 All right, our first witness is Captain Bennett's guys. We have people who are handed out the, I'm going to call this, compromised language regarding the RMP. So maybe you could take it from there. I'm Captain Bennett from the Joint Disclose. And you have a one-community chief. It's a proposed motion at the top. And I'm actually going to drop to the bottom just to remind you the capital language is at the bottom. So the money was appropriated for BGS to do assess well for cost and resource requirements for correctional facility. And you all in Joint Fiscal have to approve the funding of this before they can use money. And so you all, I believe, last meeting passed a motion that went to Joint Fiscal. Joint Fiscal struggled with the motion. So in the interim, several legislators got together and tried to, and we've worked with the administration. Jane Kitchell, Senator Kitchell was involved with this, as was the chair, vice chair of this committee, looking through this. So I believe the language that you had at the top of the page represents something that is maybe clear and more understandable to people. And the commissioner from corrections is here to speak to how this dovetails would be of their work, as well, and what the administration thinks of this. I wasn't going to read it unless you wanted me to, Senator Sears. No, that's fine. I think Mike Duchette, the commissioner of corrections, is probably the best person to talk about whether this meets this is doable. We don't certainly want to create more headaches for the commissioner. So I might just share the commissioner of corrections. I really appreciate you thinking of my headaches, and that's really appreciated. I think the language that is drafted here meets the department of corrections and needs and goals. And if I may, maybe just take a couple of minutes and talk about why this language I think is in support of the direction and the need that we have. The first and foremost is, as we are re-engaged in justice and reinvestment, we're looking at how we can first prevent people from entering the judicial system. But as importantly, if people do become involved in the justice system, that we understand how we can re-enter them back to the communities in the best possible way so that they're poised for success. So this dovetails, in my perspective, in that our facility, particularly Chittenden, where there are no vocational services, they're an incredibly limited space to offer other program services. When we know all the evidence is very clear from our perspective that vocational services, program services, mental health services are key to successful re-entry. We're unable to fill many of those obligations due to just physical infrastructure ability currently. So when we look at justice reinvestment, this has the opportunity to help us achieve better outcomes by better planning and work with the population so that when they do re-enter, they're re-entering with the skills and the tools and the knowledge that they need to be most successful. So in that respect, I think this dovetails quite nicely with justice reinvestment. For those of you who have visited Chittenden lately, I think you would probably agree with my summation here of that facility. It is dark, it is cramped, it is loud. Testified to this before, I want to reiterate this, that when we have a population, particularly women and men too, but women are nationally inimplied, 95% of women are victims of trauma, sexual violence, domestic violence. That in itself, and in order to make that excuse for wider incarcerated individuals that conduct it, but when we're considering, what if the Congress considering how we best work with that individual to prepare them for re-entry so that they can be successful, we have to consider that, and I would espouse that the current condition of that facility does not support good mental health, good physical health, and the opportunity to engage in program services that will truly benefit, not only the individual, the vendor, but our communities as well and improve the public safety. I don't want to miss out on the opportunity here to highlight some national studies relative to the health and well-being of our staff. Mortality waste of correctional officer staff is horrendous. Substance abuse, domestic violence, crime, suicide are prevalent among this workforce. In part, I think we can help shape an environment where staff can be healthy and well. Many of our facilities, our staff, have no place to go take a break. On a critical incident, they have no place to go, just decompress for a couple minutes. If they're ordered over, ordered in, working 12 to 16 hours a day, they have no place to go take a break so that they can do their jobs and do it in a way that is positive and social, working that many hours in a loud environment, which quite frankly is depressing at times, in and of itself because of the infrastructure, makes our staff tired, and they make mistakes, and that's not a criticism against our staff. That's in the support of our staff, that we can not only achieve better outcomes with our population, but I think we have an opportunity here to evaluate how we can support our staff in a workforce that is healthy and invigorated to do the challenging work that lies ahead. As we've heard previously from BGS, we're looking between five and seven years of construction time and all the things and work that needs to happen. Secretary Gobay testified several years ago that it's time to get a shovel on the ground, I couldn't agree more. We're five to seven years behind the opportunity to do better work in the department, ensure that our taxpayers have confidence in the mission and the work that the department is carrying out, and we improve public safety. All of these things together, I think this language is in the right direction and supports not only the Department of Corrections' goals in promoting public safety and providing people that are our population and our custody the opportunity to be successful. It also is an opportunity for us to recognize how difficult this work is on staff and giving them the opportunity to have a break and work in an environment that is not as stressful as we've created. Nationally, since the war on crime, we have built prisons around this country that are built for one purpose and that's containment. And if that's our goal, it's just containment as opposed to really working with individuals to re-enter successfully. We've used crime rates, we've used recidivism rates. We have an opportunity to hear things strategically about how we do this and thought the way that it addresses the trauma and the needs of not only the population, but our staff. Good, I asked that you work with the State Employees Association to put together a presentation on some of these things visit St. Alvin's on the 8th of November. Do you have any of that? That would allow us to look at what's going on nationally and as well as in the state. And actually, I've been working with former colonel of the state police, Jim Baker, who was arrested and dealing with the suicide problem of first responders and police officers and so forth. And there will be a bill, I told them I would put together a bill and obviously I got Luke involved that I ever had heard back from Luke on it, what the bill will look like. But it would be a commission to look at this problem and try to deal with it and certainly on it. This is an emergency because this workforce has, particularly the Department of Corrections has been an understudied workforce. From the last 10 years, as people started to do evaluations, there's an interesting study at a Pew that says correctional officers experience higher rates of PTSD than combat war veterans. That's stunning. Not shock, not surprising, but stunning. If you could, you know, if there's people that you can think of who would be good, if you'd work with Peggy and myself and Alex on putting together, I mean, I don't want just a session where we just talk about, well, we're understaffed and we need 50 more employees and we know the administration probably won't support that. But I'd really like to talk about what things we need to do and how much understaffing is there, is there an understaffing? I know the issue came up, but. So I think the evaluation of how we can support a healthy workforce is key to keeping a strong workforce better. It's true in the community as well but probation officers, I spent some time last session talking with a group of probation officers who were very worried about the environments that they had to go into today. Absolutely, I think, having been there and done that myself and walking into a home where you see children that are in an impoverished situation, it's heartbreaking quite frankly, but I think that's one of the other. There's so dangerous situations that they're asked to walk into as well. Commissioner, the other day in Springfield, you talked about a committee, I believe you talked about a committee that was looking at recruitment every day. So the department, about a year ago, we initiated an internal leadership development course. Could we save that for another time? Just to get this issue, I wanna make sure we vote on this. Is there questions about this particular? I did have a question about how this RFP and this language would tie into the Consulate of State Government study of what's necessary, is the timing going to coincide so that it'll be informed, the RFP will be informed by then. Did that make out information? Yeah, in my perspective, this actually complements the work that CSG is doing quite nicely. I believe it'll be December when they have their work. Right, Consulate of State Governments, the Justice Reinvestment too will be in December. So this language here in terms of working with BGS, because BGS is the driving force here more, more so, you've got to coordinate with BGS. In the capital bill, we said this review in terms of different scales of facilities or how you do it, will be presented to us by the middle of March. And the capital bill also said that BGS needs to really look at the results of Justice Reinvestment too, to incorporate that within the buildings. So we have that in the capital bill. And that leads into a statement that I just wanna make sure that this does not, this is not in place the Council of State Governments Justice Reinvestment. This is just a sheet, right? So I just want everyone to be clear about that, that it's in tandem. I'm not done. And I just. I'd like to hear what else you have. And I just wanna know what conversations you have had with the Commissioner of BGS pertaining to this language. And where the Commissioner of BGS is on this. I did actually have a conversation with Commissioner Cole earlier this week. We reviewed the language. We're both agreement that this language is, will support the needs of the department as we look forward to our infrastructure needs. So he is also agreement that this language is appropriate and facilitates the work we'd like to do. BGS is the one that has to go out with the RFC. That's correct. Did he give you a timeline on that? We didn't get into timelines on that, no. So the. Bill and then Janice. Go ahead. Me, yeah. Just wondering about the relationship. Unfortunately, I had missed the last meeting. And it seems like the motion that we've passed to okay the money had some limitations on size. And this seems sort of deliberately to move away from limitations on size. Just wondering what the, what produced that change. Joint fiscal, Mary may be able to speak to that. I missed the joint fiscal meeting due to personal issues. Yeah. So the joint fiscal committee was not in support. They tabled the language that we presented, that we voted on. And in particular, we're concerned about about the limitations on the scope of the work. And this specifically not looking at the larger size. There was a conversation about the cost of operating the kind of the dispersed model that we have now was noted that we're spending $21 million on healthcare costs because we run such a dispersed model. And so I think that's the reason that was the concern there. I'm assuming I was not part of drafting this, but I'm sure that this was attempting to respond to that. And if you look at this, it talks about the multiple in-state locations. So that's kind of what we have now. And then the campus style, which would be presumably a larger facility. So that's the best I have an answer in response to you. JFC was concerned about limiting and not getting sufficient data to understand the costs of operating a diverse sort of model versus a more centralized model. Okay, and I intuited that. I guess my question is rather what this committee's reaction was specifically to having that removed, if anybody could recap that. That's where we're reacting right now. Okay. This is our first meeting since that. Oh, I see, so we didn't talk about it. We didn't miss anything, because we didn't talk about it. We just handed out the language. We just handed out the language at the last meeting so people were prepared for it. I think my reaction is that they know, they know where this committee stands regarding an eight of them in a bed and a facility or anything of that nature, unless somebody can actually show us how that would be superior to the current smaller facilities around the state. Obviously there's considerations, but I think the first fair to say that it would be a tough sell to get to an 800 bed facility. But if you want to do a campus-style situation, I would be allowed to look at it. For me, it's a tough sell. I shouldn't speak for the committee. I'll speak for myself. I can't support an 800 bed facility that would replace all the smaller facilities. No, it doesn't. That's the issue. It doesn't. It doesn't. The language in this draft says, capacity of the system required to meet the needs of identified inmate groups. So it seems to me that that implies what we have as a population in what weeks. How many folks do we have incarcerated? About 1,500 in... No, system. Why? Not just in state, but our Mississippi folks as well. 17,000. 1752-ish, I think. So we have 276. Okay, so how many out of state do we have? 276. So for rounding off the numbers, if we have 1,770 folks incarcerated and 270 are out of state, that leaves us with 1,500? How many general population beds do we have that are not restricted in use? Or how many restricted beds do we have that you can't be flexible with? We're gonna present that at one o'clock, because I'm sorry, I don't have that right probably. I wasn't prepared for that right at the moment. So right now we have 1,760 folks incarcerated. If I could offer my evaluation of how this is going in which in the Justice Center. Can I ask a question before we do that? One of the things that we ask for at the end of the session, I think that we're working with Senator Sears and with you on the health, the whole healthcare piece, which is integral to any decision-making is to look at access to local facilities and community facilities. Because that has a distinct effect on whether or not there's a campus and where the campus might be as compared with accessing local hospitals, local treatment facilities. And so I would hope that that is part of this conversation. So I think the language does support that because it doesn't evaluate specifically science. Okay, because we're getting a report on that. I know that. And then the other piece is the concerns that were brought to us from the community. And of course, the programmatic concerns do help people maintain their mental health while they're incarcerated, but then also as they leave to re-enter with their families in a way that isn't disruptive. So I'm hope, it says community reintegration, transitional supports. The question would be while folks are in the facility, facility-based treatment and programming. And I'm just wanting to know that the people who are incarcerated in South Burlington who may be removed from their families, that they're maintaining contact with their families where whatever happens with that facility. That is a goal that we always strive for. The connections with family and friends is truly important to the Jolston, not only part of re-entry, but also for their general well-being while they are incarcerated. So that is certainly something that we will continue to ensure is available. Representative Shaw. Thank you, Senator Rogers. So I think we as a group and we as a legislature need to move away from the number of 850. Yeah. 850 was a number that was in a report that came out over two years ago. Things are fairly fluid in the corrections arena. Those numbers are changing even as we learned in the House side last year that those numbers change dramatically. The services that a facility may need change dramatically. And so I think if we fixate on 850, we're wrong. We are wrong. And I'm hoping that this language, I'm fairly reasonably certain that this language along with the CSG group will bring to us different models that we can either choose from except reject or whatever. But I think 850 was just a number. And I think it was a number that people fixated on. And I'm hoping that we can move away from that. It might be, who knows what it's going to be. But that was a number that came from the administration after we asked for a number as this committee in the legislature asked for some supply and everybody was a little taken aback. So I appreciate that. I think there will be some disagreement on this committee regarding the numbers, but I will say that perhaps part of the angst came from the fact that there was a discussion of course civic owning of the facility and happy at least to the state. And that led to the idea that it could be private prisons in Vermont. I think that was something that the administration. So are there any questions for Mike or anyone else about Catherine or anyone else about this proposal? I think we, yes. I think we just have to be really clear that this is looking at developing the design of the facility. Because that's capital dollars. Capital dollars look at the design. The design needs to incorporate those programings, but BGS isn't going to look at the programming. That's corrections. They're working with DS. That's the connection. This language, the 200,000 in the capital bill is looking at the design of the facility to support program needs of DOC. So it's like getting an estimate. Well, you can't move forward without an estimate. Feasibility study, that's what it is. It's a feasibility study. You're not going to put a shovel on the ground next year. I thought you were winning before you brought that up. I was going to say. No, we're not putting a shovel in the ground. But it's 200,000 to go for an RFP. I think you were winning. I know. You should have. When you were that old something. It's nearing us. We're some of the above, 20,000. Okay, I'll erase this from the last slide. Is there any other questions for Mike or for Catherine or anyone else about the proposal from the Judicial Committee? The compromise language. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. And your crew, yeah. And this is up in the Judicial Committee. One slide, that's likely, I'll need to turn it over. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is exactly one point. Yes. Oh, it's 146, not 46. Oh, and 146. We're not required to talk to you about the navigation. We're only 146. Oh, good. Good morning. Thank you so much for having me in the record, Sarah Robinson from the Vermont Network Against Domestic Insectual Violence. And have a good morning, everybody. I'm Karen Bastine. I'm a senior advisor to the commissioner of the Department for Children and Family. So thank you so much for having us today to report on the work of a recently concluded study committee. This is Act 146 of 2018. That examined the use of restorative justice for domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking. And we're excited to be able to share with you the recommendations of that group and discuss what the possibilities are for moving forward. So briefly, I just wanted to remind us of the charge and composition of this study group. The study group was charged with examining whether restorative justice can be an effective process for holding perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence and stalking extramable while also preventing for the future crime and keeping victims in a greater community safe. And this was an interdisciplinary study group. There were 19 seated members of the study group and it included state's attorneys, many state-based advocates. We had representatives from the Department for Children and Families, the Attorney General's Office, the Department of Corrections, community-based advocates, restorative justice practitioners, as well as survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking. So it's perhaps with a bit of measured surprise that I'm here to speak with you all and our organization was so involved in this conversation because for decades, domestic and sexual violence advocates viewed the use of restorative justice to address kind of the harms of domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking with a bit of skepticism. I think out of some concern that restorative justice could function as some kind of watered down version of the criminal justice system. And the good news is that we're really represented here with a study committee and evolution in that thinking. And in fact, in 2008, it was the network along with several other organizations that advocated to prohibit the community justice centers in Vermont from receiving referrals for domestic and sexual violence with the exception of kind of limited re-entry context. However, for the past several years, there are restorative models in Vermont that are already addressing domestic and sexual violence and have been, and that includes the COSA model where folks returning from incarceration, especially sex offenders, have had great success with that model, less measured success with domestic violence offenders. Family group concencing efforts at DCF, which is a restorative approach, often includes families where domestic violence is a concern. The Barge Program, the Youth Justice Program, run out of DCF, which is also a restorative-based model, works with youth who sexually offend. And there are some very exciting emerging partnerships that are still in evolution with community justice centers functioning as domestic violence accountability programs, formerly known as batterer intervention programs. And very briefly, I just wanted to highlight two of those. There's two in the state. One is right here in Montpelier, where the Montpelier Community Justice Center offers a evidence-based curriculum working with domestic violence offenders. And the other is a new and different model at the Windsor Community Justice Center, and that's a partnership between David Kihl, the state's attorney in Windsor, the Windsor Community Justice Center and our member organization, WISE. And it's a model that has been adapted, was originally developed in the Navajo Nation and has been adapted and used in Arizona and Utah for domestic violence offenders and is now being used in Windsor for misdemeanor domestic violence offenders. And we're really excited about those partnerships. So that's really the context in which, here in Vermont, we entered into that conversation. But there are also really well-established restorative justice approaches to domestic and sexual violence outside of Vermont. Certainly internationally, there are many models that have existed for years, including some that have been well-researched. And the Center for Court Innovation here in the US received a grant from the Department of Justice last year to conduct a broad nationwide survey of programs across the country that are using restorative justice to address domestic and sexual violence. And so all of that is to say that there is certainly a rising interest in what the possibilities might be. And the Center for Court Innovation just recently released their report and identified 34 programs across the country that are doing similar work. They actually highlighted the COSA program here in Vermont in that report. And so there are many models that we can look at and look to and learn from. So Karen's gonna talk a little bit about the committee process itself. Okay, so hello again. So, part of the reason I'm here in this role, because I'm usually in front of you speaking on different topics, is that I was actually the chair of this group, and so Sarah and I worked very closely together to design these meetings. And as you might imagine with the topics, with merging two topics that are so incredibly nuanced, the committee undertook a lot of work in order to get us to the point where we are today with the set of recommendations. And so the group prepared for this work by reading national articles and hearing from presenters and discussing the current sets of programs in Vermont. And one of the outposts of the first or second meeting is that the group was clear that hearing from survivors was of utmost importance. And what we were able to do because of the committee composition is do a lot of cross-training and sharing of expertise with respect to either domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking, or restorative justice. The group had met 11 times and more than half of those meetings were three hours or longer. So this group definitely had to get into the thick of it to fully understand the scope of this. So I thought I'd first share with you what we learned from survivors and also to share with you how we incorporated their input. So we actually had choose two members of the study committee, our survivors themselves, and they very willingly and we very graciously shared their experiences in the system. We actually provided a number of opportunities for them to provide direct testimony to the committee as to what they would have liked. Could there have been a restorative justice option for them? And then moreover, the network actually conducted a survey of which 136 survivors responded to. And then finally, the network also conducted four focus groups and you can see them was to hear one was at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, one was at a community justice center, another was at a Vermont network program and finally there was one that was at a culturally specific community center. So from all of that information, this is what we learned from survivors about whether or not restorative justice is an option that they thought was a good one for dealing with domestic violence. I'm trying to find a solution. Can you take those questions now or would you rather? Just to quickly remember all of these in Chittenden County. No, they were not. They were all over the state, but were being intentionally vague about locations. Thank you. They intentionally avoided Rutland County. Like, it's no problem. Thanks. Curious. They went to Bennington. They bypassed Rutland. I was just curious. I am happy to go through this and take questions. I'm very sorry, but I am gonna have to leave at five to 11, but Sarah, we'll be done, we'll be done. Okay, yeah, we intentionally made this brief and succinct as possible. So we thought you all might want to hear what we learned from survivors. So, not surprisingly, one of the conclusions is that a more nuanced understanding of domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking is needed within the current system. And I'm sure that's not going to come as a surprise to you all. It is especially challenging for victims who are also parents. There was a lot of discussion and comments about that. These crimes can cause extreme financial hardship. And being able to access peer support is very important. Restorative justice for these, for the folks who responded is an attractive option, but they also were clear that they'd like to see some improvements to the current system. And finally, that it would be important to have options available at multiple points after harm occurs. One of the things that we know is that it can take time before somebody is willing to come forward to share their story and that it may be, even after they've participated in a work process that they realize that they would like the opportunity to have a restorative process. So we definitely came out that no matter where you are in the system, that it would be helpful to have options. Sarah covered this a little bit, but wanted to make sure that you all have this in front of you as well, is that we have a number of restorative approaches. One of the things that I've been learning with my other hat on, with the general justice reform work, is that nationally other states are incredibly impressed with the infrastructure that we have in place to provide community-based restorative justice options across a range of needs. And so with respect to that, Sarah covered some of these with respect to what they do for domestic violence and sexual violence, but also just wanted you all to see the list of restorative approaches currently used in Vermont that this group actually dug into quite a bit. So in the child welfare and use justice context, Sarah mentioned the COSA. There's also victim defender dialogues. And then I think all of you are probably familiar with the community-based restorative justice programs which includes barge, court diversion and the community justice center, as well as domestic violence accountability partnerships. And one of the early conclusions of this group was a deep appreciation for the existing approaches and also a recognition that the current infrastructure of community-based restorative justice programs are a major asset to our state, but are not currently structured to support the work of handling domestic violence and sexual violence and stalking. So with that, I think it probably makes sense for us to move into the recommendations of the group. So, and I'm not quite sure why that happened, but now they're connected. So, we're just gonna carry on. So for the recommendations, one of the things that I wanted to explain is that the committee really mapped out different approaches based on community-based options. So that this will be for somebody who does not want to report to the police and or that example that I shared before, maybe already has been through the system but is looking for support outside of the system. We also looked at system involved. So what I mean by that is that a person could request a restorative process irrespective of what's happening with their case. So things that exist like that that are already in play include the victim and vendor dialogue, which can happen for somebody who is incarcerated that a victim were requested for a victim vendor dialogue. There's also the parallel justice commission in Chippin County, which is comprised of a number of multidisciplinary leaders who actually hear from victims of crime and then work to address the issues that the victim brings up. And we consider that to be a restorative process. And then finally, I think what you all are familiar with are the more system-driven approaches with respect to restorative justice. So that includes COSA, but that also includes when somebody is basically assigned or referred to a restorative justice process. And so the group believes that there is potential in all three of these spheres. And as I mentioned, we heard a lot of different victims that they want to see restorative justice options within the system as well as options that they can access in the community. So without further ado, the first recommendation was that, surprisingly, Ramon should continue to study and explore restorative justice options as a response to domestic violence, sexual violence, and examine whether a restorative justice is an appropriate intervention in stalking cases. Because of the complexities of the conversation around stalking, one of the conclusions of the group is that that needed a further study. And as a matter of fact, we don't have good examples to drop on in the same way that we do for domestic violence and sexual violence. So that would need a lot more, a lot more studying, so. In many cases, there isn't a relationship between the victim and the stalker. Exactly, exactly, and the rates of mortality can be much higher. Well, the stalker thinks there's a relationship. That's true, that's true, yeah. Second, the committee strongly recommended there be some programmatic criteria for organizations or entities utilizing restorative justice to address domestic and sexual violence. And the committee began to discuss what these criteria may be, although we're recommending that they be formalized by a body or agency that's authorized to create these criteria. But some of the things that came up in our discussion were things like voluntary engagement by the offender and victims, a defined approach that's based on either evidence or an established body of knowledge, facilitators who are trained in the dynamics of domestic and sexual violence, and demonstrated trauma-informed program elements, among others. Before we move on from that, so I know this is a kind of budding discussion, but was the idea more along the lines of accreditation, like a program would be developed independently and then accredited, or would it be top-down? Good question. We had discussed various models, including some kind of certification process, like the domestic violence accountability programs currently move through. And we didn't reach a conclusion on that, but felt that there should be some established criteria in the programs that are offering these kinds of programs ought to somehow need to demonstrate their really readiness to be able to offer those. So the next recommendation was that Vermont should accelerate its commitment to procedural justice reforms, especially as they relate to legal responses to domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking. What does that mean? Yes, I know, so that's interesting. So many years ago, I was actually at a court, a Center for Court Innovation Conference, and they presented a study to us on procedural justice. And this was actually more focused on how offenders experience the system. And what they saw is that when an offender reported that they fully understood the process and that it was transparent, that actually they were more likely to comply with their conditions of release because they felt more empowered. And so kind of in this context, what we're meaning is just that that the process is understandable to all, that there is strong communication. This is something that we heard was a theme from survivors who had actually been through the system is that it just did not meet their needs and then they felt that they didn't have a voice. So I think procedural justice is a way of addressing. It encapsulates that ability to really be respectful of all those who are involved in the process. I would also mention that we saw an overlap between procedural justice and restorative justice in that procedural justice is concerned not just with the outcomes of a particular disposition but with the process itself and the extent to which both victims and offenders feel like the process is fair. You know, that could be said for everybody going through the court system. Yeah, we agree. We absolutely agree. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I asked certainly the juvenile system and many people don't understand what they're going through. Exactly, that's right. Exactly. We also thought that there are times I didn't. Would you urge her to not? No, I was working in the fields. It was hard to understand what the judge really meant. So one thing that occurs to me is even as we sit here and listen to your testimony is the speed at which this is happening and I think the speed at which some of these procedures occur is. Let me give you a concrete example. Somebody says you shall not associate with so-and-so. That seems pretty clear cut. But if you run into so-and-so at the store, have you now violated the conditions? When I had no, when you had no idea that person was gonna be there and then you get a complaint from the victim saying he was at the store when I was at the store. I'm just talking about what happens at a hearing where people are just bombarded with either the conditions or the legalese and it's difficult simply to understand. And certainly one thing we experienced is there can be cases where a victim might have a civil order of protection and there might be orders related to some kind of criminal prosecution. For example, domestic violence and those conditions are actually in conflict with one another. One requires, for example, visitation and the other is a stay-away order. And so those are the areas where we feel like commitment to that process being clearer and more transparent for both parties will lead to better outcomes. Who is the central, which is the central entity response? Is this a court problem? Is this state's attorneys? To whom do we turn? To say, okay, how do we figure this out? I would say this is a way of a structure. I mean, this system is created and based on a whole set of language and a culture that I think if you're not used to engaging in it you have no basis to understand it. And then I think for Senator Sears' point, I mean, we hear too from prosecutors and of our staff that it can be confusing even for those who are person. If you don't mind, I think if we can move through this and I'm gonna put Sarah on the spot when I take some of the additional questions that you all have. We also felt that there was a lot of opportunity to expand victim voice and voluntary participation in just a current array of offerings. So while all of the restorative approaches that currently function in Vermont do hold a value of being victim-centered, the actual experience of victims participating in those processes is very limited. All of the referrals, almost all the referrals are almost every restorative justice offering in the state. The subject of the referral is the person who caused the harm, it's not the victim. So there are very few opportunities for victims to opt into, request any kind of process like that. Their participation is really often a choice that their offender has been referred to participate and then victims usually have an array of choices about how or whether they'd like to participate. But we feel like there's a lot of opportunities to expand those offerings. And then an area that we saw as ripe for potential restorative justice application is with relief from abuse order processes in family court. Before the proceeding happens, survivors and victims are actually all together in a room and then there is an advocate and somebody from the court who walks them through the process. And so I think that that orientation itself is a way to actually both support and engage victims as well as the process itself. We felt that the family group conferencing that is offered by the Department of Children and Families is an approach that's been proven effective. But it's also very labor intensive and it requires many staff hours and many hours for the families involved as well. It can involve actually family members traveling from out of state to participate in these kinds of conferences. And because of that, the offerings are fairly limited but we felt like it is such a promising model. It's used across the country in various places in a restorative context related to domestic and sexual violence with great success and also outside of the US. And so we felt like expanding those offerings would be beneficial. And I've touched on this before but that survivors are very clear that they would be interested in pure support opportunities and we actually have a number of models even just next door in Massachusetts that I think would provide a strong foundation for us to consider that approach. And finally, we felt that there should be public investment in some demonstration projects that are aimed at addressing domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking, particularly restorative models that provide survivors an opportunity to either opt in or request a process. And we have been looking at some federal funding possibilities, I have to say that we were feeling quite hopeful but with some changes in the political environment are feeling less hopeful about that. We thought that there was going to be a solicitation from the Department of Justice related to restorative justice but it looks like that is not forthcoming at this point. But we feel like there are a lot of opportunities to be looking at investments in these kinds of models that serve the broader justice interests and broader justice goals of the state and perhaps there's even an opportunity to use this conversation in the justice reinvestment work that is ongoing. And then so in conclusion, I think this group felt incredibly encouraged and Sarah and I are really excited to be in front of you today to share these initial recommendations that this has concluded wholeheartedly that we want to see restorative justice options expanded and there's a significant amount of work to be done but I think that as you all are aware that Vermont has been incredibly solid foundation for this work to continue. So thank you so much for your time. I'm sorry you have to leave but before you leave, I know there's a number of questions. I have one a few years back from Monabart on a electronic monitor for offenders and it was a pilot project in Wyndham County that took him some in Bennington County and it seems to be ideal for victims of domestic violence as well as the person who allegedly committed or did. And it has just not been replicated and to me the positive thing was that it even enabled the victim to know where the perpetrator was if they wanted to through the electronic monitoring device. And at least in Wyndham and Bennington there was some really good stories about what happened. I know there was a guy who delivered furniture over the delivery truck. He was gonna go to jail. Instead of going to jail, he wore electronic monitoring. They moved him to dropping the stuff off in Rutland, the furniture that the Rutland store had in the Bennington one who was able to keep his job, was able to pay his child support, was able to work with the victim and I thought this was done in conjunction with the victim and things worked out. Instead of having somebody in jail and somebody paying taxes and et cetera. Yet when that program, the legislature and the administration by the time they got finished with it, the program was useless. I think the commissioner's not here but I think we've got about eight people on it now. As was there any discussion of type of things we've already done that seemed to work and then we screwed them up? Not quite in that way. But one of the things that I think is most interesting about that program is that it occurred at the same time that there was the integrated domestic violence court done in the Bennington counties. And so those three things in concert with one another, that was really, it's a great example of procedural justice working really well in Vermont. The family court process, the criminal court process was integrated and there was also some level of risk assessment that was involved with who got and who didn't. So I think those are exactly the kind of processes we'd like to see explored further. Yeah, just they had a good example of something that worked and then whatever reason. I mean just, so thank you for this. See the recommendations here. Do you, will there be a report with more me on it? Yeah, so there is a report. I believe that it's on the website. Yeah, yeah. So there is a final report and there's a group of us that are continuing to meet. Are there suggestions for legislation? Is that what you were talking about? Just what I was wondering. Yeah, there may be, but they're not complete. And I'm assuming that a lot of this is about capacity. The CJCs, the other restorative programs having, so will you be making a recommendation in terms of how we should be expanding the system and specifically what dollars ought to be put toward it? We certainly may be. I think that those, I mean one of our recommendations is that there is public investment in these models. And so that's what we mean by public investment. And I think that the Community Justice Center certainly are the heart of the community based approach. And also we realize that those approaches need to happen in partnership with local domestic and sexual violence programs to have the expertise. So given the national interest in this, are there, in your words, did you identify any federal funding or matching funding that might be available to the state? We were hopeful that there may be some. We believe that there is going to be a solicitation from the Department of Justice Office of Violence Against Women. And the Center for Court Innovation informed us last week that that element of the solicitation, it doesn't look like it's going to be forthcoming at this point. So we continue to look for that. We're also looking at whether there are community based models that can be funded through private funding as well. So there are foundations on the national level that are interested in this kind of innovative work. And we continue to certainly pursue all of those options. If there are legislative suggestions for what you get them to the members of this committee, soon rather than later. Yes. Other questions for Sarah? Sarah, thank you very much. Thank you all so much. The next subject is one that I, we had opportunities and actually before the opioid crisis hit, we actually had a lot of discussion about how we deal with it. Obviously, we didn't do as well as we could have. But we did have some preparation and it has a way of starting elsewhere, ending up in Vermont. And one of the things that I saw in an article in the Boston Globe that I thought would be proactive if we had a discussion about our preparation to deal with a meth problem that is already here in some areas, but promises to be coming sooner rather than later, unfortunately. I think I would say my own meth skip. People using meth in terms of violent behavior scare me more than drug abusers. So when I saw this article about it moving into Massachusetts, living on the mass border, we're not immune to that. We have roads that lead to Massachusetts in Vermont. We don't have a wall yet. We don't have any funding for the wall. I thought it'd be helpful to have a discussion here about this problem, what we're doing to be prepared for it. So I appreciate Kelly, I agree, the Department of Health as well as Lieutenant Randall from the State Drug Task Force. If you want to join us together or you can meet up. I don't know whether you are prepared for the thought about this or it's just an idea to get some update to this committee before we're at it. Can I just ask a clarifying question on meth? How different is that from bath salts? It's a different drug, it's a different formulation. Because we're seeing a lot of bath salts too in the southern Vermont. I don't know if you are in Bennington, but we are along the I-91 border. So that's why I was kind of wondering. I don't know. I was specifically looking at the glow particle. Yeah. That started out with a headline treatment system fear the unprepared materials, stimulant addiction issues. So I can start or Lieutenant? Okay. So the Department of Health is very aware of the increase in stimulant use. It's something that is showing in our data. When we look at the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Drug Use and Health, and also the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, meth continues to be pretty low in Vermont. That isn't to say that we're not aware of the potential for it to reach us. But it is definitely not the primary stimulant that we're seeing. So, but the Department of Health has been working on a stimulant plan, specifically Senator to look at the treatment system as well as prevention and what we're doing in the community to help address the rise in stimulants. Just to set the stage around what stimulants we are seeing, stimulant prescriptions have actually been on the rise in Vermont dramatically. And we're actually one of the top three states in the country for prescriptions of Ritalin, which is a common stimulant that's prescribed for treating the home attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. It also has the potential for abuse as do other prescription stimulants. So we do know that prescription stimulant misuse is prevalent among adults. We're not seeing that as much in children, but we do see a very high rate of actual prescriptions given to children. You say we're number three, that per capita, I hope. It's, yes, yes, yes. And we're also, we are seeing an increase across the board with stimulants in terms of visits to hospitals. Although we're not seeing an increase in overdose fatalities from stimulants, we are seeing an increase in emergency department visits for stimulants. Most of stimulant-related fatalities that we have seen about 80% also involve opioids. So we are seeing a lot of stimulant use among people who are using other stimulants. So just to, the other area of concern is that our young adult, 18 to 25-year-old population are cocaine use among that population as the highest in the country. So definitely some red flags that we're seeing around stimulants. And we are seeing more people seeking treatment in our treatment system for stimulant use. So that's good. But we are doing some things to prepare for this. Back in January, we conducted a literature review to look at different treatment methods and what are the most effective treatments for stimulant misuse. And so that was completed back in January. And we're doing a needs assessment of our preferred provider system of treatment to look at what practices they currently use in terms of treating stimulants. Are they in line with evidence-based practice and what technical assistance and training needs do they have around treating stimulant use disorder so that we can be prepared to provide that technical assistance and training. And we actually already have delivered some training to our provider network specifically on motivational interviewing. There was a medication-assisted treatment learning collaborative that specifically addressed polysubstance use. So looking at those providers who are providing opioid medication-assisted treatment and how prepared they are to also address stimulants when they're seeing people who are struggling with opioids. And we've requested some technical assistance from the Addictions Technology Transfer Center, which is a training center that we access around substance use issues. So we're gonna be working with them pretty soon on, there's a method of treatment called contingency management that is the most promising practice for... I'm sorry. It's called contingency management and it's really like an incentive-based treatment program. And so we've requested some technical assistance from the Addictions Technology Transfer Center on developing some training and some other things for our provider network. As far as outreach to the community, we've added a stimulant page to the Department of Health website that has a lot of resources for community members, for providers, and other interested, maybe people who are suffering with stimulant misuse so that they can get as much information as possible. We also got some materials that are on the Vermont Addiction Alcohol and Drug Information Center site, so we've provided information to them because that's often where providers go to look for information. And we also updated, you may recall back, I believe it was in the early 2000s when MET really sort of hit the scene and we worked with Public Safety at the time to develop materials around what are the signs that there might be MET manufacturing happening in your community. So we reviewed and sort of updated those materials and put those out on our website and put some direct links to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. They've got some really great materials on MET and other types of stimulants. And then we're also doing some work with children and youths. So later this fall, we're going to be doing a briefing with school nurses and with the substance abuse folks that we fund in schools to specifically do some education with students and faculty and staff around stimulants and what to look for. And we just very recently, a couple of weeks ago, did a series of focus groups with young adults, specifically on substance use. What they're seeing, what their own experiences are, and actually next week we'll be getting the report from the agency that conducted those focus groups. And those focus groups will inform the social marketing strategy. Are you saying the same at the state police? Yeah, I will say, yeah, I mean, has been here, Crystal Mett has actually been here for quite some time. We haven't seen the influx that our county parks across the country are telling us that we're going to see twice a year. I go to, with our captain, we go to a conference and we network with other state agencies and drug enforcement agencies and they see the trends. And as we know, we see across the country they start with us and they can go to the east and it's a national epidemic right now that they're having. And I'm fortunate enough to say that we have the partnership with the Department of Health who are already on from the opiate standpoint. So we have that piece in place. We are monitoring this, but we are seeing an increase. We are also seeing an increase in crack cocaine as well. So we do know that it's here. We're aware of it, we're monitoring it. And like everybody has told us in the past that if it's something that hits our state and we thought we had a problem with opiates when crystal methamphetamine hits and those type of numbers then we're going to have a problem. And I don't wanna, we had press releases the other day we discussed that, but every bus that I see it appears to be the vast majority are opiate and arrow and fentanyl, et cetera. Very rarely do I see some bus for methamphetamine or even producing. I've heard that Franklin County has a high incident of methamphetamine and I understand that the West Virginia and Kentucky and parts of Ohio have particularly high rates in terms of meth and cocaine and stimulants. And what scares me that, we're woefully inadequate with all the things we've done. We still have places in the state that aren't fully equipped to deal with the opiate crisis of my district being one of them. And if we're that far behind on that, where are we, and I don't know how you, difficult to treat people who are using cocaine and methamphetamine, there's no suboxone or methadone. And there's also concern around the perceived risk that people don't feel that stimulants like cocaine are as dangerous or received. So the stimulants that you're finding are a result of prescription. I have about three questions, a result of prescription or are they homemade, the meth and the crystal methine? So crystal meth is we're actually staying in Vermont right now is something that's coming in from Mexico and out West as well, so it's being shipped in. Crystal meth is different than what we were dealing with several years ago with what we call the one-pot method when they're manufacturing it. So what we need to be prepared for and aware of is if the supply and demand, the supply goes down, the demand is up with that, then the one-pot methods are going to come back to the state. So right now we do see a decrease in the one-pot method, but we're starting to see the increase in the crystal meth. The crystal meth basically looks like sharp glass. It looks like a clear glass. So when people see it, it looks kind of like a pure type of a product. And again, it's when they try it for the first time, it gives them that sensation that it's the feeling that they're just like the OB. It's a different type of feeling, but it's more, it grabs onto them like the OB. So then the other, a couple other questions. The prescription drug detailing program that exists has been quite effective, outcome-based. And so our, is there a connection between you and that, we're gonna say that committee, and I know we meet in the coming up, over, I think. I will actually be there. Oh, good. So is this something that you'll bring to the primary care folks? Yes. Can you just talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I actually oversee that grant that the Department of Health has with AHEC and the academic detailing. So this is very much on my radar for them, and I'll be attending that meeting coming up. And then link that with the $9.7 million that's come in in terms of a prevention with opioids. Is this, can that also be used to identify programs that work for prevention, intervention? Yes. I think of preventing the influx of crystal meth as much as anything else. So the recent CDC grant that we just got that was announced last week, it is opioid-focused. But one thing is that a lot of the preventive measures that we use for opioids and for other, are effective for other substances. So a big focus of that grant is looking at data specific around opioids and around opioid overdose fatalities, which like I mentioned, many of which also involve other substances. So we should be able to get more data around how prevalent stimulants are in those overdoses. And then the prevention strategies that we will be using in that grant will also address other substances. So as you know, there's been a lot of money coming into the state for opioids and we're able to be true to the funding source and address opioids while also recognizing that other substances are also an issue and often used together. I have one last question and it deals with prescribing of Ritalin for kids. And we know that's always been a point of contention but it may lead to involvement in the judicial system later in life. So is there any data on Ritalin prescription and outcomes for kids? I'm always very concerned about drugging children. Right, that's a great question. I don't have that information off the top of my head that I can certainly look into that and bring it back. Why is this happening? Why now, what are the causes? So history has proven that we have drug trends where there's the hottest drug out there on the market that everybody wants to try. Everybody is looking to get their hands on. Crystal meth is being produced and cheaper and it's easier to get now than it was several years ago just like when fentanyl hit the market and it was cheaper, it was easier to get and it's coming into our country and they're actually, that's the history in itself. I guess I can say that 10 years ago we did have an opioid heroin problem and it moved to crack cocaine and then it moves back to heroin and now we've got the crystal meth that is coming. It's just, the supply is there and people are trying it and then they bring it in and then they start distributing it to us the same as what we would with heroin. Can I just piggyback on that for a second? Back when, before the opioid crisis was full blown, we took steps in Vermont to deal with crystal meth because we knew that was coming and we did some changes in the law regarding pseudofed and all that sort of stuff with the one plot type thing. The state police also had a lot of training and did a lot of work. I know about Reds Trail was involved with what happens if you have a crystal meth factory or not crystal meth factory in your neighborhood and how you deal with that. We took a lot of steps. I just don't, are we taking those steps this time? That's, because I think that helped us to avoid what was coming from West Virginia and I keep picking on West Virginia but I don't know anybody from there. And this is a little bit different. So what we were dealing with then is actually the one-pot method where they could actually manufacture it themselves. This is more, this is actually produced and it's kind of, it's kind of in and as ready. Both the prescribers as well as the illegal drug trade? For? Well, people are prescribing a lot of stimulants, Ritalin, et cetera. And then you've got the Mexican cocktails and others running in them. Right. Yeah, so I think with that, with it being available and it's coming into our state, I do feel that education for adults and our youth is really something that we need to focus on right off and get the message back out there. And again, some of the systems that we do have in place which the one-pot methods that we've talked about in the past that we've had of, that would be helpful too to keep an eye on that as far as, like I said, the supply goes down but the demand is still there. They'll fall back to that method. So definitely we are monitoring it. We are watching it very closely with our partners, with our federal partners as well. So, but it is here in our state. Is there a perception that it is less dangerous than opioids? Are people thinking, huh, opioids are a real issue? Is someone going to do the Southern Drone? Yeah, I think at times people get into that, but once you're, you try it the one time or you're, and you use it, then they're gonna continue to use it. And it's more so that it's available. And I can't point it out if you can actually say that. Yeah, I think for cocaine there's a perception that it is less dangerous than opioids, but I don't think, I don't know for crystal meth. And crystal meth is highly, highly addictive. It's great to ask. So equally or more addictive than opioids? I mean, I don't know the signs on the top of my head but I think that probably equally, if not more so. Is it being injected or is it being, it can be injected. I know it can be, but what's the basic use of it right now? There are a lot of different ways that you can use it. You can inject it, you can snort it, you can smoke it. Is there a particular population group? Kids, adults, are at X already? Well, our use here in Vermont is low. So right now, so it's difficult to say. I mean, I do have a little bit of data here that says that, let me pull it out here. In the 12 year old plus population up to 18, our use thankfully is much lower than the rest of the United States. In our 18 to 25 year old population, it's slightly higher than the US but not statistically significantly so. And that's one and a quarter percent of the population. So for Lieutenant, so Senator Sears referred to the one-pot method when that became popular, training that BSB gave to first responders that were involved in some of that and went into another life. Actually, I went to two or three different incidents that were one-pot method, either burned building down if people were ill or whatever. I'm wondering, you say that that seems to have dropped off but has it really dropped off or people that are cooking are doing a better job and being able to be with that safer and have a good market for it or is it just been market driven and that crystal madness easier to get than it is to take the risk of cooking homes? Yeah, I think definitely the systems that we have in place, the blocking systems through the pharmacies where they actually block people, that has been effective. Where people feel like now that's not as easy to get the precursors, where before it was easy to go into the hardware store and to the drug store and they could have the whole lab within 10 minutes. Now with this new system in place, that has blocked and we do have numbers through our intelligence center that actually indicates how many blocks that system has and if someone has gone over there and lived in. So for what we're seeing in the drug task force and through our investigations, we are not seeing the one-pot methods. Not to say that there aren't any out there because there are always people out there who are doing things a little bit better, able to hide or do stuff and not get caught but for what we're seeing in our homes and in the task force itself that we are not seeing an increase in those and we have seen a decrease in that. You're using the one-pot method kind of as a barometer to gauge what's happening with crystal meth. No, crystal meth is really totally different. It's brought in just like an opium would be just like crack cocaine. So they're having it, a lot of it's already pre-packaged or they'll get a bulk of it. They'll package it up and distribute it. That's a lot easier for someone to go on the street and just get the crystal meth than it is to actually manufacture. So they are two different methods of methamphetamine. One is the crystal meth and then the other is what we've been talking about the one-pot method as well. Senator, I mean representative. If I keep on, Senator, yeah. I'm a rep. The dean. The dean. We're talking about all the resources that we have throughout the state and as the state. What about the folks who are really, the boots on the ground, the folks who are really coming into contact with this? And I'm referring to our local police departments, our local EMTs, our hospitals, our ambulance, all of that. They're the ones who are seeing this firsthand. And I'm curious as to what tools we can put in place to help them because that's where either the person who is using can keep reusing or you can start breaking the cycle. But also your local folks, EMTs and police departments, they get burned out because they're called out to the same folks over and over and over. So how do we break that cycle at the local level? What tools can we do at the local level? One thing that is part of the CDC grant that was just announced last week is training with first responders, EMTs, around motivational interviewing and compassion because we heard from first responders that exact issue of feeling very frustrated and frankly not feeling very compassionate when they've returned to the same house time and time again. So we're doing some training with them. Also, I mean this piece is a little bit opioid specific but because there is so much polysubstance use, ideally it would address this issue as well is getting people rapid access to medications is to treatment. So when they come into contact with emergency responders, let's say, if there's an overdose, we know that 95% of the folks who have an EMT response due to an opioid overdose end up going to the emergency department and we are rapidly having medication assisted treatment available immediately at emergency departments across the state and part of that process is doing an assessment in terms of what is somebody's actual full substance use picture. So even though it's sort of under the guise of opioids, they can connect people to treatment that would address all of the substances that people might be using. So what if a person denies going, what if a person says, no, I'm not going to emergency room? That's what I'm hearing. People are saying they're refusing to go to the emergency room after Narcan has been administered or whatever. What's the process? Those folks need to get hooked in either to a designated agency or recovery center and then you get into the HIPAA issue with EMTs. Is there any work being done on that? Well, our EMTs are certainly providing information about treatment resources and we have some kits that we've put together that in addition to providing naloxone for the person to have after the EMTs leave, it also has information about treatment resources and recovery supports. It's trying to meet people where they are and unfortunately, even with the potential overdose or an EMT response, some folks are just not ready to access those resources. I'm betting to the local Turning Point Club has begun to, as much as possible, go to these overdose sites and try to say, well, you don't want to go to the hospital or at least talk to us and try to help offer what's available. But there's a challenge. If they're having that challenge with opioid, what's gonna happen with that? Well, the treatment is different. And I don't know if the treatment world is ready for it. I mean, that was the reason for putting it on the agenda was to try to highlight that we have opportunities to try to avoid some of these major problems that other states are dealing with right now. And what are we doing and what do we need to be doing? And that's why we're doing the needs assessment of our treatment network to find out what are they doing now in terms of stimulant treatment and what training and technical support do they feel like they need in order to be able to address stimulants? It seems like, you know... I mean, the data that you have that you've given us is pretty clear so that there's some identified places and drugs that can be targeted. I wish I knew how to operate this, get there. I brought it to the office. Oh, good, good. I got it, good. You're taking the correct sense language. Who? I do, I do. Again? Yeah, I do. I'm sorry. We're house members. I know. I do. Here, I heard you say first responder burnout, first responder attitude. You can't get to that fast enough. Right. And with enough support right now. Yeah. I hear it all the time. Overgoing back there again. Yeah. We're overgoing the same person again. And it's serious. It's a potential for PSPB. I don't know if I'm going to first responders. How can you elevate that response to first responders? How can you elevate that to the top of the fact? Because first responders, as you know, are hard to find today, especially in the volunteer use. Right there. And they're just frankly just burning out at a very high rate due to some of these repeat offender reviews or repeat calls, I forget. How do you elevate that? Well, luckily, the grant that I spoke about from the CDC, we've just got the reward out of September 1st, so that work is starting now. So it's definitely a priority in that work plan with that grant. And we got $9.5 million over three years to do a host of things, but that is definitely a priority in our work plan. Thank you. Go ahead. How much of this is, I've got my corrections had on, but how much of this is going to start putting pressure on our department of corrections? Because where are the folks going to go? There's going to end up being some behavior that the public says, you've got to arrest them. And what pressure is that going to put into our other systems? Is that being looked at? Because corrections doesn't go out there and recruit people to come to them. People come to them through other systems. It's not DOC that brings them in. So what can we do at the front end here? Because if we don't do anything health-wise, some of this is not criminal behavior-driven, it is health-driven addiction. If we don't address that, they're going to end up in court. I think for the Department of Health, it is the focus on the treatment system and helping us bolster that treatment system so that we can get people into treatment and successfully treat it. But we got law enforcement. So, you know, and we also put in place the addiction, the prevention chief and the executive branch. If Bennington County is the second highest in the state behind Wyndham County, and Wyndham County is the highest in the state, and they both have one thing in common, and they're on the mask board. The other thing, at least for Bennington has in common, and maybe not true in Wyndham, treatment is already woefully inadequate in Bennington County for opioid abuse. I mean, I talked to you about that. And we're trying to figure out why, and obviously one of the reasons is that when the Spokane Hub system came into place, Bennington was supposed to be a spoke of Rutland, but Rutland quickly filled every slot for methadone treatment, for Rutland residents, and Bennington couldn't get in. So if we're already the highest in the, the two southern counties of the highest in the state, what are we doing in those two counties to prevent, number one, the spread to the rest of the state, but number two, to make sure that we're treating and where it is the law enforcement response needed to deal with this problem. Frankly, I wasn't aware of how much, what the per capita in Bennington County was of stimulant prescriptions. And that's prescriptions, that's something we can control. Has anybody talked to the Southwest Vermont Medical Center about the number of prescriptions in Bennington County? Not to my knowledge, but I think. I mean, that's sad. I mean, we can at least have some influence on prescription rights. Yeah, we certainly have the data. And I don't ever, you know, we had a meeting and there was a lot of discussion getting to a treatment hub in Bennington County and the opiate crisis. And I don't remember anybody bringing up that. We had the second highest right for prescriptions. Well, this data that you have in front of you literally caught off the presses as of last week, so. Well, I appreciate that. And we actually have a meeting on October 4th with so many of the legislators for the opiate response group. Certainly bring this up. And you may be aware that the CDC grant that I've been bringing up. Yeah. A lot of the efforts in that grant are targeted toward Rutland County and Rutland County because they are the counties that are most impacted. And yet, I look at the stimulant related diagnosis from Wyndham County and Rutland County are way up there. And they're way down. And how did we get way down? I don't know what happened there. It might be a mistake in the analysis, you know. But yeah, you shouldn't worry. Like, well, I am, I am. And what I'm worried about, and I appreciate the fact that the focus is on treatment, but as representative Cooper has before, what's causing this? And what are we gonna do to intervene so that thankfully right now, the epidemic is low in Vermont, but what will we do to keep it from being exacerbated? Well, we do have the new Substance Use Prevention Oversight and Advisory Council, but, you know, it was formed in the last session. And that council, which replaces the opioid coordination council, the tobacco evaluation review board and the Vermont Alcohol and Drug News Council is a cross-substance prevention focused council. And we are still awaiting word of our Chief Prevention Officer that will be appointed by the governor's office, but the health department, Commissioner Levine and a community prevention professional, Melanie Sheehan from Dallas-Gutney are the co-chairs of the new council. And the executive committee is meeting next week to actually start appointing the rest of the council so that we can start our meetings in October. And the charge of that council is really to look at what prevention efforts are happening across substances across the state. So we'll be doing an inventory as well as looking at evaluation metrics for all of those prevention efforts to identify what are really the effective things that are already happening. And then the council will make recommendations as far as how to bolster our prevention infrastructure across the state. And so, and any substances of risk of misuse in the legislation, as you may be aware, it says that any taxes on those substances, a significant portion thereof would be directed to prevention efforts. So we are very focused on prevention. That's part of the Department of Health's mission. I want to make sure we're not shooting the messenger here because I really do appreciate getting this information. And a couple more questions. Representative Emmons. So I'm on the page, I was at second, third page, second page there, that deals with similar use among high schoolers. And I don't know if this ties into the previous questions, but if you look at that, the use has decreased since 2009 to 2017, but when we talk about the 18 to 25 year olds, they've increased. So what's happening between the high school year and becoming an adult, what's happening? Because if it's decreased while they've been in high school, something triggered that usage. And I'm also wondering, do you have the breakdown here of the different schools or school districts in terms of what they're seeing because some districts may be decreasing. This is an average of the whole state, but in some parts of the state, there may be an increase. That data comes from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and I believe that we have that by supervisory. I'd like to see that because that may give some indications for some of our counties that are showing an increase. And I'd also like to know too about dropout rates. Shayla just reminded me that you can look at school or supervisory level, supervisory union level of YRBS data on our website. But that to me is telling if it's been decreasing in high schoolers, but it's starting to increase. Is it starting to increase as well in high school? What's happening from the time that they're 15, 16, 17 year old to 18? They're more engaged. Plug in one piece, vaping. Vaping is there. So there are a lot of some stimulus available by it. Also, I think that we focus on one drug. I always think of a parent that said, thank God their kid was using booze, not some other drug. I think when you look at the decrease in high school, we also can't ignore the drug culture that exists once you get to college. And I know I see a lot of that at UDM of kids who say, you see cocaine use really prevalent in parties and on campuses. And so if somebody wasn't using it in high school and they get to college and they make friends and they go to parties and everybody's using it, then they're more inclined to maybe try it for the first time or go back. And they think, like you said, this isn't as harmful as something else. This is just a party drug. Everybody's doing this, can't hurt me. That also might be a little bit of a response to that discrepancy between high school and then when you get to 18 to 25. But I'd also like to dig deeper into the 18 to 25 to find out how many of them are in college and how many are not. And then they can't get absorbed in the workforce. That's acting against. Yes. This has been extremely helpful. And I'm glad that this was hot off the presses. I think it should be attributed to all of the hospitals. So they're aware of at least of what's going on in their area. Kind of thank you so much for the work that you all do. Thank you. And when I brought this to the table, I do think that it's important and I'm thinking of one more thing about hospitals. I think it's been good that we've kind of worked out some things with the opiate and the overdose. Thank you for being aware and when someone's overdosing that and keeping the system. And I think this is something that we also need to look at and focus on a little bit more. And it is good not to just say we have the opiate crisis going on, but now we have these other unlined jobs over here that are going to take over. So it's good that we're getting a start on it now. And I think it's very important every day. I don't think there's any secret. I would add substance abuse problems forever in the long run throughout this nation. It's nothing new, but the drug of choice seems to shift. It changes, doesn't it leave a change? It's a cycle. And unfortunately, I'm infatuated and cocaine is certainly just as dangerous as non-server. We, one last thing, we don't have, the results are starting to come in from a study that we were doing as a collaboration with the University of Vermont, it's called CASE. And it's attitudes and behaviors among middle schoolers and on through young adults. They're attitudes and behaviors around substance use and other things. So we'll be starting to get more information from that study soon, so we'll be putting that out there. Thank you both very much. Good to see you. Thank you, thank you, Senator Sears for bringing this to us. I will. We'll get back at one. Okay. Underwriting these challenges to the corrections population. We started talking a little bit about that this morning. And I know that I talked yesterday with Judge Grierson about his challenges. We'll start by saying one of the things that happens is that we have a lot of people who generally support reducing corrections numbers against locking people up. But then we sometimes get down to specific people that we want locked up. And they may not fit the definition of what we've put together for. For example, there's a person who is very well known in Bennington County who's been arrested on a misdemeanor charge and a number of people locked up for violating the conditions of his release. But it's a one year misdemeanor. And so it's convenient to blame the judge for not locking him up. But maybe because we've kind of set directions out and it's a state that we don't want to do that. And then we have a person and I see that the Acid County state's attorney is able to get somebody locked up for animal cruelty. Well, I don't know all the details, but it's an interesting conundrum for judges and for us as policy makers when there's certain people that we have. We have the Rutland County case where people think a person should be dealt with. Anyway, I think it's important to remember that that we have a general, I think the general population is supportive of criminal justice changes. Sometimes when it comes down to specific criminals or specific crimes, we're not happy with it. So with that, Representative Emmings stated that the Corrections Department doesn't have control over who's just locked up. But to a certain extent they do because they do have people who are on probation, parole, and other statuses who they are responsible for who they can make choices about. At any rate, subject is population challenges. Mike Duchess, first on that. I'm going to, if it's okay with the committee, I'd like to have Monica, Lieber, and Shannon Marku do it. So that if I get something wrong or I miss something, I'll be able to pull the committee in. Mike Duchess, make sure of Corrections. Monica Lieber, Administrative Services Director from the Department of Corrections. Shannon Marku, Facilities Operations. So before, we have a couple of handouts and we have three of us here because as you know, nothing in Corrections is simple. And we worked really hard to try and simplify kind of an explanation of population flow within the Department of Corrections. But I would like to start by just doing a quick follow to what Senator Sears just mentioned around, you know, it's really a cultural dynamic, not only from a lot of the United States around how primal parts of it are handled. You know, back in the 70s, we were a prime, we were shifted that focus of what was truly about containment. And further than that, none of the precedent you raised and so none is kind of a sense, perhaps, that people are still going to occupy those beds to some degree. Justice Reinvestment One, I feel strongly that Justice Reinvestment Two will continue to put Vermont on the map of being thoughtful, mindful about how we utilize those prison beds as we go forward. That said, I think one of the challenges we have as a state is shifting that culture of just lock them up and throw away the key. We can do that, but I will tell you that the model we're going to cause the taxpayers a lot more money if we're showing these people out there, prisoners who have had a stimulus and we are better citizens. So I think, again, the Justice Reinvestment Work that we're engaged in, we're a product of some grants that help us think about how we strategically move forward and their operations and the systems that we're providing that I think will help shape and pave the path for Vermont to continue to be on the map of being restorative in nature, but also in how we're using the correctional system. So with that, I just wanted to jump into kind of the population and, Mark, if you can hand it out. Yeah. You got it all on one page? So I was thinking about you, Senator Sears. I was thinking that we had the last time we had a dashboard, and so it's a big, big page. Well, the other page we had was color coded. The other page we had was two sides. This is just one-sided, so it's all the same. It's good. Color coded. Keep it simple. So we're just as committed as we are, and horribly, horribly colored one. I have a black and white copy. I will not be talking about color, so if you have a question about a color, Shannon or Monica will be able to help us. There are some answers there. Thank you. So this is really kind of a broad picture of a lot of partner corrections, primarily around our in-state capacity, and it does touch on our current out-of-state population as well. At the top, you'll see that it mentions our out-of-state population currently of 276 males out-of-state. And we have used the out-of-state system, both for-profit prisons and non-profits, such as the state of Pennsylvania for more than 20 years at this point. The real challenge that the department has right now is finding the eligible inmates who are eligible to be placed in an out-of-state facility. For example, if an inmate is designated as SFI, they're not eligible to go out-of-state. If an inmate is receiving chronic care services through the health services division, they're not eligible to go out-of-state. So an example of that might be dialysis, HCD treatment, or any other form of chronic care where a representative out-of-state will not lend itself to a good continuity of care for them. MAT has been a significant impediment to the department to send people out-of-state. We are engaged in conversations with the force of administering community in that system to our population. There's been no commitment at this point. We have about 700 individuals in our system right now who are on MAT. And those 700 individuals are comprised of both sentenced and detained inmates, and I don't have a breakdown of that population at the moment. But when looking at who is eligible for placement out-of-state, our numbers have really diminished. I think we have 13 currently that we can consider sending out-of-state. So can I just interrupt? Are detainees allowed to go? So that's 400, almost 400. That's 400, yes. That's 400 people immediately that cannot be sent out-of-state. That was 700 that we had. And females, which I didn't put in this particular paragraph, too. So there's 960 individuals who have been out-of-state. MAT is another 700 individuals that are in out-of-state. Currently we have about 30 to 40 persons enrolled in the H-C-V treatment. I have C treatment. Programming status. If somebody is, if they're within a period of reentry, we're getting ready for them to reentry into the community. We've done a program services prior to the reentry so that those skills are freshened in mind as we enter sex, gender, treatment programming is a big one. There's 60 inmates in that program currently. There is a waiting list for that program. Risk reduction program is all offered here in Vermont. That's another scorer of individuals who have not set up a state. Should we see those services? So as you can see, as these things add up, we have a really very small pool of individuals who are eligible for out-of-state placement and that puts additional pressures on our system, keeping it as safe and as safe as care is possible. At any given time, we have about 60 sled beds or boats that are being utilized around our correctional facilities, both male and female. And if you're not familiar with that, it's simply a hard plastic. It looks like a demolition, quite frankly, that gets, we put mattress on top of it. It's elevated four inches off the ground and the person will sleep on that as opposed to a bulk because we don't have the beds. I know the group that toured Southern State this past Wednesday got an opportunity to see what that looks like. The cores are incredibly cramped. I love the fact of using these sled beds, having a sleep next to a commode is not, in my opinion, a humane way of incarcerating individuals. I love sending inmates out of state because, quite frankly, we know that connections with their family and friends is important, not only for their short term, but also for the long term. So we have a lot of challenges in respects to not only managing our in-state population beds, but also effectively using our out-of-state beds. We currently are budgeted this year for 225 inmates out of state, where 276 inmates out of state. This morning, as of this morning, we have 76 more males than we do beds in the state. Can you clarify, 76 more males than you have beds, is that general population beds, over here? Doesn't include the sled beds. Well, of many of those people, a lot of them are on the side. They're in the sled beds. Can I? Yeah, are you ready for questions, or do you want one? Take our questions at a time. All right, my first question is why only 15 people on home detention? That's a great question, in fact, the Defender General High. We have the Defender General here, we have the Judge here, we have the Prosecutor here. Actually, we have two prosecutors here and others. So that's, to me, a way underutilized program. We had more people in that, in Bennington and Wyndham County, than the Sheriff was operating in. One point of note, Senator, is that this report was compiled on August 28th, as noted in the last minute. Some of these numbers, everything here is fluid. Oh, no, I understand that, but when we're having these kind of population, and I know the judge and the prosecutors and the Defender General are on schedule to be on shortly, and maybe they can answer the question why it's over here. But work camp eligibility continues to decline. What could we do to get more people there? And another question that I have is I've been talking with people at 208, I gotta get my default street number, street number right, 208, I think has five people and eight beds available for apartments. Are we not? So, I mean, they're in small numbers, but they add up, and so when you're talking about that, so it seems like those are some opportunities that are immediate. So, I guess it's specifically the 208 depot and what's happening there as a population go. One is important for this committee to know, though it's just that even two or three years ago, Vermont had a population of past minimum eligible for release inmates sitting around 300 to 400 individuals as of this morning, we're down to 138. I think that's a good demonstration of some tremendous efforts on the part of the staff that are proper to correct us to pull it aggressively and do it possibly with population on with the entry planning. Put it with this room to be had and work to be done to bring that note further down, but as a pretty significant drop in work over a couple of years period of time. I don't have a good answer in regards to the whole detention. I'm not going to helpful with that, perhaps if you're better than your own prosecutors or I'm sure you're going to have some further insight down to what we have. Do you have an average length of time for detainees? Five to seven days? Yes, I mean, there's a lot of people who cycle in and out five to seven days and I think that I have our party mentioning most of them are going to be gone in 30 days, but then there's another four group of people who are in the group that have been trying to hold serious crimes and held without bail and there it sometimes helps for significant amount of our period of time. Be mindful of the time of one of the other highlights here on this document here. The housing needs versus capacity is just a simple visual of what we have for capacity in the state and what we actually have both in state and out of state. Currently at Chittenden, we have six free general population beds. Numbers have been pretty stable with the female population, they tend to have them flow like everything else does, but they're generally within plus or minus five people at a given time. I think it is important to note that the ACA standards for prisons is a 10% vacancy rate. One of the reasons why Vermont has never subscribed or been accredited by ACAs because of the limitations in our facilities to support that accreditation. And many of the other standards, in fact, our housing standards are built around the ACA standards will not be accredited because of our current housing situation, which is why we've never subscribed to or petitioned to be accredited by this organization. Part of that cap, and this is another visual that might be helpful at some point in the future to kind of describe every unit in every facility has actual beds that are built into the building to be occupied by an individual. So we look at that hard cap as being, that's what we know we actually have, that's what we should be operating with. And when we start to add the sled beds or we have a large cohort of individuals who are in a booking cell or an unrestricted housing unit or an infirmary or some other specialized unit, we have to consider that all those people at some point will need a general population bed. We can't keep somebody in a segregation unit just because we have no beds. We can't do that. All of those people cycle back to general population and this is kind of what this demonstrates is we have an actual hard number of general population beds. And so beyond just the scope of people that are currently occupied it or all those other people who at some point our goal was to have it in a general population unit. Two things stand out. One, we have a work camp in St. John's Ferry that's underutilized and I mentioned already the apartment but the beds at 208 and some other programs probably around the state that aren't being used. What can we do by working with those folks who are community providers to increase that population? What can we do with St. John's Ferry to change the designation or move the work camp if necessary to some other location? Well, okay. So that you take from a wider variety and then the other question would be the federal detainees. Yeah, a couple, let me go back to the work camp. I think it's a good thing that those numbers have diminished and I think it ties directly back to justice for investment one where lower level offenders are being circulated through diversion programs, committee justice centers, repair boards. That's a good thing. It is my preference and probably the preference of this committee that we not go back to having lower risk offenders cycling back into a congressional system to be able to be eligible for a work camp program. We're currently about 50% filled at the work camp, meaning about 25 to 30 empty beds in that facility. Adjacent to that work camp unit is another unit that has been used for reentry purposes, but there are some limitations on the ability to use those in front of the agreement with the town of St. John's Ferry. Specifically, if there are sex offender in order for them to be housed in that facility, they have to have come from the California County area. So we have a bit of a gap there. We are in discussions with the town manager, Chad Whitehead, to sit back down and have conversations about re-defining the purpose and utilization of those beds. Quite frankly, we need to do that. We cannot, this is not a good use of tax, there are dollars to have about 50 empty beds in one facility in the state. So we are actively engaged in conversations with the town and the select board. Senator, I've represented. So those 50 beds that are in one wing, the work camp, and the other 50 beds, they're in the other wing. Are they set up like the regular correctional facility or are they barrack-style? Those are barrack-styles. It's basically a big open room. We've got double-tiered bunks sitting in the living room. So it is a community-style living in the apartment. It's not everybody doesn't have their own cell or no occupancy or triple occupancy in the cell. They're in the common area. And for the work group people, they're either working on the grounds or they're out in the community, supervised doing either contracted work or working for the town of St. John'sbury. Being one possible, the past million eligible for this population are working very closely with their caseworkers on reentry planning. And I think the good news here is it's been about a year and a half since we entered the new MOU with the town of St. John'sbury. We had kept that place, we had kept the reentry unit full for a long time, but now we're down to bare bones again. So I think it's been an effective use of our, not only the space, but our staff resources and skills to get people re-entered. And it's had an effect to the point where we're only able to have occupied the unit at this point. So as for DOC and for your management, do you have to be careful in terms of an offender who's ready for reentry, but would not be able to live in a barracks style or not? Does that play in with that? Yeah, so there's a couple of things that play in that. One is, first of all, they have to be eligible. Part of that criteria is determining whether or not their classification is appropriate, meaning that their demonstrated behavior inside the correctional facility is commensurate with a lower security level of supervision that happens in that unit. A number of other obstacles are if somebody is not medically cleared, for example. There are quite a few inmates that require a CPAP machine to be able to breathe and sleep all night. Because there are no outlets like every bullet that's in the world, this big room, they can't be housed there because they wouldn't be able to have access to the CPAP machine. So it has some real limitations in the ability to, it has very little flexibility, quite frankly. And that's, I think that's one of the challenges. We have across all of the facilities is not being agile enough to change the purpose and intent of the design. Southern State's a good example. Foxtrot has 46 beds that looks, feels, no like segregation because they are. And we can put a tremendous amount of capital funds into that and it will look and feel like a segregation. Questions to the commissioner or? The 138 folks that you have passed their men but for because of the housing issue. I mean, that one feels like it's a solvable problem. And I appreciate that you have solved a lot of that. So kudos to you for that. But what are we needing to do to get that to zero? I'm smiling because at some point I've always wanted to, we, there are, there's some of these people we want to get out pretty quickly. There's no question, right? If we're back in, we just need to restrategize on the re-entry plan again. All of these numbers are cool, but there is a cohort of individuals who have truly exhausted every possible resource, friend, family, person, housing, the possibility in their communities. People are tired. They're no longer willing to house these individuals. And I think that's kind of where, or we're not there yet, but we're pretty darn close in these people that they don't have their own resources and they truly burn every possible resource. More than just housing, it's all the other supports that they need to be successful in re-entry then. They just don't have that. I don't know what the better term is but I think lack of available housing is a term that doesn't really describe the individuals. I think we really need to come up with a better description. When the public here is that you've got 136 people that are waiting because they're lack adequate housing or whatever it is, yeah, they just say, well, you know. Well, so, and I break and I understand the complexity of the problem. I wonder if one of the solutions, and you put, excuse me, COSAs around sex offenders should we be talking about expanding those services to another kind of difficult group of people who are not able to succeed on their own because they burnt out all of their connections in the community. So how do we build those connections in the community? And I'll just use the COSA as an example. Are there things that we are able to do in the community that will support those people so that we're successful? So to your point, Representative, yes, we fact there are cases that are not sex offenders who are going to be posted for that exact very reason. CJC is a limited resources as our volunteers and if we can support either of those and as a willingness for volunteers to support these circles of accountability then we can promise to some increases there. But we do realize that right now. One of the gaps that I think that the state has, they've been a little promise here or not. I don't know if you might have had a discussion last week. I bet you were going to answer the question I was going to ask. Okay. Mental health, go ahead. No, this is our substance abuse. Oh, the same thing. We have a fairly robust set of sober houses throughout the state of Vermont that they're not contracted by the block through us. The challenge that we have is that when somebody has used or is in possession of a substance, they're removed from the house. And oftentimes, unless they have something immediately available, they come back to corrections. That's where the gap is for us in the correctional system is if somebody has had a relapse and if we're smart about understanding the impacts for the recovery routes for substance abuse, somebody, a relapse is likely to happen. And we're not prepared to continue that treatment modality in the community beyond just a sober house. They go right back to jail, sets it back to square one, they'll work back to square one. So in my conversation, to be clear, I don't know if promise here or not, but he's made no commitment about this nor have I. But we both agree that there needs to be continual between the sober house and prison before we just say they've used or possession to go back to jail because we're not going to host you anymore. We're smart about addressing substance abuse adequately. That's a gap for us. I'm gonna go ahead, one final question, then I want to move on to some other questions. Okay, but I don't want to skip over working lately because that's a huge success story, believe it or not, with only 50 people in it. Well, it wasn't, it wasn't. We had 200 people. Yeah, it wasn't that long ago, there were 200 people trying to work in. The success is that we have those folks, we have trouble finding people eligible for the work camp because our population has changed in the way we sentenced people and the way people are moving through corrections. So I think that's, but can you give us like one minute of eligibility requirements for work camp and have you had any thoughts on how to change those requirements so that we could post it with that population? I'm gonna let Sharon in. Do you have any better information about the eligibility requirements? It's not my area of responsibility. custody level is number one, so they have to be minimum custody because it's single fence coverage around the institution for a medium custody or higher, it would have to be a double fence coverage. So we have an architectural way that limits us about custody levels that we can place in there. Then there are certain convictions that are not a violent nature. Those are automatic disqualifiers for work camp placement as well. I can't recite what all of those are. Majority convictions. As well as criminal convictions as well. So if you have a violent charge at your serving time on them, you're not allowed to be there either. As the commissioner said, their institutional behavior is also considered through the use of disciplinary process, but that also impacts the classification level as well. Those are the big disqualifiers for that area other than the agreement that the commissioner already spoke to. At your point, representative, we are engaged with the town of St. Josbury to talk about no, no in North Cuba, which is in the South. We need to have those discussions about how we can effectively utilize those beds going forward. I think they had a slight more, they had a slight more of a meeting on the 9th, and then they were gonna look back to me and we were gonna connect that. Senator DeWyans has a final question. So I hope there's a quick answer. So there are a number of folks who with mental health issues that end up in corrections when they probably should be in healthcare. So what is the, I'll ask a question maybe that's just very definitive, but what's the timing? Between the time they end up in the correctional facility and they receive a psych-avail evaluation so that they don't stay there if they don't have to be there. That's a good question. It's a tough one to answer because quite frankly it can happen from before they even actually enter a correctional facility all the way through the entire course of their correctional experience. If somebody comes into our custody and they're not experiencing an acute mental health crisis in three years from now, they are, will certainly get them evaluated and assessed. But the courts do a prescreening already before they determine what the next steps are for the individual. So again, it could happen if before they, with the courts, before they even come to us, if they even come to us all the way through their entire stay with us. I think we do have that cohort of delayed placement persons which has significantly diminished. We might see one every three months, is that fair? So we were seeing three, four, five, six of those every month two years ago. We're seeing very few of those anyone which is great news. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate the color chart. A lot of it was helpful for you, Senator. It was. Well, you know, the next witness is Judge Brian Greerson, who is responsible for all of this. Thank you, thank you for that, Senator. What are the challenges for the judge? So for the record, Brian Greerson, Chief Superior Judge, I wish I had answers to all those questions you asked. Obviously, depending on who you talk to, either we're setting bail on the wrong people or shouldn't set bail on people depending on other folks we're setting, we should be setting bail on other people who are not. So, we're literally in the middle of this. I will say that the tainee population, I get the numbers every day like many folks do. It's right where it usually is, 380, not including the federal detainees. Those numbers remain fairly constant in getting ready for today's hearing. For instance, I was going back to the archives and there was a report that Judge Davenport, whose position I took did for probably this committee, in 2011, the number on the detainee population was the same at that time, 400 individuals. And in going through my notes, my records, every time we've taken a snapshot with data provided by Department of Corrections, there's usually anywhere from 350 to 400 detainees and there's usually around 25 are misdemeanors. All the others are fairly serious felonies. And of those 25 or so misdemeanors, usually half of them are domestic violence cases. The other half are oftentimes have other charges involved, either probation violations or perhaps furrow violations, so the offense to which they're detained going is really not the reason they're being detained. And so those numbers, despite everything the legislature has done, changes we've made, used to be that the court clerks commonly impose overnight bail. We've removed that in the last year and a half or two years, so judges that are the only ones setting bail on doesn't seem to have made a significant difference in the number. Hasn't, that detainee population remained relatively constant over the last 10 years. The home detention that you asked about for Senator, I would guess without knowing that if there are 15 on home detention now, there are probably the same 15 that have been on for the last few years. And by far the majority of those individuals were individuals being held without bail. And the legislature changed that status so that we could no longer consider those individuals. But I'm guessing the 15 today are probably most of them are carry over from that. I wish I had an answer as to why electronic monitoring isn't used more, but we can only respond to the requests that come into the court. And although I haven't checked recently, my experience when we were talking about this in committee was that there were not that many requests. So it wasn't as if a lot of requests were coming in and the courts were denying them, they just weren't coming in. Senator Baruch, another question. We've, in other areas, we last year looked at expanding the authority of the judge in various ways. You say you can only respond to requests for electronic monitoring. If that's something we should think about empowering judges to be able to do without a request? Well, no, I think we can still make the suggestion that ultimately the Department of Corrections has to determine whether the residential setting is appropriate for electronic monitoring. But in the final analysis, the defendant, the individual may choose not to launch electronic monitoring. Yeah, I'm just wondering, because the commissioner was relatively out lost for why there weren't more people using the program, and your answer is that there aren't enough requests. So I'm wondering who we should be looking to for increased usage of that program. I need to pass this back to the defendant general, but I think it comes down to an individual. The last guy to test it. Yeah, but I mean, I don't have the answers as to why there are not more requests. The court can suggest in recent weeks. All I'll say was when I was in the Wyndham County Sheriff's Hands, there were more people in Bennington and Wyndham County on home detention than there are today. And it was just two counties. So can I ask a question of clarification? Sure. Are we talking about home detention, or are we talking about electronic monitoring? Because they're two separate things. You may use electronic monitoring in home detention, but electronic monitoring can also be used on its own without home detention. It cannot be. It's only for home detention? Yes. There's other electronic monitoring that goes on. Well, they use it on probation. Okay. So that's what I wanna be clear about for electronic monitoring. When we're talking home detention status only, that is a request from either the offender or I believe DOC to the court for home detention status. Correct. And the court can look at a case and then setting bail to say this case may be appropriate for home detention. We can't order someone on home detention without the first getting the request. I'm talking about home detention or the electronic monitoring. The detainment process. The detainment population, there are people who can be either electronically monitored or whatever else they're on probation on furlough or whatever. I don't know those statuses. That's what I'm talking about. The peace guarantee. Yeah, I'm talking about the detainment. Not everybody on a lot of people. I was referring to the detention population, not that of the population. And that's what these numbers are that I was saying. This is probably the same people that have been on for the last two years. And I don't have any answers to why it's fine. So when you're confronted with, well, one of the judges is confronted with a community wants somebody incarcerated, but the crime doesn't fit that. And the judge gets blamed for being soft. We have to accept that. And we do. I mean, that's what happens. Should we do a better job of explaining the Constitution and the base? Well, I think. Or what changes could be made to. I think I was saying to you yesterday I received a letter from an individual about that situation. And that's the response that I gave them. And these are the constitutional ramifications of setting bail and explaining the steps the legislature had done recently in terms of that particular case where there was a limit on the amount that could be set. And those are the rules that the court follows in opposing or not opposing bail. Despite what I'm sure a lot of people felt is the wrong decision, I believe the judge followed the law as they are required to do in making the decision that was made in that case. I don't think under our current framework, they had any choice. So I believe they made the right and correct decision based on the law that presently exists and defend obviously that judge in making that decision. I don't know a question about that. But I mean, that's one of the, when we're talking about challenges, one of the challenges is for certain people that the public would like to see locked up that and those same people are calling for justice reform. So it's difficult to represent that. And we are obviously in the middle of that debate. Right. Any questions for the judge? So you kind of, oh, I'm sorry. I was ready to get the next party responsible. Go ahead. To the detainee conversation. So we heard from the OC this morning saying there is a cohort of people who are being detained for a very long period of time. And they definitely aren't probably in the category of people who are committed. There's public safety issues associated there. But we also hear from corrections that this other seemingly larger cohort of people, and yes, I understand they may be in felony charges, but they cycle in for five to seven or three to seven days. And it's hard to understand what the usefulness is of putting somebody in jail and detaining them for that short period of time. What is changing so that it's, I'm not asking my question very well, but I'm trying to get after that population, which at some point, clearly after a few days, people say it's okay to be on the streets again. So why are they there in the first place? Without knowing exactly which population the commissioner was talking about, and I would just suggest to the committee, you really have to focus in on the population that is being discussed at any given point in time. We set, if we set bail and the person's being detained, the reason they may be getting out in five or seven days is that they may bail. We don't control the decision at that point. I would think that the population that the commissioner's talking about that recycles it's five to seven days, there are probably lower level offenses that individuals are making bail and then being released. We don't make a decision here being detained today, but five days from now we're going to release you. I guess I'm, I appreciate that. So if it's a, the reason you said bail is so that they will come show up for their court appearance. Risk of flight is the basis of that. That is the constitutional basis. Should we be considering that differently? I mean, because I think we're probably talking about fairly low bail amounts that. You may, you may be in some cases, other cases. I think there was some numbers I saw where there was a large, fairly large number of bail on excess of $10,000. Only more serious cases. Let me try it this way. Is this an area that we, that we can gain something in terms of controlling our population? How, how do we dig into this effect of life? What would you do to analyze that? I think it's one of the things justice reinvestment's making. Specifically at the bail, the detainee. Detainee population. That's the focus of the time. I'm saying this is the justice reinvestment. This is, this issue is not one, this is the same issue. And so, I don't, I wish I had an answer to it again. And it may be that home detention, electronic monitoring is one approach that has not worked successful, or at least successfully in the sense that it's reduced that population. There are a small number of misdemeanor offenses. So that tells me that it's the more serious cases. It's one of the items that was specifically asked to, I'll let that one. The investment too to work. We'll look at our detainee population that hadn't really shifted in. Actually, you look at the Zaccaro commission report which was in the early Douglas years and that still had 400 people in the desert. It just, that number is remaining. There is such churn in the facility. I realize that, but it's just a number of states. Yeah, yeah, okay, thank you. I would just follow up with one comment the commissioner made about the idea of an individual on furlough who was in a residential setting, relapsed and then goes back to the correctional center. Recently, we have been talking to them about making certain members of the furlough, furlough aid population eligible for a treatment course. It may be what these individuals need if they're out of a residential setting, is monitoring the treatment court can provide that may keep them out of the correctional center and into the community. And we've been talking about a certain population that may be eligible for that. So that may be something that we're doing on that end that hasn't been done. Thank you, Judge. I sometimes do a very poor job of scheduling and this is one of those. We've got 15 minutes left and I still haven't heard from the defender general of the state's attorney, but maybe it can take a crack at this. Well, thank you, Erica. Did you come all the way up here for this? No, sorry. Thank God. Thank you. Hi, I have for the record James Pepper, Department of State, Strangers and Sheriffs and I brought, well Erica was in town for we were looking at some of the justice lab recommendations for that expansion of family court jurisdiction. She excited to stick around. She is the executive chair of our executive committee for all of the state's attorneys. So she does have kind of a statewide perspective on our policies as well. I think just trying to jump in very quickly some of the concerns that I've heard, I absolutely agree that there is a disconnect in the public as to the purpose for bail. And a lot of folks see what they consider dangerous people being released on $200 bail or no bail. And they wonder why. And I think, you know, of course, bail as you noted is for mitigating risk of flight. So someone's committed 12 burglaries in a row but they show up every time for arraignment. No judge is gonna impose bail ever on that case. Also under the constitution all misdemeanors shall be bailable. And very recently that was capped at $200. So you see someone who appears dangerous to the public because of the nature of the conduct but the only charge is criminal threatening or disorderly conduct. And they're released on $200 bail. And the public kind of has this disconnect. Why is that the case? So that's something that, you know, our state's attorneys try to help kind of convey to the victims of crimes and to the media the purpose, the statutory purpose, the constitutional purpose of bail. Well, one of the other issues is when the person is charged of violating the conditions of the release, then they're released with more constitioners. Because that's the subject. You know, the $200 bail is one of them. Right, in that, but I mean, I don't think the general public, well, so they didn't follow the original five restrictions. And now we're gonna add seven more, right? What makes you think that they're gonna follow those new ones? So I'm extremely consistent with telling every person of the public what the purpose of bail is, how, why I'm capped at $200, I ask. You know, I may get $200, but frankly, if it's not, if it's the burglary, I'm not gonna get it. And then I refer them to their representatives. I understand that. Yeah. But, but that, so it's the $200 cap. I think, you know, I think one thing that I've heard discussed a lot is maybe we should change the Constitution to change the purpose of bail, to look at risk to re-offend or something along those lines and not look at mediating risk of flight solely, which is very similar to that. I mean, when I'm talking about risk, I would think of the danger to the public. Danger to the public. Right. And that would about, if I could just interject, that would be what I would say would, because what we used to do with bail before the $200 cap is it was still as to risk of flight, but the court would talk about the repeated violations and the, and different issues to impose more than $200. And now that we're capped at the $200 it's, there's no way to look at those other factors, like continuously re-violating those conditions. And also the, yeah, it should be people that are a danger to the public. Not. I mean, it certainly has to do with risk of flight, but I mean, I am more concerned about the person that has committed a domestic assault that, you know, it's released in the community than the person that committed a, you know, the felony trespass, but they live in New York and they left. Stay in New York. Like, that's fine with me, but it's the person who lives in my community that's committing the 25 bird lorries. I literally had 25 bird lorries. I couldn't get enough. So, but I did want, Representative Hooper, you asked about the five to seven days and I would, it was, it was like being in school. I was dying to wear it because I know once I say it, he's going to go, that's it. So the, the five to seven days includes the hold without bail people. The hold what? The hold without bail. The hold without bail. And those are set for a way to the evidence hearing. And because the judge is saying, I need more information. This person is charged with a felony crime of violence. They have a record of violence. I am concerned that this person is a danger to the victim or to anyone actually, then they want a hearing on that. So I have those come up multiple times a week, even in my county. So I'm sure they're coming up and those take a couple of days. I've never heard that before. Yeah, those take a couple of days to schedule, but I know Judge Meyers can try that, but I don't know, that was it. That was it. That's it. Matt's going to disagree. I don't think that's it at all, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, you get yours. I'll get my 30 seconds. You'll get 30 seconds, man. I promise you five minutes. The home detention piece, if you want us to touch on that. Yeah, well, what's why? Prosecutors generally aren't in the business of referring for home detention. I mean, it can be done by the courts on their own, you know, motion, not motion, but suggestion. And it can be done by the defendants. And from what I'm hearing, the defendants are moving for home detention. Why that is, I don't know. I know you need to have a stable residence that has either a landline or cell phone access, which can be a barrier to some folks. I know from a public safety standpoint, people being held without bail are not eligible for home detention. So that's half of our detainee population right there that's not eligible. And a lot of that has to do with the typical response time for people being held on home detention. And, you know, a judge, when someone holds someone without bail, has already made a determination that the person, the way the evidence is great, and that no combination of conditions can adequately protect the public. Didn't we change that law, right? Yes. That you couldn't be on home detention if you were held without bail. Maybe that was a mistake. Well, the way the law was written, the only folks who qualified for home detention were those that were held without bail. Those that did have bail and couldn't meet it did not qualify for home detention. So the, because I was one of the counties with the home detention population, they, for me, it was pretty plain and the same with the Wyndham County State's journey. It went from, I had a sheriff that had a 24-hour dispatcher watching this dot of where this person was to now I have, maybe an email goes to the Department of Corrections, they get it the next morning, sometimes they get it that night, but there's still this significant lag time. And so when we're talking about, I mean, there were people that I had on home detention that were charged with felony crimes of violence before the law, because I agreed to it. I said this first, fine, the victim lives in another county as long as I know they're being watched, but that's just not the case now. The way it is now, it's not. So the legislature may have made a mistake when it took it and put it into corrections. But the law was wasn't corrections, it was not. What, no, it was the Wyndham County Sheriff. Yeah. It was a pilot project for the Wyndham County Sheriff to the legislature, I won't say which body, James the law and put it with corrections. And we have actually fewer people on home detention than we have when the Wyndham County Sheriff was operating. And most of them were domestic violence, I think. Wait, I'm a different. The vast majority of them. Yeah, I know a difference. Because when we had a number of people coming in, victims groups and the victim coming in and saying, you know, yeah, I live in another town or another county and if he's being watched, you know, the little dots being watched for real time, they would support it as opposed to how it is now. Do you want to defend it or put it in corrections? Three, no state. Yes, that's the reason we changed it. It just, we were paying $200,000 a year for three people. And he wanted to go statewide and we said, yeah, you can do that, but give us a proposal in the plan and he didn't. Well, I couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. I think the happy medium is whoever is running it. It's just from our perspective, it's the response time, that's all. And that's the issue, whoever is running it because the law. I want to make sure that the commissioner has a chance to respond to my comment there. Mike, do you check my share of corrections? Just two quick comments going back to the constitutional change. No, I mean, just agree with it. The notion that maybe we need to consider the risk to the community or others, but we consider that there is likely to increase our attention policy. I feel like I need to put that out there. Department of Justice Home Detention program right now is not overly well utilized. We have 14 people, it has never been well utilized. Our requirements for approving as stated is self-online or a bang-a-bang, water, yeah, sometimes both if they have those. We do have 24 hour monitoring, but what we don't have is a staff person sitting at a monitor 24 hours a day. The company who provides the GPS tracking of these individuals does that 24 hour monitoring for us. So for example, if we had somebody at 1 a.m. who had removed their bracelet, we would get a notification that would park our staff to get out of bed who were on call and to respond to where it was happening. So we do have that 24 hour ability. Is it going to be within 15 minutes? So it's not going to chase. I promised Matt five minutes. Do you have any final comments, Dr. O'Rourke? We're working with obviously Justice Reinvestment to try and get a deeper dive into our detainee population or prison populations and look for ways to not spend so much money on very expensive student cursory. Yeah, and I just have to say that it was interesting hearing the detainee population because that was my impression that it's really gotten pretty constant over the last many years, probably more than 10 years. So I think main deaths telling us that that's the number it's going to be. Maybe there are different ways we can deal with it. Not decreased, but. I hope that Justice Reinvestment, too, will come up with some brilliant ideas. Matt Valerio, promised you five minutes. It's okay, that's all I need to solve at all. I'm sure. Matt Valerio, Defender General. Let's, I think I'll just start with the thing that people are, you're talking about with the detention population. I had got wind that this question was going to come up and I had spoken to the Commissioner Corrections about it and put out a survey of all of the public defender's contract and otherwise, who do the work and the summary response is as follows. Changes in the bail law have resulted in people who would otherwise be held who are now being released on conditions and so now home detention is no longer necessary. So they changed the bail law to allow more people to be released, and on the other hand, the legislature in the last decade has created 11 new domestic violence statutes which would require, put people in a position where the state would routinely inject to people being held on home detention. The allegedly POC has rejected residences so frequently that Defenders see it as a waste of time and effort to request. Prosecutors routinely fight it youth and male except for in minor offenses that don't need it. These offenses are for these home detention with monitoring is best suited for more serious offenses but prosecutors try to fight these even harder and judges tend not to impose home detention over the objection of the state's attorneys in those serious cases when they occur. And finally, and I asked the commission about this and the statute specifically calls for it allows the Department of Corrections to request home detention after a period of days has passed and we're unaware of any of that request ever happening from the Department of Corrections. I'm not saying that one didn't but I don't know of any. Yeah, we have done this, that's what's happened. But frankly, not that this is part of our policy action that should be this but in reality when our staff are getting moved and everybody's being considered they're feeling it's almost like a, we have to do the paperwork but we know the answer is going to be so they focus on our priorities. I'm not defending the actions that's our policy is that we can make that referral and just tell them what we've been doing. So there seems to be a bit of a disconnect about what home detention with electronic monitoring is supposed to be used for and moved in. Particularly it's supposed to be used for more serious crimes that are alleged that would not otherwise be available for bail and the only ones that it seems to get granted on are the ones that are lesser in particular counties. And so it's very sporadic. The numbers are so small that you almost don't know what the pattern is because there isn't one. When we look at our detention population as a whole I think if you go back a number of years I'll go back to the 80s when I was first practicing in Vermont before the whole bail reform the early 1990s. Almost everybody was released on recognizance. There were rarely even conditions of release not even one, two, three. You know, which is gonna show up and you don't put another crime in the light. And the population really hasn't changed much. If you go back to that time then you hit the early 90s when Art 7554 went into effect in 1013. That's when we started hitting the bigger detention populations. And it really has to do with considerations of the types of crime that people are left to have committed where we're holding people. I remember in the early 90s there was an individual who came into court in Rotland and Judge Hudson was sitting on the bench. And he had not showed up for the arraignment earlier in the day and he came in later and a warrant had been issued for his arrest. And he said that he had difficulty getting from White River to Rotland in time because he had other charges in White River. The other charges in White River were that he had been charged with homicide. But he had been released on his own recognizance having had no record previously. He just had difficulty getting over the mountain to get to Rotland so he could deal with anything like a DUI or something. Something not particularly important. And I remember Hudson kind of rolling his eyes oh okay, warrant went away. Well that individual ultimately actually ended up acquitted down the road. It was an odd situation I guess. But the bottom line was back at that time the seriousness of the crime didn't have as much to do with the way we approach males we do now. And in the interim, and I've said this many times the legislature has repeatedly increased penalties, increased the numbers of crimes and types of crimes for which people might be held on bail and incarcerated longer term. And I just wanted, I did a little microcosm of research regarding one particular area. The Supreme Court came out with a report which I'm sure you've all seen. This is the 2018 statistical report. And on page 29, it has, it indicated that between fiscal year 08 and fiscal year 18 felony domestic cases increased by 8%. And then case violence in this area are 58% higher, 58% higher than they were a year 10 years before. Well we know that the crime rate in this area has not gone up, I compare it to the crime rate in the front crime report which indicated during the same decade, there were only two years where the crime rate involving domestic violence went up and they went up by small amounts, 2%. One year was 6% and then it dropped back down. And there's been basically a study declined during that period of time. And on the next page on page 30, it also indicated that case violence in misdemeanor domestic violence cases had dropped from 775 to 679 during the five year period. Well, why is this important? Because during that same decade, the legislature created this many new crimes related to domestic violence that range from anything from kind of self sets involving stalking that don't involve actual contact, various degrees of domestic violence. I'm not saying any of this is wrong, but you asked me why. And if you look at the things that you are now can be held for, when 10 years ago, those crimes didn't even exist. That's why these people, mostly domestic violence, as we hear from corrections and from the prosecutors are being held when they didn't even have the opportunity 10 years ago because the crime didn't exist. So I think if we wanna look at why things are going on, we might wanna look inward a little bit about them. And I've said this, it wouldn't hurt to go a two year period with no new crimes and no new penalties. There's gonna be plenty of stuff out there to allow people to be charged and convicted under existing law going forward and at least allow the system to simmer or marinate for a period of time before we add another layer of potential liability and incarceration to what we already have on the books. So, yes, that's one, that's just one area. I just look at the message. Why are we going on? It would be interesting to go back and look at advocacy groups and their impact on legislation and how that contributes to this. It would also be interesting to go back and look at how things like legalization of marijuana have reduced the number of people being stopped, even in traffic arrests and the number of people being charged with various that crime and how that dropped precipitously, that word, how that made it dropped and the number of people arrested. So, I didn't, you could, and I don't disagree with you either, to know that I've heard a lot about domestic violence and our laws. It's a nationwide attempt to try to deal with one of the major problems in the amount of domestic violence, or is domestic violence. So, I think a lot of times we hear from those groups and we realize there are gaps. But, yeah, it would be interesting to know, what's the impact of the laws we've passed? How did the bail out our impacts? How did the domestic violence law impact? How did the sex offender laws impact? It's not all bad. I mean, having cultural and social and cultural awareness of the issues, I think it's really important. And I know you said that. I want to, And I'm talking about impact on inclusive violence. I'm mindful that many people have to leave at three and we've got another issue to take up. So, thank you very much, Matt. And I appreciate you coming today. There's a note. It's a little no. Pardon? There's a no. I didn't do it. I did it. I know it, yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah, whether you put it, whatever. I have. Our next witness is turned to page. Thank you all very much. I'm sorry. Eight times. Eight times. Thank you very much for helping me with that. Doctor. If you'd join us. This is kind of getting an update. I don't expect that this would be the last day we'll talk about the racial disparities issues. But I thought it would be helpful to hear from a few people. And your suggestion is the one who knows the most. Dear Lori. I am the chair. I have been certainly keeping tabs on what we've been doing during my tenure, so I can speak to that. We are, it has been, I won't say arduous at all. I think it's actually been quite pleasant. It's been a very detailed proceeding, these discussions that we had once a month for two hours about the criminal justice system, about the juvenile justice system. We had, I inherited a body that felt it needed a lot of transparency and a lot of organic conversation. I have been trying very hard to foster that. I think that that has come. It has taken time, as I certainly don't have to tell any of you. Democracy is not a very quick process. But we are, at this point, we have a draft of a report, which we are statutorily required to produce every two years. We have a draft of that. We are fine-tuning it. I had the honor of meeting, and I'm gonna get the accent wrong. Representative Burdett? Burdett. I did it right. Oh, thank you. At one of the attorney general's recent fora that he's been hosting around the state. And in that conversation, a due date of November, which I know is a 30-day period, has come up. And I have relayed that to the panel. And we are intending to have a finished product for that, at that time. Overall, what are some of your impressions of it? Are we making progress? Are we falling behind? I mean, I know it's been an increased reporting of hate incidents. Yes. And some crimes. We have what happened at Bennington. We have what's happened at Birdport. Bridge. Bridgeport, Bridgeport, Bridgeport. I'm not familiar with Addison County. Where we've had things at UVM, incidences in the Northeast Kingdom. Yes. So, and nationally it's on the rise. What's some of your impressions, are your panel's impressions of where we're at in the state? Within the state? I think we have not had a specific conversation about that. I have had conversations privately with different members of the panel. I think we feel, if I'm gonna just sort of give a blanket assessment, there's a sense that there is certainly a rise statewide in incidents around bias. Just put it that way. I do think that the recommendations that the panel is coming up with will address a great number of these things. There is a particular slant at the moment, and I can get help here, around certainly data collection being a very important thing that we need to have more of it, more generally, more specifically, but in some cases, I mean certainly the state police are no worthy in their attempts at doing data collection, but even so there's a feeling that that needs to be fine tuned. So, that's something that has come up, a great deal, is how to do that more generally across the criminal and juvenile justice system. Like yes, there is a sense that things are not well. They are not well. I visited Woodside, and I think there was eight kids, eight or 10 kids there the day that I was there, and two of them were persons of color. Is that odd, or do we look at those numbers? It's certainly some of them. That was the juvenile justice system. Correct. Why would two kids out at, say, 10, 9, but for simple math, for those who aren't great at math, that's 20%, when we know it's a much lower population of people. Commissioner Schatz spoke to this at our last meeting. We did not have reasons for this. That didn't come up, but it is a concern. It's certainly known. It's being talked about, and we are, again, the data collection is key with this. He has been very clear that that's something that needs to happen more in a more in-depth fashion in the juvenile justice system. That's Gail Anash, who's a new intern with this committee, but he's also active at UVM on a number of issues relating to diversity, inclusion, and equity. And Skyler actually is the one who asked me to put this on the agenda to try to begin the conversation. Great. So I don't know if you have questions. I'd like to hear the rest of this testimony on the issue. It's a good way out. No. I can't talk from us. You'd be a legislator if only you know. Other questions for the subject? Mm-hmm. I think you're good at what's going on. If you looked at the, I mean, I just saw that, and I know Senator Baruth was hammering me from the time he entered the building here at Montpelier about marijuana, and decriminalization first and then legalization. And I'm wondering if we see a tremendous reduction in stocks and that stocks, and how does that impact this whole issue? That's a great question. That's something that certainly came up with the most recent data crunching in the state police. There was some juggling of the figures that there was an assumption, not a complete certainty, I should say, that there had been a change, and that it may correlate to the legalization. Not certain of that yet. Otherwise, in terms of how that will affect what we're doing on the panel, I can't say at this moment. I was just gonna say, Tim Ashford, Senate President, points to his reasoning for not wanting to go with prime enforcement on seatbelt laws is that they're disproportionately used. I got a few people of color. I feel like the same used to be true about very small bore marijuana offenses, as well as differentials in crack cocaine, powder cocaine. So the more we move away from the criminalization of voluntary things on the part of officers that can be invoked or not, I think we've decreased that in terms of systemic bias. And this has come up. I also serve as the co-chair of the Fair and the Partial Police Committee for the state police, and this has come up time and again when the day the dump happens in June, and we talk about contraband. There are various people who say, yeah, isn't this a little problematic though? What constitutes contraband? How much contraband? That certainly is an issue that's gonna come. And when do you invoke, like, you know. And that's a discretionary moment of possible implicit bias, yes. We're supposed to signal when we're switch lines, but who is cited for that? How is it used to advance it? I'm fighting for that. I'm fighting for those things. I always say. But I immediately thought of one of our colleagues, Senator, about, wouldn't that be true of helmet loss? Oh, God. The two Northies. Thank you, Doctor. When is the report to? When is it due? Yeah. Well, that's in November. Well, I would like to have a discussion with when that comes back, and perhaps we can add. I, Mark Hughes asked to testify with another person. I think we'd have time for four people today, so I told him we would take it up again, so maybe on November 13th we could. Never, okay. Would that be time for the report? Grant. Good. Good. Thank you. Thank you. I think we originally talked about it in October, but you wanted to. Yeah, we'll wait on the reports. It'll be helpful to have the report before we. 13th of November. I'll get you a deadline. Thank you kindly. November got shortened up. Right, yes. David, sure. Yeah, it's good to have a time. 30 days in November. There are only 30 days. Are there? Yes, there are. Good afternoon. Dave's here with the Attorney General's office. I just want to actually start by thanking Dr. Nussra and the Longo for taking on the chairmanship of this panel. It's obviously a very challenging subject. The panel is made up of people with divergent views and divergent responsibilities and viewpoints, and he's really done an excellent job of guiding the panel towards recommendations in a report. So we're grateful to him for the work that he's done. Beyond that, I think that speaking, I don't want to speak for the panel, just a brief overview conceptually, I think of some of the things the panel's really good focusing on discretionary points, and you've heard Dr. Nussra and Longo refer to that, discretionary points in the criminal justice system and what those may or may not mean for the disparities that we see and that are not really a point of dispute with regard to the outcomes. And the reality that we don't always have a lot of visibility into what is happening at those discretionary points, which brings us to the question of data and data collection. And again, this is not so much me speaking for the panel, but my observation, my office's observations about some of the areas that we hope to focus on and that we certainly hope end up being, and we will advocate for it to be part of the report, although ultimately that'll be the product of the full panel. And that's sort of just a broad overview. I largely want to defer to Dr. Nussra and Longo in terms of being a voice of the panel, but beyond that, I'm certainly happy to answer questions or anything that the committee I should say if they want to ask about it. Have you joined the attorney general around the state? Yes, I've been. How two of them or three? Three of them so far. Yeah, we had one in Wynuski, one in Hartford and one in Rutland and we are organizing one in Wyndham County at Browborough for October 17th. What's been the general reaction to the groups that attended? Yeah, they've been excellent conversations. They've been challenging conversations, very emotional conversations, I think as is appropriate and expected for the topic that we're dealing with. I feel like at each location, there were sort of slightly different emphasis that came out from the conversations that we had and these panels are real, I should say forums are really focused on eliciting input from community members. There is some education that goes on, some discussion about what services are provided by the state, but we really wanted them to be and at the behest of some of the leaders of color around the state, we really wanted them to be a time for community members to give state officials feedback on what they really see and feel around the state, that a lot of the leaders that we spoke to, both that was an essential thing that we needed to spend time on. And I think this is speaking from my own observations and in Wynuski, for example, I think we heard a lot about how important it is for state officials to interface with local community organizations that we may not routinely interface with. It may be the case that folks who are affected by some of the bias-motivated incidents and hate crimes are reluctant or fearful of themselves directly working with state authorities for understandable reasons, we may as state authorities feel like we are as sympathetic as we could possibly be and yet that still doesn't feel safe. And so having intermediaries who may be more comfortable with that was a point that came out there. I think in Hartford, one of the issues that came out was just doing the best we can to make sure that communities are aware of, and community members are aware of implicit biases that come out in sort of more everyday interactions and conversations and how that can feel unwelcoming even when community members may not fully understand what they're doing, so having more education interface around that. Ruffling, we heard a lot from, I'd say, gender and sexual minorities who had felt quite unwelcome, unfortunately, in various circumstances and service provision, and that was one of the areas that came out strongly in that form. When I say that, those categories that I said, those were personal observations about things that were emphasized differently. I'd say a lot of different issues. These are two-hour forums that we're having. A lot of different issues come out at each of them, so I don't wanna make it seem like that was the only thing that was happening at each one or dismissive of voices that had other things to say. But I think from my office's perspective, they've been really important. I think we have learned and we are going to be assimilating that. I think our goal is to have a final. We don't just want it to be a sort of traumaturism to use a denigrating term for what some folks might view us as dealing and going around the state and making people talk about all the tough things that have happened to them. We do want this to ultimately result in some change and some sort of action items that we will act on. And so our goal is at the end of the forums to produce a document that we hope to distribute to as many of the attendees as we can. We're not entirely sure we'll get everybody because the sign-ins aren't always complete. But we'll do the best we can to make everybody who came to those forums feel like we have heard what the people were saying. We're internalizing it and we're gonna try to turn it into change in terms of how we operate and how we work with state agencies and community partners. And will you be available when the report comes out in November? Yes. And there are other questions today. I know you said that data collection is something that the panel is looking at. And there's a bill in the House 284 talking about data collection as pretty comprehensive. Is that something that the panel, I don't know if you've had this specific discussions about that bill, would that be something that might be included in your recommendations on safety and further action on that, or do you think we need more? I don't, again, I'm hesitant to speak on behalf of the panel for what they might do. We would certainly support data collection that would include data collection from lawyers, and I use that term broadly to include prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges. I think one of the things that's rather opaque is that we have data at the beginning of the process, which is the police stops, and we have data at the end of the process, which is who is incarcerated and we're under supervision of the federal corrections, and we have relatively little visibility into what happens in the business thing. So more data coming in around that is something you support. I think, I wouldn't want to comment on any specific bill right now, but certainly, again, but I should say the concepts behind 284, I haven't read 284, the concepts behind 284 are something that we generally are fully in agreement with. I think it'll take a little work to produce a workable bill that can actually be, that our people can do operationally and then we'll have data collection that's reliable across the board. But conceptually, yes, I think something like that would be important. So, what's that? Call me Alex, it's calling me Alex. Alex, I believe so. I have a question and I don't even know if anybody can answer it, but are you looking in or having any concerns about what's going to be happening over the next 14 months as we enter into a political presidential election that may really escalate some situations that right now are sort of undercover or happening, may not be happening, but the political arena's gonna really get intense next year. And has there been any discussions on what that may look like here in Vermont? It's an ongoing concern and the reality is that we do have a rise in bias-motivated incidents in hate crimes and at least anecdotally, I'm not sure if we have statistical, like rock salt statistical data we can point to, but at least anecdotally, it certainly does seem to be the case and I would say personally, it is the case that it is related to the political environment that we are living in and to our leadership in Washington and the White House. That's a plain reality and I think that as we go forward through this election, it's gonna be a continuing concern. It is something that our office pays a lot of attention to and talks about frequently and especially our civil rights unit with Julio Thompson. I think if you want to go more into that topic, I would recommend setting aside some time for him to testify. I'm sure he'd be happy to talk about it. He's sort of the head in our office focused on that topic. Are we seeing situations, I mean are you seeing or anyone seeing situations dealing with white supremacy that's really starting to come to the surface here? Is it still an undercurrent? Is it still an undercurrent? White supremacist. I wouldn't say, no, I think that a good number of the events that we're hearing about are related to white supremacy and explicit white supremacist ideology. There are those and then there's the data regarding the justice system. Juvenile and adult. And I think it's to some extent we have to keep them separate. Those are incidents and how do we deal with those incidents and how do we educate people that it's inappropriate behavior? Seriously, I mean I spent my life working with delinquent kids and I had to teach them that. You know, leaning against the door and then walking into the store and stealing stuff. You can lean against the door but it's inappropriate to steal the stuff. He argued he didn't break in because he leaned against the door and the door opened. So I could therefore steal the stuff. Teaching people what's inappropriate and so forth is what ultimately will get us out of this and not allowing that behavior to be acceptable. And unfortunately it seems like we're more and more accepting some of this behavior. So I mean I think the data collection is very important but I was thinking about my comment about two persons of color being at Woodside. I don't know, they might have been there because they were older teens and that's the only place they could go. It may have been because they were 17 and had nothing to do with anything else. So I mean, we have the data but sometimes with our numbers are so small that it may not tell us the whole truth. But we do know that things are happening and so I'm looking forward to the report and having everybody back on the November 13th. The state house may be closed but we'll find a place to be and let you know where it is. We have actually the state house doing under renovations or doing something that's been closed on the 13th. So I have to find another address. IT? Oh we're gonna improve our IT. Is the battling the backup? So are there any other questions for David? It's not. Thank you David. Thank you. I look forward to seeing you on the 13th. And Mark Hughes will be on the 13th as well, as scheduled if you are available on the 15th of November. And our next witness is Christine Longmore, who was the first chair of the criminal and juvenile justice system, Mr. Geisler. Thank you Christine. Thank you. Thank you all for an opportunity to testify. A lot of times it's hard to figure out what to say because there's so much to say. So I'm just gonna say a little bit and submit my hand right personally. This is actually one of the folders that I have from all the work that we did in the panel. So I'm not here to testify. I mean I'm here today to testify not because so much that I'm grateful for a seat at your table in your space or in your state house. I'm here because I'm committed to standing up for racial justice. People including children are suffering. Changing that should be a priority with resources and results-based accountability. We've made some progress, but not enough. Years ago we talked about the disproportionate contact with brown and black people as experienced with the police. The local law enforcement responded by saying it could be our perception. We responded by saying we need to collect data to truly define the issue. Data has been collected and the facts are clear. Black and brown people in Vermont are not safe including children. A question that is central to this issue and has to be answered on an individual basis and from a systematic perspective in our justice system and all state systems is this is the question. Are black and brown people inherently more criminal or is it our justice system unfair and systematically racist? One of these statements is true and they are mutually exclusive. Once you decide what you believe you should use your answer to guide your work as public servants. Thank you. Are there any questions? So we'll take this up again when we have the report. And other people who want to testify besides Mark Hughes just contact Peggy on the line over there. We're going to meet again on Peggy and I and members of the legislative council and over a number of reports that are coming in and a whole bunch of them are due and we set this December 1st and December 15th. So it would require us I think to have two meetings in December I was planning on only having one but we have the Youth Law Offender Expansion benchmark report December 1st. Oh November 15th the corrections and health care report we're going to see if we can get that report moved up. The presumptive parole report December 15th even our jurisdiction report from the sentencing commission December 15th and then we have the justice re-investment areas of study due around December 15th. So what did we settle? December 10th and December 17th. I know that Mary wasn't able to make one of those meetings. I think it would be the 17th now because I can't be in either one. And Skyler wasn't able to make one of them. Probably not. This is the first time she's done another one. The two states are just totally out of point. I teach those. So you guys, Senator Lyons also can't make either one of those dates but she didn't fill out the legal parole so that's not a secret. I can make my fault. No, I can make it. The 10th and 17th. You can't make the 10th. No, I can't. Oh yeah, I can make both. I can try and arrange my schedule to get here for one of them, I'll see what I can do. November 8th. So November 8th we're going up to St. Albans? Yes, November 8th is the trip to St. Albans. November 8th. November 8th, yep. Do we meet again? I think we'll start that meeting at 11. Well, it's a long. Travel, you've got to travel off. Representative Shaw has a long distance. No, you're going to carpool, right? Yeah, we're going to carpool at 11. We'll still walk at 11. Two and a half. The date at 11 to three. Because we'll have lunch there and we can continue to meet during lunch. So in October we only have one meeting. We couldn't get very many people in October. Vacation time. And then Commissioner Schatz wanted me to extend the invitation if everybody wanted to do it at the conference site. Also an email out to you guys that didn't have a email. Is there a day or a month? 45. I guess to be determined. And then also one of the reminder about the conference at the Vermont Law School. We're going to need an email for me about that on September 27th. The children are going to use the program. Oh, that's to be even out justice. People have to be able to use the program. That's a big part of it. That's September. September is September. September, oh, no, September. When is the JFC, the JFO briefing on what December? Oh, I can imagine. Oh, we had that come out somewhere here. Oh, that's in December. Is that the first part of December? Yeah. OK. Usually that's right after Thanksgiving. Week after Thanksgiving. Oh, that's because Thanksgiving is coming up. Don't they usually put it together inside? Are we down here? We don't know. So the 10th and the 17th, I think that's what that is.