it's obvious that enough was not done for mr johnson because he uh you lost you know he lost his life let me talk a little bit about sections b and c around policy the first one talks about this very thing that we talked about about the understanding of the role of the healthcare provider and the corrections officers that are involved in providing security and um you know you know we retain the services of the moss group which is one of the leading firms in the country uh headed up by an individual by the name of andy moss um who who was in in an employee at one time with the georgia department of corrections and her her consulting firm is one of the leading think tanks in the country like best policies um they've been helping moss or excuse it they've been helping dmr with the chitin review and uh we've engaged them to help us with several things and i won't go through all of those but one of them is um a media priority is to take a look at these policies that guide this conversation right here and provide us with input and create new policies for us to implement and we're doing it from the outside um in because i i feel like we need an outside set of eyes on this um because it's easy to fall back to old thinking and in my mind it's a way to break the thinking around the way we've done business in the past so moss has been involved and in this is uh a lot of conversations about the issue of segregation and uh you know we we've uh since this incident we've we have enhanced our segregation reports monthly which much more detail and much more follow-up that we provide not only internally to myself and other leaders in the organization but we published that um on our website and um well it used to be just a graph of what the segregation for the month was and what type of segregation it is is a company with much more detail now and i'm briefed on a monthly basis and in at least one case in the last two months i picked up on a situation of data that um i think could have led um could have led to inequity in the system around an individual who was transgender and so that's one area that we've worked on um we we've we've also um shifted the oversight of the health care um to a deputy to the deputy commissioner and the deputy commissioner now is the point of contact um for the lack of better term i i would see deputy commissioner hanging it as the CEO of the hospital with a medical director because again a 20 million dollar health care system requires a lot of oversight and um we've elevated that to the level of uh deputy commissioner hankin having oversight over that and we are in the process of of reviewing those policies and in particular around the segregation piece and um there there was a lot of confusion in the interviews between staff members about segregation and what you can use that for and i'll go on the record right now uh as the commissioner the sitting commissioner to say that segregation um is not a tool that should be used to force people into doing any into doing something um that is not in their best interest um segregation is a tool we have to use inside the facilities but in this case um the misbelief that mr johnson was manipulating led to threats of segregation and um when you read all the various reports um it's it's hard to read this stuff and so the piece around segregation is a big part of what i'm paying attention to now we're doing the policy review on it and we're going to clarify and make sure that staff understands when it's appropriate um to talk about segregation with an inmate in our custody and the last piece um that came out i can't remember if it's in this section or not um is is the observation process of an inmate that's being observed for medical reasons you know there's three levels of that um constant supervision someone staying with them all the time with eyes on 15 minutes and 30 minutes and um there's confusion in the interviews about who can elevate that observation period but more for me um that i found troubling was that when the observation was made and in this case to the credit of the staff the observations were made within the policy's time 30 minutes but the documentation um was woefully in accurate on the documentation so for example at one point an entry said that mr johnson was awake and when you looked at the video it was clear that mr jason was struggling with breathing so that's that's a piece of the policy that needs to be adjusted so senator i'm going to stop there to see if there's any questions i have a couple of questions that arise but i don't know if they're this part of the hard to follow which part of the report but the fact that mr johnson was a person of color and given the nature of the crime that he was charged with is that a factor in all this um you know anecdotally um you know the report or is that later in the report it is it is addressed by dm r dr m later later in the report um and it is addressed in the body of the report and that's part of the recommendations around both uh training for implicit implicit bias excuse me and around the issues of culture so what i'll say to that senator now is is that you know the nature of what mr johnson was being held on was the nature of an allegation of the crime that inside a facility not only by the inmate population but by sometimes by others that is seen as um not higher high regard and then you have the fact that mr johnson was african-american i i don't you know i i can't get inside someone's mind and i can't say with certainty that that played into this but on the other side just as a report says you can't rule about it i mean it was interesting that at least one of the staff members was not aware of the concept of implicit bias other staff members were and there were actual staff members working that night that were of color and so um i can't say with certainty that that played into it but i don't think you can take it off the table and i think it's in our best interest to really start focusing in on um raising the conversation and the awareness and the training of our staff around equity and i'll address that when we get to that section on implicit bias and culture does that does that help senator help suggest that uh continually throughout you know just a review of what little part of the report that we have in front of us need additional training need additional training and clearly that that's part of it but it's also this the factors um let's put it this way mr johnson that everything going against him the person of color the crime that he was alleged to have committed the age except i i agree with you senator and i think um i'll make this point again and i'm going to make it now um i have a fair amount of experience in my career feeling around implicit bias and how you bring that awareness education and mindset shift within an agency and it takes much more than training to do that it's um it's a cultural shift and i'm not i don't mean to be preachy but i just want to make that point now and i'm going to make the point again because uh in the review once dr i met did the report um secretary smith and i um chatted about this and chatting with dmr about it and um it's important to understand that you know you can do an implicit bias training for all the staff you know do an hour online training about implicit bias and check the box off that you did the training but that's not the cultural shift that needs to occur and it's more than just racial bias as i told you i picked up on something reviewing seg reports around a transgendered individual and so it's more than it's more than just um race but in this case i agree that mr johnson had a lot going against him sir thank you you're welcome other questions regarding these sections um i do have a question or senator alliance yeah thanks um so it's it's clear that you've identified a distinction between some of the medical process and policies so the nurse didn't know when she or he uh should be um making recommendations and and also on segregation and so it seems to me that and we've talked about this before uh and a better integrated uh system of care for inmates and do the inmates have i mean you don't have to answer this but as we look at that will they have um primary care so that the nurse have has a regular contact or the physician has a regular contact with patients so they get to know the patient and i know that's hard because people are going in and out but at some point that becomes really critical especially when you see something like this where there's an acute need uh so on the medical side having that system in place uh for primary care and then being able to hand off and then just one other comment and that as you mentioned families being involved and more involved than people outside being more involved do inmates ever at any point have um as so might not sound like something they would they would do on a regular basis i agree which would be like an advanced directive or some kind of uh identification of individuals who can weigh in when there is this kind of an acute issue i'll try to answer all that for you senator let me go back and just say this situation in my mind was not about if the nurse didn't know if they could send someone out or not i think this was more about what senator sears framed earlier about um the underlying belief that there's a level manipulation that happens in the system um they had full power um in confusing reports now but i do think it's in this report that um a medical director was contacted it's it's about the it's about the coordination between security staff corrections officers and nursing staff about when to move someone in a medical crisis right and that for us has to be worked on at a level of communication and understanding for our leadership team at the facilities the next point is that absolutely what we're trying to do inside corrections and are we there yet no or not and i've said this before people know that um some folks on on this hearing know that i face some medical challenges in my life and i receive some of the best care in the world and that's why i'm still here and i i believe i believe that um the folks that are inside our system for 20 million dollars a year should should be getting the same level of community care so the standard we measure against and dr strenio and i've had this conversation several times since it's come on as our part-time medical director the expectation is that the folks that are in our custody get a level of care that's comparable to the community care the next point is what i what i said earlier which probably wasn't clear because i didn't say it the way you asked the question senator but one of the things that is happening now is is something that wasn't happening before with our prior um uh care provider and and i think it's daily calls it could be every could be three times a week but anyway there is a list of buttock or has gone through the system and identified those patients that are um are most acute and there's a daily or or three times a week phone call with both our staff and vital core staff going over what is the situation with each one of those patients and that list is is not huge it's small but it's a level of communication that was not happening before this incident so um i i think what i'm trying to say to you is is that they don't get a nurse assigned to them but um the nurses understand what the situation is with inmates what was missing before i think is the level of over nurses operated at a certain level as we all know and doctors are at a different level and i think what we have now is a better communication with the medical directors about the acute nature of of the patients and then the final piece is there are situations where there is medical directives or power of attorney or permission for loved ones to talk to us but if we don't have permission we can't provide just like any other medical you call the hospital about a friend you're not going to get information if we don't have a release on on file we don't release information but you but they can designate folks who are are their power of attorney and and you know and that comment by saying and in fact we're dealing with a situation like this now an end of life care and we tried to get the individual out of the system into a hospice type care and um this is a situation where this individual becomes the nature of their crime that they were convicted of and pretty much burned all their family bridges and didn't have anybody and those are the most difficult cases for us to deal with and we're dealing with one right now that i said earlier i got emailed just before i got back on zoom about this situation with this patient and so there is that level of tie into the families thank you good i don't see a few people on the screen but senator beruth did you have a question any other questions okay um commissioner go ahead um conclusion d is another i touched on this about the training to understand between communication process there's confusion in the report by the supervisor on duty how many times they spoke to the superintendent at the time and the superintendent has a different recognition a recollection of that and again i'm not casting any um uh i'm not casting any opinions on that clearly we have to do a better job of having a point of the point the tip of the spear about who the final decision maker is on a situation like mr. johnson's and um that'll be part of the policy review james if you move to page 37 sorry i should have told you to move earlier i apologize to the committee for that this is the peace senator sears you brought up earlier about um about dlc should implement implicit bias training um this comes as a result of the interviews that um downs wracklin and martin did with staff and at least one of the staff members um professed that they did not know what implicit bias was um that's troubling to me but that's really why we did this review this nature to understand these issues and so um their recommendation is is that um we implement implicit bias training and uh i take that recommended recommendation seriously but i'm going to say what i said earlier in order to integrate equity into the system it's got to be more than just implicit bias training and um i'll remind you of some of the work that was done around senate bill 24 in the last session that we worked um with um house corrections and institutions the shape language as it made through the various committees the idea behind that working with hci on the house side was um i think we were in the forefront of saying to the committee that we wanted a framework to force the conversation and force us to create situations that went beyond training and when it comes to equity in the system and we've already introduced implicit bias training into our recruit class the last two classes have gone through we've implemented implicit bias training that's being provided to us by uh tavitha moore and um that's it that's a day long uh presentation and kind of an interesting side story the last class that um miss moore provided that to she was driving home we got a flat tire on a kind of a desert desert section of marsfield and one of the recruits in the class came along um and i tell you this because there's several pieces to it several cars pass by her as as all of you know that tavitha is a person of color and uh this one car stops and uh picks up miss moore helps her get the tire changed and as it turns out it was one of the recruits in the uh in the class and the recruit brought up how powerful it was um her training that day um during the eight hours and you know it's the kind of remind story that you can't make up that happens so i bring that up because it is it is an impactful training and we're starting it with our recruits and we do have plans um to move uh training throughout the organization my my charge to the office of professional standards is and they need to find the training that we can implement fairly quickly that's not checked off the box and it's not a one-time thing it's a base setting for the conversation inside corrections around implicit bias so um that's that's what's what's happening there um any questions about um implicit bias training and i find myself muted go ahead representive evidence i think i'm intrigued commissioner when you said about the implicit bias training you can have the training but that doesn't mean it corrects the problem how do you deal with the pressure of co-workers your colleagues your co-workers because that's where it really comes from you know representative i was i was i was hoping you were still on because i think you were at the print executive committee meeting on friday yes i was there was a defining moment in that conversation that i want to bring you back to when i'll share with the committee the union representative through the print executive committee called out that um he is starting to understand the issue of humanity inside our system and i'm paraphrasing what he said if you remember this that to me was a defining moment and so part of of the work that we're doing on cultural change is not only the work that we're doing with moss but it's the print project and for for folks that um just to refresh your memory this is the print prison prison research and innovation work that we're doing in springfield and it's it's funded by the arnold ventures foundation and our partners our research partners are uvm and um we work with the urban institute and there's an executive committee that oversees this which representative edmunds is a is a member of that executive committee and the union is represented there and uh it was a defining moment i thought the other day um i kind of had a long week last week and it ended my week realizing that all the hard work we're doing is starting to set in so i say all that representative edmunds because um i'm a firm believer in uh in milk and gladwell's work tipping point and um i think what you saw the other day is a concept that gladwell talks about in his book which is conveyers of the message and i think what happened is that that representative from the union is the conveyor of the message and um he's holding up i i speak to him once in a while he holds me accountable in our conversations but i i think your point is well taken that um i believe what i've seen in other organizations primarily with police organizations but i don't think it's any different here in my work that i did nationally in this area what you see happen is is you you provide training and input and opportunities for conversations and the conversations break out and eventually the culture tips as a result of more and more people being aware of what their prejudice their biases and prejudice may be and how it affects the operation of the system so that's what moss is helping us with that's what the print project is all about and um we are providing opportunities to have these tough conversations does that help represent them yes thank you any senator any questions for me on the implicit any other questions on the on those that jim you can go down to the to the bottom of the section on on a culture of respect and dignity and i really think um i i covered this i think senator this goes back senator sears this goes back to your comment earlier about what mr johnson had going against them you know the nature of his offense um the fact that he's african american and that he's 60 years old and we know that a 60 year old in a correctional system um isn't really represented health wise of um what 60 is and um this this issue around respect and dignity um is the stuff that we're working on as i said through moss print and the conversations that we're having internally on a regular basis with staff around the issues of dignity and respect and i will also finish this by saying this issue of dignity and respect goes to other conversations i've had with this committee and and house corrections and institutions around retention of employees it goes hand in hand and so it doesn't matter if you're showing the lack of dignity and respect to a new staff member or if you're showing a lack of dignity and respect to an inmate um it all has negative outcomes and um we have to we have to change that and we're working on that through our efforts with moss and print so those are the comments i had uh i'm certainly open for the more you know and i read the report earlier but trying to go over it now more more you read on the more concern you get a why i mean the man was on the floor in the bathroom and they still don't call for outside help but it just um inexplicable uh and obviously we're not going to get an answer from centurion yeah senator i think um i've said it's hard to fake lying on the bathroom floor but i think also senator if you were to see the video it's also hard to fake um the trouble that he had to catch his breath the distress he was on correct and i'm not not here to defend it i'm here to tell you that um you know when you're in your professional working career certain things that you encounter that leave a lasting impression on you and this is one of them and there's i again i don't want to make this case simplistic because it's not but it's not as complicated it it's not it's not as complicated about how he ended up passing it's complicated is why certain things happen and the best i can do right now is the commissioner is to change processes around the policies the culture our relationship with our with our healthcare provider and um make making awareness that there's a difference between manipulation and when someone's in distress yeah um other questions for commissioner baker representative hooper yeah and after we hear from matt hopefully jim you're gonna stay on wine and if there's questions rina one of you afterwards i'm here senator to your done with the subject sir great yeah go ahead yeah thank you um i understand and appreciate and admire the um challenges and the commitment to instituting change within an organization and how tremendously difficult this is within an organization of the nature of the department of corrections i i get it philosophically um i understand intellectually what what is being accomplished i'm i just continue to be really concerned that we are not addressing this as urgently as needs to be done and and commissioner boy i get it you're on it every day you are trying to you are urgently addressing it the the concern i have is is that if i'm a co one in some one of our facilities and i hear i'm going to get training um i i've been trained on bunches of stuff and you know and so what or or yay good stuff happens but when something as horrendous as this happened and i don't see kind of the consequence of change immediately or close to immediately why why does the training matter i mean i do you understand what i'm trying to say i need to see a consequence and i get the change culture but there's no i i don't see it happening and so how do i become invested and committed to that change unless i see the consequences you know representative you and i've had this conversation and i i don't i don't want to make this sound personal for me but um you know i'm doing 12 14 hours a day trying to turn this shit please let me finish because i want to make this point um this is not my first um fix it job and um i will tell you that um and i had this conversation with someone on friday who why they were attending what i described happened at the print meeting i cannot emphasize to you what a game changer that was and i had somebody that from the advocacy community email me during that that individual making that statement say to me wow i i i can't believe um the change that's happening because it isn't i hear that you want a consequential change change but culture that's entrenched in an organization and there's so much going on i said this earlier when we were talking about reinvestment there's so much going on that um my experience at change in organization is all of a sudden you wake up one day and you say to yourself how'd you get there because it's every day putting your shoulder to the grind and and pushing as hard as you can forward i will tell you and i would encourage you because i i i would encourage you to talk to some other staff around and ask them about how fast change is happening inside corrections and i you know that's the best i can do because because otherwise it's going to make it sound like i'm just pushing you off i'm not it's it's it's uh it is a it is a long process the problem with this situation is that mr. johnson should not have died and he did and i i i wish i you know i wish i could have something i could say that would change that but i can't all i can do is look at these circumstances and i pretty much understand this this situation inside out and the changes we're making are not only addressing what happened to him but the issues about the way we look at inmates the way we treat them threatening someone with segregation because they're not complying on something that relates to your health care now if they're not compliant because they're being given an order to do something in violation of the rules is a different story but not around health care that that so so these changes are happening and all i ask you to do is be patient thank you and and i i i know that i am being impatient it is not challenging your theory or practice i just i and you've only been with us for a year but sadly you know we have been hearing we're working on this i i've been here for 12 years and i hear this um and i can't hold you accountable for that but i just the fact that somebody could die under these circumstances in today's society is appalling and um i am fearful that we are not accomplishing the change that is necessary as as hard as you are working and your team is working i'm just so i am impatient and forgive me for sloppin over on you and and others but it your your job's to hold me accountable representative and i don't mind that at all yeah that's part of why i'm here all i'm saying is is that i know you related to me the story of when your son was growing up and what you used to tell him about i think you said about a b plus right if you're looking for i get it i understand yeah and i want i i want the a from the i i want us to position our frontline staff so that they can get a's yeah well listen can i can i just finish this point because i i always i always forget to say this especially the environment we're in right now i am so incredibly proud of what the people in corrections do every day this put the johnson thing aside for a minute what they walk into every day springfield facility retested on friday completely negative that just doesn't happen and you know what we're doing every day to keep people safe this situation is not good but it's not it's it's not the majority of the staff and corrections in fact what i find when i talk to them someone may have a tough exterior because they have to but when you get into it with them they really do care my job is to support them sometimes they feel like they don't get a level of support it's not it's not a glorious job they don't pull people out of burning buildings like firefighters or respond to car accidents and save people at the scene it's not the nature of what the job is it's behind the scenes of what they do every day and so i have to say this publicly because sometimes i forget to say it the vast majority of the people working inside corrections are incredible human beings that are working right now under some very trying circumstances with the pandemic being what it is so i'm going to leave it at that because i'm taking airtime away from other people's report that we received from in the joint fiscal committee perhaps as timely as well regarding the retention of staff and the problems there i think it's it's more than there are problems with set with the low wages the retention of staff the working conditions and you know the it compounds itself because you can't the more you when you have such turnover insurance staff that means people are working overtime mandatory overtime and so forth and so on but are there any other questions the commissioner right now if not we go to Matt Valerio the defender general who's been patiently waiting and thank you Matt thanks for having me again you know i don't have a lot to say about about this the commissioner and i have had numerous conversations as our as the defender general's report was was being developed and ultimately came out on this and i don't find any of the findings in the downs rackland martin report to be notably different than what what my office found there are different shades to or emphasis and in certain areas and the like but i didn't frankly anticipate that it was going to be particularly different you know this this situation is is one that regrettably um situations like this don't often result in death but over a period of now be doing this job almost 20 years i've seen it many times in my office one of the since the litigation about good time went away years ago arguments litigation regarding provision of medical care um is the number one thing that we deal with um and one of the things that the commissioner and i have talked about is try to break down the sort of litigious nature of the way disputes over medical care dealt with um and i think that some of there are some very subtle things that the department has done that aren't i think a parrot on its face um regarding medical care since this incident and with the commissioner's assistance that have gone into place and one of those things is that the the medical grievances are treated in a completely different way in the past medical grievances were going to be resolved by people who had no medical training whatsoever they were sort of the person assigned at any given time to be handling grievances of all varieties now they are being forwarded through a medical review um and then i believe to the commissioner himself um ultimately to deal with the biggest disputes um when we when my office does litigation regarding medical concerns it's you know the traditional path is that the inmate files a lawsuit and sometimes they file it before the grievance situation is over they don't follow the correct steps and doc legal is all over that as a normal quote unquote normal grievance would get caught up in the red tape of um the grievance process and the when it got to court you would not have exhausted your administrative remedies before you get to court the case had a chance of being dismissed um even if everything was done the right way once it's in court it's going to take at least six to nine months from the time the case is filed to get to the point where a court might be able to schedule to make a decision at oftentimes at that point doc legal would just dismiss the case on their own and the person would get whatever it is that they were asking for um six nine twelve months earlier the hope is that would the change in the way the grievance process relative to medical care is being dealt with now by the department that we are going to avoid some good number of that sort of activity and the commissioner has said to me if there is a particular case or if there are particular issues where you know you're getting the typical kind of lawyer response to litigation to contact him and I will do that and I have done that on occasion and we try to get these things resolved before they get to the point of litigation that in and of itself is such a massive change in culture but it's culture from the very top that it is almost unheard of but you know honestly it's it's about having those relationships that allow you to do that the the issues that arise regarding implicit bias racial bias and how we treat individuals no matter the charge relative to medical issues and just in general when they are in facilities it's going to be a massive nut to crack there have been a number of studies recently about implicit bias and its impact on behavior of law enforcement and the like over the last couple of years because obviously it's been a hot button item everywhere and you know the study that was done in New York City showed that they spent a lot of money having a lot of training and it changed no behavior whatsoever um and there was a similar study done in Missouri um the bottom line is that when it comes right down to it oftentimes uh biases and the like to be resolved you have to actually change people it takes a long time to to to shift the the mentality of a culture of organization um I had my struggles early on with the Defender General's office in certain areas and I know anybody who comes in to attempt to change the culture of a a long-standing large organization in the Department of Corrections I think would be one of those the commissioner has a monumental task but it's the kind of thing that you chip away at incrementally and it takes a long period of time I know it's not the kind of thing you can say look we just did a massive implicit bias training we and we and we just fixed it now everything's good it's the kind of thing that has to take place over a very long period of time with multiple reinforcements and changes in the people who are involved in the system um you know they they talk about uh I've you know one of my majors in in college involved was political science but it was a focus on public administration and one of the things they talked about is that it might take 11 years for an organization to fully change an entrenched bureaucracy's culture and I always thought that was crazy until I got into working in bureaucracy and saw how it worked and I think it's going to take a long time it may not take 11 years it might take 20 years but it but it's the kind of thing you have to persistently reinforce expectations over a very long period of time um and it's it's not just about race it's not just about religion or sexual orientation or um you know in Vermont we even have advice about people who aren't from Vermont and that carries over uh into facilities as well um and it is uh it's one of those things that is going to be very difficult to get at but I think the only way we can do it is to continually um work on it some of the structural changes that the commissioner has made since this Johnson report um I think have been paying paying some dividends and you know obviously there's been a and I will say it's been a very big change in uh how the medical provider uh that we currently have has dealt with the prisoner's rights office and in my office in general um regarding uh openness openness and transparency and ease of getting information and uh understanding what's going on you know I had been concerned and I am always going to be on uh you know kind of on guard for the fact that there will be resistance to us attempting to get information and if that ends up being the case I'll be here complaining about it and I'll be with commissioner Baker complaining about it um I do frankly hope that he hangs around long enough to see some of this through I you know I'm mindful of the fact that he was interim chief of police in Rutland for six years or something and uh you know that might be half the time necessary to deal with the uh issues he's got to deal with in corrections but you know those who have been around long enough um you know go back to the Carragher case and go back to the uh you know seven suicides in 18 months that we had in the early 2000s um and you know in various incidents in between and now we are where we are um but these are recurring themes that if we don't keep our the pressure on um are liable to recur and do recur so I'm hoping uh that uh you know and I and I have good feelings about how we're going right now with it but I'm hoping that this is the kind of thing that um does not get lost in the shuffle I will say that regard to the COVID situation I am happily surprised that we don't have more incidents of uh self harm more incidents of uh medical concerns that are not even related to COVID because COVID has come so high on the list of priorities that uh other types of things are have neccess almost necessarily been pushed down on the list of priorities and I'm very concerned about the use of segregation to deal with COVID but it's almost no way that you uh you can avoid it and prevent it from getting into the facilities at times um I do wonder however over a long period of time the type of damages this is going to do emotionally and not just to uh inmates but also to the staff who are dealing with them because you know that's a that's an interaction that's a society in and of itself within those facilities um this this is a uh you know the effectively combat a combat type situation within those facilities relative to this virus and that having that sort of pressure over a long period of time with segregation being one of the ways and I'm not talking about segregation for purposes of disciplinary matters but over a very long period of time um is liable to manifest itself in a lot of long-term problems and uh I don't know all of the answers to this but relative to the medical care as a whole I think we have some structures in place that are better now than they were um I don't have major and as I said I don't have major disagreements because with the report um that Dr. Acklin did because it basically mirrors what what our report said uh while we might have been more um you know hot on particular issues the issues are just as identified in the in the Downs-Racklin report as they are in ours um and I think some steps have been made and it's just how long can we persist and carry on to get make sure we get the job done on a long-term basis so if there are any questions I'll be happy to answer or if the commissioner has any questions but it's there's so much that's hard to focus um but one of the things that's clear in the report is whatever reason and I don't have the advantage of having seen the videos I don't know if you have oh yeah I have how could you miss it that's I guess that's the question from what Jim was Mr. Baker was describing and what no you this is the kind of thing you I mean I've been watching death scene videos and the like for the first half of my career and then watching these types of videos in the second half of my career and um you know they're the kind of things that haunt you um you you don't believe me you don't want to have to watch this if you if you if you can avoid it just trust us it's not it's it's horrific um but uh how you can miss it I mean how can you think it's a manipulation I mean I I remember you know having kids say that they were hurt when I was in 204 you know and where they weren't there we took you know we aired on the side of caution and took them to the hospital even though we didn't believe there was anything wrong and sometimes there was something really wrong um you know it's um but I was you know in reading the report and Jim's comments about it all and your just comments about it and and I go back to Mary and the consequences you know I guess that's my big question is how do we make sure this doesn't happen again so senator I think um I am um the only explanation I can give you is is culture um you know if you convince yourself you know I mean put it in the bigger context of what's going on in the world right now around what's reality or what's not reality and culture drives people's belief systems and um being um you know again I don't want to overplay what happened on Friday but I got to say it again when you start changing people's minds they start looking at things different and the suspicion that um you know uh there's a manipulation going on you've convinced yourself of it I can't explain it all I can do all I can do is is you know you're you're you heard Matt talk about the conversations we have and um you know I don't have a high level of tolerance for if someone needs medical care you know you you know my situation senator I'm a I'm a blessed guy everybody should have that same privilege and so um to litigate you know as Matt said it may be subtle to all of you but it's a big deal that we're not going to force them to litigate for six eight eight months a medical situation needs to be taken care of now it's those kind of things that start changing people's thinking around the way we interact with the the inmate population so I don't I don't have an explanation for it I wish I did I don't I don't one of the one of the things about the change and you you seem much more confident with vital vital vital core vital core um than with centurion but one of the one of the comments that we heard earlier on was it the same staff same nurses same uh it's not is it or is it three three of the four nurses that were involved in this no wonder but I don't I don't want to talk for first you know um well let me just be clear about you know our experience with vital core and what are we on we're we're heading into uh we're heading into December so we're talking five months 150 days you know our experience to date has been positive but there's still challenges in the system that need to be worked out um but I think you know Matt talks about what he's really talking about is under the prior system the health care the health system administrators at each facility would run his staff around when they needed information and I'm not speaking for you Matt but I think this is what we were talking about and I put the word out that if they need information and they have a right to have the information under the statute and get it to stop making them litigate for it and if there's something in that system or something in that conversation in the system that's not getting the proper medical care and if they're not getting the response they should get in their role as the prisoner's rights office then I need to know about it and I think Matt stepped in a couple times and you know I sent the word out get this straightened out. Thank you. Other questions for either Matt or Representative Shaw? Thank you Senator so for either Matt or uh Commissioner Baker so I think you touched on it uh just a moment ago uh Commissioner about your contractor uh you said I think you heard you say three of the four people that were involved in this situation are no longer with but it's also my understanding that most of the staff I'll generalize that as most of the staff that was working for the previous contractor is now working for the current contractor. How do you bring your contractor along with the various training scenarios that you're talking about within DOC and assure yourself and us and others that our medical contractor is properly schooled in the various policies and procedures and trainings that DOC requires? Well I let me make a comment first I'm not sure if most of the staff is still working there is some staff but the leadership team is entirely different so at my level in doing in fact I have a meeting with Vital Core this afternoon to go over some issues that that I'm concerned about and again I'll take it up with them to give them a chance to fix it. I think the difference at that level is is that because we have a deputy commissioner focused in on it the message through Vital Core is very clear since the beginning and I used the Johnson case as a benchmark about the things that we need to work together on to provide a level of community care that they deserve. Now when it comes to the training piece we've already sat in on trainings they've done and I would expect we'll do the same thing with their staff when it comes time to sit in on that training but I'm real hesitant just to put training out there because of what I said earlier it's not training is an awareness to me the real hard work is down changing the outlook of the employees so it takes collaboration and conversation and it's unique because we have six different facilities with six different sets of staff and they're decentralized just like we are so it's those relationships and joint conversations and training together that we're all on the same page. So is your contractually bound to provide or follow your guidance I guess or are they just doing it all the kindness of their heart? I can't say I don't know because I'm not that familiar with the contract but I don't see I've never run up against any resistance in any conversations that I've had with them since July. So should they be bound? You know I don't know because I I'll accept I don't you got me on that one representative. All right thank you. I want to mark this day down that Representative Shaw caught me speechless. Okay thank you. Thank you. Other questions for the commissioner of comment? Senator Hooker. Thank you. Something that Matt said piqued my curiosity he talked Matt about segregation and especially now in the time of COVID and what effects it might have and so my question to you commissioner is is there a difference between the isolation that's disciplinary and the isolations that is related to COVID? You know Matt I think what Matt's referring to right and what you're referring to senator is that you know the reason why we were concerned about Springfield was there there was an arrest made last weekend um pretty violent arrest someone high on drugs and very a lot of people came in contact came into a system we isolate them when they come in test them he was positive so that system of isolating people prevent it from spreading I think Matt would argue that it really doesn't look much different when we medic or we isolate people coming into the system and we segregate people because we're keeping them separated from the rest of the population and no interaction and Matt's points about I'm as concerned as he is and we spend a lot of time with vital core talking about the mental health services provided if there's an area where I feel like we need to do more work is the mental health piece um so isolating them I think Matt's point I'm not speaking for him certainly can speak for himself but I think what he's saying is it just because of the nature of how we isolate people coming into the system for 14 days it's a long time is does take a toll on people now with segregation I'm starting to pay closer attention to segregation because being new into the system it just didn't register with me the significance of it and in the last couple months it started registering with me especially now that we have this this report in front of us so segregation for disciplinary purposes is treated a little bit different but in essence it's the same thing they're isolated from the rest of the population and we're you know they're no different than you and I were social preachers right social interaction is important the point being obviously it's just the isolation is the issue and what an impact it has on the mental health of the person we have people who would like to attend particular hearings in court but are not doing it because if they do they end up in isolation again for 14 days when they get back into the facility so um you know these the impact of this virus is it's more than just the medical impact and I you know I have concerns about the long-term impact as I said before on inmates and on staff who are who are trying to manage it don't know how it's going to manifest itself but you know we in Vermont what is our mass I'm off the top of my head I think we have a 48 hour disciplinary segregation that is the maximum when you without review there you know there's a initial review but it's a 48 hour seg and because we we understand the damage that that can do and you know the mental health side of this thing is huge you know because we have people who are you know 14-day seg to prevent the virus from getting into facilities and spreading um you know it's it's very concerning but I don't I don't know the right answer I don't know which is worse the virus or the the impact of keeping the virus out but it's definitely something that needs to be watched and I know the commissioner I've talked about this many times so it's there's no no this isn't something new that I'm saying that he hasn't heard before is there enough testing there there is senator you know we test a facility a week St. Johnsbury northeast is being tested again today this is the fifth week in a row because we had introduction of the virus through staff members we caught it but the contact tracing we and we'll be shortly moving to testing staff every two weeks because we just do the details out now and then the joint fiscal committee just added I think it was 8.5 million to testing and right part of that testing is supposed to be the correction so you know again this is part of this and I appreciate what Matt said about you know the it's almost it is almost like combat and and the post traumatic stuff you know we're trying you know we have we have a clinician now that we brought on board and we're putting a lot of emphasis onto that and we're trying to work with vital cord to provide the same level of support to the inmate population but you know just imagine this week is the fifth week in a row that we tested St. Johnsbury because of that outbreak and wasn't an outbreak I shouldn't say an outbreak it was because of the exposure into contact tracing and we want to make sure that the facility is clean so the staff has gone through five weeks in a row being tested that's that in itself is stressful and so we have we have plenty of testing the testing is not an issue for us we have a we have an emergency response team that responds with contact tracers and we're training up another 14 contact tracers that are going to be used in the community because as the numbers go up the health department is in need of contact tracers so if if an inmate went to court they would have to come back and segregate for 14 days yeah you know these are the top decisions we make and at the end of the day for me I got to keep the facilities clean because if we you know we get an outbreak and either especially either in northern or springfield where you have the older population or excuse me northwest um where you where you have infirmaries um it could be disastrous and I know it's I hear what Matt's saying I understand it try to do the best we can with it but on the balance something's got to give and I've got to keep the facilities clean other crush either Matt or Jim well but thank you both very much it's a really difficult subject and clearly the the administration response through the downs rec and Martin the court is quite in my view quite well done I'm glad that you're taking up the recommendations but I I hope that in the future we would take these medical conditions much more serious that's what we end up with and that's the major change I think we'd all be looking this committee particularly is I would say it's most concerning this and so many events have occurred within the department of corrections in the back last December the sexual child charges or the sexual charges against probation and parole officer the other things that have been going on I don't know if the next witnesses are available our next subject is the construction report which representative Evans I believe Al Cormier is going to be the chief of operations Al Cormier is going to cover this because I have another commitment well Mr we appreciate your being here I get we've we're scheduled for 1230 with Jennifer Finch yeah Mr buildings and general services and Eric Bill Cormier principal assistant buildings and general services so they're here right now I just emailed their admin and said we're ready for them so I'm hoping they join it join momentarily well why don't we just take a momentary break and hopefully they'll be here by 1230 1225 according to my watch senator thanksgiving wishes to everybody on this thank you Jim