 I'm going to turn this over to Kurt and also Carl, which if Carl's more than willing to participate, if he is Carl. Carl went on two trips to the facilities. Sarah, butch, and I went on one of those trips. So we have a little, and Joe, Aja, you went to Maine and Pumpkin. With the both, that's correct. With both. So there was, Maine was the first one that Kurt went to by himself, was a committee member, and BGS and DOC then went there. That's all right. And then Kurt went to Concord, and then, did you go to Concord separate, or was that all of us? No, I think we all went to Concord. And then Carl went up to Maine with BGS and DOC. And then we went to Concord, because it was Carl, Kurt, Carl. You, Joe, butch, myself, and Sarah with BGS and DOC folks. And then Kurt took to Michigan for some reason. We thought we'll stop at a correctional facility there. And then he went to Alaska to visit his daughter, and so we all stopped at a correctional facility there. Have you seen any in Canada yet? You did, didn't you? No, did I like? No, I went to one in Nova Scotia here. At the same time, Kurt did the shadow of a correctional officer day in the summer, beginning of the summer. What facility was that? Chicken. Chicken. And then Carl has been working a lot on, was it more in MAT, or was it more just? It's more baseline facility stuff. So I went to four other, four of our prisons this summer, observed the MAT line and all of them, and also spoke with staff, and then also spoke with P&P people in the local P&P office. So we thought this would be a good way for the committee to kind of catch up on some of this and put in perspective maybe what's out there, what people were finding and seeing, and overview of what's going on in corrections. And we did it this afternoon because we weren't sure what was going to happen on the floor. One night before we get started, we always have folks who are sitting around, and sometimes we know folks and sometimes we don't. And so if we ask questions of anyone around, we just ask you to say your name first, at least so it's on the record, so your voice is recognizable and where you're from. And we're going to work, Phil's going to be at some point setting up a click board to send around so you can just sign up so that we know who's here for the items. So we're going to have to get more questions. I would like to introduce one of our new employees with Building and Journal Services today. We're going to have a day to introduce all you new folks to at some point. I don't want to lose that. Okay. No, but this is good. This is Jeremy Stevens. Jeremy is my new program chief. He's the wealth of those who knew Mike Coombe. That filled Mike Coombe's position. Wow. So this is his first introductory from into this world. So it's not a good day to beat him up, but. Well, think of a good initiation. I've told him stories. Oh, good. So Kurt, Kurt's all yours. You don't have to sit up there unless you really want to. Well, actually, I'll probably end up standing to point. Whatever works for you. I'll stay here. That's good. I was going to put my feet on his chair. As he does on yours. Seriously, though, folks. Okay. This was this is made with the women's unit, which is part of the. This is the men's areas here. It has a fence around it. So there's a woman's unit within the men's. And there's also reentry facility in these two are the primary ones that I visited. Although we also walked all the way down through all this, which is kind of. Is the woman's unit connected to that physically to the building houses? This one here? Yes. Yes. Do they use common space at all? Or do they have separate space in the woman's unit? They have separate separate like dining and medical one. Yes. Totally separate. Totally separate. They're all infirmary and everything. Okay. There is another unit. There's a smaller woman's kind of a wing part of I think it must be this one. Carl, correct me if I'm wrong. I think that's correct. It was right. So booking and booking is right. It's the farther the farthest to the bottom of it. And then there's a there's a living block. I don't know how to operate that. Oh, thank you. Okay. Oh, there's the air. Okay. So that is booking right there. And then up in here there are two living blocks and one of them is reserved for women who are close custody or whatever. So they've got to maintain that site, site and sound separation. So it's a pain for them when they bring people in because then they've got to clear that whole corridor there. But the women's unit itself, it's connected by an outdoor chain link fence walkway, I believe. That's it. How many minutes? 100. And then 100 down at the three entries. Yeah. Is it 100 total? Is it the only facility period in Maine, like for men and women? No. For women it is. For women it is. There's several other in the men's. How many beds is the men's part? No. I don't know. I think it's something like 500. So in Maine does not have a unified system either. Do they? No. They have a caring system. So they're getting sentence folks. They're not getting detainees. Is this the only state facility? For women, yes. But for men? No, they have a number of them. For men. Yeah. So they have total 200 beds for women. 100 is they're in a more incarcerated setting and the other one is used for the entry for women. But they have to earn to get to the re-entry. Yes. So you have 200 beds. So it's important to remember, especially when you see the picture of the re-entry facility, that it is a re-entry facility. So it's very different from this and other units. It's about 25 minutes from downtown Portland, which means it's fairly close to a big city. And the population is about a half a million. There's only state one. So it opened in 2002. And the re-entry facility is really newer, 2017. And it is a... Oh, okay. I'm sorry. What's the question? Let me see. So that's an overview of the main facility in Windham. This is what it looks like, the re-entry facility. A lot of attention to design and making it warm. And notice there's no chain link fence or razor wire around it. The 96 bed was what I had. It's a minimum custody. When I was there in the middle of the day, about half the inmates were out working. Off campus? Off campus, yep. How did they get to their jobs? Was their transportation provided by DOC or...? I'm not sure. I believe so. They have a bunch of vans that get the women to work. And where would they work mostly in Portland or just kind of around women, do you know? Well, there was, across the street, I think there was a farm that they worked, a horse farm that they worked in. But there are also other jobs within the city. They have a culinary program in the facility that's run by a former White House pastry chef. Within the reentry facility. And then they also have the laundry for the whole prison in the reentry facility as well. But then they've got women working at Dunkin' Donuts and places all around the greater Portland area. Do you have something, Joe? Yes, I'm Joe Agent, Director of Design and Construction for VGS. Again, the women, not only do they have some transport, but they also can get an Uber or a cab. And that comes out of their pay. So they are paid for that to go out, but they also pay for their own rides. And when they're working on the outside of Dunkin' Donuts, they're getting paid like the regular minimum wage or the regular salary. That is great. High level of freedom contingent on personal accountability. So actually they, I asked about diversion of drugs and they said they don't have a problem with it because they do more drug testing than the whole state combined. And as soon as you have a dirty drug test, you go back up the hill to the other place. So these people are the incentive to come down. The other thing is that up on the hill, they can see this place and they know about it. So the people who are in the other facility have some motivation to, you know, wouldn't it be nice to be in here? And they know it's a nice place. But inside it's much like a college dormitory. It actually felt like a library when I was in there because half the people were gone. But they had trouble apparently in designing it because they forgot to put blinds on the windows up here and there's a hill that comes down and lights would shine in and people could see them and things like that. But basically the design is very modern and very warm inside. Real particular attention to the colors and the moods that that brings about. So that's the women's re-entry facility in Maine. So Curt, before we... for the drug testing, were the women, when they went out the day they came back, was there any type of search done or anything to see if any contraband was coming back in? Or when was the drug test done? I don't know the specifics of that. I suspect that there was quite a bit that they said they were tested very frequently. But they've had very few dirty tests. Very few dirty tests. And I'm also wondering, too, how many of them have substance abuse issues or opioid issues and that type of thing. I'm just curious. Well, they did say they think the women said she'd be very happy to come over and testify to all the real specifics of it. I mean those are the layers that we deal with and that's what we hear well. They go out and they're going to bring all this contraband in and on and on and on. So it would be nice to know sort of what their process is. They are searched on the way back. There's an area where they have to get processed. Strip or pat? It was at least pat, but I think it's still a strip. I'm not 100% sure. Does it need to jump out? I understand. It's just that when they come back in they do have one process point that we are writing to. Whatever you're going to say. The cost of the facility. I remember you emailed something about this, but I can't remember the cost. Ten million. Ten million. Ten million and their annual expenses for power, natural gas, and city water consumption are 138,000. So 10 million for 100 boats. Yeah. That's a lot of that construction. The inside is a processed wood product with it's open vented. You really can't see the vents in there. So it's a nice rain screen behind it. So it is potentially a very durable product. And then it's insulated and on the inside is regular sheet rock. No holes in the sheet rock? There's no holes. It's basically it was like a library of a psychology dorm walking in there very open. They're freedom. They're allowed to, like on the right-hand side of the photo that you're looking at, it's sort of like a three-foot high gate. They're allowed out in there. The day we showed up, they were out raking and cleaning and mowing along. And they're free to come and go when they're on that campus right there. So it's not as hard? Correct. It seems like I saw some pictures of it inside that were, it's very open, airy. It's like there's a pamphlet. Yeah, there is a pamphlet. That's a copy but I can email it to you. How do you go down a corridor and it opens up? Connor? Sorry. Connor, agency of human services, Carnegie. We have like 35 photos that we took and we could share with the group that shows different areas of the building. I think Mike Duchet showed me a few of those and he was really pumped up about it when he came back and said, you know, this is the direction we really need to go in. I'll send Phil the PDF of the pamphlet that you give out. Because it's part of the issue is putting in an environment that is very calming, natural life, and I think that's true for both men and women. And I think it's true for the SNAC as well as the United States. But it's important to remember that it's a reentry facility. Right. Transitional housing? Yeah. I mean, they have irons and knives, things like that. Not alike. Connor? I just wanted to reiterate a point that Representative Taylor made is having that other facility so close by and the conversations we had was a very significant part of that whole process. They call it, you know, I'm finally going downhill with something that a lot of the women spoke about the ability to go down and then, as you indicated, you did not want to go back uphill. So that incentive alone, they said was, you know, the personal responsibility was pretty huge. So why did they do it just for the women and not the men? They have two reentry facilities from them. From men? Yes. Not on that site? No, no, they have Bolduc and Mountain View. So did they go from this site to those? No, so there are two regular men's prisons in Maine. There's this one in Wyndham and then there's the Maine State Prison and Warren. And then they have two pre-release facilities. The other thing that I asked about and discussed was this is the, what you see here is the place where they make to meet their kids. They come in, they don't come through any razor wire. They don't come through scanners and things like this. You know, you look out the window, you don't see the big high fence. It's, and they said they get a lot more visitations from the family because of that. So there's a lot of more connection between the family and the kids. How did the town react to that? They said something like as long as you, they were in favor of it from what I remember. It was something like as long as we can see it or something that was bizarre or something a little bit strange that they said, but it was well received. And actually before they did it, Maine did this study which resulted in all of this, which is maybe the kind of study that we were talking about, a feasibility study that really looked at their whole system, except I noticed at the beginning of this they said these consultants sat down with DOC and knew, or their DOC and knew how many they wanted in each facility, which is one of our big questions, how many beds. But they did a really extensive study of the whole correction system and the flow and things and came out with a proposal for a big bond issue for the state that would save $7 million a year once it got going and the bond got voted down. So then they scaled it back and built pieces of it. Okay, I also have some more. This is up on the hill part. So this is more, this is comparable more to the Chittenden what Chittenden could be. And you can see there's a lot more windows and natural lighting, the artwork and things like that. There's two wings that go out, one out this way and one out that way with the central place here where you can get line of sight out both directions. And so there's two levels each. What did you say, Carl? So there's 25 on each floor. So each hall I believe, some of them are four person rooms, some of them are two person rooms. I think they're mostly four. Is that right, Joe? Do you remember that? I don't. Sorry. But they've got 100 there. So each corner, I think there's 12 of them on each side and they're all dry. All dry and none of the doors lock. The doors lock. They have wooden doors. Yes. They're all wooden doors. This is on the hill, but they've got wooden doors. So what's the security level? I don't think so. We should have had corrections in the room, but corrections in such children aren't right now. I think it was medium. I believe it was medium because they've got... There's so many separations from the outside. Well, this is inside the wire. Yeah, it's inside the wire. But even inside the wire, there's separation inside of that. Was it pretty quiet in there when you went in like this? With something like this? Was it pretty quiet? It should be two weeks. It is so different from Chittenden. And you know how when you go to a prison, you get a vibe there? This is entirely different. And what vibe were you taking out? It's just people are more relaxed there. There's not as much stress. There's not as much anxiety. There's not as much... You don't get that. But I think the main point to make about this is you're seeing... So this is the main guard station? Is it the men's facility? No. Women's portion. We're not doing anything with men's. Just the women's. If you look at it, you see the main guard station there. And then there are two levels there. It's sort of split level with the guard station and the mid-level. Upper level is all common area. Bottom level is more common area, but with desks and tables. And then you have the living wings right off of that. All the services are behind. That photo was taken with the services to your back. You see the gigantic windows there? Tons and tons of natural light in that common area up there. It's just all couches. It's built with... It's gender-informed. It's built for a relational style facility. And they have outdoor access right outside those windows. And they have that 24 hours a day. Do the men have anything to do with this? Do you know at all? On the men's side? We didn't see any of the men's stuff at all. Let's just be curious. They're starting to reconstruct for men also. So they're just going through multiple phases on the same site. So that may have something to do with the future. But there, when you went into the close custody area, to me it was no different than walking down a corridor at Chittenden or Northwest. Very, very similar. Long corridor, grey doors. For the men. Even the women. That was very traditional. But this is... It's night. Night and day. Can you go back to the first slide with the aerial view? This is not the re-entry point. No, this is the prison. So if... All right, so if you look here, this is that hall. This is the main common area right here. And then this is that one living. The two living halls. The two different floors of the living hall. This is the other one. Back here you've got chow hall, infirmary, visitation, programming. There's a library, an exercise room, and even a hairdresser back there. So if you compare that to Chittenden, there's none of this sort of disorientation that you get. Everything is right there. It's either the two living wings, the main common area, or the services right behind you. So were there any issues with having that building connected to the male facility? Because whenever we've spoken about campostyle or whatever you want to say, the part for the women's facility would be physically separated. Completely separated from the male facility in your core. That's how we've sort of envisioned it. This is not. Was there any issues? Outside of being a booking sort of, the closed custody is an issue. But outside of that, were there any issues? Well they did have problems with these women too. We'll have to go somewhere for programming because they can't go through the facility without locking all the men up and which they do. So there is that passage. I think when we were talking, Carl was saying this is fence rather than building right here that connects the two. I think that's probably true. Open side fence and most of it did have a roof over but it was open. So Connor, you had your hand up? Yeah, I just wanted to point out even at this, so the first reentry facility is full of minimum security but even in this sort of higher security, I don't even know if they classify as a medium. But each woman has their own key to their own door. That's in the regular facility? That's in the regular facility. So that's like even in the higher security facility, there still is a lot of personal responsibility, freedom of movement. They have their own section. So the reentry and this facility is about, I believe, 15 years older than the newer reentry facility. So if there's a violation then I would assume there'd be some DRs or something. I don't know. They're actual practices. I just know it's something that the way the facility is built they work with that in mind. So I'm curious, if you do that for one gender, do you need to do it for the other? I'm just putting that on the table to make it through. The prison in Warren, their old state prison was in Thomaston and I believe they closed that and they built the Warren facility. This was built in 2002. I don't know what the one in Warren looks like but the one in Thomaston was sort of comparable to our old Windsor prison. So this is probably comparable to the Springfield facility? In Newport we do have dry cells and they do have keys to the room for the mat. In Newport? Yes. Is that more and those additional beds that we've put in or is it just... It was constructed that way originally. And that was back in the early 90s. In the early 60s something like that I think was when we opened. Was that in the 90s? Yeah. 93, 94. Then in 1991 almost 1999 I think we did a 16 bed and the E building was built out of poured concrete instead of concrete block and divided into four units which we cut a hole in for good staffing levels. Because of the cost of having the force over units as opposed to one officer being able to watch both living units. But even that building has one side, the dry side that is, it makes that keys to their room. The day room probably not as nice as the one you see here. They do have a day room. It's certainly the men's and Newport's louder than this one. This one still had that loud feeling to it. But I think due to the age, even though it was 2002 relatively new there's still some other sound, things that you could probably do for it that doesn't have that echoey sound going on in there. So from Maine you went to Concord, so here you go. They're random slides. Not completely. We'll stay in one state at a time. So this is Michigan which I visited and this is considerably bigger facility. This is for comparison. That's the size of CRCF. This is the size of the Michigan facility with 2400 women. Only women. 2400? Only women, 2400. Do they have county government there as well? I think they do. So these are all sentenced? I believe so. Oh. You'll find a theme for a lot of these. Look at the configuration of these. Two wings in the central area, two wings in the central area. A lot of wings in the central area is the kind of design that I see a lot of in prisons now. Wings going out in the central area. There's this one and also Concord was the result of a lawsuit. So Michigan had this lawsuit. Do I mention the date? But it resulted in a $150 million settlement for the inmates that sued. And also a lot of restrictions that changed the whole policy for Michigan. They were forced into prison. And I don't think that, you know, this is my fear of Vermont is that when people are determining the size of a lawsuit, they don't necessarily take into account the size of a state. So Vermont had the same lawsuit. We could get hit with a $150 million lawsuit. And so it resulted in this which is a big improvement. The other thing that the law specified was that only women officers could supervise in a women's living unit. And I talked to Jen Spatsky about that. And she did point out that she doesn't think that's necessarily a good idea. Which was interesting because I assumed that that would be a good idea. And she said, no, in fact if you have a male corrections officer it gives them a lot more potential to the way that the women feel about men. If they're so used to domestic violence and being abused they think all men will do this. But if you're a good corrections officer you can change that, make that change. And that's an important change for women. My wife and I took about a two hour tour of this and went around most of it. She liked it. It was optional. And this has a high security fence going around. Inmates do not leave the facility at all. Maybe I think that they're allowed to supervise, to go out and work around the perimeter. But only if there's corrections officers with them. It's a lot more restrictive environment. But the size of it gives it the ability to have a lot of other services. They have full time psychiatric, full time medical, full time personnel that can cover the whole facility, rather than having to bring in people for those sorts of things. Yeah, total of two of the two thousand and twenty four. So Kurt, there's a thousand and minimum seven hundred and fifty-three in medium. Are they physically separated from each other? Or are they co-mingled? I believe they're physically separated. There's like different blocks for different things like that. So they're not co-mingled, I think. It looks like they have a baseball field out there, do they? What was the feeling in that facility? Was it noisy, loud? Was it kind of laid back? Was it attention? I wouldn't say laid back, but I wouldn't say it was noisy. It was more like between Chittenden and Maine. More on the Maine side. When you walk around with a warden, this I noticed in Mississippi, when I visited down there, you walk around with a warden, how does he interact with the staff and with the inmates? And there was really pretty good interaction between them. It wasn't, you know, here comes the warden look out. It was, hey, warden, I think there's no limits. And they call the superintendent Warden. I believe so, yeah. And they call the correctional officer's guards. I don't know. The language, the reason I ask that is the language is really, really important. Because if we read the news articles, we always hear correctional officers are guards. And they're not. They're correctional officers. And we talk about the superintendent. And you have a very different vision in your mind when you say vision, when you say warden or superintendent. And the same thing when you say guard, correctional officer. It's a very different visual that you have. But I come away from each facility usually with something that I didn't necessarily expect to get from there. And this one really introduced to me the idea of what's called gender awareness. Because of a lawsuit, because all of that was explained to me. So that it reinforced to me the need in training our corrections officers to have them aware of how that works. The other thing was that when I talked to Jen Spatsky was I asked about the training of Vermont's. And whether it's just they give an extra week or so of training for corrections officers who are going to be working here. And I believe in Vermont, all the corrections officers get the same training because, and she explained to me that women correction officers men correction officers in Vermont have to deal with women at various stages of their incarceration. So they might be in booking and they might be somewhere else. But you have to knowing the difference between how you deal with women, how you relate to women, how you get them to do something is important for the whole correction system. Not just the women's facility. Or a wife. Exactly. Wife's happy. Wife's happy. She'd be happy with that for some. Yeah, with $150 million and the economies of scale is what I was talking about. That is funny. Remind me, how many people are in there? 24. So in New Hampshire we all visited so everybody jumped in to be here and were allowed to visit. We didn't like your directions to get there. We got there. She wrote the same name. Again, it's close to Concord, so fairly close to the services that they use. Again, it's outside the wire of the men's facility which is right next door here the women's facility is up here. So there's no fence around the women's facility. 2018 and also again the result and that was about two decades of lawsuits that finally resulted in the new facility there. 224 bids and a bunch of you saw the place. Same architect as the main women's reentry facility. Oh. The other thing too that was enterprising in Concord he spent quite a bit of time with the superintendent and commissioner corrections to really talk about things that they learned in the construction, things that they learned what to do and what they shouldn't have done and wish they had done and they're more than willing to talk to us about some of that. It felt like a correctional facility. It was softer than ours and much brighter but it looked like a correctional facility. It did not look at all like the re-entry part in Maine. A little more like a correction They all have keys to the door depending on what level they're in. They also just fairly recently 2018 started using full body scanners so that they don't have to do cavity searches and things like that. How many women did they have there? 234 24 They were full. About 180. This is a small footprint too I remember the big ridge of the facility but it was another one. Right? In New Hampshire? It was a hundred. It's fairly large in this area including if you could I guess there wasn't as much greens at all. What was that sort of courtyard in? It's a little bit campus style there. A couple things I noticed right in the middle of a populated area and we drove up and we didn't drive through any fencing or anything like that. We just drove right up the front door and knocked going in. They did mention that with their close proximity to the building they were very cognizant of not allowing the women to see the men and the men not seeing the women as a matter of fact the men's prison they blocked off all the windows and doors that faced the women's prison. The women's prison actually that side of the prison you couldn't see out of other than where we were in a conference room but I think the other areas were We're facing the other way. I think you're right. There was a physical barrier That's why they put the windows. The way they designed the building and kept separation that way. The windows were up high. They were very high windows. They kind of did the same thing in Maine. In the back of the prison there with one living wing set out so you can't see anything and the other one I think maybe they don't have windows on that one side. The thing that I think was really different about Concord and Maine is the common areas. This is a common area that looks like a common area in any of our male facilities. What I thought was remarkable about Maine was that it's a common area for 100 women and it's two levels one's more tables, chairs, desk type stuff the other's more couches and sort of relaxing but I thought that I thought that was remarkable. I think if we want to get the superintendent over there on the horn at some point and ask her more questions I think she'd be happy to talk with us. The one in Maine. I'm curious, in New Hampshire I was kind of impressed that they had a number of different programming spaces and programs. They had a culinary program and they had scissors. In this one area where they were locked up. I'm curious, in Maine did they have did you get to see the different program spaces? My sense was that the women they wouldn't be spending all their time in one area that they could go. There were different things happening in different parts in New Hampshire from Concord. I think the programming I don't think they had any vocational in the pre-release center. Got it. Does that sound right? There might have been some programming space up top but nothing really for vocational stuff. There were rooms in that that were before that they were in space. When I say I might use it in a different way than corrections uses it. I think of programs. For vocational there was when we were touring around New Hampshire there was a space for women where they were like crocheting, like they were knitting and just had a space and there were these other rooms where they could go. There was like a sewing area a craft space that they had different area for evening activities and they were in a transition they didn't have their second I think they do that in Maine. They do have room for wreck stuff and I think they have yoga classes where they got an exercise room they got a hair salon but I think the only vocational stuff that goes on there is that they have women working in the kitchen and I think that's it. In the laundry. That's just the pre-release folks in the laundry. The facility in New Hampshire we went into a lot of areas that were amazingly quiet and empty and I kept saying that there was a lockdown and we asked huge areas that nobody was in zero people especially some of the sick even the commissary they do the commissary for the entire prison system within New Hampshire in Conker the women do that that big commissary it's like a big warehouse so if a prisoner wants something to commissary they have a system to get him that stuff out of that particular building there was nobody in that place either which I thought was a little bit strange but maybe they were on lockdown and just didn't want to mention it but they did take us right into the living area so that was fun. Part of that was the layout of the facility having that perimeter which was exterior wall which was also their perimeter security and so you had those long corridors and we did go buy a few of the rooms that had people in them until you really branched out into that day room where the living units were and that was one of the downsides that they mentioned with these living units that you see here the recurrence head is the fact that a lot of daylight coming in but the problem being is they still have a mix of male and female officers so when going by there you were able to actually look in and the women had issues with that but what that provided mechanically was a wonderful thing is the mechanical chase was between the two so those units were back to back and so you don't have any exterior windows in each living unit or in the rooms but you had it at the end of the corridor at the end of that long day room so that's where all that daylight it was glass floor to ceiling which was a nice feature but I do think that if we were to look to do something along those lines it would still have it so the rooms had access to natural daylight and not have these large glass issues one of the women commented on that that it was the layout that you have probably if you stare long enough in one of those pictures you could actually see the toilet so I think that is part of the problem a lot of the rooms had their lights off as we were walking through and so that was a little detrimental in our facilities between the two doors is where we have the toilets so basically when you're doing officers walking through and doing a bed check it doesn't matter male or female when you're sort of looking over them because it's a smaller window in the door that you're looking through so that provides a bit more privacy but then again there's a lot more to hide behind and I think you look at this design there with the glass on the side of the glass from the door I can see in a way why they did that so the person would feel so cooped up you're looking out you're not cooped up in this room or sit up and walk but the superintendent we were walking through for Warden I guess she was she had mentioned that if she had to do it again the door was yes but the side glass probably not so much because of that privacy issue but that's a workaround it was still a very nice looking facility there were other pros and cons to it from a BGS point of view for construction but it was still a nice facility so that leads into my question this is probably totally pretty sure but BGS lives in your world and DOC lives in their world and DOC's world right now is a total chaos to put it mildly I mean they're changing whatever direction they're going out and we're pursuing a new facility that then opens up to other things for men as well due to the women's facility it's going to open up a bigger issue for the men in terms of staying alone or doing part of another campus BGS can design something in BGS's world but may not work in DOC's world and DOC would need certain needs to communicate with BGS so how are we going to bring those two together when we've got one department that's really trying to stabilize I think we're already doing it we have calls set up every month we're still part of the same state organization and we want to achieve the same goal between working with Eric here and then our commissioners back there I feel like we've had great lack of success I'll just use an example we have stuff breaking our facilities all the time we jump on the phone BGS is there and can fix it I think we believe in what BGS will probably say is we're getting to a point where the things that are breaking are bigger and bigger and that's more concerning our deferred maintenance so as far as designing it I think between some of the experiences that legislators that we have that BGS have seen as we go to visit but also like we're going to pull on experts and get their opinion on things as well but is BGS going to be willing to listen and I ask that because I'm concerned that BGS will be working with an X number of dollars per bed and we're going to be within those X dollars per bed and we're not going to have other people telling us what to do without construction well it is cost is an issue cost is an issue so you're looking at that but it's how to you know make that work where is that fine line when I've got 34 or five years plus experience in this stuff and where we do fail in certain areas I think the New Hampshire facility like I said they had some issues but they were all concrete block filled concrete block could you get by with could it be done fast with precast similar to what we had down in Springfield and make the area softer and more inviting like the day room the larger lighting natural light coming in yes I think that's possible to be working the corrections on and things like that the bottom line is you know corrections needs wants this and when we put it together to make that all work well here's the cost and potentially where are those cuts it's the bottom line that's what they said in Congress they said it would be it's going to cost you they said well we can't afford that so let's change this let's change this but I want to make sure the two departments are working in tandem well they're just going to I'm saying that to BGS and I know with the OC right now we don't have a full-time commissioner in turn to stabilize everything but we're going to move forward at some point here I would assume this session we're trying to figure out the limits facility that then has implications for the whole corrections system facility-wide we need to have those two departments working in tandem and that's what I really want to emphasize those two departments that's pretty much standard procedure for us we meet on a monthly basis with the OC they come in and we discuss the issues in all the facilities and what to do better it would be still a collaboration going forward of what type of facility to construct and how to construct it I'm always going to argue for the heavier is better because I can always make it a little bit prettier by painting and stuff like that but concrete is a lot harder to kick holes into than sheet rockets but is there a level of security like when you go to Maine and you go to the reentry facility that it's a college dorm and everything else that yes I think that works if there's a population here for that then it can work but if you have the population that's slamming books in their doors all the time and every month they're replacing the door then the harder route is better but I think it's the whole facility that you gotta look at it's not just although I probably would argue for make it all hard because it's easier that way for me it's a population we're looking at the greater needs how to spread that out so over time as the population shifts you're not losing something to have to go back in and renovate an area to make it harder because of the population shift yes from my perspective there's a lot of people that have to work in to make this work it's not just PGS and DOC it's also the training of the corrections officers it's also the laws that are putting the people there and how long they're there and how whether they can be moved out whether they'll come right back in again there's a whole bunch of people that really need to work together in order to make the corrections system work in general and for the facilities to properly support them so it's going to take a lot of coordination so then the question becomes to your point Joseph a lot of it's going to depend on what the legislature decides they want to spend and in what value that we get for every dollar spent and what we want to accomplish I mean if we give him you know we give you a hundred thousand dollars in bed and what DOC really wants is a hundred and twenty thousand dollars if that we're going to have a problem and spend a little bit of my experience as we all under fund construction projects because we don't give good estimates and good honest estimates and you know if I've been Joe and I've been having a conversation I wasn't saying a word it was like my happy place over here it was a bright smile and I think that's I think that's what it's going to come down to you know will the legislature have the intestinal fortitude to give the DOC and BGS enough money to build a facility that we think is the right facility for whichever gender population we're building for because we're just you know we're under stress women's facilities soon to be under stress with St. Aldins St. Aldins facility itself still have two hundred and fifty odd prisoners down in Mississippi multi-year, multi-million I can't say billion yet but as long as we go we'll sort of get to that number and what's the legislature supposed to do what do our colleagues at the hall want to do other than nothing or think you can put up a building in six months I think that no one should be there anyway I think that no one should be there anyway every order should be there so then there's Alaska there's snow you were there for Christmas for Thanksgiving I wasn't flying over I was there for Thanksgiving and there was snow this is outside of Anchorage 15 miles outside of Anchorage which is the major population center of Alaska and this was interesting I when I came in the first thing I met the superintendent which she was and the commissioner of corrections was also there and my wife wasn't so but the first thing she said was we're all about safety that's our primary concern safety of the inmates safety of the outside population we're all about safety Alaska is a more conservative state than Vermont she asked about what's going on in Vermont and I said well we're trying to reduce the population in prisons by offering these trying to get more community based services and she said yeah we tried that in Alaska and it didn't work at all and so what they my daughter told me afterward that that was controversial they passed the first part of the legislation which was to which was to build the structure of the corrections but they neglected they never got to the second part which was supporting the community services so you only got one part of it and so it didn't work so that's why I say things have to be done in tandem you have to really have the legislation that supports the kind of facilities that you're trying to maintain this was a very but this was a very interesting facility most of it looked like this this was the entrance to the main part but I mean you can see that you're talking wooden walls and things like this on the outside these other units in the back the same kind of so that's the whole correctional facility there just for women is it just for women or are they men there too? they had some men there at the beginning and they said we've got to get them back they took the men out of there they said it improved it a lot that's now the way we're in I made a smile to them I made a smile to them but these are smaller units and there's one of them that's faith-based and there's another one that's they have different kind of where they're all living together with a more religious attitude towards it it's not a specific religion and there's another one that's for drug rehabilitation so that everybody's a drug-free unit like that and everything is earned in this one they're very big on accountability and what you get so you don't get a tablet you have to buy your tablet yourself you have to earn the right to have a tablet they have different colored shirts for different places different units so people felt they kind of stood out I'm a member of this unit so I'm not like the general population I'm a little bit better they have a lot of I need to find out still about Vermont how much community interaction there is community being what? outside the community community interaction within different segments actually there's a point on that too because they said if you do this sort of thing you want to keep these smaller units separate from the general population as much as possible because the faith-based and drug-abused ones they don't mingle that much they don't live in the same proximity so they separate them more in terms of not their classification of security but more in terms of what they're dealing with on a daily basis or what their belief system is or if that type of thing probably means perhaps yes but I think you probably still have to earn the right to live in one of those so do they have minimum security and medium security in this facility you know I would say not I didn't see a big separation is this the only women's facilities so they would have both justification the community interaction like they grow flowers and have a flower sale out in the community they have concerts in here they bring the community in for concerts the warden there said they have a the prisoners pay for a McDonald's meal Mississippi or Michigan Mississippi they pay for McDonald's comes and delivers and the money that goes to the bought the meals that the prisoners buy goes to the community I've run into this a lot in places where they're trying to improve the relationships between the outside community and corrections and I don't I haven't seen that yet but a lot for all I know it exists that we do that sort of outreach in the community we used to move some of the agriculture I think I've been in St. Albans they did a little bit particularly when we had Teresa Snow with Salvation Farms that went to the food banks family centers all of that they also had a big craft sale where they could make things for kids they have that in Maine they have that in Maine and this was built in 1974 which was quite a while ago but it still looks see no, let's go back yeah so it still looks very modern for having been built but the other thing to remember is that Alaska in 1974 had a lot of money they had the oil money and they also had a fairly good budget now the oil was dropped, their budgets dropped, their ability to find something like this has probably been much more limited now but all of our correctional facilities when you approach them you know it's a correctional they're all concrete, you know that this does not give you the impression at all it gives you an impression it could be a library, it could be a campus building it could be anything but now a correctional facility it doesn't give you that impression at all I believe this does have a wire perimeter but see, you drive up here the entrance to the facility actually is over here so the wire is more around here so you don't see it coming up so you're right it doesn't look like a prison I mean all of our prisons look like prisons when you drive them up to and those are the ones that I visited which one of those four did you as a person feel the most comfortable in it? well in the re-entry facility in Maine because that's what we're used to being free but that's the thing that difference is important did you pick up any difference in the staff and how the staff any tension between the four facilities? I've asked do people want to work here? do you have trouble getting staff? and the people in Alaska said all the corrections officers want to work here partially because it's close to anchorage it's not often the real boonies of Alaska but they also like the atmosphere and the people in it things like that Michigan had some very interesting problems I found with they had because they had the restriction of only women could supervise women they also then were confronted by a law suit by women who said they couldn't advance in corrections because they were stuck in that facility they wanted to be able to get out and experience the other thing experience the necessary and increase in job responsibility that they could get at other facilities so they were suing so it's hard to tell what happens there Maine there was one that they there was one that they said the men don't I think it was actually I think it was said that the men don't necessarily like to work there they don't want to deal with women they didn't go into corrections in order to deal with women they like things cut and dry it's a different attitude women are now cut and dry exactly if you were in a couple women together I mean I'm saying that women are very different to work with them they don't go in there but the big thing that I got out of shadowing is that what did you say? we get things done and we do it's a different way of working I think we have to be not just speaking in stereo there was different issues and different interactions later Connor? I forget if we spoke about this last year but to your question about these let's call them more New Age or progressive thinking facilities in higher North Dakota has done it across their prison system including their maximum security so if that's something that interests you you can look at that system as well they have visited Norway they're super or they're but commissioner and deputy commissioner came back and started making some immediate changes and to your point I believe Norwegian's model when we're talking about community is they want to basically create good neighbors so when you leave it's part of that community again you can be a neighbor they are they have a much different system I'm not trying to compare the U.S. system in Norway but North Dakota has taken some steps after what they saw there a lot of it's programming and it's great for our correctional officers once you have options where tensions are a lot lower it helps everybody Maine's also sending their staff to Norway they're rotating people in and out of there when I shadowed the corrections officer the CRCF it was actually very good because he was floated which meant that he went around and took different jobs to relieve somebody of one thing so I wasn't fortunately stuck in a control room unlocking and locking doors for eight hours so he showed me that and I stayed there for about 15 minutes and then we got somewhere else and I was on the unit he was relieving somebody and all of them will take care of it so I was there and the unit I'm not sure which one it was but it had I think the day room was about the size of this room and then the hall going on and we were standing there he was doing paperwork and one of the inmates came in and she was kind of waiting at the door and he said I'm going out to work to work around the facility and she said that'll be good and she said but my head's in a bad place I'm really not feeling that good today and I noticed that he didn't respond that he just kind of kept working on his thing and and then I think he might have said something like um how are you doing again and she said I'm really not feeling very well at all and he said well maybe we're right up to slip for mental health you can go talk to mental health and she said yeah okay that's probably the end so they did that and we left and he said later he said you know that I should not have asked her how she was doing that was because then it just spiraled down and she started using that and she ended up not going out which is what she really would have been the best thing for and he said the hardest thing for new corrections officers is to not be a friend now I talked to a couple of people I talked to my manager I explained the same story he said yeah public safety is like that our cops are floating social workers who go to domestic violence and I talked to my cousin who was a Unitarian minister and she as I was explaining to her I was thinking that just doesn't it's not a good excuse you really you have to be human and the thing is that if you ask what is the job of a corrections officer in Vermont you know and it's not to be their friend to be their counselor to be there to rehabilitate them the person who is a corrections officer and I can show you the job description doesn't talk about making prisoners feel good and things like this it's all about treatment supervision custody things like that it's a safety issue more than it is a security in the facility and that's where the training comes in because I talked to Jen about this too it's very difficult for somebody to learn how to put up an appropriate barrier between them and the inmate inmates who are criminals and very good at manipulating people they do it all their lives so you don't want to get sucked into something that's going to cause you problems down the way but you also have to be human and be able to help them out and that's a really that's why in Norway it takes two years before any corrections officer comes into a facility and actually starts working they're trained as social workers more than as prisoners while we we have a six week program the facility has a one week program you know it's a and they call us the people and they want to get paid more each prisoner as I've heard ranges from 90 to $120,000 per inmate in Norway so on the other hand their recidivism is down to 20 or something like that whereas it's 120 or 60 or 70 that saves you money so where do you put your money in training or do you put it in larger facilities if we had the recidivism rate that Norway has we could we would build a facility for the whole of Vermont with 450 beds but it's to get there it's to get there it's a 10 year lag to get there it's a 10 year lag to get there in terms of the recidivism rate that's great so everybody's got ideas about how their particular idea saves money but it takes a coordination of all those to really make it work the best way is Anna Downing who said don't arrest me don't arrest me don't arrest me I do so I'm kind of full around here Alaska DOC website and all that kind of cool stuff looks like they have about 12 men's facilities and the warning women's facilities some are better than others do you have any feel for how many and I understand why they have so many facilities they're just a huge state but some of the facilities are really big really really big in Alaska? they don't have that much population the population is not the same as Vermont yeah they get some big huge facilities yeah but what I'm saying is the population in terms of people so anyway I guess my question is did you ever think about it trying to find out how many total people they have incarcerated in Alaska no that's just that's one of 12 that's pretty big I do have budget numbers for Maine if you're interested or not at any point and I don't mean anything I'm just saying it just seems to me that they've got a lot of people looking down their facilities very facilities why don't we go with Carl and Kurt about your thoughts on when your shadow perpetual officers and your discussions with Carl you want to lead it more and tentatively have different issues there was one thing that I wanted two things about it that I would want to have when I was in the Chipman facility at one point with one of the officers and I mentioned the slamming doors and he said do you know that those slamming doors they're good because when I've walked through and I hear the door slamming back of me I know that it's secure in back of me you mean the salad boards? well no the doors between the unit and the hall between the hall and me the area you go in you open the door that's your salad board it's not the double doors any time you go into a unit you have to buzz in and they open the door you're in this combined area sometimes at the end of the hall you're going through a hall through another one so when that door slams he says I know that that door is secure and nobody is going to come up behind me there was a pressure on me how long you've been in the system I don't know it's not quite a while it's a real culture and in Michigan the guy said some of these women are vicious they've killed their kids they've burned their husbands they've done terrible things we have to have facilities for these kind of people it can't be all that nice thank you it's a fact you don't want to say what the facility is for I have mentioned several people things what you said one day butch when people get mad at the overcrowding of the correctional system and everything I says one of our committee members butch I says just remember we don't invite them in they come knocking on our door and if you don't believe it you look at the papers on Monday morning and do a watch thing on Monday because they had legislative visiting the courtroom and I did I know that well when I went to Maine the superintendent there talked about how they didn't have slamming doors there that was something that she was very proud of and she seemed to really think that that changes the tenor of the facility they don't have a loudspeaker they don't have a loudspeaker system there so the guards have to yell from the guard station she said that's one thing that as soon as they can they're going to put a loudspeaker in because they don't want yelling they don't want slamming doors those are two things that they felt are real triggers for women so where did you hear that about the slamming doors that wasn't shit but what Carl says is backed up by what other people have said to me a few women who are incarcerated for domestic abuse with men that are yelling at them with slamming doors it is a trigger but on the other hand there's always a but on the other hand what else did you pick up Carl so are we just talking about Chittenden or are we talking about all of it I went to the MAT lines at all four of the facilities that I went to and the MAT line and Chittenden started at started at 5am you were there at 5am I was there at 5am for the start I got there at 4.30 and what's that 3.30 no traffic and they have to do that there because that's the only time they can have the programming space the programming space during the rest of the day is used for other stuff and all the other facilities it was much later much later in the day and what I watched with that is the sort of level of stress that the MAT line puts under puts the guards under particularly in the mail facilities I think that they're they have two guards there and they might have 20 I'm sorry 20 20 inmates 20 correctional officers for that MAT line and they have to pull people off of the units it increases it increases over time and it also leads to having less people on the units and I would be curious to know about what happened in Springfield that was like 10 in the morning the altercation yeah what time of day the two things I heard from corrections officers were that the MAT thing was a real challenge and giving up it well there's challenges operationally with pulling people off of units to supervise the line there's the issue of security on the line more issues yes no that's that's sort of the operational piece the other piece they talked about a lot is why and this came from some of the PNP folks too there are people being inducted who have no history and they just want to serve their time high which that was the complaint of a lot of them now whether that's an education issue for the correctional officers whether that's a procedural issue in terms of induction whether it's both I don't know but that's what I heard and the other piece that I heard from them too was just the overtime piece and what a toll that's taking on on them those were the takeaways for me were you picking up on both ends folks picking up room around issues with our officers I heard that I shouldn't but the other ones that people I've talked to weren't as familiar with the rest of the system you know when you're working the kind of hours that Carl's talking about and then something like this hits the news and people see you in a corrections uniform outside you know on your way to work or something it's not the kind of place it's not the kind of place you want to work the kind of job you want to have one of the things that bums me out is that every time every facility that I went to I remember saying at least once to a corrections officer there saying that that I appreciated that their work they have no bigger advocate and champion than the commissioner and the commissioner is gone now because he you know he was always in here talking about the quality of the people and the hard work they did and you see that if you go there and you can tell that people are putting a brave face on it but I get the sense that Morale's not great so I have several COs that work at Northwest State that live in my district that contacted me this summer after they resigned and it was because of the overtime one of them was in a pretty bad accident on his way to work he fell asleep because he had less than four hours of sleep between ships and they made it very clear to me that they liked the job they liked what they were doing they felt it was important it was better paying benefits than most jobs offered and yet they were so overworked one of them just about died on his way in because of the overtime so I really think it goes beyond Morale these people are seriously afraid that even getting to and from work was a 15 minute drive from where he lived it wasn't an hour long commute so he's falling asleep on the way to work and then going into work that tired how does that work and the other safety is in their minds they see something hit the news like the incident in Springfield and they wonder would I even have enough energy to deal with that they're always on because they're adrenaline so just on the Morale issue I know they came to me this fall and one just a month and a half ago to express to me how frustrated they were and I thought that was relevant in this discussion did they talk at all about feeling supported by their superintendent feeling supported or not supported by their superintendent or case supervisor shift supervisor they talk about that at all in very unkind terms so was it they weren't supported by the folks within the facility or central office or the facility they felt that inside Northwest State it was very much a supervisors and a CEO's club and there was a severe difference and lack of respect both ways and I picked that up and the correctional officers because I approached them when I see out in the community purposely go off and ask and I heard the same thing I've asked specifically we feel that higher up we don't have nobody has our back we immediately think it's central office and I really wanted to find out where that was so I specifically asked is it within the facility the building is it your shift supervisor is it the superintendent is it central office where they said it's inside the building it's not central office because we always jumped to central office so I just wanted to it was more than one occasion that the superintendent in Northwest State was very punitive towards people that did not see him favorably and shuffled people into positions that they should not have been in because of that but that's a personnel issue and I'm only hearing on the side of that story so I do want to make that clear as well thank you did you hear either one of you here in your talking with officers that they didn't feel that somebody had their back I heard that once I think officers came to the Women's Caucus last year and were distressed about the overtime issue you know we hear it too though like you know the Brattle Bar retreat like there's a in a 24-7 a facility operates 24-7 for the safety of the facility you have to have a full full staff and so this mandatory overtime is a challenge and I've heard from in corrections when you know it's just not very attractive to recruiting new members and when we have a workforce shortage in the statement it's exacerbated and so if we're thinking about a new facility I do you know I really now even more than ever like to think about location to workforce and then the other pieces like you know could there be with a training program like you know better training would it you know all of us we're talking about a culture shift that's what we're really talking about how do we do that what I thought Jim about today about the culture shift within corrections within what he saw when he was in Rothern you know the other thing I ran into he's he's seen all of us two and a half days in the job that's what he said to me two and a half days in the job he's already one in ways to one of them you know in those ways here one in ways to the job he went through this he went through this that's why he's brought on so the employee piece in the overtime here's back we were using 60 to 70 temps maybe more and yeah it might have been a lot more than that there was a lot of discussion about why are we hiring temps and not full time CO's so so work was done as a position pilot or something that I don't remember but to duel away with with temps and hire more full time CO's and and I think that's right I think we're probably better served full time full time corrections officers are not using temporary CO's but the problem then became you can't hire a CO 60 positions open or 50 positions open and can't fill so I don't know where we are on the temp level but I think our temp level is still down I think it is also which creates more of a problem because of the overtime yeah now we have no employees which now is boosting the overtime and which they didn't have before course overtime is really great until you have to work you know three to four overtime that gets to be a risk now that's become a real big problem it's going fast catch 22 situation that's been created by good attentions the problem is I think we all, I never realized that our employment situation would look like it is today on the dearth of people looking for jobs I think we might find and Alice just said I think we might find a new interim commissioner may have some innovative ideas on how to solve some of those problems they might not be accepted they might not be accepted they may not be accepted but you'll have some innovative ideas you're not going to listen to the guy you hired to fix the problem then maybe you should hire him the way that I see it being on the outside and it's a very simplistic way of looking at it but I think the MIT shows is an example of this that one thing we've heard from correctional officers is well we're here for the security we're not here to be social workers and I think you look at the level of pay and then you look at the you need to have a high school diploma in GED and you know you look at that you know 30 years ago fine I don't know when was the last time we really looked at the credentials of the correctional officers and that's not to negate who's there now by any means but I think we've come to a point in our culture and also with all the initiatives that we've done within corrections the folks who are now being incarcerated by a different group of folks then they were incarcerated 15 years ago you're dealing with much more severe issues you're dealing with more mental health issues you're dealing with much more social issues than you were before and that changes the culture within a facility and your correctional officer, your frontline people interact with the offender and I think we struggled with the mental health piece back in the 90s that correctional officers really needed more help in their training for understanding and working with mental health correctional officers aren't going to be therapists but there needs to be an understanding that if someone's in a mental health crisis you don't slam a door or yell at them that makes it worse but if you're coming from a point of security it's a different mode of reacting and so that's where I get into saying it's a culture shift and that's going to be very very difficult to make and it's going to take a long time to do it the other thing that I ran into or was mentioned to me was that corrections officers might move from being corrections officers to probation and parole and the two jobs are very different from what I understand there isn't a lot of training to make to move you to that so when you're a corrections officer in prison things are very cut and dry if the prisoner does this then you do this as your reaction but when you get out into probation and parole and you're managing people in the community you need to be able to look at other ways of dealing with things and just hauling them back to prison which is one of the reasons why we get so many people coming off furlough into prisons because the people managing them or think manage them as prisoners which is what furlough is it's extension of the walls but this person mentioned that there's no rewards that he can give now what's up the walls came up to here yeah just wanted to be something I needed to do for corrections yeah you never know hi you want to be a correctional officer she already is she's got 180 inmates so the problem was this person thought that right there the people he was managing a couple of them were doing a really good job and wanted to reward him so it would be nice to be able to say well let's go down church street and get a cup of coffee you can't do that you can't start you don't give anything to want somebody you're managing you don't receive anything from somebody you're managing because then you get into this gray area so that's what they need to be trained for some way of managing that we need to be able to come up with ways of rewarding good behavior we're not rewarding it we're short of bringing them back into prison so what were you picking up Carl? I talked to P&P folks mostly about MAT about security where they were and for the most part good with the exception of Newport Newport P&P is in the courthouse and it's they have all sorts of public walking through there their security is they've got a sheriff's deputy there at the front door and a metal detector but it's not ideal I think that probably what I think the MAT situation made the sort of hiring and workforce challenges and probably those things were happening or had started when MAT came on but MAT probably just made it worse and I'm not saying that because I disagree with MAT at all I think MAT is it's the right thing to be doing but it just came at an opportune time for where we are with hiring and workforce development Did you hear anything from the correctional officers in terms of how they are kept abreast of changes that might be coming down from the central office such as MAT raises to that level where there's a new program or new institution of policy or something How does that get transferred or translated to the correctional officers how are they made aware of it and what support are they given I didn't hear anything about that I did hear concern about the time frame with which MAT was developed and implemented but that was sort of rushed out of the blue and really But has that settled I think it's settled but I think there's some lingering lingering bad feelings about and then it continues to add to the overtime burden so I think that might be part of that That's a real concern that we've had because MAT got away from us That's the bill we expected 200 or less and well-rupted 750 800 because of the federal rules and I just re-read the bill and the medically necessary thing and all that stuff but the rules that were in place when we passed it there would have been only about 200 people but it's now we have 750 or so I guess so we really got away from this and we were told it was going to cost 800 to 900 thousand dollars and it's only a million two points I think it's two points we're millions now and the whole bill is based on those facts and I understand we're saying this is out of control but we're starting to see the numbers we saw this summer we're starting to see that taper back down the diversion numbers are higher than ever that's what I was hearing too we're officers talking about that the diversion piece I think I'm trying to remember now but what I was hearing was that the diversion numbers weren't getting any better as the summer went on we heard this summer that we're in an anomaly in that in other states doing math or introducing math their diversion rates are going down we're the only state where the diversion rate's going up so there's something suspect there have been thoughts about that well I think this is just speculation here but that might get back to that issue of people being inducted who don't need to be along with introducing a new currency I spoke to a constituent constituent who had a big brother, big sister and he he said that people were going on MAT because they wanted to stay in Vermont because that's another my point is only that there's a little bit of an incentive to go on it I know you're supposed to be you're supposed to be a suspect I think that's a I wonder that's a factor you know they want to stay in Vermont not go to Mississippi oh no I didn't hear that so if you wanted to stay I mumbled that you wanted to stay in Vermont and my team I spent a lot of time in St. John'sburg talking to the Centurion folks the next facility I went to I don't remember which one it was I was told that the Centurion people were told specifically not to talk to me they called ahead the Centurion that was not made clear but the Centurion people were not going to talk to me and who told them not to I don't know I don't know one of the CO's at St. John'sburg no no at St. John'sburg I spent quite a bit of time with the Centurion folks talking about MAT you should have let me know you were there I don't know what was the next facility you went to I think it was um it was either Newport or Chittenden I think it was Newport Newport would be most likely yeah it was Newport yeah because that's where we had the most problems and there was a fight there that day during the people who had just come off the MAT line and did you do any other work with DOC or obsession is that something not pretty much what you did just those four in-state visits and then with the P&P folks after the facility visits and then the two out-of-state visits and this all finished before the Chittenden article appeared yes oh yeah I was at Chittenden I think early September well there's a lot of food for thought yeah we've had a lot thrown at us today for thought we'll have our work cut out for us we'll continue working for now anything else on us because one thing we can transition to I'm looking at the time 24 we just got as I was talking earlier for this committee budget adjustment Theresa just came in did you get a copy of this of all of them if I've got it on email I wonder if it's something we can copy do 24 I'm just saying one more thing I'm really glad I spent that time this summer to do that because I don't I feel like at least I have some education on what we're talking about here in this committee and I don't it would be much more difficult to be having some of these discussions that we're going to have to have without having done that so I'm really glad I took the time to do that all spent thank you for doing that thank you Kurt for doing all your chores all your trips that was good yeah I like it learned a lot I'm going to quickly shift gears here to budget adjustment appropriations did you didn't get anything by email by Theresa this is a paper copy she said there wasn't much but you know once we start working on it so that's why I'm thinking if we could spend some time today do you want to for the internet that's really weird it is weird today right? it's been just like awful intermittently yes this isn't kind of here thank you that's why let me look at this real quick she just handled it to me so equipment revolving fund is that in your baili... is the equipment revolving fund in your BTS or is that... I don't know they highlighted information technology needs and shall be tracked and reported separately from other equipment so that's IT issues for us to start with something great are they putting IT in there? no no, this is something different there's an equipment revolving fund equipment revolving fund that each department feeds into and then departments can use that when their equipment needs to be upgraded and they do have IT that they take out of this as well and I think they just want to carve that out shall be used for the intended purpose of establishing revolving loans for information technology needs so that's our IT needs so to take the pressure off the capital if they don't take pressure off general fund but there is a bunch of money for that let's see transportation fund carry forward payroll, we don't get into payroll, retirees I don't know why they probably probably gave you the wrong packet well I'm just kind of wondering what's going on what's addressed to me this doesn't make sense what were you mentioning yesterday I thought Supreme Court I'm working on that I'm not exactly sure how that works I need to talk to Catherine about it Supreme Court it is just because we have to I don't see a painting for us what am I missing I'm never going to have to not speak about us I'm not looking at the laws they're highlighted none of it started a project it was a product I really don't want to start with capitalization of the IT that's the only thing that I see that's it transfer to BGS transfer to the BGS Equipment Revolving Long Fund to capitalize on IT revolving funds do you know anything about that that sounds really strange I do not that's the only thing giving money to us to capitalize on IT that's the only thing that pertains to us yeah that's what I would think I know that's why I shift to here I can ask are we on the record