 Welcome. My name is Ben Joseph. I'm a retired Vermont trial judge. This is the Judge Ben Show. I recorded an interview about once a month. As it happens today I'm doing two in one day which is very unusual. It's also unusual because I usually do this in the studio at what is it, 259 North Manuski, 239, which is the town meeting television. And because of the COVID virus problems we can't use the studio. So we're using Battery Park and we've been blessed today with beautiful weather. I'm very fortunate to have Karen from Scott Scott back. I did an interview with her recently and I thought was one of the best ones I've ever had. Thank you very much. It was really good. So I invited her back and there was some other things I wanted to talk to you about. And Karen sent me a note. I just want to read part of this and then go into it. Okay I just thought it was just a terrific, terrific note. You and I both know that each story, each survivor, and especially survivors from traditionally marginalized communities, these are all so complex and different. We, Karen, I mean me and my ilk. I like that. Create a generalized story about domestic violence, perpetrators and survivors that really describes the experiences of very small white and poverty families. And we built an entire response system on this story. This is why the majority of survivors not only avoid accessing the criminal justice system, but avoid accessing the system in which I work. Okay. Well, my guest Karen is the executive director of the Vermont network against domestic violence and sexual assault. Big job. You've had it for 13 years. 13 years. 13 years. Goodness. More power to you kid. And then you go on here to say we're at a crossroads. We are in the midst of a transformative moment where we actually are listening to the voices of marginalized survivors. And they are telling us that some parts of our system are great and work well, but some of the system is not really useful to them, right? Together we are acknowledging that survivors as well as perpetrators need many more options for intervention beyond in addition to the criminal justice system. And we are acknowledging we have ascribed a singular approach and an ideology that erases them. So it was eloquent. Thank you. Oh, thank you so much. No, really. It's right on. I'm um, so I do a type I did your topic online. I do one for every one of these shows because I want to kind of keep track of what I wanted to ask about. I also want the people who are guests here to be comfortable. So I start with a real big question. How should society deal with perpetrators who use violence and coercion, coercion in their relationships? What should we do in Vermont? What do you think? Well, you know, as I said in my email to you, Ben, we have for a really long period of time, about 30 years, we've really invested in one pathway for people who cause harm in their intimate partner relationships as well as for their victims. And that's really a pathway that that pushes people into the criminal justice system. We often hear from survivors that enter the criminal justice system that it's a poor fit. It's not an indictment of the system. It's it's just that it's we're asking the criminal justice system to do something that's it's not really designed to do for some survivors. Access to the criminal justice system is vitally important and it could be a matter of life and death. So when I talk about we're at a crossroads and we really need to think about different pathways, I'm thinking about additional pathways, not necessarily shutting down one pathway to open up another pathway. That's been the mistake of our past is just taking just opening this one door when survivors need so many doors, you know, we were talking earlier about the complexity and individual complexity of each individual case that you saw when you were on the bench. Each survivor that I've ever talked to has their lives are uniquely their own and their situation is unique to them. And I've often felt like we were trying to in helping survivors are trying to, you know, push a square peg into a round hole. So, you know, what we're looking at in terms of how do we keep how do we make our families safer? How safer? How do we make our communities safer? There's great wisdom in talking to the people who have experienced harm as well as the people who've caused harm. And so we're starting to have those conversations. And what we've heard, you've heard this, I've heard this for years and years from survivors is, I don't want him to go to jail. I want him to stop hitting us. And we have, we've pretty regularly pushed folks into into jail, regardless of what that survivor lives. There have been situations where, you know, the opposite is true. Of course, and sometimes, you know, I've spent a whole lot of my career kind of in a protest mode protesting folks that had demonstrated they're pretty dangerous who didn't go to jail. So, so you know, this is again, this is a really complex issue. The one thing that I've been thinking about so much lately is how far down the river we are by the time we get to the criminal justice system, as as a society and as a community. By the time the police are called, there's been a there's been an inordinate amount of coercion and violence in a relationship that typically in a relationship with those violence, it's involved the whole family unit, and sometimes members of the community. And we actually, if we want to really hand, I think we want to get to the root of your question, we have to be further up the river, have to be really thinking about how do we create a society where we never get to the place where somebody has to call the police for safety, where we have interventions much earlier, and we have and we're doing good prevention work. But well, my, my constant thought and all this is, I think it would be very nice to somehow change the culture. Yeah, get you know, I think that would be very nice to wouldn't that be nice? Yeah, that people shouldn't be understanding about a guy who beats up his wife. You know, that there are, it's not okay. And the culture has tolerated violence. Well, we live in a culture that tolerates violence. We live in a culture that sees violence as a legitimate means for solving problems. I mean, just think of the news headlines this week. The, you know, where we have a 17 year old shooting into a crowd of protesters with a assault rifle. And, and we have real strengths in our culture as well. We have a vision for what a more peaceful culture could look like. And it will, it will, you know, it takes good culture change and social change work to get us there. We're here. And so the question is, you know, we have this vision for the future, where our families, our homes are more peaceful. How do we get from where we are today? To where to that vision? And so there's lots of examples, there's lots of communities where this is happening. Very successfully. And I'll tell a short story, Ben. I'm ready. Years ago, I attended a conference and there was a group at the conference, a group of young people, they were teenagers, they were brought there by a community center that they were a part of in Atlanta. And this is an Hispanic neighborhood. And in that community center, which was led by the brilliant Julia Paria, who recently died, recently passed, but she had, she understood that in that community, the police were never going to be called. When there was violence, there were lots of issues that were the supporting the violence, the backbone of the violence, not the least of which is racism, you know, in the community, intergenerational trauma, and all the things that go with that. And she also knew that nobody was ever going to the families were never going to break up. They weren't going to, you know, they were going to stick together. This was a value. So they had a they had a session every Tuesday night where the kids would come and go to a group for the kids. Moms would go to support group and dads would go to domestic violence accountability programming. And then they have a potluck. And everybody came together, community came together. And within that model, there was there was a community standard around holding, using social constructs to hold the violent partner, the dad usually accountable. And I mean, I think that there's I think there's communities that are doing that kind of thing right here in Vermont, where I'd never heard of there. Well, it's not organized. It's not, you know, there's no stamp of there's no 501 C three that are doing it. It's it's how do we how do we implement how do we operationalize how do we use our community values, our family values, our values around valuing each other, all those things to help this person change their behavior. Wow. I think that happens all the time. Well, that's great. But what could be what what if anything should be done to encourage this? Well, there's really good models. So formally, what I just described might be called transformational justice. And, you know, here in Vermont, we're really taking a hard look at the use of restorative justice practices in cases of domestic violence, we're in conversations with all kinds of folks restorative justice practitioners, the Department of Corrections, folks across the country or experts at this, and we're trying to think of how do we create a system here in Vermont, where certain people that meet certain criteria that come to the attention of a community, because they're causing harm in their family, can receive not just not just accountability, which you know, we in our movement is code word for punishment. So how can we hold them accountable for their actions? Well, simultaneously, recognizing that it's likely that they're trauma survivors. So there's a healing aspect to it. There's a relationship building a community building aspect to it. And there's also a restoration aspect to it. So how do we how do we how do we help these folks to recognize the harm they're causing and to repair it? And I think that holds a really great promise, really great promise. Now, I have to tell you, I was part of a group of people that helped pass a law in our state several years ago that that precluded the possibility that a domestic violence case could go into a restorative justice program. I forgive you. I've changed my mind. I changed my mind about it. Clearly. So so that's, you know, there's there's many pathways that we have to really be exploring. And the wisdom that sits in this conversation in this question sits with survivors and the people that are causing them harm, both of those folks. And and we can do a better job of of engaging, engaging those people. And a lot of this work is happening in marginalized communities here because they because they're not going to call it marginalized different ethnicities or different African American communities, immigrant communities, you know, in Vermont, of course, our biggest minority, our biggest marginalized communities, LGBTQ community. So so this is happening in those communities. It's often, you know, just not that visible. Oh, I clearly, clearly, you know, I, I just think you keep you, I've said this so many times, I'm tired of here. I just think that so many, so often, I think, each case is unique to its facts. And that, and to say that the only way to deal with this is through the criminal justice system is it's obvious that not every case should go through the criminal justice system. But there should be combinations of things. I just want to tell you, well, I used to try to see if a short hit was appropriate. And a short hit was, I saw there's gonna be a long term problem. I thought that at least there should be a reminder that punishment is possible. So I make a very short jail sentence, put them out on five years of probation with the understanding is going to have to be cooperation with counsel and someone providing support. But you've got to have resources. Well, that's just it. You got to have resources. That's just it. I don't know if you ever knew about Judge Sun-Tig's program down in the southern part of the state. I think this is after you were in that period of time, you know, you take these little breaks from work. He ran a program first in Bennington County, and then in Wyndham County, and it was a domestic violence docket. And so it and the idea was to shorten the length that the case was live and to immediately push folks into make referrals. But you know, for the person who's accused of doing harm, it was more of a push to push them into treatment and other conditions. Exactly. So they and it involved the whole gamut of community based services. So not only was it the organization called PAVE in Bennington County and Women's Freedom Center in in Wyndham County, but also their drug and alcohol treatment systems there. I'm trying to think of the other there was, you know, there was what they tried to do was to really recognize the mental health system, recognize what was going on within that family and recognize what was going on for that harm doer and get them into services and help and have them complete some treatment and then come back and let's see what happens. They also had to do batters accountability programming. So they they had to do a lot in order to to be diverted from a sentence to stay out of jail. Right. Right. But but you know, the outcomes were pretty great. They were things were moving quickly and issues were being resolved satisfactorily satisfactorily. And unfortunately, the energy was really judged sometimes energy and when he retired, the system just just wasn't able to stay. It happens. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. You know, some of these some of these things that are so successful, you wonder why they don't become more widely adopted. Well, money. Well, that you know, that is why you really touched me with that one. You know, my brief stay in the legislature in 2017 when the Trump tax cuts came into effect. The wealthiest 1% Vermont got a 239 million dollar tax cut per year. Got more than half a billion dollars more because of this tax. And I had proposed in the legislature that we should increase the progressive income tax to recapture some of this money because we have all these things that we need to address. And I was in a room with 90 other legislators. There was utter silence. You know, it's the money, the resources is very difficult. You got to be you got to be able to pony up that money. Well, this is the paradox of the time of COVID. You know, this is the our observation six months in is that things that we thought weren't possible suddenly are. And I mean, I think right now we're in our legislature is hard at work. And our governor is hard at work trying to figure out how to maintain the integrity of our economy, maintain services, deal with COVID. You know, deal with the situation in Mississippi, where so many of the people that are from Vermont have now have COVID who are imprisoned there. And 80% 80, I think it's something like 80% of the people who are housed in that facility have COVID. That's staggering. And, you know, that's not this is in Mississippi, not in Vermont. So let's make that really clear. But these are Vermont prisoners being held out of state, because there isn't enough prison space in Vermont for them. I understand that many of them are coming back. Well, I just I just think it can't be we're going to have jails or not going to have jails. There's got to be individual judgment. It's the kind of thing that you do as a judge, you have to take each case and its facts. You have to consider all these standards. And then you have to try to get a solution that's appropriate to that case. I can't remember if you and I have talked about the women's prison. This is a particular area of interest for me because, you know, just about 100% of the women who we house in the prison, you know, just over the hill, are have experienced domestic and sexual violence in their lives. I didn't know that. And so we operate the network operates a program called Divas inside the prison. Of course, we're standing right outside the prison now, and talking to people on the phone, because and we are so we do advocacy work inside the women's prison. And you know, the women's prison is a is a really interesting place. We have built we long ago, we built a system inside the women's prison, so that any woman who's housed there could have this array of services. And everything from advocacy around violence, domestic and sexual violence to vocational services to education, to support for parents for mothers, we really this beautiful array of services mentoring to help people come back into the community and that's very important. The thing that we did though is when we when we made all of these services available inside the prison, without thinking about access to those services outside the prison as we created kind of this vortex for women who had deep needs, many of them suffering from addictions. Trauma, the place where they could get the best services was inside the prison. And so this path this pathway was clear. Yeah, so you know, we grew the women's population, women's number of women who we imprisoned in our state exponentially within the course of about a decade. And then and we had plenty of room they used to be housed up at the Northwest facility. And and the vast majority of the women that we housed then and we house now here at the Chittin and Regional Correctional Facility have have committed crimes that are now you will get into arguments about what a violent crime with constitutes a violent crime. But when you think about the crimes that they're committing, they're committing crimes related to addictions related to ongoing trauma, ongoing violence. So they're writing bed checks, they're shoplifting, they're stealing. Some of them get into, you know, fistfights there, you know, they're, they're but they're homeless. They're, they don't have access to the supports, basic supports. They're involved with DCF because of addictions and because of all these things. And and and then so then we move them to Chittin and Regional Correctional. DCF is the Department of Children and Families. So they're so their involvement has to do with how they're treating their kids. The average age of the women who are housed in or by our state in this facility is 22 years old. 22? 22 years old. You go to that facility and visit that facility and I'm looking around and their kids, they're, they're teenage girls. And they really are not to do with drugs. Lots to do with drugs. They've had everything happen to them that you could imagine happen to them. We now have a commissioner, James Baker of the Department of Corrections, who has taken a really hard look at the facility and he is public to say that we need to close the facility. The facility itself is not built for her to turn housing. But you know, our folks who work on the inside, and they know all the women who live there, they, what they've said is, you know, we've probably got 10 to 15 women who've done things that would make you wonder if they would be safe out in the community. They've done pretty bad things. The rest of the women that are housed are, they're actually people who need services. And if they had access to services and stable housing, they wouldn't be in jail. They would not be in jail. And then we have the system of furlough and I don't want to go into too much, you know, jargony detail. But we have a system right now where people get. I'll try to interrupt you. Okay, good. Because you know I can get going. It's not winding up. We have a system of furlough that was designed for all the right reasons and all the good reasons, but it's created a a cyclical, um, the cycle for women who are released on furlough. It has very, the standards for being able to stay outside of the facility are very narrow. And they include things like she lost her job or she lost her home. And these are not things that are illegal. But if that happens, and go back to jail, she goes back to jail. And so they're, they're in and out. And every time, every time they're released and out in the community and then brought back in anything, any progress that they would made is interrupted. So we're really thinking about different ways to do this. One would hope, yes. And the the state of Vermont and its wisdom, and I'm very genuine about saying it's wisdom, brought in the Council of State Governments last year. And they did a comprehensive review of the of the Department of Corrections and Systems. And and they focused in on the women who we house. And their recommendation is that we rebuild this furlough system and, and focus energy and focus resources on supports in the community. So I'm, you know, I'm very helpful about that. Well, where's the, sorry, I don't mean to recruit, but no, no, that's a good question. Well, so it's a it's a reinvestment of the money that we spend currently to bring people in and out of prison to house people in prison, which is very, very expensive. I think the number I think is $88 a day. Does that make sense? And, and so by having fewer people in prison, we will save money. Now we've done this once before, and it worked. It was we've created a whole new set of policies. And by and large, that was the first time we decreased the first big decrease of prison population. And so the state invited these folks back again, from the Council of State Governments to do this review. And so we think that there's real possibilities for, for reducing populations and getting the services out in the community that we need. I just think the immediate, the immediate concern I have is where are they going to live? You're going to put them out of jail? Where are you going to go to a hotel? Where are they going to go? Well, yeah, I mean, that's a big question. Street corner? I mean, we have to create housing here. We have to do that. And that's, that's money. And I don't know where that money comes from, maybe from the tax on folks. We have second homes here. Well, you know, I just think I, I can think of 239 million a year that's obviously immediately available. But the inequities of the distribution of wealth and income are becoming more and more broad. I mean, they're bigger and bigger. The separation of wealth is awful. And that's a global issue. Oh, yeah, well, this is here in Vermont. Yeah, right. Well, that's complicated because there are 50 states and there's a national standard and an individual. But I just think within the within our little state, we could, we could do much more in terms of equitable distribution of income and wealth. And you know, you're not like what I always brought, I bridle it to put the proposal of a tax squeeze, we're going to take away all their money. And that's silly. You're talking about a small percentage increase in taxation. But when I've discussed this with people to say, Oh, the rich will leave the state. And I think to myself, I'll help them pack. What are you talking about? You're going to pay 10% more tax. So you're going to leave? Get out of here. Come on, stop. And you know, it benefits all of us. Right. It benefits all of us. Well, you know, we so often look to the Nordic countries, right as a model for Vermont. And one of the things that we know about the Nordic countries are they're much higher tax rate than ours, than our tax rates. And they, they certainly have their problems. You know, you have a friend who says, Well, you've got people, you've got problems. The, but the, but the, you know, the reality is that one of the things that we haven't done is actually creative vision for, you know, create a really solid understanding of what's happening right now. So the thing that the thing about Vermont is that our, because of our rural nature, poverty is often really well hidden. You know, it's hidden by trees and mountains. And if you drive, you know, the backgrounds of the Northeast Kingdom, you drive the backgrounds of Orange County, you drive the backgrounds of all the, you know, any place in Vermont, what you're going to find are people that are living in very difficult situations. You can see from the road. They're shacks. Right. Right. And, and so I think what we have to really be talking about is, is, is a recognition of, you know, that this is a problem here. This is impacting Vermont families and Vermont communities. And you know, our, our Vermont values are about caring for each other. So we have to then create a vision for what that looks like. Well, I don't think they're universal. I don't think it's a universal quality. You know, I'm an optimist, Ben. I just want to see the best in people. Yeah. I spent a lot of my time looking at the worst. So, you understand. Yeah. You understand. Well, what would you think would help? I've been concerned because I've seen over the years people have told me about really dreadful acts of violence that are never reported. Yes. And is there anything we could do to get more reports so that the kinds of not just criminal justice system, but other things could become engaged? Well, you know, you're right. If we take a look at the Vermont, Vermont has a domestic violence fatality review commission. And they look at domestic violence fatalities every year. They, they take testimony from, from surviving family members and they put out a report. And year after year, we learn a couple of things. This is almost, it's true almost every year. Most of the people who are killed in domestic violence homicides have never called the police and they don't have any contact with any of our member organizations. They haven't gone into shelter. They, they've lived in severe isolation. No surprise. No surprise because their partners are, you know, the most dangerous and they know that and they know that they'll, that they'll if they call the police that there'll be that also presents risk, heightened risk for them and often their children. So, so the other thing is that 50 percent of the homicides in our state are committed with the fire. Year after year, after year. So we've been working on legislation and we don't want to take guns away from anybody. And of course, that's what you hear, you know, they want to take our guns away. We don't want to take guns away from anybody, except for somebody who pours, proposes a risk of killing their partner. And so we have the technology to understand who those people are, not only through, through, you know, the issuance of a protection order and the affidavit that goes with that, the description of the violence, the pattern of violence. We have lots of research now to understand who are the most lethal of all abusers. And we have, we have validated tools that police officers can use for checking on the lethality, the likelihood of lethality and a survivor. It's very simple tool. It's called the lethality assessment protocol. And police officers will ask a series of just 11 questions. And if that's if the survivor answers the six of those questions, the research shows that there's a much greater risk that that survivor is at risk for being killed. And then a whole series of things can happen. So the whole series of things you mean? Well, we can arrest the perpetrator. We can, you know, we understand that we need to be able to offer the survivor shelter and other kinds of services that those are don't need to be rude, but those services available. They are. They are. And there is a you know, the great thing about this this tool is that police officers also love it because it gives them a really concrete way to get to the to the to the crux of risk in that moment. That's they administer it at the site of a domestic when they go out on a domestic call. That doesn't get to your question about how do we get more people to to report? I think that there's I mean, you know, I think that we have to really explore what we mean by reporting, you know, does that mean we're reporting to the police or does it mean we're reporting? We're seeking help in other ways. You know, we have community councils who you know, similar to the I don't know if you're familiar with the COSAM, all the circles of support and accountability. So we have so we have those in place in communities. We have we have different mechanisms in communities where we're building relationships among community members to down to decrease some of the isolation and we're we're not washing our hands of this issue. So so in my you know, when we aligned ourselves and our movement with the criminal justice system and in effect, what we said was, please recognize that this is a problem in our society and we presented all the documentation and all the statistics and all the things and let us take care of it. Us and the police will take care of this for you. And I think that was a fundamental mistake because first of all, we denied the voices of all the people that were saying the police are not the place where I see myself getting help. But we also you just ignored it. We just ignored it. We just ignored it. And we but we also said this is a problem that is a family problem. It's a problem that's that's that's happens one person and one person at a time. We we put a wall up between the relationship between the acts of a person using violence and control and their survivor, the individuals and the society that supports that violence. So now we're in this place in our movement where we're trying to course correct, where we're trying to go back out to communities and say this is the crossroads. This is the crossroads. Yeah, going out to the communities and saying we can't do this alone. We can't do this alone. And actually, not only does it impact all of us, we actually all participate in it. We are participating in a culture community that supports violence. And and it's and it's intertwined intertwined with racism and with xenophobia and with, you know, transphobia and and and heterosexism and and it's all intertwined. It's all intertwined and it feels huge, huge. But I still think that what's important for us to do is to create a vision and people will know what to do to make that vision happen. Well, I, you know, I've had to, you know, I I got this when I saw this great mind in the business, this what's his name, Gellis? Gellis, I think it's what he's saying. Yeah, I saw he recently passed away and the vituary mentioned this book which I got a hold of. And the thing that confounds me is the the effect on children and the fact that I mean, so many kids grow up with physical violence directly to them. Yes. You know, they're they're hit with a belt or you see it whacked with a paternity battle when I was eight years old. And I think it had a profound effect of which I'm not really conscious. But it really, when I grew up in the era of not only is it OK to hit your kids, you should. Yes, exactly. Oh, no, it was a responsible parent who would hit the kids. Yeah. And and I just think this is a profound cultural problem that violence has been. It's been sort of is a good thing when it really is not a good thing. It's not. It's just a little. So what we're talking about here is a profound cultural change at a time when there's family disintegration. And it puts puts a real burden on the community and the school system. Yes. It's very difficult. And to say that the schools should now take over the process of raising kids in a culture. And I bridle against that. And then why should the why should the school be telling my kid how I should behave? Yeah. It's a very complicated problem. It is a complicated problem. I just saw some data yesterday coming out of New Hampshire and they showed the number of reports for child abuse over the course of these last six months. And, you know, the so that the chart, the chart looks like this. And then you hit March and the number of reports drops. And they're starting because it's schools closed. Right. And so the vast majority of reports are coming to schools. I mean, I have to say, I think that reporting is important. It's and it's also important what happens after reporting. And so, you know, Mr. Gallis, he did, you know, a 180 and went from let's not, you know, let's work with families and then he worked with a child or a couple of kids who are severely abused and he changed his mind. And then he became the the primary driver of we have to remove kids. Put it into a secure. Yeah. Yeah. And we know that system is also when I know some great foster parents. And but we also know it's a difficult system. And it's not just the quality of the foster parents. It's sometimes the problems that they're dealing with are very difficult. Sure. Sure. Very hard. It's a lot. It's a lot. But think of how things have changed since we were kids. Mm hmm. They've changed incredibly since we were kids. Well, I have in many ways, in many ways. I just think that the number of single parents now and the break up of the family and the deterioration of the concerned parents, number of concerned parents is causing us all a great deal of grief. It's really hard. Yeah, I think that there's, I mean, I think that simultaneous when you think about the arc of what you're talking about at the same time we've also seen the gutting of the social safety net. So think about funding even in our state and how that's, and so what sits behind those dollars are services. And we've seen the erosion of the availability of services. I can remember welfare of her form under President Clinton and the impact of doing away with educational allowance on single moms. So they went from being able to go to school to get an education, go to college or go to a technical school to fulfill their obligation under when they were on welfare to having to do false work. They had to go work in an office or do filing or do, and what a loss. What a huge loss. Because I know in our organization we helped a number of women go to school who were on welfare at the time, got degrees and then got jobs and became self-sufficient in a matter of 18 months, two years. It's a terrific loss. So this thing about single parenthood, single moms, those burdens, they're out there on their own. And that's not good for us. That's not good for our society. It's not good for our communities. So when you talk about people don't want to have their taxes raised, we don't want Rob and Peter to pay Paul. We don't want to pay for somebody on welfare to go to school but we'll pay $88 a day for them to be in prison. Yeah, values, values.