 Welcome to the joint committees meeting here, the correctives and the institutions, and House Judiciary as well. Today we're going to be reviewing getting the restorative justice 101, I guess we'll call it. Really trying to give us some good background knowledge before we get into H645, which is a pretty extensive bill related to community justice centers and restorative justice and diversion. And just to start, because these two committees have not had the joint session together before, and also for the purpose of our witnesses as well, we'll go around the table and introduce ourselves. I'm Martin Lulone, representative from South Burlington, Chair of the Judiciary Committee. Can we go this way? Yeah, let's go this way. And I'm Ella Simmons from Springfield and Chair of the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. Rev Wilknau from Rutland City. Representative Ella Chapin, he's no player. Rev Kangosa in Northfield, in Judiciary also, enjoying it. So far. Converted from West Rutland and the Vice-Chair. Angela Arseneau from Willis-Soon, House Judiciary, and enjoying Ken's enjoyment. Yes. Ben Rush from Franklin Bridge, Highgate, Richford, and Berkshire, on the Corrections and Institutions. John Ericson in Willis-Field, Cavendish, Baltimore. Troy Hedrick, House Corrections and Institutions, representing Franklin. A portion of it, anyway. Chip Toriano, representing Caledonia II District, Cardridge Center to Wolven, Vice-Chair of Corrections and Institutions Committee. And I'm Michelle Boslin. I serve on Corrections and Institutions, and I represent Wyndham III from Westminster. Karen Dolan, represented from Essex Junction and House Judiciary. We'll have the two who just arrived introduce themselves as well. Well, this is Connor Casey. He represents Montpelier. It's my buddy, Tristan Roberts. How's that? Oh, yeah. It's the 20th town. You're welcome to my world. I'm sure you miss and that would contribute to that, too. Yeah, I understand. Understood. That sounds like it's a fun committee. So I'm going to turn it over to Representative Dolan, who's going to run the show this morning. Over to you, Karen. Great, thank you, Chair. For folks who just came in too, just setting the stage that this is meant to be an RJ in Vermont 101 today to get that background on what restorative justice looks like in Vermont and really happy that we have a panel of folks who are going to help to tell that story and kind of talk about the goals for this conversation or talk about what is the history of restorative justice in Vermont? Why has it been an important tool in the state and how is it working? And maybe even what are some of the opportunities going forward? And this is all in preparation for our work that's going to be on H645, which both of our committees are going to be working on. So I think for chairs. So we're having the witnesses there. So yeah, we're going to have one more chair down here as well. Yeah, and I can move down. I want to make sure you're at the table, too. Yeah, right here. So we are going to go through a variety of folks. I think let's go ahead and just, you know, take questions and comments as we go through each person and we'll see where the morning takes us. But we're going to start off with a chair of corrections who has a great understanding of the history of how restorative justice has evolved in Vermont. I'm restored. Yes, in the hot seat. Yes. You got more folks. Two chairs at the end of the table. Just I don't feel a sense of it. Oh, wait. My folks get settled there. I got a chair right here. We can fit a chair right on the end right there. Why are you lost? Why don't you sit here? Why don't you sit here, Eric? There we go. We've got a chair there. But I don't have any physical chairs. Can we just help you out here for a second? Right. Oh, no way. Looks great. You look great. You have an amazing list of folks that. So for the record, my name is Representative Allison. Chair of the Corrections and Institutions Committee. And I've been around the block a few times. Maybe four or five times. And Representative Doean asked me to come in just to give folks the history of how restorative justice began. And I want to be very clear this is not talking about the bill. I know people are really interested in, I think at the note, 645. But this has really delayed the foundation for understanding how restorative justice came about in Vermont. And I'm willing to take any questions. I'm willing to be cross-examined by the chair of the House Judiciary at any time. Back in the late 90s, this is when it started. It was in the late 90s. We were building correctional facilities to handle the number of folks being incarcerated. We had built a 100-bed work camp in St. Johnsbury. We had just built a 250 to 300-bed central facility in Newport. And we were on the verge of building a 350-bed facility in southern Vermont, southeastern Vermont. And at the time, the Commissioner of Corrections, John Gortchick, was concerned with what was happening to corrections and happening in state policy. And he came before the, at that point, it was the institutions committee that we were dealing with corrections in a very small manner. He came before our committee. I was Vice-Chair at the time. And he said, you know, we can't build ourselves out of this. And we really need to start looking at what we're using our hard beds for in our correctional facilities. Because at that point in time, we were spending about $30,000 per inmate per year. And it was starting to bust open the corrections budget. It was starting to bust open our capital bill for building facilities. And he said, we're paying prime taxpayer dollars for these hard beds in our correctional facilities. And we're incarcerating folks that really don't need to be there. Because when you start looking at their risk factors and you start looking at their security, he said, we've got a lot of low-risk folks with low-risk security that we're holding in these hard beds and paying a tremendous amount of money. He said, we should be putting our hard beds to the highest risk folks to reoffend and the highest risk or the highest severity of crime. That's what we should be using our hard beds in our facilities for. And at that point in time, we were incarcerating a lot of misdemeanors. And it's very well known within the correctional world that when someone has a very low risk to reoffend and low severity in crime, if you expose them too long into the correctional system, you've opened up a pathway for them to be there for the majority of their life. And do we really want to do that? So what the commissioner of DOC proposed at that point in time was for those folks who are coming into the criminal justice system and landing in a correctional bed, he said, let's look at this through the eyes of the harm to the community that the person has created. And he suggested a restorative justice model in which, instead of the person being held in a hard bed in a correctional facility, the person will go before a group of peers in the community to repair the harm. And he started putting this in place and we in the institutions committees started doing this in statute within the corrections Title 28. And his philosophy was if you had these committees or community justice centers, that's where it came from, our community justice centers, to work with folks who have been charged with an offense or even those folks who are re-entering, but particularly in the upfront, to work with them to acknowledge the damage that they've done, acknowledge what has happened to the victim, and confront that and put in programs to help that person repair the harm to the community. So that's what instigated back in the late 90s the restorative justice program. And what happened with that is, and I'm going to direct you to Title 28, which is the corrections title, and it's in Section 3. And it's current statute, and it's a definition section. And it talks about restorative justice program. And it's in Title 28, Section 3, Number 11. Restorative justice program means a program developed and implemented by the commissioner of corrections consistent with state policy and legislative intent, provided by Section 2A of Title 28. So you go to 2A of Title 28, and it's the state policy and implementation of the restorative justice program. And it puts out the objectives, resolve conflicts, and disputes by means of a non-adversarial community process, repair damage caused by criminal acts to communities in which they occur and address wrongs inflicted on individual victims, reduce the risk of an offender committing a more serious crime in the future, and that would require a more intensive and more costly sanction, such as incarceration. And then it talks about the implementation of this. And this was all done in 1999. And there were some amendments to it in 2011. So the restorative justice program right now is housed in the corrections department of sorts, but it's housed in Title 28, which is in corrections. So what happened when we started funding these community justice centers? There were a few, one or two or three in the state. It was the initiative of corrections. And the money came from corrections to fund the community justice centers. And since then, it has been such a hodgepodge of how we deliver this type of programming to our homeowners. And this is what's before you now trying to figure out, what do we do now? Because whenever there were amendments to it, it was scattered all through the statutes. But the money was still coming from DOC for these community justice centers. But the community justice centers are doing much more now than what was envisioned originally back in the 90s. So I hope this helps in laying the groundwork in terms of what the restorative justice program is, in a way, and where it was developed. And because of this program that was instigated by corrections, 90 to 95% of the folks who are incarcerated now are due to felonies and violent crimes and a high risk to reoffend and high severity, severe severity in crime. And that was the goal back in the late 90s. So that's what's happened in our correctional facilities. We housed very, very, very few misdemeanors. The only misdemeanors, really, that are housed are domestic violence situations. The rest of them are dealt with back in the community. So that lays out the groundwork. I don't know if that's helpful, but I'm willing to take any questions. And that's great. Yes. Thank you. That's super interesting. And I'm wondering if any of the times that you were taking up amendments did the legislature or your committee look at where it made sense for these programs to be administered? Like, at some point, did it even come up? Like, should they stay in correction? Should they be anywhere else? So the only amendments that we really worked on was expanding the diversion program a little bit. And there was some conflict there between diversion and restorative justice at one point. And this was back probably about 2001, 2002. But since then, any amendments that have come in have come in through conference committees that the institutions committee wasn't part of. It could be in a judiciary bill that's not even connected to the committees of jurisdiction. Could be in the appropriations bill that's not connected to the committees of jurisdiction. That's the issue. It's a hodgepodge. There hasn't been that cohesive view. So those amendments came in. It could be in a bigger bill that maybe had one sentence or two sentences. Or it could be a funding change that occurred. And some of the funding that got changed was coming from other places besides corrections. So that also makes it extra hodgepodgey. So your role is to figure out how to streamline this and where it should be really housed in our statute. What the role of corrections is, what the role of the attorney general's offices, what the role of the CJCs are, that's part of it. And also, I'm going to give a little plug for the pre-trial services. That initiative started in corrections and institutions with a sequential intercept. And it was DOC where that pre-trial services was housed originally. And the money went to DOC. And a few years after that, it got shifted to the AG's office. So again, it's corrections and institutions that led the pre-trial services in the issue of the sequential intercept model and where you put in these interceptions to divert folks from either going into an incarcerated setting or on the tail end when they reenter the community so that they don't come back into corrections. I'm going to get corrected. You want to introduce yourself for the record, too? Ben Overgrasse from the Office of Legislative Counsel. I was just going to make a plug if everyone knew what the sequential intercept model is. I think we'll probably have folks who are going to probably talk about it in depth. I would imagine. But I have a question. OK. Well, so it's interesting. I hadn't really thought deeply about this on how it started and where it is now, that it's very in looking at the restorative justice policy in Title 28, it is very centered on the offender. And actually, restorative justice, in my view, one of the most important benefits of it is for the victim. And the victim actually getting some justice in a quicker and a better manner, it's restorative, as they say. But that's not how it started. It seemed like very much focused on the offender. And would you agree with that? I would, because what was happening is our beds, we couldn't keep up with building beds for people that were coming in. And that's why it started with the Commissioner of Corrections. He said, we can't build ourselves out of this. The last facility that got built was the one in the spring built at 350 beds, at $27 million. If you were looking even at a 100-bed facility or maybe a 200-bed facility, you're at over $100 million to build. If you're talking about a 200-bed facility, you're at $100 million, if not more to build. So back then, $27 million in 99 and 2000 was a tremendous amount of money within our budgets. And as the Commissioner said, corrections has no control over who comes to our facilities. We're the in. We just house people. We put them up. But we have no control who's coming through those doors. So we're the holding place. So that's why the focus was on the offender, because we're trying to deal with our beds. So since that time, in any time that you've dealt with the Restore of Justice and the CJCs, has it shifted at all to the victim-centered approach? I think it's more involved with the community as a whole. But it's still like the pretrial services in terms of having what we call back then pretrial monitors to really hook in with an offender who was being charged in court and arraigned. It's the CJCs in some places that submitted the bid to be that entity to work with that offender. So it's been more focused on the offender, but the community piece, I think, is really evolving more now. Because the CJCs, one thing that also happened, it was probably back around 2003, 2006, right in there with the CJCs, the COSAs started to be developed. And that started in LaMoyle County. Can you hear what COSA is doing for? Circle of Support and Accountability. And it all was centered during one or two CJCs. It started in LaMoyle County. It was Senator Susan Bartlett that started it. And it's the offender, the person that's been charged, or even a person re-entering from a correctional facility. There's a group of community volunteers that put a circle of support around that person. Could be for housing. Could be for treatment. Could be for employment. It could be for family issues. But if you could support that person when they're re-entering, they're going to succeed. They're more likely to succeed in the community than re-offend and go back into an incarcerated center. So the COSAs developed. So gradually, your CJCs were developing into more of a community system. And the CJCs depend on volunteers, for the most part, from the community. I have a couple of questions. I appreciate the history of it. So I've been in the CJC field for eight years now. And I remember when I first started just trying to understand the history. So I so appreciate it. Two things is, so that started in the 90s, can you share like how many times has or has there been times to reevaluate the system and like about is this making sense? Have these conversations taken place or is this what we're going to be moving into hopefully this session one of the first times? Well, the compensation started, I think, three years. You were on the institutions. It started a little bit before that, like the year before. It was starting in the Appropriations Committee. Because the budgeting, there was budgets for DOC. There was budgets for Attorney General. There were budgets for diversion. There was budgets for restorative justice. And nobody could get their hands around what was really the program. And are they duplicating the money? Are some programs getting two different streams of money for the same thing? So in my conversations with the Chair of Appropriations at that time was Representative Mary Hooper. I said, let me try to see if we can bring this together so we have a more cohesive understanding of what restorative justice is and all the players. So I asked three members of my committee. It was Representative Morrissey, Representative Coffey, and Representative Dolan, who was on the committee at the time, to really start looking at our restorative justice programs. And how can we streamline it? How can we at least look at the budgeting piece to see where the money is coming from and where it's going? Because there's a lot of pressure on DOC's budget now for restorative justice. And it's not even in DOC's bailiwick, per se, anymore. So let's really look at this. And when they started looking at it, they just realized how complicated it was. And then Karen has taken this on as being a member of your committee, Judiciary Committee, and a result of the work that has occurred over the past year or two, 645 is before us, to really look at the system as a whole and restructure it, maybe, so that it works in today's world. So I would just add on that the Joint Justice Oversight Committee took a lot of testimony in 2022 in advance of the current biennium on justice issue. And that informed Karen in my work on this as well. So that's the goal of 645. But let's look at this program. Let's understand where it came from and how it came about, and then how it has changed over the last 20 years. And what we need now, which is very similar, but it may be defined differently, it may be funded differently, because appropriations is a big piece of this. Thank you. So you raise a good point about looking at what it's funding and trying to get on top of that. Having been in the nonprofit world that contracted with the state all the time, I also think about, in addition to making sure no program was being funded twice for the same service. Coach, you need to be on mute. You're on unmuted. OK. Sorry. Thank you. I wondered where the voice is coming from. Are there gaps where certain place is not getting funded and the amount of work, the amount of unnecessary work that goes into doing a report for DOC, doing a report for the AGs off? Like, we could make things more efficient as well and make sure things are covered well. And I think that, as we look at this like the goals, should be aware of what it's like from the contractor's perspective, because more work and resources can go to the mission when they're not going to the 14 financial reports that have to be filed. Makes sense. That's your work. That's what the bill hopes to do. To do. So thank you for setting the stage. Really appreciate having how it started. And so now we have some folks who are going to let us know where things have gone since then and what current programming looks like. And I believe, Willie, you're up first. OK. Good luck. So if you want to introduce yourself for the record and go through your info. Good morning. My name is Willa Farrell, and I am working the Attorney General's Office. My office is just a key corner from here. And my title is Court Diversion and Pre-Trail Services Director, and I am in the Community Justice Unit. And I'm really excited to be here. It's really rewarding for those of us who work in the realm of restorative justice to have legislators putting devoted energy and interest in the work that we do that we think is so valuable and so important for our communities. I have to add a little history of my own because, so just interestingly, when I started my job in 2006 and in 2007, there was another study. And my colleague from DOC, Derek Miodovnik, and I were involved. I have that somewhere. So this discussion has been going on for a while. I and my colleagues at DOC and DCF, Department of Corrections and Department for Children and Families, and the community organizations which we fund have had various task force and such that we've called to discuss these issues from more of a system community and state funder level. So there's been a lot of thought and consideration at the community level as well on these topics. I do want to note historically a bit about court diversion, which started in the 70s. And Representative Triano was one of the early developers in Caledonia County of court diversion, which I think followed a similar approach to what Representative Emmons and John Gorsuch brought to Vermont within the correction system in terms of keeping low risk people out of the system in the first place. And so Vermont has a long tradition of valuing what we might call as alternatives or different approaches from the standard criminal prosecutorial process. That's what we're here to talk more and explain more. What does that look like? I think an important thing about restorative justice, despite our statutes, is to think about it not as a program. So to me and to those of my colleagues, we see restorative justice as an approach. A restorative justice informs many programs. You'll have programs in the schools that follow restorative justice approaches. And we often now talk about restorative processes or being informed by restorative justice principles as a way to try to capture that the values and approaches that are named and statute and that Chair Emmons described can be used and inform many different programs, services, interventions, both in the criminal and youth justice systems, as well as in other parts of our world, where there's some conflict or wrongdoing that happens. So I just have to feel like I want to say that at least one more time, that restorative justice is an approach on a set of principles and values. Excuse me. I brought with me a few handouts. And I thought I might start with one that is modeled on the sequential intercept model. And these are also on, at least I know the Judiciary Committee's web page. They're on our side. Great. So this is a document that I developed with my colleagues at the Department of Directions, Children's and Families, and all the community providers, which are organizations, fund who do different work. Yeah, I just have a question. Yes. It's a process rather than a program. But then in order to administer those processes, we have to have some sort of program. And when we start dealing with language going into the law, we have to have that set up straight so there's not too much confusion. So maybe it should be layered into the definition of the program. It's a really good point because we are, when it comes down and when I talk about this, we are talking about programs and services that have this common theme of restorative justice. But they are distinct programs. And with distinct funding sources, distinct goals, distinct groups of people that people or staff are working with. So the sequential intercept model, which many of you are probably familiar with, grew out of an approach from the federal government and SAMHSA, the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Administration, something named like that. And basically it looked at the criminal legal system and different points of intervention where you could originally really sort of take people out of the system or provide an intervention or support that would address typically mental health or substance use treatment needs. In Vermont, we've sort of expanded that concept to use it as a framework or a lens to look at the criminal legal system and what's the sequence that somebody being, who commits an offense in law enforcement arrests or cites them, a prosecutor may charge, et cetera. And so our document here, I thought, for the purposes of today, I would focus more on points one and point two and touch on point three. So really at the point where law enforcement, when somebody commits a crime or an alleged crime and law enforcement is involved, in this document, we show the service or a program, might be a good way to use it. The statute that governs that, who makes the referral or is the decider of who is offered or directed to that service, who are the people that we're trying to work with, who funds it and where is it available. So I will take, for example, in the middle of point one, you'll see restorative panel with the words pre-charge and parentheses. So I thought I'd walk through that as an example, given the bill that was before both the committees. So this is a statute, this is a set of services, a program that does not have a statute, particularly governing it. Law enforcement refer people before they've been considered to have committed a crime that had not been charged by the state's attorney. Following state's attorney's policy for their county can refer to a program youth and adults are involved and the Department of Corrections has done with that. If you move into pre-point two, court diversion is the program, one of the programs that our office funds and I administer their statutes, it's prosecutor post-charge referral, again, youth and adults. This is a document that I think captures the distinction that Chair Emmons raised about pre and post adjudication and that the different state departments which have purview over that. And you can see there's sort of a medley at the bottom there in terms of where, who's funding which set of services. Within the Attorney General's Office, our, I have to say, I've just been really helpful to have statute that outlines the purposes and the goals of the service, the rights and responsibilities of people who participate, confidentiality provisions and the like that has been really valuable to create what I feel is a high quality set of services around the state that is following similar policies and procedures. May I ask a question? Yes. I really appreciate this because I feel like it shows the complexity of the system and the different players that are involved in this. And where is I going with my question? With the different players that are involved with it and then the statutes that are also connected to it. I'm wondering if you can talk more about how the services are available statewide. Yes. Like available and then versus the, are they implemented statewide? I appreciate the question represent Dolan. That on our document, we were very careful to use the word available because every county or the DOC funds not necessarily by county, there may be one and one organization that DOC funds has this have similar grant agreements and that these services are provided depending on both gatekeeper or referral sources and so I think maybe I would speak to pre-charge given the context of the bill that you'll be taking up in that to my understanding and I do not administer obviously the grants from the Department of Corrections. Those grants provide for the delivery of the full array of services that you see here under which DOC is named including pre-charge in the communities where state's attorneys have set up policy or memorandum of understanding or directed their law enforcement to have pre-charge and the most notable example I think is Chittenden County where we've had two states attorneys make that clear priority that they want to use a pre-charge program. You have a rigorous set of pre-charge services being provided in that county. To the point that the referral numbers to court diversion actually are relatively smaller which I can explain in some data momentarily than you might see in another county where a state's attorney has decided they want to deflect people out of the system using court diversion and you also see the relationship I think post adjudication with the restorative panels that DOC funds. So if a prosecutor doesn't offer, doesn't have a pre-charge service in their community or chooses not to offer court diversion to that person or they fail court diversion or they don't want to go through court diversion after if the person has found guilty and adjudicated that person may have as part of their probationary sentence a referral requirement perhaps to participate in a restorative process. And so that's, there's, I don't know if it's like a domino, there's probably some metaphor I could come up with that shows the inter-relationship between how services you may see more in one community than another but they are sort of linked I think in terms of decision makers where they, you know what they're, how they view the best approach. Can you clarify your question? So I just want to make sure I understood were you saying that in some counties people can do the restorative panels but not do the pre-charge diversion or that they have to be a package? What I'd like to say is that, well A, the people, these programs diversionary process is voluntary but you don't ask to go, you are offered, you know it is the state's attorney or the prosecutor who is saying to an individual would, here's an offer for court diversion. So it is really the prosecutor's prerogative and they look at the facts of the case and the situation and make their decision as to whether they think this is an appropriate case for court diversion or whether they want to prosecute the case. So each of these services exist in all communities in Vermont but it is up to the elected state's attorney to set policy and direct their staff and or law enforcement in their community as to whether to use pre-charge or whether diversion is an appropriate referral or not or how they choose to prosecute obviously, I'm sure. I don't work in the, you know, it continues that. But if they don't do pre-charge, can a restorative panel still, it's still, yes, yes, and I guess I would say all of those what I've been talking about pre-charge diversion and restorative panel, they all are restorative processes and a person who participates in one of those, any three may actually experience a very similar process of talking or meeting face to face with a victim if the victim was there with community members, talking about what they did, how they, what the impact of their behavior was and how can they make it better? And I think, I know Rachel will talk more about this but I really think it's important to recognize the value of that process and the people really actively being accountable for their behavior. If you go in a courtroom, if you're a defendant in a courtroom, you don't speak much, your lawyer speaks for you, you may answer a few questions of the judge but you are not actively talking about what you did, how you hurt somebody, how you harmed your community and what are your ideas about how to make things better? And similarly, the person who was harmed, the victim doesn't have that opportunity in a courtroom, they may have a victim impact statement that the state's attorney's victim advocate may speak but those are usually in much more serious crimes for much of the misdemeanors that affect people, the local shop owner doesn't have a chance to talk and have support from their community about what it was like to have somebody, you know, vandalize their storefront, for example. We have a question from my committee representative, Hi, thanks for being here. When I'm not here, I work at UVM and some time ago, the division of student affairs where I work jumped all into the philosophy of restorative practices as we engage with students on campus. Specifically, I work at the Center for Student Conduct so I'm talking with students a lot who have caused harm and I can see, and we happen to be a department within the division that has the longest, aside from the office of student community relations, the two of us kind of have the longest longevity of staff members, there's been a lot of turnovers so we're kind of constantly educating new peers as they enter the division and I want to punctuate the fact that yeah, absolutely, this is a philosophy, right? This is an approach and my experience has been that it's a significant leap of faith to ask somebody to engage with that approach, right? Before we took on a restorative approach in our office, we were incredibly punitive and since we have committed to a restorative approach to dealing with matters of conduct on campus, recidivism has gone incredibly down. The engagement I have with students has improved drastically and I think the real kind of core of the harm caused has been addressed in much better ways but again, it's a leap of faith. I'm curious to hear your thoughts, right? I worry right now from this seat kind of the vibe that's coming of returning to more order, more punitive, our colleagues are about to, on the judiciary are about to really wrestle with the retail theft legislation. Do you have thoughts, I'm gonna have thoughts with my committee on the impact that's gonna have on incarceration rights but do you have thoughts on how to convince that leap of faith on such a large scale and have it, that philosophical approach reside within committees, within this house as we wrestle with legislation that I think is designed to kind of bring us back to a more punitive model. Does my question make sense? I think so. There's a broad, broad, broad group of people that have to be convinced that when we're talking about new legislation in this, my example right now is a retail theft example and we're gonna say we're gonna say restorative, right? The response from the church street storefronts is gonna be that's not enough, right? I'm tired of seeing people coming to my shop one, two, three, four times a week to steal. I have two thoughts I would share with the committee. One is that I think you make a really good point about a leap of faith. Restorative justice is a huge paradigm shift. We all grew up in cultures and societies unless we live in some indigenous community far removed from where most of us in this human grew up that is punitive. So it is a big shift. I think people become to an appreciation of restorative justice through experience and storytelling and I think Rachel has some colleagues coming who are going to, I hope for those of you who may be less familiar with restorative justice get a flavor of what the value of that. So large scale that's hard to do but I'm a strong believer in a mixture of data and storytelling to convey the value of a different approach and I think both exist. And the second point I would make because within one of our diversion programs which we call TAMRAC is really geared to people who are struggling with mental health treatment who have a mental health problem or a substance use problem and our focus in that program is really to help people stabilize before they can engage in a restorative process. It's very hard if somebody is not sober to really engage in a restorative process. It is very difficult for people to get into treatment. It is very difficult for people to find a place to live and our staff, what I hear are pretty sad stories about what they're trying to do to help people in terms of basic needs in order that they can engage in a restorative process. So I think you can't look at these issues without considering the broader societal challenges that we face in Vermont. So it's not a simple answer and I don't have any immediate solutions but I do know from what I hear and frankly what I see is that we need more housing. I'm not saying anything that any of you do not know but I feel strongly and I want to share that. Thank you. Willa for that. I see we have a couple more questions. One additional, I just want to put out and see if you agree with that question is that it also can be and or both like you can have a criminal legal response to an offense and you can add a restorative justice approach. It doesn't have to be an either or which I'm not saying I'm advocating that has to be both but I just want to throw that out there that that can be. Would you agree? I would and I think this document captures that that you see a restorative process through COSA being provided to people some of whom have committed pretty serious offenses and who have been incarcerated for years. So it's not always a deflection out of the standard legal system and which I think is actually a value that we can imbue these principles at different points at the same time as maybe taking a more standard approach. So I saw representative Laroche and then Triana. Just an operational question. Can voluntarily enter pre-charge and then you can be ordered by the court from by diverging question. Then are the services provided identical? The problems the same or are they going in different places? Is there a duplication effort or is this consolidated? I would just add a clarification that people who participate in the pre-charge program are referred by law enforcement. People who go through court diversion are referred by a prosecutor. That the process may look similar. I would agree with you. And probably even more so if the services are being provided by the same organization. So they may have the same community volunteers and they'll be like, today, tonight we're meeting with people someone who's being charged or not charged. I'm just suggesting to be effective and actually re-entering people into society that are actually better. Then it would seem that there would be a certain skill set or certain group of techniques that would work for that. And if it works one place, it should work in the other place. I would say that the skills and the values are very similar throughout these services and people being trauma informed using motivational interviewing, reflective listening, et cetera, similar. I also see that. Yes, I think we have a bunch of questions. So let's get through these questions and then we'll see where we need to go from there. So when we speak of history and storytelling, I have a few things. So from a defense perspective, which I worked for in 35 years of my career, we saw that the initial repressive boards really didn't have the complete concept of what restorative justice was. It was run by the Department of Corrections and what we found from a defense perspective is that it was more punitive than restorative simply because it was a new concept and it wasn't really grasped well. So we actually stopped using it to a point where the changes were made and what I hear and see now and knowing you, Willa, for years, it's heartening to me to know that we have progressed to a place where we're looking at pre-charge, we're looking at continuing and strengthening our diversion program. So it's really an important piece to me having the history that you mentioned before as being in the second diversion board in the state. But I also have to tell one story. As traveling, the good fortune traveling in the South Island of New Zealand where restorative justice concept was originated with the Maori people, I found we met two women who were running a restorative justice program in the South Island of New Zealand and they were taking homicides and they were bringing those convicted of homicides in corrections to meet with families to reconcile what they had done. And I thought that was really a very interesting piece, nothing that we would ever see here, but it's still in the nation that where restorative justice began, it has progressed to that level and it was again, it was very heartening to hear that. So just a story and a little history. Thank you, Willa, for being here. So I see we have some folks online and then I see a hand in the rooms. We'll go back and forth. Is there a representative, Oliver? Are you okay? Yeah. I guess my first question while we're on the bus right now I'm trying to screen by my profile that's where I'm going to go in a very good, recharging simply the screen board before it becomes involved in the state's office? Correct, yes. It's a referral by a law enforcement officer prior to the prosecutor seeing the case. Okay, but the end result but it could still be the state's attorney that could still receive a case on this. Yes. Based upon performance. Correct. And or just need to file one. Typically, yeah. I think more of the former if somebody doesn't engage or complete the pre-charge program, it's possible they will then be charged by the prosecutor. Thank you. You're welcome. And did I see that there was another question online? Somebody meant, no? Okay, we're going to switch to the room then. Hi, when was the last time a feasibility study was conducted on the restorative programs in regards to utilization of effectiveness? I don't know of any feasibility study. Or any type of study in which the report was issued on back to maybe legislative in regards to the effectiveness and the utilization of the current programs that are in existence. So annually I submit a report to the legislature that shows the number of referrals by county. And in my budget presentation, I include information around successful completion rates. We collect data, amounts of restitution collected and paid. In 2019, CRG crime research group did a study of diversion that looked at recidivism as well as cost benefit comparing to cases going through the court. So I can only speak to that realm. I don't know enough about any work that DOC or DCF may have done for the services that they fund. So what you're saying is the last report that you're aware of is from 2019? In terms of looking at recidivism and cost benefit, but we collect data and report annually on the number of people who serve and are successful completion rates. We don't, frankly, have the capacity to do more rigorous evaluation than those few metrics. So in regards to the currently there's a possibility of a bill that's coming across with restorative practices and maybe some nuances that you want to add in. Do you believe it would be widely important if we can do a feasibility study of what's currently in place and then go from that information? I'm tempted to talk now about the bill and I'm not sure I should have given time, but I do have thoughts that I would be happy to share with the committee in regards to your question. I just have one last little point. I just see that we're implementing, it seems like we're beginning to just stack and stack where stepping on back and taking a look of what's already in place, provide a feasibility study to guide us along what the next steps would be that's actually best practice. And I believe that is also outlined by SAMHSA and their restorative programs. I mean, I'll just say briefly that I think partly what I see is we do have certain services and have an understanding and knowledge of what is effective. And I think it was Chair Emmons who talked about moving things around. And I think that's more of what I understand part of what the legislature is interested in doing is reconfiguring what in some ways already exists and providing some more framework. And I would say that as part of that process, it's really important that we think about how do we know that we're doing the work well and what are our specific goals in doing that work. Those are really important pieces for me. Agreed. Thank you. Oh, let's have legislative council weigh in. Well, just on that one point. So as Ms. Farrell alluded to, CSG kind of set the stage in S-14 last year, it created the coordinated justice reform advisory council which is basically set up to do exactly as you're suggesting to assess where the state is at in its various initiatives and its funding mechanisms. And it's comprised of I don't know the composition off the top of my head, but basically everybody that's sort of involved pre and post adjudication to look at it and then to suggest legislative priorities and fiscal needs. So it has been set up, it's just in its amazing stages. Thank you for that. Right, yes. Thank you. I don't know who this question might be more suited for anyone at the table, but wanting to, when we talked to John Gorchuk last year in our committee about this history and I asked him what would be most significant for making restorative justice more common. He talked about the importance of schools and doing this in schools and I know there's some ways in which DCF and DAG touch on schools, but more, you sort of already have to be down a certain road maybe of being at risk to be touched by those programs. And can anyone speak to sort of what's anything being done to normalize restorative justice and just comment dispute resolution in schools? I know you're speaking on that. Yeah, I think Rachel will talk more. I do know the agency of education has funded and supports restorative justice. I think that's probably good for, and I feel like that is an important conversation and probably separate from the, it's very broad as we're learning for restorative justice in Vermont. So I'm gonna take a couple more questions and then, well you have a few things you want to do to wrap up before we move to Rachel. So it's actually just more of a comment. So Rep Triano had mentioned how in New Zealand he was aware of a case where they used even murder cases in restorative justice and I was just gonna say there are some places in the United States, particularly in native communities but even I had a professor in a restorative justice program class at Vermont Law School and she had done murder cases in some housing communities in New York City and they've actually been really effective and in Canada they use them in, I did some case studies of family sexual abuse and restorative justice was actually used really effectively to mend these very broken communities and broken families and so I guess I just wanted to say in terms of restorative justice, I think Willa mentioned that it's a paradigm shift and it's a paradigm shift not just on the part of the system but also on the part of the person who's perpetrated the harm because I think in our system historically people are used to like oh I have to go to court maybe I'll get off, you're not acknowledging if you did something wrong, maybe you're guilty but you might be guilty and you still are hoping to get out without too much punishment but the idea with restorative justice is that every person who has done some wrong when you go into that system you need to own it and you need to listen to what you've done to impact people in your community or in your family or businesses and then what can you do to make it right because that's the goal of restorative justice is how do you heal the harm and how do you make it right and it is a huge paradigm shift and it's one that if it works it's way more effective at providing a stable and safe community for everybody so I'm really excited to see the direction we're moving in and I just wanted to kind of make that statement. Thanks. I think Rachel's gonna get into some of those principles of restorative justice as well. Are you here to anchor us? Yeah. So Willa go ahead. I just wanted to reference my other handouts so I won't go into detail but the next two pages are an excerpt from the annual report that I submit to the legislature that shows data by county and the percentage of cases coming to divergent relative to the misdemeanors filed in that county and I'd be happy at any time to talk more about that with the committee that gives you a sense of what this, yes. So this does not capture pre-charge the burden. Correct. This is just. The case is that. Yes. I think there is, if we go on, I think both committees have it on their website. They're under Rachel's name, there's a chart that shows panel referrals by pre-charge and post adjudication. It's not called pre-charge on the data that you received, it's called criminal direct. So that's what pre-charging is with the DOC reporting system. Okay, great, thanks. And then the other document I provided, I wanted to show that captures a sense of who is providing these services in your communities by county. So you'll see, maybe I'll just take, let's say, Bennington County, you'll see that the Center for Restorative Justice has grants from the Attorney General's Office, DCF, and the DOC. And so they are the organization in Bennington County that provides all the services on that first page that I brought with me, the sequential intercept model. And I will say that I think part of the confusion that arises is the term community justice center. So the Center for Restorative Justice is considered a community justice center because it receives funding from the Department of Corrections. But in Rutland, you'll see there is the Rutland County Community Justice Center. It is part of the community action agency in that county. So it's confusing. And I do think that's an important piece is to understand when we talk about community justice centers, we're talking about organizations that may be municipally based or may be a nonprofit, and that diversion programs sometimes exist in an organization that might be called a CJC or it might be in the community action agency as it is in Orleans County. So I have really tried to, in the same way, talk about restorative justice as an approach to talk not about the programs we're funding and that we are working with community partners and community organizations and try to focus on those more generic terms I think will help in the conversation. Thank you. And one piece that I feel like the first handout and the second really do give visualization to the complexity of the system that we are looking to potentially rework of the variety of programs that exist across the sequential intercept model and then who is delivering those programs and services in each county. And some it's one and some it's two or three entities and how do they coordinate and work together? I think these are some of the conversations that come up. So thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. So I think I'm not seeing any hands that we're gonna switch gears and have Rachel share more about what are the ins and outs of restorative justice and how it's playing out with Vermont. Yeah. Hi everyone. My name is Rachel Jolley. I lead the Burlington Community Justice Center which is part of our city of Burlington municipality under the Community and Economic Development Office. I'm gonna underscore some of the points that my colleagues made just to back us up on that big picture around restorative practices, restorative principles, and then get into in the CJ system, how does it look at one of these centers? So just to underscore again that nothing is new about restorative principles or practices, very ancient indigenous communities around the globe. New Zealand didn't invent it. It is indigenous communities, all of our ancestors probably practiced these kinds of principles in some way. New Zealand is a standout in terms of taking it into the system and making it the norm rather than the exception, which it is here. But the principles of restorative practices include that it's voluntary by voluntary nature. There's equity, accountability, and responsibility as the core despite some of the things you might have heard, voice, and a relational approach. It is about impacts and dynamics of whole communities. And in fact, in many indigenous communities, maybe these words aren't being used, but those relationships are looked at at the broadest sense in terms of non-human relations as well. So as Willis said many of times, it's not a program, but it is a paradigm. And those principles are incorporated in services and programs. And so those principles can be used proactively as we heard in the schools. It can be used in any kind of sector proactively when people put emphasis on community building and on relationship building and how can we develop healthy relationships so that when there's harm, because we know there will be if humans are involved, when there's conflict, we care about those relationships enough to want to repair them. So that's where it is really exciting when we look at using those in the school setting or even in government settings around how we run our meetings or how we set the tone of relationship building so that we care about later on when there's gonna be conflict, we care enough to invest in the repair. And since the 70s in this country, restorative practices and respiratory principles have been brought into the Western criminal justice system where as a contrast, as a stark contrast, we look at the paradigm of our criminal justice system. Generally the questions being asked are what law was broken, who did it, and what punishment do they deserve? Where in a restorative approach, you're asking what happened, could be a law was broken, could be there's conflict, what happened, who was impacted, what are their needs, and whose obligation is it to meet those needs? So that kind of paradigm that very much counters from the punishment equals accountability, which is what the criminal justice system does hold as a base level. And I also wanna underscore that this is not either or. It's not that restorative practices or restorative justice is always the right way to go for every case and that criminal justice is bad and jails are bad and in terms of, I will say like the current paradigm of jails, I think is not really effective, but in terms of removing somebody from the general population for the safety of themselves or others, it's not that we're saying that that kind of concept doesn't have validity as well. So definitely there's nuance involved all throughout. In terms of taking it into Vermont, I think Vermont has been a leader because we have funded through these various sources as well as the Center for Crime Victim Services, 23 centers, some hold the names of CJCs, others don't as you've heard, but 23 centers in Vermont get state funding to use restorative practices in the criminal legal system in some way. And so that's unique in this country. There's many states in the US that use restorative practices, mostly in either isolated non-profits or maybe counties and regions where police departments have embraced it and there's a region that embraced it. The fact that we have it statewide is something to be proud of, I think. And so we do have these four funders, the ones listed on the sheet as well as I will add the Center for Crime Victim Services, though also to representative Lalonde's point, victim services has kind of been an afterthought in terms of specified funding. So the Center for Crime Victim Services is able to serve six of those 23 agencies with dedicated victim services funding. And the Burlington CJC happens to be a proud recipient, a lucky recipient of some of that funding for a parallel justice program that is uniquely centered on the victim's rights, which I'm really glad. I mean, that's a key part of a relational approach is thinking about all parties that were impacted by crime and obviously victims are one of the most directly impacted, but also that community piece, which Restorative Practices is really good at trying to add is when conflict or crime or harm happens, what have been the ripple effects for that harm and who again, whose obligation is to meet the needs of the repair. And so in terms of like, I wanted to underscore those principles and then now getting at it how it's practiced in the ground, we'll give you that overview of the funding now that is stretched, we have these services are offered, the same services are like kind of theoretically available in every state or in every county rather, but pre-charge is one that is kind of not similarly offered around the state. Although DOC would fund it in any CJC that they fund, not all state's attorneys take them up like that CJC, that opportunity up. And so Chittenden County is a county that has very consistently over the past many, many years like enabled the law enforcement agencies to give those referrals. There are MOUs in place with all four CJCs in Chittenden County that really have been working very well for a number of years where we get these direct referrals from law enforcement and use Restorative Practices. And I also wanna underscore a point that Willa made, again, even though the program name might be different, pre-charge, court diversion, reparative panel, the process is virtually identical. The same idea of taking in the information from the person responsible for the crime or the harm, the person impacted by it, getting that information of how they've been affected by it and then seeking repair in some kind of process. It can be called a panel, it can be called a circle process, a restorative conference, there's many tools to use that are using the same elements of looking at that repair. And so I thought we'd shift to a story of how that looked on the ground in the Burlington CJC to better illustrate, again, this is a pre-charge case, but it could be fairly similar in a court diversion case or in a reparative panel, which is post adjudication. So just keep that kind of in mind in terms of what your hearing has the same elements throughout that system. I'll hand it off to my colleague to introduce yourselves for the room, please. For the record, sorry. Do we have a question before we start this? These organizations, are they 501c3s? Are they corporations? Great question. That's one of the ways that we are diverse. When Chair Emman started us out in the late 90s with DOC funding through the Community and Restorative Justice Unit at its height, there was 19 CJCs, almost all of those were municipal based at that time. Now, I think there's only five of those 23 centers that are municipal based. Four in Chinning County, or six, rather. Four in Chinning County, the Franklin County Grand Isle is municipal and Montpeliers CJC is municipal. I believe Barry might be a hybrid, but most of them are 501c3s, most of them are non-profits. So in that way it's different. And the other ones are under town or city governments? Right, so Chinning counties are all under our town or government. Any other questions? Any other questions? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Sorry, Becky. For the record, I'm Becky Penruthy. I work at the Burlington Community Justice Center and I like to say I'm a restorative justice practitioner with 20 years of experience and my pronouns are she, her. Stay representative, Taylor Small from Wynuski and also a CJC restorative justice participant. So I guess I'll start out by saying that what Rachel said is correct that all of these processes, pre-charge diversion are very similar. Once participants, victims, others are with us, we do a very similar process, but we're here to talk about pre-charge today and the part where it's dissimilar is the immediacy of the referral and the outreach. So I'll just start by saying that at the Burlington CJC, the pre-charge referrals from law enforcement come directly to me. And when I get one in my email, I'll review it and decide sort of who is, at least initially who's gonna work on the case with me. And so I'm reading through the case and in the best case scenario, you reach out to the victim in the case and I read the victim's name. I didn't know that it was representative Small, but it was and I reached out to her and I said, Taylor, it's Becky at the Burlington Community Justice Center. We knew each other just a little bit, but not as well as we know it better than at all. And I said, I have your case. So Taylor's case was, the charge name assigned by law enforcement was Unlawful Mischief. I read the case and reached out to Taylor and I said, I have your case. What do you need? Just to give some backstory on what happened in August of last year, I was just going to work. It was a regular day pulled off of my street and just within a thousand feet of my home had a near accident, a near traffic violation there. And I didn't think anything of it and pulled into my local gas station to get my caffeine so that I could be ready for work. And you go there every day. And I go there every single day. It's my little routine when I'm down at Winooski. And as I pulled into the gas station, I heard the screech of a car and another car pulled in immediately next to me. And I didn't think anything of it at first except for when this car pulled up parallel to me and I saw that the driver was very agitated. And he looked at me and then he proceeded to reach over into his passenger seat and was rifling around. And I could see that he was going to grab something. Everything in my body in that moment told me that it was not a safe situation. I chose not to leave my car. I chose not even put my car in park. I said, I think I'm going to keep the car rolling here. And as I started to leave, I saw this man leave his vehicle with a hammer in his hand. As he started yelling and charging my vehicle, I was terrified in that moment. I had no idea what was going to happen. I had no idea what this man's intention was, but all I could assume is that he was going to inflict some kind of bodily harm. And so I began to drive off and as I drove off, I heard the crash of my back windshield and the glass come in to my car as I pulled onto the street. I immediately called law enforcement to report the incident. I drove safely about a half a mile down the road to a local rescue organization. So I didn't know if this man was following me. I had no idea what had happened to make him so upset that he was going to throw a hammer. And as I gave the information, shaking, I waited for a bit. And then I told officer, I was like, I just, I want to go back home. I'm a thousand feet from my home. That's where I want to go. And I went home to my then fiance, who was wonderful and like pulled my car around and backed it in because I didn't want to do that in the moment. But I was terrified. All I could think was what was going on in this moment. And as I was in my house, I saw that there was a group of individuals across the street. It seemed like a group of construction workers waiting on someone. And so I sat there anxiously wondering, okay, a man came out my car with a hammer. There's construction workers waiting outside. Does he know where I live? Is he coming to finish whatever had started? What, I had no idea what was to come next. And once again called law enforcement. And they arrived, they checked in with the folks. It was not them. And the officer said, luckily, there were constituents of mine who were at the gas station who took video, who took photos of the car and they were able to find out who the person was or at least who owned the vehicle to get in contact with them. And they said, we'll be back in touch soon. And so I waited. I closed the blinds in my house. I waited for a few hours to hear back from the officer. And when the officer called me later, he said, so we found the gentleman, he came in voluntarily. He was very apologetic to me. So I just want you to know that I am gonna refer this for a pre-charge. And I said, what do you mean by that? And he said, well, I'm not gonna cite the individual. I think this is worthy of a restorative process. As a long-time supporter, restorative justice and restorative processes. As someone who practiced restorative justice in my time, I appreciate the mention of education because my first introduction was at the University of Vermont when I was a resident advisor. Deeply held and knew that restorative processes are a healing experience. But this case, this case in particular, I said, no way. I said, I felt threatened. This was not unlawful mischief. This was an attack and I let the officer know that I did not believe that this case was right for restorative justice. She let me know that. And I really let Becky know that as well on the call. And what was most supportive is Becky said, I hear you. I hear you and I recognize that so often when it comes to the charges that we see, they do not reflect the victim experience. This was not unlawful mischief for you. This was so much more serious than that. And she said, can I start by reviewing what the paths are forward? Can I review what would happen in the criminal legal system versus what would happen in restorative process? And I said, fine, Becky. And she went through to say that in the restorative process, she was going to reach out to the perpetrator. She was going to get a full background of information of what was coming up for this person. She was going to assess that there was true remorse if this was truly a viable case for restorative justice or if this was not actually valid for pre-charge. And she said, and then once all of that is set up, then we will have a conversation and it will be intentional and focused on the harm that was caused and how we can repair and move forward. And she said, the alternative, is that in the criminal legal system, this perpetrator will likely boyer up. He will not have to say a word in the process. He might not even admit to the harms that were caused. And you will never have an answer to why this man threw a hammer at your car. You'll have the damage repaired, but that's about it. And so I put a lot of trust in Becky in that moment. And I said, okay, I believe, I believe in you. I believe in this process. I will give it time, but is there an opportunity for me to say no? And Becky said, it is a voluntary process every step of the way, both for myself and for the perpetrator of the crime. We both have to agree to go through it. And so it takes some time to get all of the information set up. It was about two months before I had the restorative process. And in those two months, I had really big life events happen. I organized Burlington's largest fight event to date. And I also got married in that timeframe. So to have this looming in the back of my mind, I was worried of like, how is this gonna sit for me? And yet to know how deep this process was, how intentional it was going to be, and that there were folks that were working on this, it allowed me to just be fully present for what was going on in my life and know that I did not have to worry about that conversation until it came up. So the other person involved in this story, the person who harmed Taylor, has consented to us telling this story. So he does know that we talk about this. So I asked Taylor if I could assign her part of the case to one of our victim service specialists at the Burlington Community Justice Center. Because I was going to talk to the person responsible, I thought that it was better for Taylor to move forward and have their own support person. So Taylor said that was fine and I reached out to this person. And I could tell you all sorts of things. He was having a moment in his life where he was incredibly vulnerable and was mortified by what he had done. He was very emotional about it. He, in these processes, people share things with me that I don't share back with Taylor because I want them to come out in a conversation. So he did agree to meet with Taylor even though it was incredibly stressful for him. And so after doing enough pre-work so that I felt like it would be a safe and good situation for everyone, we came together in a meeting. So it was Hannah, our victim service specialist, Taylor, this other person and myself. And I call it an impact meeting. These conversations are pretty similar. It starts off by asking the person responsible for the harm in the crime to tell their story. And knowing what Taylor needed from that story, I might ask clarifying questions to get sort of the pieces out in a way that feels natural in that process. So he told the story. At some point, can I say this part? Do you know what I'm gonna say? Yep. Okay. I mean, at some point during my conversation with him, before the impact meeting, he said, I found out who Taylor is. I learned that Taylor is a trans person. This makes it so much worse. And I agreed with him. It makes it so much worse. He said, I hope she doesn't think that I targeted her because she's trans. And I said, well, we're gonna meet together. You can talk with her about that. I also checked in on his needs, right? Because sometimes people are creating harm and crime because they have an unmet need. So the work that we do really does work incredibly hard to shore up those unmet needs in a way that prevents future harm and crime. So we put those things in place for him before the meeting and maybe there was gonna be more that came out of it. So when we got together, he told the story. He talked about who was impacted and how. And the question to Taylor was, what did you think when this happened to you? What have you thought about since and what is the hardest thing for you? What was the hardest thing for you? What I reflected on was just hearing the sound of my back windshield coming into the car and the disruption to my own routine. I remember now I lost my routine going to work. I started thinking of various ways that I could avoid going past that gas station or avoid going in where I have always gone. But had very supportive folks around me. I had a wonderful partner and a wonderful boss that were able to say like, do you wanna drive together to this location? How can we normalize this back for you? And the other piece that really stood out to me was that imagery of him rifling into the passenger seat. It feels weird to say that I'm grateful that it was a hammer of all things because where my mind went to that it was a firearm. And that was going to be the end all, be all for me. And that was one of the main pieces that I came in as we're thinking about what restoration looks like. I was very worried about this man's access to a firearm because if this is what could happen because of one incident in a car, what if there was a firearm in that passenger seat? Would he have grabbed for that instead of a hammer? What would the consequences have been at the end of the day? And I was really worried about it being targeted. And so the fact that even in that first moment when he relayed what was coming up for him, this piece of feeling a loss of control in his life overall and just wanting to let me know that I had done something wrong. He just wanted to let me know, like I had done wrong by him for the traffic violation. And then for him to then be able to think back and be like, I had no idea why I grabbed the hammer. That was a really important question that Becky asked of. He went through the incident and then Becky goes, can we go back to that moment when you were grabbing for the weapon? Like what, what was coming up for you? What were you gonna do with the hammer, I said. He said, I had no idea what I was gonna do with the hammer, I just wanted, you were driving away and I wanted you to listen to me. And so in that moment when he threw the hammer, there was another constituent there who walked up and said, what are you doing? And he said, they cut me off. He goes, you threw a hammer. And it was that moment where he just sat and was like, oh my God, what did I just do? Actually from that incident, he went to the gym, realized that there was some steam that needed to be let off. And what he also shared with me is he called this counselor. He said, I had stopped seeing my counselor in January. And this incident told me that I was not, I was not ready to stop counseling. And so I have gone, I'm back into my counseling program now. I'm really committed to this, I think about this every time I get into the car. You started to check on him during that meeting. Yeah, that was a weird feeling of knowing that the harm had been caused to me and yet this man, he was more nervous than I was coming into the conversation and just kept being like, I feel like I'm a terrible person. I feel like I'm a horrible person, I'm such a terrible thing and I will never forgive myself for that. And I said, I, if you are doing this for me, I don't want that. I don't want you to keep being yourself up actually and our agreement in the end, one of the agreements was for him to stop beating himself up. So that is not going to be productive in the long run but how we are integrating more into community and in relationship with one another. And the other piece that I asked him was around a firearm. I had the conversation directly of saying, do you have access to a firearm because I'm really concerned about what would have happened. And he relayed, he said, I was also, I'm also scared of that and have had a previous incident so I have it because of a previous interaction have already given up access to my firearm. It's in a completely different state and I appreciate you bringing that up and have thought about it myself. And now even has the mantra when he gets into the car, how to stay cool, calm, collected, recognizing that a minor car infraction does not warrant throwing a hammer or otherwise. And he apologized to you because he imagined that you would have thought you were targeted and he said he was sorry for that and he understands that there's harm being done to our trans community worldwide and he didn't want you to be one of those people. So I feel like in this case, the best thing that happened was, I don't know, I've lost the string but we'll just make it up. But it's, the timing is the same. Like this happened on a Thursday. I got the case on a Friday. I reached out to Taylor the day that I got the case. I reached out to the responsible party the day that I got the case. We don't have that opportunity and there might be good reason for it in our other programs because there are other things that happen in between the referral. So I think especially for you, the victim of the case, the immediacy of being attended to was incredibly important in just like taking care of yourself. Absolutely. I felt very much cared for throughout this process. And one reflection that I had with my victim's advocate and with the Community Justice Center was the interaction with law enforcement. I think that was the piece that made me feel like I wasn't going to be supported the use of unlawful mischief and it felt like this dismissiveness well, this person apologized to me so therefore I'm going to move this on to a restorative justice process. It was a very different interaction when I was talking to Becky about why such a pre-charge usage of this process would be put in place. But when it came to the interaction with the law enforcement officer I just felt like it's someone getting off on a crime that really deeply impacted me. And so even had conversation with my victim's advocate about facilitating that conversation with the officer of really acknowledging this is great. I want, now that I have been through this process I feel restored, I feel true reparations of what had happened in this situation. I wanted to also be communicated effectively from the start when it comes from law enforcement of recognizing that this isn't just someone getting off on a crime that there is going to be wraparound support and the immediacy of how you as a victim will be contacted. Can I pause? I just want to make sure I leave time for questions. And I want to just underscore one thing which is there's multiple checks and balances in the system of skill level. Law enforcement, the more skilled the law enforcement officer is in terms of using discretion about when something can be referred is a highlight. And then the skilled practitioners who recognize when the ingredients are there that it will be likely as a potential success of a restorative process. Because a charge is a good place to start. A list of charges that are eligible for referral but it's not the be all end all. You can't just say automatically, these 10 cases make perfect pre-charges. It's a good, again, it's a starting place. It's a real, we can see the practicality of that and their skill at every level needed for when to go forward. Because Becky could have heard something from that responsible party and said, no, no, no, we're not even bringing this forward because the potential of causing more harm is there. And in that case, it would have gone to the state's attorney who then has the decision making power to charge or not. And so, and then the process evolves from there. Thank you for the overview. And thank you both for coming and sharing the story. So we're trying to set the stage of understanding restorative justice in Vermont in general. And so I just want to check before we open up to questions that you would be open to questions of just understanding this process and how it works. So I see Chair Lone and then I know Representative Oliver has had his hand up for a while. Can we do so? Great. Yeah, there's a couple of questions. So, and maybe this is not so much to you, Taylor. If this went the other process in criminal court, do you think you would have had a resolution by now given where the courts are? When did what? This would have been in August 10th, August 10th. This would have been a misdemeanor, right? This would have been a misdemeanor September, October, November, December. No, I don't think it would be settled by now. That's about it. I think that the arraignment, so August 10th, I think the arraignment would have happened within six to eight weeks. So we're at October 10th. They would have come back, I think it's 60 days for misdemeanors. So we would be at like their second hearing at this point. Right, so less satisfactory and not any resolution. It's possible less expensive. It's possible that at that arraignment date that Taylor's case could have been referred to diversion. So a similar process may have taken place, but would have been six to eight weeks later. A little bit later. The other, I think this question, but it seems from the situation you went through that how important the victim service part was. And that just perhaps highlights how important that that should be part of, there's only six that have victims. Is that what I'd heard before? Dedicated victim services. I will say from AGO funding and DOC funding, they're expecting victim services to be part of it, but the funding, like the whole system is built around that responsible party. So that's the timing scenario. Like everything is responsible party year. Victim services are expected to be part of any restorative process. However, the Center for Crime Victim Services funds six directly for dedicated victim work. So there's still victim services in all the other, it's just not dedicated. Okay. All right. Okay. So I guess there wasn't so much question there, but thank you. So then Representative Oliver, then Rachel's in. Good morning. Thank you. What a pleasure surprise. I guess might have from a law enforcement perspective and I could have asked you in person back the exos, but I guess it's great having you both here. I appreciate your story, Taylor. Thank you. What do you receive from law enforcement when they refer a case to you? They send you an affidavit, a statement. What kind of package? Just a memo. Nice to see you too, Representative Oliver. We get an affidavit. So the full police affidavit, it looks like it's prepared to go to the state's attorney's office, but they stop at us. So I think the full case is prepared. We get that and just like a basic referral page with contact information for both the person responsible and the victim. So that way I can just go straight to charge if need be, if someone doesn't want to participate in this program. Exactly, it's ready for sending. So it doesn't really take a whole lot of work off law enforcement's shoulders? No. Okay. I have a lot of work. We'll add a lot of work. So can I have a follow up question to that? So the affidavit's there, but there hasn't been a finding the probable cause necessarily, which would be the state's attorney, but before it gets to the state's attorney for a finding the probable cause, is that correct? That's correct. Okay, thanks. Representative Oliver. I'm not going to go, almost. On a lighter note, the only other concern, well, not the only other concern would be telling Taylor that I wasn't going to prosecute somebody. That might scare me a little bit. But as far as the paperwork process goes, I think this is a tool, not so much the paperwork, but the process goes is a tool that the judiciary could take advantage of regarding their backlog. We keep hearing about this. It's one more thing to take out of off the shoulders of the judiciary. And the seriousness of the crime that the story Taylor was telling, at first I was a little caught that it went to the restorative justice arena, but it worked out well. And I think that's a good thing. Although that does bring up my really, the biggest concern I have with any of this is making sure we don't let somebody recidivate and get out of control. When something, you know, crosses the line, they engage, it doesn't follow through and you end up with some sort of little disaster. That's all, that's just my concern. But I see a lot of value in this, as far as taking things out of the judiciary. Thank you for bringing up that point. And I feel like raising those questions, because that's gonna be part two of where we go after getting this kind of 101. So thank you. Representative Richardson. Thank you. So thank you so much for coming and going into great detail. My question comes from constituent. So I'm not thinking statewide right now. I'm very sort of Burlington focused at the moment. And I know when I have referred people who have been victimized to the organization, they, people are so grateful and well taken care of. And so I am grateful for the skill and the wonderful array of services that people can benefit from. And it does seem like I wish everyone on the stage could do that. I also have heard from so many constituents and in our hearings the last few days on retail, that law enforcement is super busy. And so a lot of times constituents have called when they're in distress, their car is being broken into at that moment or something bad is happening or just happened. And the response is, why are you calling this number file online? And we were hearing from a lot of stores that originally thought, let's make these felonies, like all we want is to be restored. And so I guess I'm wondering what we can do because I'm concerned that with law enforcement being so overwhelmed and the paperwork being what it is that people who could benefit from this program both ends and want restorative justice or want to, like this one constituent's just like, even if the dispatcher just like acknowledged that I was going through something awful, like customer service 101 would have gone somewhat. And it was not, they weren't in the scary situation that you were in, but I'm just wondering as we look at this, what can we do to take those realities into consideration and not just dump more things without funding on you all? Like, I get that, like we can't give you when funded mandates, but putting that aside, like what would make a difference in terms of the realities of law enforcement now and getting those referrals to you? Sure. So Rachel and I, Burlington focused, conceived of something called rapid pre-charge and we've proposed it to the mayor's office and to the chief of the police and some others, the downtown market group where we would have a team centrally located in the downtown center and if an incident of retail theft happened, law enforcement and they're backing off on the online reporting at this point, law enforcement would respond or one of their community service officers could respond and they would actually bring the perpetrator to our team, which would allow another member of our team to go to the store. So, you know, there are a lot of people who are just stealing from stores every day. So that program would attend to the needs underlying what the behavior is, but it would also respond to the victims right away. It's a tough one, but I do think like the quicker we can attend to the crime in a way that is reaching out to everyone, that seems to be an option and an opportunity. And we need that in Rutland, in Bratow. Absolutely. Like there were no towns, even downtown Morrisville. I mean, Parallel Justice Program is something really unique and really needed in terms of geographic equity. That's a program that I wish was offered at every single center. Like every victim deserves that kind of acknowledgement of what happened was wrong. I'm sorry. What do you need? And sometimes those needs aren't able to be met. We get here so often. I just appreciate being asked because this is the first time I'm being asked. So, I mean, that would go a long way. And the Center for Crime Victim Services, of course, is limited in its funding. It's mostly VOCA funding, federal funding that is already kind of tenuous. And so that's a gap in terms of the victim services. But this rapid getting at a question that was asked, I think over here, but I can't remember by whom, around the complexity of cases now for in terms of what none of us have an answer to, is when the overlay or intersectionality of healthlessness and or substance use and or mental health issues that are like, when somebody is in crisis in various ways, they're not able to participate in a restorative process, as has been mentioned. So, when we don't have, when we hear those underlying needs and there's no solution or they're told a six month waiting list for such and such, that's no kind of answer. Right, but seven months of incarceration for felony, which is what could pay for a lot of restorative services if we don't have to worry. I think those are some of the questions we're going to have to tackle. Yeah. So we have, I want to be aware of time that we were, we've scheduled this to 11. And I feel like we have a few questions. We have Chair Edmonds, Chair Lalone, and then Representative Capon. Very short question. So in the work that you've done over the years, what do you find is the, which one is the hardest to bring in to the process? Is it the perpetrator or the victim? Do you find it's about equal or is there anything that stands out? I think it's harder to bring the victim into the process. And there's however many reasons for that, right? Like, maybe somebody's just done, their insurance is paid for, they don't want the inconvenience of having to deal with something. A lot of times victims will say to me, well, I don't want them to do it again. So I'm going to do this so that nobody else gets harmed. So they're sort of doing it for others. But I do think like, not everybody is open to that restorative process. They're not ready for it. We don't have conversations this way. I mean, have you ever had a conversation like that? No. Yeah. So we're just not practiced that having these intense conversations where everybody in the room is vulnerable and to ask people to do that sometimes is too much. So we just ask them if they want us to write down something or if they want to write something. But I think it is hard to engage victims and especially now it's gotten harder because the trust has sort of eroded over the last few years. And they want to see the person really punished. They do, yeah. And they want them to stop it. And they're really mad. So I just want a little more follow up from what the conversation was with Representative Rachelson. Could you talk a little bit more about how you deal with repeat offenders, the folks that we're hearing about who are in the retail theft context. It's not just retail theft, but because I know that the CRG crime research group study looked at the success rates of repeat offenders versus first time. There's definitely it goes down. But can you talk a little bit further about that? Yeah, so pre-charge really isn't the appropriate program in general for somebody who's there's a repeat offense and there's these deep underlying conditions. As Willa mentioned that TAMRAC and pre-trial services are generally where we're likely going to be seeing repeat offenders. We will be seeing because there's these underlying needs of mental health and substance use issues. And so those programs, the whole point of them is to rapidly connect them to services like that's the focus of that program. When somebody's, if there's a repeat offense, there's some other problem going on. And that's what, so it's generally, it's gone downstream a little bit more. It has been prosecuted, like it's gone to court. There's a charge. It might be pre-adjudication or with pre-trial services. Somebody is going through court. It's not diverting from the court. They're going through court and they just need the services to hope, ensure that they will successfully go through court and hopefully reduce their recidivism that way. Yeah, there's other, perhaps pre-charge is not the place for that particular situation. But we also have treatment court as well, but that's off topic, but it is something we're going to be looking at trying to expand. I think one of the points of this is to question a one-size-fits-all approach. When the needs are diverse, the current, like the reasoning, people's lives are complicated. These are messy and victims need different things too. But some people react strongly to this idea of calling something a low-level crime because it's not low-level for them. The impact can be hugely high. So I think nuance is the name of the game in terms of developing multiple tools to fit a variety of situations rather than punishment always fits the bill. Can I see representative Chippen and then we'll go to representative Laura. My apologies. I do have to. There are some amendments I need to hear in committee, but I'm happy to answer any other questions outside of this conversation. I'm really grateful for you all sharing your stories tonight. Thank you. Thanks, Taylor. Thanks, Taylor. I was just going to ask a similar question or talk about the need for interconnectedness right now between the restorative justice and community justice work and treatment options. So I think it's just something we'll have to keep thinking about. So sometimes we do take repeat offenders. Yesterday we were referred a case for Tamrak, for a person that I think three years ago got like eight or nine charges. And he's a person with a mental health problem who says that he needs to live a solitary life and mostly outside. And he's actually created that life for himself and since his last charge hasn't reoffended. So we have this like two year gap since he's been in court where he's been living a life within the rules and laws of our community. And so our team actually met with the prosecutor and talked to the defense attorney and we said we'll meet with him. So we met with him, a team of three of us and had a conversation with him about how things are going and what his life looks like and who his supports are and what his supports are, what, how he's attending to any medical or any health needs. And he has achieved a period of stabilization. So we accepted him into the program because he is eligible and he's shown on his own that he can be okay in the community. If for some reason in two months, he'll probably be with us for about six months. He reoffended, we would send all of his cases back. All of these cases would likely send him to jail for a period of time. I don't know how long, but he would likely get in more trouble and commit more crimes in jail because he is somebody who cannot be around people. And now that he's not around people, he's doing well. In sec. And he identified members of our community like our urban park ranger, who is a support to him. And so we're gonna do a restorative process with him that involves our urban park ranger and some others that he's connected with in the community, and invite victims in if they'd like to talk with him about that in a way that he can sort of manage the people contact. Yeah. So the affidavit, I'm spinning off and representing all of his questions. The affidavit that you get, does that always consistently let you know whether he might be a repeat offender? No, not always consistently. So there is typically some line at the bottom that will say what their prior charges are. If that case is coming through diversion, we have access to look at Odyssey, the case management system for the judiciary, so we can do that work ourselves and see in Vermont what's happening for them. So do you have a consistent policy that you do that for all of them? So what I'm suggesting is, is there a process in place that ensures that that is done? Either one way or the other, either you do it or whoever's in charge put an affidavit together, do that. I will say not all of the agencies who get pre-charge referrals have access to that system. The ones that hold the diversion contracts do. And it's for diversion work. That's for diversion work. The purpose of that access provided by the judiciary. It would seem likely that that might be a good thing to take care of. They are very protective of criminal history, so we cannot, those are like confidential documents that only the defense attorney can have, which is interesting. But the policy could be created with the court, to make sure that they do that. It is within age 645 having the policy developed that's uniformed for state's attorneys and presumably that will be part of it. It will be here until it's going to be done. So that is a proposal. So I feel like we're switching into the bill piece of it, but I feel like this helps to highlight that there are agencies in the state that have developed policies of how to offer pre-charge, deal with pre-charge referral in a consistent manner. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you go to another and it's the same. And so that is one of the things that the bill is trying to get at. And that's for us to decide. Does that make sense or not? But I think for us to hear that there are policies that exist, it's just not consistent across the state. So I'm looking at the time. I want to see if, I didn't see any other hands, but I want to make sure I didn't miss anybody. So I want to thank all of you. I don't know if there are any final thoughts or things you wanted to share that we didn't get to cover. I'm just glad that you brought up that restorative justice is one of these powerful tools that isn't only good for low level and misdemeanor crimes. I think because of this reputation of it's just a slap on the wrist, it's light on accountability, people see it as inappropriate for high impact crimes and it's very well used. Like when the victim is most impacted, that's when it can be at its most effective. So I just again want to underscore it as a tool, like through this sequential intercept model, it can be used throughout the system at various points. So it's good to just think of it as a sim, it's similar principles being used at various levels as the criminal justice system escalates. And we're very thankful for the opportunity. We look forward to coming back to talk about the bill. The CGCs do have some concerns that they would like to be able to talk about, but we're definitely glad that again, that the committees are really taking an interest, see it as something of value, and that the ultimate goals of what this bill is trying to bring about, we really see value in as well. Karen, can I ask one more question? Sorry, do we have time? Yep, last question. Thank you. One of the things that we keep hearing are people are no shows for court and that it's catch and release, whatever. So I know you mentioned pretrial monitoring, and I'm wondering as we're looking, I mean, we could do this work with what CJCs are currently doing and we could do it with where, see where this type of organization and service could help solve some of the problems that we could solve in different ways. You know, like people have talked about, we could add that to the judiciary, we could add. But so it would be good to know if that pretrial monitoring is something we should think about as a good fit for the restorative model. I guess I would say that that it does exist. So pretrial services exist in every county under the court diversion, we had court diversion pretrial service grant. Pretrial services work with people who are charged and if Becky can speak more how it plays out on the local ground. But if somebody doesn't appear in court, it's very hard for a pretrial service coordinator to connect with that person. So in terms of that one. But so adding rights. So right, yeah, anyway. And the pretrial coordinators, when the person is engaged with the program, they're reminding people, if we're in court and Bill is supposed to be at his hearing and he's five minutes late, we're calling and texting him saying, Bill, your hearing starts in five minutes. It's that first appearance that is often the most troubling, the citation date. I wanna hand it back to you, Chair. Yeah, I think we'll take a five minute stretch break before we get a high level walkthrough of 645. We'll have more detailed walkthrough with lots of detailed questions separately because there are separate sections of the bill that each committee will be dealing with. Let's take five minutes and we'll go on live. All right, and we're back in the joint committee meeting of corrections and institutions and judiciary. And back over to Beth St. Dolan. Great. So we just finished the kind of our day 101 in Vermont and getting that foundation of what it looks like in Vermont and what the history has been in it. And under what Chair Lalonde said that we have a bill before us H645 that hopefully is proposing to take us into the next chapter of restorative justice approaches in Vermont. And we have Ledge Council here who is going to do a broad overview for us in joint committee to maybe I think get to what are the goals that we're trying to achieve in the bill and maybe understanding the different components of it because there are different sections that judiciary committee is going to look at that are relevant to pre-adjudication and then there are also some components of it that are post-adjudication that corrections and institutions will look at. But I feel like we have more context now understanding how complex the system is and how there is that divide in between the different points on the sequential intercept model. So that's the step that we're taking now before lunch and then each committee will take more work from there. So I'll hand it over. Thank you, Reverend Dolan. My name is Ben Obrogowski from the Office of Legislative Council. Before I get into the broad overview, I think I'm just going to kind of reorient everybody because there was a lot of information that was just provided and a lot of very important information. But I think something that's very helpful and it was very helpful for me from the beginning is an analogy that I have to credit Derek Miadovnik with about restorative justice in Vermont is like an old Vermont farmhouse where it's been added on, painted over, it works, but it's kind of creaky and may not be the best, but it's what we've got and it's what everybody appreciates. And I think that's really apt. And as you've seen, there are different funding mechanisms. The Attorney General's Office funds diversion, Department of Corrections funds community justice centers, which I'll get into a little bit more on that. And then DCF funds the BARGE program. There are different authorities for these different programs. So for instance, diversion, there's an adult and a juvenile court diversion program that the Attorney General's Office is authorized to oversee and administer. Community justice centers are in Title 24, which is the municipalities title, but it's run by DOC, which is in Title 28. Which is also as Representative Emmons informed us earlier is where the restorative justice state policy resides. And then there's the BARGE program, which is operated by DCF, but it's a contract-based program that doesn't reside in statute. It's really just part of their broad authority as a department. And then there are different policies and different forms that these various programs take throughout the state. So both committees heard today and a lot of sort of analogies from Chittenden County, where there's a physical building that you can walk into and you have an array of services, but that is not the same county to county in the state of Vermont. And that's partially due to the program structure, the funding structures and all of that. So for instance, there is a spreadsheet or I guess rather a PowerPoint that I forwarded on to Kayla and Phil that should be available on the website that talks about, and this was, I have to credit to Jill Evans. She put this together. This was something that Justice Oversight heard two summers ago. So that kind of gives you an idea of the length of time that this has been discussed and where we've come to today. It breaks down who the funder of each program is and then where they're located. So for instance, some are municipal run, but the majority are nonprofit run as we've discussed. Like in Addison County, there's Addison County Restorative Justice Services, which is the civil DLS program, court diversion, restorative engagement, restorative justice intervention, restorative reintegration, Tamarack and pretrial services programs and the substance abuse safety program. But there's also Easter Seals, which is the nonprofit in Addison County that provides barge services. So two different places, but for programs that are all tempted to do the same thing. And so you'll often hear people refer to community justice centers and have the vision in their mind of a physical place someone can walk into and get that. But in reality, it's a conglomeration of services and programs that are offered in various ways that don't necessarily have a physical location and a one-stop shop that people can walk into. So to kind of bring that back around to where we are now with H645, I can tell you at the outset, H645 is not going to solve all of the issues that the community's heard today, but what it does is an attempt to partially restructure diversion programs and reparative programs in a more logical place. So for instance, there is a dividing line where anything that happens pre-adjudication, so before someone is found guilty of an offense, that is all gonna be moved to the attorney general's office. Anything that happens post-adjudication, so after they're found guilty, moves to the Department of Corrections. Based on the sponsors and the conversations that have happened since, I think it was November of 2022 is when everybody met in the Speaker's Office for the first time to start discussing this. So to, you know, no, 2021. It was a bit ago. Yeah, over two years ago. Yeah, I forgot COVID. It's seen that that was a logical dividing line for law enforcement, which is what the Attorney General's Office is at its core and custodians of offenders, which is what DOC does. So keep that dividing line in mind as we go into the bill itself in its various forms. And so that's also gonna be the dividing line for the two committees. The post-adjudication portions are more sensibly before the Department, or the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. There's the pre-adjudication stuff that happens in the courts, in law enforcement, which is more within the realm of the House Judiciary Committee. And to, so to take that and to get into the bill itself, the high-level overview is that, and it's really captured by the statement of purpose, that this bill proposes to create pre-charge, so direct referrals by law enforcement to these restorative programs and post-charge diversion. So once arraignment has happened, has occurred, which is what the current diversion program does, will be under the administration of the Community Justice Unit of the Attorney General and in consultation with the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs for certain eligible offenses and certain eligible persons. The offenses are going to be outlined by statute. However, there is a uniform policy that the Attorney General's Office and the Department of State's attorneys will consult to create that can discuss and outline additional offenses to supplement the statutory minimum and the eligibility for individuals to, and whether, and the appropriateness for restorative programs. The Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs has the ability to create these policies provided they contain those certain statutorily prescribed minimums and as long as they're done in consultation with the Attorney General's Office and other stakeholders. These statutory standards contain minimum requirements for the administration of the diversion programs, eligibility and referral processes, rights and responsibilities of responsible parties and victims, and confidentiality when it comes to engaging in these restorative programs. The bill also proposes to create a post adjudication reparative program under the administration of the Department of Corrections. And this would be done in consultation with the judiciary because the judiciary would be essentially sentencing a lot of these people that go through this process and so are really the equivalent of, so the Department of Corrections and the judiciary are really the equivalent on the back end to the state's attorneys and the Attorney General's. So that's why they're working in consult with each other. And those are governed by a memorandum of understanding that are worked out between the two entities to outline eligible offenses in a process to supplement those offenses, to use evidence-based screening procedures, and to create confidentiality provisions. So in a very high-level view, that is what H645 proposes to do. Hmm. In one session. In one session. But we started a few years ago. Yeah. I don't remember. So we'll wanna pause there and folks have questions with, perfect, great. So over the course of years, diversion went from only juvenile to a juvenile adult and various decisions of what offenses that would be accepted into diversion and such. So now under the authority of the State's Attorney and Sheriff's Association, who would make those decisions? If a diversion board or even a consensus amongst diversion boards were to suggest that we should take X offense into consideration for diversion. Who makes that decision? Well, that would be, so A, there's a statutory, the mandated statutory offenses that have to be included. Yes. But then that would be a conversation between the Attorney General's Office and the Department of State's Attorneys and other stakeholders to supplement those. And the stakeholders being members of the diversion board? The stakeholders are, if you bear with me, one moment. Okay. We're getting details of the bill, Representative Trionne. Oh, sorry, yeah, man. Ha ha ha ha. My bad. The Office of the Defender General, the Center for Crime Victim Services and the Judiciary. Okay. Very good, thank you. Ha ha ha. Other questions on the goals of the bill? Maybe it would be good just to talk about how we're going to work it through with the two committees. So Representative LaLonde and I are going to sit down tomorrow morning and we're going to go through the bill section by section and determine which section's judiciary has jurisdiction over which section corrections and institutions has jurisdiction over. And there could be some sections that are overlap and we hope Ben can help us with this too. Ha ha ha. So the bill is physically sitting and has judiciary but corrections and institutions will be working in tandem looking at our sections of the bill but not in isolation because we will be working with judiciary and vice versa. One thing that's crossed my mind yesterday was it might be helpful to have some liaisons between the two committees that can really do the deep dive into it. I already have in my mind two people in our committee that I haven't spoken about yet but that may be a way of really because we can't do, we just don't have the scheduling time to do joint meetings all the time. So if we could have maybe some liaisons between the two committees to really do the deeper dive and keep each committee informed of where the other committee is going but Representative Vellon and I will be in contact pretty regularly. I look forward to that. Okay. Ha ha ha. Then you can really interrogate me. Ha ha ha. Exactly. And vice versa. Exactly. So that's the plan, I hope that works out and the other thing that's looming we have to meet crossover for this. And we have a capital bill at the same time so we're gonna have to figure out the schedules. Yes. Is there work also happening in the Senate on this? Do you know or is this? They are waiting. I mean I've kept Senator Sears in the loop as far as what we're doing. Okay. So I have a quick question maybe. So my understanding is that the goal of the bill is to try to make sort of more uniform what's available all around the state. And one of the issues that I'm aware of that has not been uniformly available at all of the CJCs in which I haven't heard is addressed in the bill is funding educational programs. And so I'm just wondering is that in there anywhere or is it not? And if not then that's one we should put on our list maybe for next year because right now some CJCs have very intensive educational outreach programs with local schools and some have none. And that feels like a huge inconsistency that's really at the disadvantage of some of the schools. This bill does not deal with funding at all. It only deals with restructuring statutorily where everything is. Although at the same time there have been ongoing conversations primarily through Trevor Squirrel about the funding stream because the funding stream is to eventually is to follow who has oversight. So we see some of the pre-charge is funded by DOC's funding stream. Really it's more appropriate for the attorney general funding stream for that. So but it's not in the bill but it's there and I think you have to think of it along as sort of a parallel track where S-14 I'm probably gonna be a broken record dealt with this to a degree by creating that coordinated justice reform council advisory council. So what it does is that it also created some requirements on DOC when it came to budget proposals but again nothing that's set in stone because it's still subject to the legislative process and everything that goes into it. But that coordinated justice reform advisory council one of the responsibilities is to assess the fiscal needs and how best to devote financing to these various programs. So that's a separate entity that both committees I had their hands in last year that's already set up has already made certain recommendations. There was a report that was provided for the legislation already. But so that is being dealt with but as representative Wong said, not in this bill specifically. Okay, thank you for that. And I feel like two other things to clarify with that point because I appreciate it is for this bill it is really focusing on establishing programs that then can be implemented statewide. The focus isn't on CJC's and their restructuring and what they wanna do. It is creating these pre adjudication programs and post adjudication programs saying who are the entities that are in charge of these programs at the statewide level and having them determine how they are then implemented and delivered across the state which doesn't necessarily exist right now. So like the pre-charge example that we just heard there is no policy guideline we saw a statute that guides that. So at any moment, all that could get pulled. DOC is funding it right now saying it can happen but there is no legislation policy that says it could. So it could be another year and is that correct? I think that's a really good point to punctuate is that the new thing in this bill that is not in statute at all is the pre-charge diversion. That is brand new. Post-charge is really not much changes there as far as the substance of it. The post adjudication imperative thing the name and the structure of it is different but it's not reinventing the wheel a whole lot but the pre-charge is what's brand new because as the previous witnesses testified to Chittenden County, state's attorneys has a memorandum of understanding with law enforcement in Chittenden County outlining certain charges, certain criteria for that that also exists in Washington County but that doesn't necessarily exist in every county in the state. So to represent an adult's point, it's not consistent it's not in statute and so it's really based on the whim of law enforcement and the state's attorneys to decide what they want to see as direct referrals in their respective jurisdictions. This would set a base. So you mentioned rules or anything Beckham are there any directives of policies within DOC that pertain to restorative justice and what used to be called the reparative boards and all of that because once we do a change we're gonna have to look, I would assume that they have something. Yeah that I don't know off the top of my head. Because we'll have to get into that a little bit on our side for that. And there's no rules that have been promulgated anywhere. Have sir? Is that the weeper? No. I'm not aware of that but it doesn't mean that. There might be directives on DOC that I haven't risen to the level of a rules making process. But I think that would be a better question for the department. Right. But that may be something for us to look into. And I just to set the stage again for this so I appreciate this overview of it is that there are a lot of different players that are in the restorative justice approach it's in Vermont. And one of the goals I see is again trying to create these programs that we believe should be available across Vermont and designating who should be in charge of those and how they go. Which is very different as you've heard from how it is now. And so I just wanna prepare us that we're gonna hear a lot of different input and feedback because this is a shift for it. And I think one of the goals of trying to do for this bill is to lay out that we're saying this should be available for all of Vermont and there should be some standards in consistency in that. And so that those are I think are the conversations that we're gonna have to have in committee because it's going to be different than what's happening right now. Did I see a hand there? Yeah, more of a thought maybe or for consideration, but really thinking about what was said earlier about victims' willingness being really important to us and the goal is to make this more available. Have we discussed what we can do about that and just thinking of really we need to kind of normalize this as experience in our justice system by not wanting to do that, but wondering if it's comfortable about the bill. I think the bill itself was a balancing act in the sense that there is a certain level of standardization that it attempts to achieve. But also balancing that with what's already in place and what works and trying to not dictate too much if I may and it is a balancing act and I think it goes back to that sort of Vermont farmhouse analogy where people don't necessarily want to knock down a farmhouse in Vermont. So they're not trying to raise the building and start anew and I think that this bill sort of attempts to do that where the structure remains relatively the same, but maybe there's some new finishes that are put in, a new sink, new faucets. We're modernizing the plumbing, let's be honest. Give me electricity. Don't forget DLC, the electricity. Oh, I forgot the electricity, there we go, thank you. So, and just a comment, it's like, we have a criminal justice system, but we don't really have a restorative justice system. It's more ad hoc, it's more hodgepodge. It's wonderful work that's being done, but we need it to be more in through out the state, a system that's as easy to get into as it seems our criminal justice system is getting into. So. I have a question. What effect will this bill have on the final one Cs that are currently administering a lot of this work? It doesn't address them at all. Okay. So I think that, and we're gonna hear from some of them because they may have a different viewpoint on that because what, again, I can share with you, it's creating programs that are going to then potentially be put out to bid or, like who wants to deliver this program in this county, this service area. And so it could be that a current, who is a 501 C3, might not be the one that is awarded the MOU or whatever we want to call it. But what we will know is that there is a entity that is delivering it and it's following these set principles. Under certain guardrails. And just to clarify my testimony, it doesn't affect them as far as, it doesn't change, you know, in Title 24 right now, community justice centers, however they're interpreted, can be administered through municipalities or nonprofits. That's unchanged. What's also unchanged is that it's a grant-based program. Grants that are issued by the Department of Corrections, grants that are issued by the Attorney General's Office. But the programming and what's required within the programming and the eligibility factors are those guardrails that would have an impact on CJCs and who and how they're dealing with things. But as far as the general, you know, current funding structure and who can do it, that's unchanged. Having torn down Vermont farmhouses, they don't tear down easily. They don't tear down very hard, not very hard at all. But what we're essentially doing here is we're gonna set up a system where we have a known entity that's gonna administer it at the high level. And they're gonna be helping set up what we want across the state in terms of programs. Once that's done, now we go back out to the other folks and say, can you deliver? Some people aren't gonna like that, but. Yes, I think those are the conversations that we're gonna have. Yes, I'm sorry. I just wanted to repeat what I had said when the bill first came out and was hearing a bit of a background of it. Very appreciative as a member of our restorative justice program in Bennington for close to 30 years. I started when I was three. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, Mary, it ain't ourselves. Yeah, but I was concerned with a little bit of the process where the different groups did not come together and would be able to be at the table to kind of journey through this together. So for me, that's an important piece so that all the agencies, no matter what they are, have a full understanding of changes or things that may affect the good program they're doing. So I wanted to, in a joint hearing, have the judiciary hear that as well. That is a concern. Thank you for that, Representative. And I wanna offer two pieces to that because I didn't provide that context for it. Is that, well, I guess two things. First, I'll start with one is, I agree. I think it's important for us to involve as many stakeholders as possible and get that input of it. And I wanna, that this bill, or if there's other bills out there like this, is an approach that we can do to try to manage these different programs and opportunities. And at the same time, changes could happen to these programs right now, even without any of this legislation. And DOC could choose not to allow pre-charge programming to happen right now, and I think. So this is a container where we have some control and can include stakeholder input and do that. So I wanna offer that as a, just in the mix. And then two, I think your point is important that, it's important to share that this has been like this two-year process where we've had multiple conversations with some of the stakeholders. And I think there's some consensus or agreement on the approach, but the fine details, there definitely is more conversation that needs to be had. And we might not get to a place where there's complete consensus. And that's the work for our committees is to decide what is it that we're hearing these different perspectives and where are we saying Vermont needs to go. So that's where we get to go. But I do think it's very important that people are well-informed who have been doing this good work. Yes, completely agree. But really the place for that is once the organization stood up and when you're gonna develop the programs that are gonna be taught, that's when you bring them in and have them tell you all the practices that they think have worked and all that stuff and incorporate that part in. Not at this high level part, but when that comes in. Because that'll be critical to get by and to win well, make sure you've covered all the bases knowing the range of possibilities for treatment out there and where you don't wanna go to. Well, Wayne, I would suggest that the train has somewhat left the station. There's a number of pieces kind of in place. And I just would like everyone well-informed as this journey continues so that we've got the best product coming out of this. Because this is very worthy of having a good solid base for restorative justice. I agree. My only concern is I have seen where if that input comes in too early, it may derail what we're trying to do. And I don't wanna see, this is, we're having a good direction. I don't think we'd want to risk derailing it. And I'm gonna leave that in chairs to navigate where you want to go and how much you wanna delve into those. So I don't know, Ben, do you have other points of things you wanna consider? Well, I think that there's definitely a lot more to discuss within the bill. My fear is that if I start to bring up certain things it's gonna prompt more of a detailed response that I know that right now we're not set up to necessarily get into. So my question is what's the next step for both committees? Because we're gonna need a walkthrough of the bill. Is that gonna be better to do it in another joint meeting or is that gonna be better to do? Separate. Separate. Yeah, separate. We're gonna start with our walkthrough this afternoon and then you can figure out when you can have that. And we should have the walkthrough of the whole bill just to understand how the pieces come together, correct? I don't, or not. I don't know. I don't think that's gonna be better. We may know better. Ben, you're fine, yeah. Yeah, I can talk with you separately if you'd like or I mean I can speak to it now, but. We can talk separately. I'm just wondering, scheduling-wise, and. I think from the way we've been working on this, I could see a very high level going through the sections that are dealing with the pre-charge and then very detailed. Yeah, but you need to know the whole bill. You don't wanna bog down on the first. And new for vice versa. Right, right, we're in fact not, we're not even gonna have part of our walkthrough so it's a very high level for the DOC part of it. Okay, that helps. We can do that next week. Sure. I think I'm turning it back over to the chair. So, I think that's, I think this, I think this, we get an extra 15 minutes if we leave now, which I know they're taking over this room for the climate caucus. So, we'll adjourn the judiciary committee's adjourning until one o'clock. We are too, one o'clock.