 Why don't we get started because we've got a full agenda and those of us who live in the deep south are snowing today. We're on the record. And the first subject is the plan to close woodside. And I must say that to make sure they're going to choose. The plan is not today or tomorrow or this week. So why one? It's going to be part of the budget and committee meetings in the Senate House, I'm sure. So it's not, I mean, this isn't closed. So I've had a number of people who've contacted me and concerned about the closure of woodside. And the best of my knowledge is still open. And still some days have kids there. And it's no decisions been made yet by the legislature. The administration will recommend it as part of their 2021 budget. And that is not part of budget adjustment. So people don't think it's going to be tomorrow. So with that, our first witness is the Honorable Judge Brian Grison. Good morning. Good morning. Long day yesterday. It wasn't a long day yesterday. It was actually a pretty interesting day. A lot of information. A lot of information. Good morning. For the record, Brian Grison, Chief Superior Judge, speaking to the topic of the plan is not closed on the woodside. I confess I'm not sure how much help I can be to this committee on this subject. I have heard from some judges, not a lot, concerns when they read that there's a potential closing. I think that concern to the extent that it's out there from individual judges is that it is the only secure facility for youth in the state. And so their question is, if it's not there, what are the options? I would begin by reminding the committee that, quite frankly, the judiciary and very little authority who goes to the woodside statutes have been remanded, I think it was two years ago, we cannot send someone to the woodside unless we have a recommendation from the department. That's in the predisposition phase. And that's only if the department recommends placement there and that the court finds that there's no other safe or secure setting and that there is a need to send the need there. In post-disposition, the limits he perceives, the commissioner has the sole authority to decide who goes to the woodside. So our authority to send someone there is limited by statute. I would also remind the committee that we should be looking at probably two different populations, one for 16 and 17-year-olds, which can be considered under the criminal law, in those 15 and under. I think the real problem becomes that second for population 15 and under because there are no other options for that population, assuming that they weren't a secure setting. The 16 and 17-year-olds, there is an option in the sense that because of that age, because they can be considered adults, that there is a memorandum of understanding between the department of corrections and the department of children and families as it relates to the Marlborough Valley facility and that is my understanding is they have four beds in their segregation unit that if necessary, if behavior or discipline issues normally support placement there, that they have the means to house up to four youth there. But again, that's only 16 and 17-year-olds. They are prohibited from having anyone under that area. So in that sense, if the circumstances are warranted, there is that option available for that age of 16 and 17, but beyond that. My information is that they have one person under 18 right now at Marlborough Valley. I believe it would be Marlborough Valley, I'm not sure about that facility. I don't have what facilities there are, but it's one 16-year-old in Marlborough Valley. Do you know how it changes day to day? Tomorrow it may be zero, or maybe two. Right, and if you had a 17-year-old in there today, essentially placed there under this memorandum of understanding between ACF and department of corrections, he turns 18 tomorrow he will be placed in the general population. So when, and this isn't part of the discussion, when the law changes on July 1 to a few 18-year-olds in that category, and then 19-year-olds, is there any, whether the discussion that they're going to have to have is what to do with that resolution? I think that's clearly a discussion that's going to have to take place. So can I just ask that once the law changes, then it would be all of you up to 1912? As we face it, it will start at the 18-year-old. But as far as looking at two different populations? Well, you still have kids that can be in a double court at the younger age, depending on the nature of the child. But by bringing 18-year-old in the court, it raises another issue of if they have to be sustained. And I'm happy that the Commissioner of Children and Families is here. One of the things that I think a lot of the emails I've been getting, people are confused. Only the Lincoln children can be placed at Woodside, is that correct? So a lot of people are seeing a large number of kids out of state, and they're saying, oh, you shouldn't be sending kids out of state, and you've got a facility. But those may be kids who are unmanageable beyond the control. I usually use the term, I mean, we have a different turnout. But do we know how many delinquents are actually out of state? But I might ask that question, of either you or the Commissioner. But yes, so we do have, this is Ken Shatts, Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, and I said a very simple question. That's all right. That's all right, Commissioner. Any time. But I'm just going to give my notes to give you this specific number, but thank you. So I think that, no, but right, this is not the Lincoln children. I do have that information. Give me a couple of minutes. Before we see our discussion on Woodside, it's a much smaller number. The numbers I had off the information provided by the Department, I think included children out of the Lincoln children. Right, so I don't have that. Yeah, it's 38. 38. You're seeing Johnson. Thank you, Deputy Commissioner. Let me give credit to where it's due. Of the 140 youth placed out of state, 38 of the 140 youth placed out of state, 38 are delinquents. 60 out of state. Oh, 60. I'm sorry. In total residential care, I was talking about. So I apologize for the 60 out of state. Actually, 20 are delinquent youth placed out of state. I apologize because I'm responding from our perspective, and again, we've talked about this. I don't want to go on too long. The real distinction is youth in residential care, not out of state, because so many of our out of state placements are actually closed by in border states. So again, I apologize for not responding accurately, but so 20 youth are delinquent are placed in out of state programs. And how many are back? I'm sorry. How many are back? I have that. For delinquent youth are placed in back in school in New Hampshire. 16 or another place. I wanted to, the reason the back is important to me. Back in, used to be in Bennington. And they had a change in terms of what they do. I don't know all the details, but they move the boys to Hampshire and kept the girls in Bennington. And so the girls are in Bennington, or in state, would be in state and the boys are out of state. It may not be much, but if those four kids could be considered to be in state placements in residential care, it might be. Because they're right across the river. We agree. Anyway, Judge? Yeah, I just think what we're seeing, of course, is the declining population in Woodside. I think it's fair to say that there are always going to be cases and circumstances that require some level of secured settings. It's a question of how much. If Woodside was built for 30, I think it's been a long time since we've needed a facility that size. But the more options available to the judiciary, the better we can address the issues that we bring to this. So I'm not sure if I can answer any questions. So I have a question. So I keep going back. Where are they going to be? Where are they going to be housed? Even if it's for a week or two months, where are they going to be housed? And by default, are we going to be putting them in a correctional facility and under DOC project? So where are they going to be? Well, that's what I'm saying. I think there's always going to be a need. It's a matter of a great size. I think that's the question that the legislature and the administration need to answer as we move forward from here until we finish the 2021 budget. You can't leave here next session without some decision about where those kids are going to go. If you're not going to be at Woodside, they need to be in a some kind of a facility that has no reject. It has a secure facility. It has to be a secure facility. That's the issue. Let me age myself here. We're all aging ourselves. Well, you know, I started the program in 204 Depot in Bennington in 1971. And we were an alternative to the week school. And the week school operated. Then there was a period of time where people in higher models decided to do away with the week school and the institutional ones. And they understood that all the tough kids would go to Camp Iwanaki in Bennington. That plan, that was a private nonprofit run by the Eckhart Foundation. Those of you who may be familiar with drug stores in the South, they were all Eckhart's drugs, much like CVS today. The Eckhart Foundation ran Camp Iwanaki, but soon the DCS, it was SIRS back then, found that those kids that they thought were all going to be the tough kids couldn't go to Camp Iwanaki. And they needed an alternative. And we were taking some of them at 204 Depot and some of them went elsewhere. Then there was the horrific murder in this extension. And after that, the state decided it needed a secure residential facility. And there was a fight between the legislature and the governor and others at that time. I think Mike Smith and you were in the legislature then. And your decision came into a 30-bed facility, 15 beds for treatment, 15 for attention, and they built woods. In the meantime, there was a program at the state hospital operated by Washington County Mental Health that was in, and I gotta tell you, it was one of the world's places I've ever visited. But it was in a, I'd best describe it as I remember it now. You'd walk through the tunnel in the state hospital and there was a lane or something that I think four beds at the time. And then it expanded to eight, and the state took it over and that was the program set. So Washington County Mental Health ran the secured attention facility. So I'm questioning the judge of the man. Was that history lesson in your mental health? Things that I don't do about social media. You even knew about this? He probably went there. Were you there? No, I was not. I might have trolled him. Grew him up. So for the judge, maybe the commissioner had to weigh in on this. So that's the ways that are ordered to detention. And so when you ordered them to detention, and I think I heard that DCF has authority to put them up at currently the blue side. What type of, do they get any program or are they just doing dead time waiting for a court hearing? Well, of course it depends. If it's a waiting hearing, waiting for a merits hearing, if they're there pre-merits, that Ken and his staff can certainly answer about it I would assume the program is some limited at that point because they may not be there for very long. But it is the department that has the authority to go here. Federal law that requires certain things happen, and I'm sure the department goes beyond federal law. I'm trying to think. Ken would like to answer your question. I'm not sure who. I won't take up your time. I'm thinking about what the discussion is going to be for on January 9th. Sure. The answer is we do provide a therapeutic approach, even if it's for a youth is only there for a few days. And that includes we have, we have clinical staff at Woodside. We have youth counselors who on day-to-day basis always provide appropriate care that is focused on the youth, the youth's needs, how can we enable the youth to be successful ultimately in returning to the community? We're actually, you know, we have some challenges, things we always need to improve upon to be sure, but at the same time, we work very hard to provide a therapeutic care for even those youth who come to Woodside for a short period of time. Okay. Let's start the conversation. Will. So this isn't for Judge Greerson and I apologize, and I also apologize for being a little late, but to echo the question about where will these people be if we go to a post-Woodside future, I have heard from the administration a fairly firm posture that they want to close Woodside, which would suggest to me that they must have at least a reasonably firm idea of where the, where the need would pivot. So I'm wondering, I don't see on the agenda today, either Ken or Commissioner Touche to speak to those questions, and I'm wondering, can we get an answer from the administration about what their best concept is? I think that's why they decided that I can't speak to the administration. But I didn't, I scheduled the administration last meeting, so they were here, and my recollection was that that's something that they're working on right now as to what will be the alternative, what will they use if Woodside closes here. The number is that the 20, it won't, it'll be part of the 2020 budget. So the 2021 budget, excuse me, so the standing committees, institutions in the House and Senate and judiciary in the Senate will have the opportunity to ask those questions as well as out from all here in the Senate. I understood. I guess what I do, my concern is that if the administration moves forward in 100 small ways with the assumption that Woodside is going to be closed, it pre-judges the question. It makes it harder at that point to pull back, and if they don't have a, again, a reasonably firm concept of what replaces Woodside, I would look for a commitment to them not to pre-judge the issue, not to move personnel, move money, move other things that would make it more difficult to keep Woodside open, because I haven't heard a suggestion either last meeting or so far today or in the media or from any person in the administration that they have a concept about replacement. So that's a pressing concern because it becomes facts on the ground in the absence of that replacement. You have a thing dated December 5th, 2019 in the packet that I haven't had a chance to read in my doubt before I go into class that says that Steve Howard, who's our next witness on the correspondence is to provide you with notice that the Department of Children and Families intends to see proposals from interested parties to provide trauma-informed treatment services for youth and serious behavior on developed needs. Should DCF enter into a contract, classification positions with BSA's bargaining units may be eliminated. Does DCF intend to issue the enclosure request for a close-on honor after January 9th, 2020? And since we aren't there yet, I suspect that's when the question could be. I think that kind of sets in motion where the administration's at. But I would add that if part of the Governor's budget, which we presented on Tuesday the 19th of January, were to be that they're going to cut $6 million that's currently allocated to the Woodside, that makes, if we have a different opinion, we need to come up with $6 million. The fun Woodside. Well, but I'm not answering your question because I can't answer your question because we won't know if January 21st or 19th. Whatever the day is, it doesn't matter. They spoke about this last-line debate. We're going to have an RFP. We have any more questions for the judge? Sorry. You won't hear it again when I said there's not much. Thank you very much. All right. Clearly, when we dismiss the judge and all the committees, they're not because of your question. They're our new committee assistant for this session. And maybe if I could just follow up one more time. At the very least, it seems like the administration should be able to give us a sense of what the RFP is looking to accomplish. Are they simply putting out a general call for ideas? In other words, the community and providers can solve this problem because they have themselves. They've got the provider network all worried. I can tell you that because there was another RFP that went out earlier this week that I suspect was part of the family's first effort that the federal requirements. So they've got all of the... Ken, would you join us for a play? No more than five minutes. They sent out an RFP and I've been getting anxious calls from the provider groups and emails because the RFP is part of that family's first that was presented to us, or maybe it was the Child Protection Committee. Anyway, so they're looking at what you're doing away with all the group homes because the RFP looks like it's going to be expanded foster care. Nobody's nervous with them. The provider community, the staff at Woodside Jobs, they worry, and Senator Baruth and us are worried too about what you're doing. So in five minutes or less, can you tell us what you're doing? So there are two different RFPs. And I'm glad to talk any more, they don't want to take up the time on your schedule with us. So glad to come back whenever you want to talk more but the way to think about this from my perspective and I do appreciate the concerns, I understand it, but honestly it is looking at our whole residential system of care from a constructive perspective. There are two RFPs out. One is to look for consultants to help us look, and when I say us in the agency of human services look at all of our residential programs both in terms of the programs that DCF utilizes but also the programs that the Department of Mental Health utilizes. To try to have an appropriate system. We are not talking about eliminating residential programs, we're not talking about eliminating group homes, but what we want to do is right size them. What we want to do is make sure, because the evidence through research is pretty clear that kids do better from outcomes in family like environments closer to home. That doesn't mean there isn't a very significant place for residential programs and there is a spectrum or a continuum of a level of security and this is where Woodside or a secure facility comes into play. Absolutely, I do want to be clean with you. I recognize that we need to have a high security placement for a relatively small number of Vermont youth. That's the point that I do want to emphasize. I do not believe we need a 30 bed facility to serve in that purpose, which is why we're making the recommendation and so is that the second RFP? The second RFP, exactly. The second RFP, thank you for the reminder that I get to it. The second RFP is looking, and you were involved in this conversation, some of you were involved, recognizing that we did need to have a capacity for residential care for youth who do have behaviors that are challenging, that are difficult to manage, that may be violent, that may not be met by the existing mental health system and so that we do need some additional capacity for that particular need. If you could ballpark it right now, I understand the RFP is coming a little later. What's the capacity for that? Interesting, I appreciate that question. Some of you have seen the drafts. It could be anywhere from 5 to 15 beds. This is not your typical RFP where we're simply saying we're going to select one provider. It might be more than one and that's where the residential consultant comes into play. What we want to do is look at our system to make sure we're appropriately needing the needs of Vermont youth and do it as much as possible within Vermont. The idea would be, for example, going to this point, we may get a proposal that will give us a high security facility for 3 to 5 beds. That might meet our needs for that level of security. On the other hand, we might get proposals for a facility for 10 to 15 beds that might have a variety of levels of supervision. That might be another way to meet the variety of needs of Vermont youth. One last question if I could. If I remember the timing, the 2021 budget that this is planned for, so is the idea to have the RFP go out for the consultant in January have that person provide, to hire that person then have them provide expertise on the second RFP? No, it is not. They are actually together. They choose separate RFPs. It's not a series that the RFP for the consultant is actually out now. The RFP for the long term facilities is the one that's not coming out until later, because we're respecting the statute regarding privatization agreements. It's not clear that it necessarily is one, but we want to be respectful of the union's interest here, and so they have some time to review that. So they're not necessarily joining, but they do are related. I think we're going to just because I do have with the schedule, but I think I thank you very much for the introduction. I appreciate it. This is something that will be part of the discussion, and then obviously it leads to another discussion. If you do close, what do you do in the 30 bed facility? That's open for lots of people. We've already suggested lots of things. We'll take care of that one. We'll be good about that. We'll also take care of it. The Senate will just represent whatever the House does. Thank you very much. On what? Once I forgot to mention, maybe you want to send a little blur about to the group homes and everything. I'm going to do away with you right away. My understanding is something was sent out from the Department of Health, but I don't know. The message I got from a certain facility that you can guess the name on close. Very nervous. For the record, James Pepper, Department of State's attorneys and chairs, in recognizing the time in the witness list, I'll be brief, and I did testify last year. Appreciate that. Our position is unchanged. We don't have any specific need for Woodside specifically, but there is a need for secure beds. There's a need for a secure facility of some sort. You don't have to look any further than last year's admissions to Woodside to see what that need actually is. There might only be two to five kids at any given time at Woodside. There were 71 admissions to Woodside last year. These included kids that were already in DCF custody that became violent or aggressive or they needed just, they were in the throes of a mental health crisis and needed stabilization. And the existing facilities were not well, six kids were rejected by all other facilities last year. Three were screened for being hospital level psychiatric cared over too aggressive of violence in the case of the rival or retreat. There were 12 that assaulted either the staff or other residents that needed to go for a short stay in Woodside. There are youth that are maybe aging out of jurisdiction or just need to have a longer term solution that were placed in Woodside while that longer term solution was being worked out. There's 20 admissions for those types of folks last year. And then of course there's the very rare situations that you can't really plan for and then there's the interstate compact youth that are very often short stays. The point is that there is no other place for these kids if you go to Woodside. We're not tied to Woodside as the facility for the place for it. I've been in conversations with Ken about what the alternatives are. You've heard some of them today. There's an RFP that is very open ended it sounds like that includes creating more staff secure beds at existing facilities, changing the policies of existing facilities that they're dealing with the kind of kids in mental health crisis that become aggressive differently. Continuing to use out-of-state placements and then potentially a small security. Two or three times you mentioned mental health and frankly that wasn't the group that was supposed to be at Woodside. That was supposed to be the Lincoln youth who committed crimes. I realize that some of those kids in mental health crisis assaulted staff members or did something else that is criminal in nature. But it's a sad state of affairs in this state and I'll say that very clearly to everyone. It's a sad state of affairs in this state where we use the correctness department or the juvenile justice system for people who have significant mental health and it should stop. I think it's of all the things that I've seen in my years it's more and more we are using facilities for people with significant mental health issues because of the failure of legislation and countless administrations to come grips with our mental health problems in this state. And it's pretty sad and it just points to the deficit and it shouldn't be Commissioner Schatz's or Commissioner Tuchette's problem. This is really a crisis and you point that out very aptly. And I suspect those kids again either send it to 204 Depot get sent to something else residential and then bomb out. It's because there were mental health crises and it really does point to a deficit that we have. And I realize that there's no other choice than DCF Woodside or corrections institutions because of the mental health system. But that really is and that I think this committee should be strongly recommending to our colleagues and I know nobody from left counts is here right now but maybe you can... I'm sorry I was looking at that. Could you prepare a memo on behalf of the Justice Overslide Committee or is it that it's inappropriate to continue to place people in either Woodside or Jails because we have no other place for mental health? Our colleagues... I think some of our colleagues and maybe some of the problems that we've seen publicly about Woodside and I know about some of the group problems because I still stay in touch with many of them. Some of the problems that they're facing with clients where they have to do restraint and etc. because those clients were appropriately placed. That was a little eventful by me but I think it's an important message. Thank you very much. I think Justice for Investing is only looking at the adult system. Yeah, I think so too. It's not just Vermont by the way. Other states are insane. It's not just Vermont. We pride ourselves on institutionalization but we are institutionalizing people in the long term. Thank you Steve. You're here to say I understand you've got long term good state employees. I don't want to age them. Well we had to open here today. They don't look as old as me. They were just kids when I was in my career. We used to work very closely with Woodside. We'd send kids there for the weekend just to give them a taste of what was happening and when I would drive up and say you want to come back you want to stay here. Usually the response was I want to come back but it wasn't necessarily because Woodside was such a bad place but freedom was a little there. It served a purpose a short term intention and also served a purpose for long term treatment for some kids back in the day where it would be very usual I would drive up there to be sure the kids there. There would usually be 15 on the detention side, 15 on the treatment side that would be considered long term. Thank you Senator. So let me introduce today who we're here today, Alex Hoditz who has worked for Woodside for 13 years as a clinical services administrative coordinator and Scott Green has worked there for 23 years as a youth counselor. He's not the one I used to meet. He was very young then. They're here to make sure I don't say anything that's too crazy and answer any of your questions. I'm sure the real information is the actual information you might be looking for. I think our members want to start by saying really by really asking the question what is Woodside Woodside is not just a building. Anybody who is seeing that building understands that that building needs additional investment so we're talking about something much greater than just a building which I think people can get sort of hooked on thinking that well the building is bad so therefore we have to replace Woodside. I do want to say that Senator General testified last week that there's no magic behind a locked door and whether that's true or not I'll leave that to others to decide but I will say there is some magic to what happens behind the doors of Woodside. Our members feel that the picture that has been painted of Woodside in the op-ed piece that you have now available is unrecognizable to the folks who work every day there from what they've eaten the press and what they hear in the courtrooms across the state. Woodside is nationally recognized for its outstanding therapeutic and clinical care provided to children. It's in the 99 percentile nationally in the metrics used to assess programs like Woodside. It's assessed by a program called PBS which is part of the Department of Justice review of programs provided to youth. Woodside is a place where youth who stayed for at least 90 days increase their academic functioning in an average of one and a half grade levels of math and literacy. It's part of a network of Vermont community partners that deliver services to kids. It's the only no-eject-reject facility that serves the highest needs youth in the state and because of that status they get an extra level of scrutiny that really they get because they take kids and youth that have been rejected by everyone else in the state mostly due to violent behavior. I remember feeling like there's been sort of an ongoing campaign of sorts that is difficult for them to really come to terms with and when you work with the most challenging youth the most violent you know it's hard to see a teenager be violent it's hard to see them in the state of self-harm and it's hard to see them attack a staff member and watch and it's really even more difficult some folks may have seen the video or heard about the video that's been used to justify some of the decisions around Woodside it's hard to see co-workers race in to protect their co-workers' life that's what happens in many of these cases but you won't read about that in BT Theater. That's not part of the story in BT Theater. Use of restraints and seclusion are actually in the decline of Woodside which is what our members are using as working since 2015 restraints have dropped from 116 to 36 seclusions from 320 to 98 our members have been asking for a while for additional tools that have not been provided to them to make dangerous situations even less traumatic for the youth involved. They've done the best with what they could and the resources we provided them. They would urge the legislature not to repeat past mistakes the administration's plan sounds eerily familiar reduced state-controlled debts rely exclusively on community-based solutions use private contractors. We've seen this move before it's called the Vermont Mental Health System and we know how it ends. Vulnerable people stacked up in emergency rooms or shipped away out of sight, out of conflict Contrary to testimony you heard last week from the Defender General the mental health crisis may have begun with a flood but the backups in the ERs came when the new system proved inadequate to the demand and the state's publicly owned infrastructure was too meager to meet the needs of the people just last April 2019 we had a very distinguished group of people come together and put their minds together and months and months and months for putting together a report for this legislature. A very distinguished group of people on this list people with decades of expertise. Just last April their conclusion, no stakeholder or member of the April 2019 workers thought that the state of Vermont could responsibly advocate for the complete elimination of Woodside. Only last April. Last April there must be a P of place for those not welcomed by his state or out of state facilities so one thing that has not changed is the fact that some of you have proposed significant risks for themselves to others, community or property requires some amount of security or secure treatment or intervention. I think the judge reassigned from the state's attorney's office as well the only decision that is being made by the legislature is whether we care for our own or we send them to a private contractor the administration's proposal is about one thing money. It's only about the money. Vermont state employees perform all of the services in the RFP that is provided to them. You provide that RFP so you can see that they call for a contract to be in place in May of 2020. And I really appreciate what Senator Sears had to say and what Senator Ruth asked because our members feel like this is really being set up as a foregone conclusion. And there's been very little effort to dissuade the legislature from taking Syria but I don't hear that the legislature is going to take some more testimony and dive deeply into this issue because we feel like there's a lot more of this story that needs to be told. The major difference between what is called for in the RFP and what happens now is that the Woodside has established a whole network of relationships with programs in the community that they work with all right. So taking Woodside out of the equation and turning it over to a private contractor leaves a giant hole in the system and what we did is we provided this RFP to our members and we asked them to look at the work that they do every day and look at the work that the administration is asking for from this private contractor and tell us what the difference is. And the major difference is the relationship that they have with existing providers in the community. So the population of Woodside has been a lot of talk about the day the population hit zero and I think you were just saying that we would agree with that that DCF controls the flow of kids that go to Woodside. So maybe not a huge surprise that it got to zero. But if you look at these statistics over time, unfortunately I didn't have a chance to make a copy of this but if you look at just at this chart you see that the population ebbs and flows and yes the media reported a large story about hitting zero but just last April there were 17 kids at Woodside and next April there could be 17 more but that's not what gets reported in the press that's not what gets told to legislators. I think what's important is the kids who go to Woodside require a great deal of time. They experience great deal of trauma. They've had significant challenges and I think one of our members observations both from Woodside and the state hospital is one of the major miscalculations in building of the mental health system we have today is the amount of time people would need in those beds and the fact that it takes them longer to step back up and that's really what caused major parts of the backup in the mental health system that I know none of us wanted or wanted to continue. According to DCF's own reporting Woodside is the only in-state program exclusively for delinquent use and is the only in-state residential program with consistently available capacity. According to DCF out of only 7 out of 27 other state programs have a primary focus on serving you but these programs serve both of Chin's cases in delinquent use and are consistently at capacity. So we think that's a repeat of what we saw with the mental health system and I think we urge the reason I'm really glad to hear what Senator Sear said and the desire of the legislature to dig deeply into this issue and not let made first on an RFP to be in the day of the deadline is because this is a very serious situation that we think could have this very same end or the same result that we had with the mental health system and we're very concerned about that. Last year there were 61 kids served by Woodside and where we're standing today from the state house Woodside is 42 minutes away, 40 miles away. Almost half of the kids that were sent out of 8% of facilities in Massachusetts are 3 hours away, up to 191 miles away. Not exactly next door. For a lot of families with limited resources in Minnesota will be California. Massachusetts is that far away. They're not going to see those kids. It does. But you're talking about Rutland Nass, Nadek it does depend on what you live in. From the center of the state, just to give you an example. Not everybody lives in the center of the state. How do we point that out to you as a representative? Many years. Our members would ask I think what you've already committed to, which is to do your due diligence and not allow this to be rushed or become a foregone conclusion. Woodside has made tremendous progress. You invested time and energy and money in creating a therapeutic program that's gotten great results. And our position would be to not abandon that. To not walk away from your investment, to not walk away from the commitment of 45 of our members that made to making this a therapeutic place that is delivering services to kids. But instead to make additional investments in controlled state-owned infrastructure so that we can build a better inside. I want to move along but I want to clarify my statement to make sure that you heard if the governor announces whenever the state of the budget address I believe it's January 21st announces that his budget has taken $6 million that was slated for Woodside and put it into something else that means to keep Woodside going the legislature needs to find $6 million that it doesn't currently have. So we need to. So I just caution you that I don't want to lose sight of that. That's always a difficulty for us particularly as legislators on unravel of numbers. It's a huge challenge I understand that. I don't want to make feel that way. I also I understand the administration's position and why they've chosen to move in this direction. And it's currently the loss of the federal funds. So I think Senator you touch on two very big issues. What our members would hope is that we would make the investments in Woodside that are needed in order to. I want to leave time to hear from Scott now. Okay. Before I go I just finish this one statement that we make the investments in Woodside that are needed so that we can pursue federal funding account. And we not walk away from state own facility and leave the system short of that. And Alex and Scott do you want to. If you want to stay there chair. Thank you. Any time. Thank you for making the time worse today. One of the things that my name is Alex and I suppose addressed him currently the clinical care coordinator in Woodside I've already had several roles and capacities from councillor to shift supervisor over my 13 years with that and the narrative that is out about Woodside with regard to the practices that happened there couldn't be any further from the truth. I just wanted to address that. The narrative that's out there right now about what's going on in Woodside is not true. Governor General would have you believe that Woodside has such a pervasive culture of abuse and neglect that it counters all of the people's critical coming to the building of all the people's commitment to providing safe and ethical treatment of the kids. We do not assault and we do not harm kids in our facility. So that was just one thing I wanted to clarify. What we do, things do happen over the course of day-to-day operation facility that do not always present as buttoned up and beautiful on video but we just wanted to clarify that as well. With regard to the population of Woodside and the daily head count and the diminished numbers that have been presenting over the last several months as has been discussed the department has control over that so it essentially becomes what I would call a shell game. They're looking to avoid the most secure placement available, looking for the least secure placement available for the youth. They're not always in my opinion looking for the best and most suitable placement available for the kids. So keeping kids out of Woodside may not be in their best interest but that's not being a factor necessarily because if the kid goes to a Becket Program and commits an assault and they can go to the 204 program they may not be welcome back into that Becket Program because Woodside's the only no reject. So now Becket's off the table even though it was listed as their best placement available for that youth. Becket's now off the table so then they go to 204 until the placement is available at another in-house in-state placement and this continues what we're doing is essentially letting the youth practice their risk where they can go to a facility and be dangerous and disruptive in a program to leave the program because they don't want to do the difficult work that they have ahead of them overcoming trauma to identify and work on your risk is challenging but as we if we don't hold them to working on that we're essentially doing these kicking the can down the road until they're close enough to 18 where we say all right well DCF has done what we can with this youth we're going to discharge three weeks ahead of their 18th birthday good luck and I don't believe that that's in the best interest of any of the kids that were serving at Woodside or in the state. I believe that the law said that you have to place kids in the least restricted environment possible so that may be part of the I don't know if I've seen it defending at DCF but they're part of their challenges that they're required under the law to place kids in the least restricted environment possible which may not be the best. The department has asked for and recommended potential changes in the programming of other facilities around the state to accommodate for these youth and I guess the question from the members that I've spoken to is why wouldn't we change the verbiage around what Woodside is instead of changing, looking for all these different placements available to kind of put this patchwork team together. Why not draw the program up that you have available to you and the resources. Amazing resources that we found on Woodside over the last you know since 1986 we have community partners established, we have a strong network of employees with ten years you know exceeding 35 years. The care and compassion that the kids receive at Woodside is noted by the number of kids that continuously call us responding just calling to say hey look I'm 32 years old now I just want to call and say thanks guys I got my life together because of the stuff that happened at Woodside because you guys cared, you guys gave us that compassion. So when you've assembled this team of quality capable and devoted staff members and built sort of the infrastructure of a well oiled machine the only part missing being the facility it seems like instead of taking apart the team that's been assembled to fix the problem that we addressed the infrastructure around. I want to again I'm not trying to depend on the Department of Children and Family but they did come with recommendations for a new Woodside or new facility and recognize that the current facility built in 1986 I think it was a little earlier than that I thought but as it may is in dire need of rehabilitation and that was another 35 million I can always add a million here, a million there trying to guess what the Senate has done but there was a recognition also that you would need to have significant capital funds into a new Woodside and I think that's another consideration frankly it's worth discussing but we're not in light of sort of the money for capital investment I don't know that committee so I represent Senator Hooker I'm much more familiar with the capital needs of the state I think that's part of that issue the investment is not in the kids so when we're looking at placements in and out of the state I know that our neighboring states as you said are often not considered out of state placements due to the proximity of their home but we're not just sending kids to Massachusetts we've got Pennsylvania, Texas, Arkansas, Florida these are places that while the programs themselves may be less secure than what Woodside is they are not less restricted by nature when you're 2,000 miles away from home where are you going to go? Who's going to come seeing your social worker on the last day of one month or the first day of the next month to meet the requirements of monthly check-ins doesn't really provide support for our kids in the state's custody so when we're looking at a family recently spent almost $10,000 in their own pocket trying to get their sons to stay at Woodside so that they can be incorporated and present for the therapy that needed the family therapy, the family work that needed to happen only to have them sent down to Southern Massachusetts which was again a traveling concern for that particular family so understanding that sometimes the proximity of the home is closer for the place like Atlanta or Massachusetts I understand that but it's also not as frequent as the kids that are being placed of First off I'd like to just, I saw a lot of faces last week from people that had come to visit Woodside some of you guys in Cal's playing volleyball and interacting with some of our residents as you got to worse it's nice to see, I want to just make sure that I want to say we have a great group of very highly skilled individuals that work at Woodside, our turnover, our staff turnover rate is, I don't know the exact number but it's very low we have people that have built careers on learning how to treat trauma and that's our goal and we have a staff of experts and in the years that I've worked there we've had a number of very significantly positive outcomes from really getting involved and treating that trauma work and doing that work with the clients that we serve as we do have to be mindful of our budget I think if we don't take a hard look at this this group of experts that I work with, my colleagues and see what we can do with these people, that's part of the budget is what we do and I don't want to lose sight of the fact that we have a group of people that have some of the best outcomes, 99 percentile from our colleagues across the nation we need to be proud of and I don't want to lose sight of that because it's about treatment and it's about helping the adults that we serve get better and we do that very well. Final thoughts? The last thing that I would say is that the team at Woodside collectively we see all this really driven and is motives for Woodside understanding the budget and not fully understanding the budget obviously but understanding the budget obviously weighs into the impact of what happens with our facility. It's concerning to see that there's not a set plan in place. I think when you're looking at us as employees of the state that are invested in the well-being of the kids it would be probably a little easier to swallow maybe a little easier to swallow these losing of our jobs and closer to Woodside if there was a in place plan that was developed that was going to meet the needs of the kids to a degree that exceeds what we currently do and without that it just seems like short-sighted. I think the fact that we're not closing December 31st instead talking about June 30th, I heard that there was a conversation yesterday and house appropriations about even extending beyond that so I'm not sure what that conversation was obviously I wasn't there so there is not a decision to close it tomorrow. They're talking June 30th or even later and I think a lot depends upon what the recommendations are and how this all goes. I realize we should be able to give you more answers. Well I think the reality for me it's just that the six million dollar number that we're looking at is for 2021 whereas if this plan doesn't work the cost to rebuild what we already currently have is going to far exceed six million dollars and I think that that means Lastly you alluded to the fact that and I remember the trips back and forth we as in Woodside and our company has worked collaboratively with agencies through the state for years and we've done so very well with positive outcomes and you talked about the need for just a little bit of a time to reflect and then get back into the community. We do a lot of community based services right through our building. We regularly take out my job and titles I take out kids out in the community regularly as they're able to and step them out in a senate based programming where we can help them be successful in the community again and that's critical in positive outcomes meeting them where they're at and so that's one of the things I want to do. The services that we provide even though we are in a building we do quite a few services outside of our building. Many times I guess these decisions are never easy and they're not involved in one person. I don't think they're necessarily the question of lots of faith in the staff in Woodside but more of a question about a lot of other things. And I'm very proud of our department if we're taking a hard look and saying how we can make things better. I just want to own a site that we have some of the best. My colleagues are some experts in the field and we help some of the toughest cases get better. I hope that we've done nothing else this morning at least to clarify some of the challenges ahead for both you and Woodfield. I really appreciate your coming here this morning and talking to us very often. Thank you. Thank you for putting it together. I'd like to say with a kid never, never give up. And I think you made up a sheet that you could hand it out to us yesterday. It's got a pie chart on it. And it points out several of the problems that Vermont's having with reentry housing. The title of it is the current availability of reentry housing was not going to have to be some people's second. So they looked at these populations. All the check marks are what we're doing right and all the entries are where we need to do better. And this chart you'll see an awful lot of answers. So the subject of this discussion is reentry housing update. We're open to scale and the others would give us a little idea of what we've got now and where we're headed. And I like the color coding anyway. But and also we're going to hear from, you'll see one of the things on the back pages of what they're doing right with the check mark. It's housing significant reentry. It talks about Vermont has pioneered a certain housing option including pathways. I was in First Water so we have folks from pathways here to talk about that as well. So that's to generalize for the next hour. So I think we're starting out with Dale. And we wanted an inventory of what we've got now. But again this chart shows 230 people past their minimum. 38% of programming issues. 26% lack housing. 24% hold security safety. 6% plan to max out. So we're talking about around 38% of the... a large percentage of the group of 230 are housing issues. Either lack housing or programming issues. So I'm going to talk to you starting off. Good. I'm with the Big Wet Park Housing Administration for Corrections. The Adeptive Union of Historic Justice Executive Department of Corrections. I don't have the sheet that you guys are referring to. I think there's something over by here. That's the, I mean it's just the chart talks about various... Anyway it's just the chart that the thought was helpful for the committee to have on the housing issue that we're discussing. But please go ahead with your inventory of where we're at today. So I'll let Derek speak about that. We do have a network of both scattered and housing throughout the state. I believe one of the attachments I've handed out has all the individual listings that we have situated throughout the state. Kind of the information about those housing programs. Sure. I'd be happy to just sort of give a little run-through of the handout that we've provided. Happy to pause at any moment where there's questions for clarification. I want to clarify the chart. It says about 60 people are being held, they're past their minimum with housing issues. 60 people? That's what the chart would say. With 28%, 26% lack of housing is about 60 people. Programming issues are very important. Many people past their minimum date, 230 individuals. When I was talking about that, it looks like around 60 people are being held with housing issues. I think there might be more. There may be more because of the furlough and the other chart. Anyway, please go ahead with what you're doing. Sure. And I think as we work down the great questions that the committee asked us to speak to a little later in our data presentation, we get at some of the complexities that account for that number. Corrections parlance, we sometimes refer to that internally as the P1 list. So apologies in advance. If we slip into that kind of internal coding, it's not meant to obfuscate anything. It's simply the database that we originally used that categorized folks whose primary barrier to release upon reaching their minimum census was lack of housing. And so, if this works for folks, I'll just walk us through this, but by all means the colleagues will also turn in. We'll take questions as they come. And acknowledging that we're happy to share this time with our close collaborators and colleagues from the P1 list as two. What point are we talking from first? So... I don't have that one. We have two things. Yeah, the one that says I'm the top department of questions. This is an image. It's of DOC funded transitional housing programs where they're located, the number of beds. So this gives you a statewide picture in this current fiscal year of what DOC procures in the way of transitional housing. The second sheet really takes us into what are we getting and what are we understanding from those investments. So our folks are sufficiently oriented. And by all means. So the first piece that we addressed as per the committee's questions were the current use or what we sometimes refer to as utilization. Both types of language that elections use are unsupervised. As Dale said, we often think of that in terms of congregate housing settings or scattered site. So for example, congregate housing would be a physical brick and mortar structure, such as a disney house, for example, and I think we've got colleagues from a disney house which you're going to believe we saw, where DOC grants for a number of beds, not necessarily all the beds in that house but there's a physical brick and mortar structure, it's congregate with multiple folks residing in that same residence and it's staffed. So that's what I think the legislature's intent was. I mentioned this just because all the folks for whom DOC transitional housing money is going to be supervised by the Department of Corrections just to establish that. Unsupervised would be our scattered site model. So if we provide mental assistance and the organization provides other additional supportive services that doesn't provide necessarily onsite supervision of the individuals. Again, we will hear from our pathways colleagues who use that model to help grow our housing first context. So when we look at utilization, that's just a function of how many beds are we procuring and how often are those beds occupied, whether it be one person or four persons, people or 10 people in the program, and then we aggregate that and that's an average. So if we look at this current fiscal year that we're in, beginning July 1 of 2019 through September 30, we do our data captures on the quarterly basis. We see that across all programs and again, that's this master inventory, the utilization rate, the usage rate is 72%, which we've set an internal target of 80%. If you're wondering why wouldn't we just try to hit 100%, right? It's unrealistic. There's so much movement, inflow and outflow of transitional housing programs, people who fortunately succeed and move on to permanence, but we don't know exactly what data might happen, nor do we necessarily know why exactly somebody might have to be exited from a program. It would literally be impossible to achieve 100%. It's frankly probably even 90% utilization, which just so many, you know, in and out. So we've set a benchmark of 80% by which we've internally feel like that's a solid measure of the return on investment of state budget relative to utilization. And so we've been averaging a little below that 72%, return on percentage differential is just 10%. You'll see that fluctuates each quarter. There's variability in individual circumstances and the number of individuals scheduled for release. So for example, there might be programs right now, or if we were to take a snapshot, we'd say utilization looks pretty low, utilization looks like it might be 50% at this moment. But when we project out eight weeks from now, in fact, we've got several individuals that might be slated to the end of these programs, which will bring utilization high. Another thing just to mention is economies of scale. Some of these programs are very small. We might have four bets in the program. So it may be misleading to, without knowing the economy of scale, the end variable to dig up 25% of 50% of utilization. In fact, one other person could in fact, you know, bring that, you know, effectively double the utilization. So I'll pause just on utilization to see if there's any questions on that. So I'm going to give you these two bars, the percentage and if we're looking at people who are past their minimum, why are they filling those out? Okay, so we will drop down to that very shortly. Understand that that really is the key question of the day. We use an RDA of result scale to accountability framework for measuring, again, this sort of return on investment of taxpayer dollars for housing. The results based accountability framework, I'm sure you're all familiar with, looks at three domains of performance, how much. So in other words, just sort of like, what's the volume of service that's being provided, which is of course very important and we'll always attend to that. But we also have developed a lot of the, we are housing providers, a set of measures that determine how well, what's the quality of the service. So these aren't just widgets, these aren't just units of service provision and service receiving, these are humans who live full lives and the services that they receive should honor their wholeness. So again, we work collectively with our service providers, a committee that our grantees opted into to develop how well measures as well as better off. So what do we know when photo tags are programmed with why? And so there you'll see our data around that. We have our targets on the left of the columns there and then the actuals. And this is again across all programs and this is also pertaining to the first quarter of that by 20. Yes. So as you'll see, we've served, actually we've seated the number of individuals served based on the target already. That can be complex though. I think if there's anything I want this committee to understand is that this is complicated. And just by way of a quick example, on one hand at face value it may look like a very positive thing. We've served more people than our target. We've seen what X number of people served and we've exceeded that. However, when we dig into the data we have to be understand why it is, what account for that. We serve more people because more people sitled in and out of these programs and left these programs for non-ideal reasons. And I think it's great to see we see a mixture of that. So on one hand I think we've got great efficiencies that are represented in that individual server, but we're also seeing what we might refer to as sherd. And we will pick up on that because that connects directly to what accounts for why if we have all this housing do we still have people sitting beyond it. So if we drop down to the program type, we bring out that utilization to look at the supervisor time we get and the scatter type. And we see the difference. We see that the utilization on average in those congregated sites is lower. And we have what we believe in data driven insights as to what accounts for that. And why conversely, when we look at the scattered site model such as the housing first model practiced by pathways, we do see increased utilization. I'll actually speak to Liz. Would you like to carry on with that right now? Yeah, I think part of why we're seeing utilization higher in a scattered site model is that folks have a little more wiggle room. So when you're in the house with 10 or 20 people, the programs have to be a little more strict with the rules to cover the integrity of the program. Or if you're in your own place and you're struggling, everyone can work with you a little longer to make sure you get on your feet. So we see people ask to leave the congregate sites earlier maybe than they would be if they were in their own place because it's really about the quality of the whole program and the community. And I think another way of just languaging that framework is that the individualized structures whereby someone's in their own apartment allow for the application of a harm reduction framework. Relative to that individual's health and the risk that they present to public safety, which is corrections responsibility. Whereas the congregate settings because of the broader issues of collective responsibility and liability, work somewhat against the values of harm reduction. They don't have the opportunity to apply as situational and individualistic responses with folks who are in a phase of relapse in their recovery. Because that person's relapse will have immediate ramifications on the safety and the sobriety potentially of the other residents in just time to get housing. Corrections has really established itself in my opinion, Dale, please correct me, as at the forefront of using a harm reduction driven approach to field supervision. We really reserve incarceration for folks who are presenting an active and persistent risk to public safety. So we no longer are keen in any respect to relodge someone whose behavior we feel can be managed safely in the community. Sometimes that creates a bit of a discrepancy between what those kind of good housing sites are equipped to do. It's not a judgment of the performance or the quality of those programs. It's just the co-operating and sometimes competing paradigms by which programs need to look out for the therapeutic milieu of that entire program and corrections is able to work in an individual modality with each individual which I think we should feel really proud of that as a state. Can you help me just to understand what we're talking about? If I look at Pathways, Berry, 20 annually, does that mean that they have 20 corrections or does it mean they have total 20 beds? Corrections for public safety. Corrections. So Pathways may have 40 beds in Berry but 20 of them are for correct. Correct. Pathways. When it says annually, what does that mean? That means over the course of one fiscal year, the funds that we award to Pathways will provide services to 20 individuals as referred by dealers to get them accepted. So again, Berry, because it's on the first page, Phoenix House 14. And so does that mean that that's annually or is that 14 beds whether they're filled or not? That means we are paying currently under our current model. We are paying for that provider in this case, Phoenix House to make 14 beds available whether or not we utilize them and that is reflected in those utilization steps. So where we see a low stat, that reflects the differential between how much we've procured 14 beds and let's just say, for example, for the myriad of reasons that we've dropped down into, we've only provided 7 folks to be served. We'd see, obviously, a 50% utilization rate in that scenario. Thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely. So I think the question is what accounts for why we would have folks as their minimum, again, we could have them be more less, and then still have empty beds in some of these programs. Yep, right. That's the question. And that's a question that we are constantly data mining for and we've shared some insights into this. And so I'm looking at part of our report that says estimated number of in-bays who could be released if they're now, if they're not available. Okay? And I think that there are several important things to recognize, and first of all to move forward with a shared understanding of the complexities of the population who are held beyond their minimum sentence primarily due to lack of housing. In other words, if they had a food housing, they could and would be released. This is a complex population. Okay? So it makes the fundamental premise of the question a hard one to answer. What do I mean by that? Okay? I mean in plain, simple English. It's not just a lack of housing that is preventing us from putting those people out. And on any given day, if we put them out to the empty spots in the existing programs, they would not likely succeed. How do we know this? Because many of the folks who sit on that P1 list, in fact had multiple episodes of release to transitional housing programs and made their way back to incarceration. And not simply just because of lack of housing, but recommission of new offensives. So what the P1 list essentially is, it's a coding that we use for classification for facilities about this individual, we're not holding them for anything other than for residents. Does it mean they're very compliant with supervision? A lot of times they've gone out, they've violated conditions of supervision, they've been returned. We're not holding them on the violation, we're holding them in fact that they've lost their residents and as soon as they can find a residence to release them. A lot of other systems don't have that mechanism like a straight parole system. They get their parole revoked, they have to go back before the board at some point in the group for us. And for my, once a residence becomes available, we can release them immediately. So it's not really that they're there for a lack of residents, they're there for a lack of residents, but it's not because they haven't had opportunities to be out in the community. Again, they are a very complex grouping and we can do a lot of terms with the P1 population. Thank you for that confusion. 126 people held past their minimum in sentence primarily due to lack of housing. So again, that's the main barrier keeping us from releasing them. 74, which is just shy of 60%, have participated in DOC funding transitional housing on one or more occasion. Right? And at least half of the remaining 52 out of that 126. So at least half, at least 26 of them have been referred to DOC funded transitional housing programs and denied because their needs were too high or they've been placed on a waiting list. So that, we have some programs that are equipped and set up to deal with the most complicated cases, but we don't have sufficient capacity statewide in those types of programs. And our data points towards the housing first model as a leading practice that gets folks with complex and co-occurring needs into housing and stabilizes them such that other supportive services, mental health can be brought to bear and they can be supervised in the community. So where we do have a waiting list for beds and we don't have statewide coverage for these types of beds is with our half ways grant. And I believe it's my opinion that that's a function of the broader housing first model practiced by half ways which aligns well with the complexities of the population and the housing needs and the economic liability represented fail to address both of those in an integrated model. So in simpler language you need more of these highly complex beds. We're spending more money on folks who the data doesn't suggest the programs we're putting them to are as likely to be aligned. I would not mean to characterize this in black and white terms but when we look at performance we definitely see better outcomes in aggregate in terms of utilization of this service which is a function of stability of the population that we're in connection with that. And a lot of that has to do with folks convicted for sexual offenses. That is a hard population to entice the private landlord market to be willing to open up the assets that they are in possession of in terms of apartments and place folks who are generally marginalized by virtue of their past behavior and whatever combination of facts and myth can surround the understanding of that behavior. And so pathways for example has a team dedicated to just managing relationships with the landlords so as to mitigate the perceived and real risk associated with placing that very hard to house population. I hope I'm not mischaracterizing the work that my colleagues do but this is what our understanding both in working in close connection with the grantees and what we see the data bears. I'm just totally confused by your charts. Let me help. How can we clarify? I don't know if you can but if I look at this chart with the color and I look at it says that 98% of the 377 people is that correct? Not 277 people were actually served. How much? How well 81% of the 377 were accepted? No. So 81% of all referrals were accepted. 377 were actually served. So probably whatever 19% more. So 377 was served. Of the 377 that was served 98% were not charged with a new crime. That's a health and success rate, right? While in that program. So only 2% of the 377 were charged with a new crime. What percentage will return to jail for technical violations? That's not here. What is that number? I think we could assume we don't know for sure that it's probably 65% when you look at the 35%. That's what I'm wondering about. So if only 2% are charged with a new crime why are only 30%, 5% actually to permanent housing and presumably a great number of these people are sent back to jail on technical violations, right? So a lot of the scatter sites don't have... So are we overdoing technical violations? That's my question. A lot of the reason is the program themselves. So some of the housing are abstinence only. So any drug use, any alcohol use, they have a lot of rules. If they violate those rules, they are removed from that program. And then at that point they lose their housing in an apartment response to lighter housing through technical violations. You don't have to fund those programs, do you? We are looking at aligning our criteria for funding with one that does not use a zero tolerance policy. And that would probably be something we reflect in a future round of RFPs. And I would say the biggest reason folks are asked to leave, at least the congregate sites, is their substance use. So the dirty yarn... In some of these, in some of the congregate programs, not all, but some. And some of that is a function of broader policy of the organization that runs that program, which is not necessarily, although it is often a Vermont police agency, but that's not necessarily the case. So we get into broader organizational policy. But you can understand that. You know, a housing group that has 10 individuals and one is using the other nine are at risk. So they're thinking of the collective and not the individual. I would just understand something in that. We had this discussion here last time we met was regarding that work camp. It was an informal discussion I think. There were 50 beds that are not being utilized at St. John's Fair. And St. John's Fair is saying, well, we don't want sex offenders. We don't want, if they're not, Caldonia County. And we don't want this. We don't want that. In the other 50 beds. So they're determining who would it be populating. And you may not have that population to populate. Our other service providers group doing the same thing. So in other words, you're contracting with people that want people that aren't, that you don't have. I don't know if that makes sense. So we've got proposals. And we can only respond to who responds back to our proposal. Understood. But the question makes great sense. If I may, I think what this shines a spotlight on, and I would imagine the community sees this in multiple aspects, is that some of the fundamental constructs of how these things get funded are built on premises, that silo, a set of integrated and complex problems. So for example, there may be some interplay between somebody's substance use disorder and their risk for criminal activity. However, you've got multiple corrections funds, looks to try to move people out of prison to sort of decarcerate whenever possible. And put them into programs that do try to address substance use disorders. But relatively short time frames with no tolerance for relapse. So I think that interactivity of the different challenges would best be reflected through braided funding across the different departments in AHS, such that we would have program models that better mirror the various institutional relationships that individuals have with ADAP, with DMH, with corrections. So on some level, I would agree that there's a mismatch between corrections grantees when it comes to the complex substance use disorder population. And the programs that we are able to grant to, given the supervision context in which we want to keep them in the community, we don't want them to leave the community. The other category, the sex offenders, if you will, I think that's a function which is not enough. So we've got a mismatch when it comes to the substance use disorder population and a paucity when it comes to the sexual offender. Because I'm being tailored because I'm in this position, I have to be careful how I put this. But not all sex offenders are equally dangerous in their release and that's part of the problem is we should look at what is the risk level of that sex offender in determining what the program should be. I think that's what fails here is that, and that's part of an issue well beyond corrections in terms of public perception of all sex offenders who should be doing more on talking about the risk of a certain sex offender. Maybe actually the sex offender who's being released who's done treatment is much less likely to reoffend than somebody with a history of counterfeiting. Absolutely. I mean, our sex offenders have gone through our programs and they've released that have appropriate residences. A lot of them are pro-social. They can go out and get jobs but not dealing with addiction issues and not dealing with other issues of criminality they're dealing with. But they're labeled sex offenders. And so I mean I think that's a societal issue and I put it so unfortunate that some part of your population that you can't place in the community is because of the nature, not based on their risk level. Or the nature of the general lowliness of, again, sort of the private land or the population. Not just the private, I'll throw again. I don't live anywhere near Caldonia County. But in Caldonia, if St. John's Burys community can say no sex offenders if they're not from Caldonia County allowed in this supervised program by the Department of Corrections, no matter what the risk level is with that sex offender, you can't go there. And unless you've got 50 sex offenders from Caldonia County, I feel so clearly aware of our colleagues at the time. But I think the complexity and it's not intended to be confusing to us. It's not confusing however it is complex. And so hopefully it says it's not the complexity but I sat down with a reformer from New York City who was at Bennington College and they were talking about women at Rankers Island and their goal is to get all the women out from Rankers Island. Rankers Island is being completely decommissioned. Well I know. Their goal is where do you put the women? Right. So their goal is to put the men in housing that is more suitable. And anyway, we got talking about Vermont and they said how many people have passed their minimum? I said about 200. She said well there's your out-of-state population. Let everybody out and pass their minimum if you don't have the problem. And these are experts. So I just let you know that the solution is there. Just let those 230 people out have their minimum. Therefore you would not have people out-of-state. Yeah. I would encourage us all to. So would you like that simple? But I think I would leave our testimony with the recognition that when we look at the transactions of transitional housing we don't just ask what and how many but the who. Because when we dig into the who and who is in prison past their minimum for lack of housing we get a much more textured, much more realistic, much more complicated picture but that picture accounts for what that face value may look like. Why would it be that we have empty beds in the community and over full prison beds or people who are staying beyond their minimum. And so I would just humbly submit that we drop down into that much more textured level to understand the humans who are trying to safely supervise the community and how. And who corrections data suggest that we can but these other impediments and capacities need to better line with our ability to manifest our policies. Well, keep in mind that's the folks who remain in the program. So when you take out the folks who used and got kicked out of one program or didn't get into a program that is a subset of the folks who are abiding by. Sorry, so not that we're not proud of our programs and they're not performing well but you're essentially looking at a subset, a sub covert of the folks who are already able to thread many of those needles to get themselves into those programs. Thank you. All right. So we have programs that offer different services. So some are a house with beds, some are a scattered site model like pathways where they're paying for the rent in a private apartment and then we also have a couple grants that do housing search and retention work. So they're looking for apartments in the community connecting with landlords and so some of our grants have that to look at. Our funding goes to somebody on the community-based organization side whose job is to do that. We've had some success with that in some areas. You kind of fall off on your statement, Senator Sears. Housing is a very important factor in the success of our offenders. I don't remember when I came about the lack of housing. We did a lot of data mining and research on that and the folks that were released without housing violated and picked up new charges at a much higher rate than a higher risk population that was released in an appropriate residence. So we try to be mindful of that and not just open the doors and let them out because a lot of times it will represent their needs. So thank you. I will be seeing Derek in a few weeks, a couple, three weeks and I'm sure as well ask the questions there. But I'd like to just put those in the comments. It wasn't that long ago when we had 270 or so people help us to admit we're down to somewhere around. It's around 125 over 200. That can combine other folks. That's right. If you wanted to get the primary barrier, there's other people passing in because they're in programming. But again, I will point to the solution from many people. If anybody wants to do that, it must be a good reason. I guess you don't want to set them up for failure. It's not that it's from a housing grant program. I manage essentially a mutual fund of investments for housing. From our perspective it's not a function of we wouldn't want those people out to set them up for failure. It's just that a particular program that we've procured our mismatch. If those individuals had the means to live independently, there'd be no opinion from that from a transitional housing perspective as to whether or not that would be a wise decision or not. We just have what we've procured and the population we have and the challenges of optimizing for that match with the population that has changed over the last 15 years at least. I think I know the answer. Presumptive parole would be at your men. So now at your men you would be furloughed out. And that's where we get into those technical violations of furloughies and then they come back. We did something like presumptive parole at your men who would be presumed to be paroled but for. And then DOC has to prove to but for. So then the onus would be on the parole board to really work through where does that person go. They qualify for parole because they've met their men, they're played by the rules while they were incarcerated. So then it's really the parole board that would then have to work through the housing issues, the programming issues and not DOC. Correct? I'll definitely defer to Dale as the field services director. I'm the housing person. We generally would prevent the parole. It's unknown at this time because we haven't had it. So what is the release mechanism look like for presumptive parole? Do they have to have an appropriate residence? Is it just once they meet certain criteria, out they go and they have to figure out after they're already paroled? So there's a lot of questions. It's very complicated and throwing presumptive parole on it just has another layer of complexity. This population that utilizes these services these are individuals where parents don't want to supply them anymore, friends and families we call them bridge firms. They've gone through a myriad of options. Very few are there for poverty reasons where they haven't had any opportunities. They don't know anyone they can't get out. A lot of it is they've had multiple opportunities and multiple resources that they have are no longer want to supply resources to them. So this is really the population that these services are trying to address. Really complicated. Either through addiction, through trauma, through violence, through mental health issues it is a myriad of individuals that we're trying to basically address housing with. So there you go. Did you go in here for a pathway? Thank you. Thank you for inviting us. My name is Patrick Gallagher. I'm the Development Director at Pathways, Vermont. This is Elizabeth Mesa. She's our Program Director for Housing First. We're here to give you some detail about our Housing First program, particularly in terms of the population that we work with. If you have any questions you might have, out of our program how it works, what our male heroities look like, and where we're available and what we're not currently. We're defining the situation. So our Housing First model brief, I don't know how much you know about Housing First but we focus with zero, we provide zero barriers to housing. So we work to get people into scatter-side apartments around the state, and then provide services once they're housed. So particularly through our Department of Corrections program we work with anyone that's referred to us by the Department of Corrections, if we have unavailability. We utilize a, practice a harm reduction model as was spoken about earlier. So we don't have any requirements for sobriety or no drug use in an apartment. What we do require is that someone advised by the rules of the lease, just like anyone else. So we have an independent housing team that works with landlords in every community we work with to identify housing and then work with that landlord and the tenant individually to get them moved in. And then we have a specialized team that works with folks on their self-identified goals and so each individual person we have a tailored service one. Is it voluntary? Did you describe is it voluntary? Oh yes, all of our services are voluntary. It's voluntary if they want to work with us, we'll work with them. But if they're in corrections and they want to leave the jail, then they kind of have to say yes. So our colleagues at corrections can speak better to this, but essentially the way that it operates is that referrals are made to our program that are screened by the district manager. And those referrals are typically folks in corrections the casework staff in corrections working with the event or to determine what's your best option for a sustainable housing plan once you've reached your minimum eligible service. As Mary Jones is that from Chittenden Correctional Facility and Deeds of Placement Browbro, did they work with the Browbro? Or they work with Staff Ways Brahma? I'm confused about who's working with Mary. Yeah, that's a great question who's working with Mary to get Mary out of Chittenden? So typically the casework staff would be working with Mary and Chittenden to determine where she might go when she's eligible for release. But as you're alluding to, people typically return to the place where they committed their crime, right? Where their residence was for field supervision. So if Mary's going to be field supervised in Browbro, she would be referred to our Browbro based department corrections team. We're a statewide organization as we currently operate our corrections program in Fadden County. In the state, that's in Fadden County, Watson County, Washington County, Chittenden County and Wyndham County currently. So we'd love to be in all 11 probation and parole office districts but we're currently due to funding constraints just in those five communities. But Mary has now been referred to past ways of what happens. Yep, so she would be the referral system is through the funder management so the electronic database that the department of corrections uses and she would be referred and that referral would go to the district manager in the probation and parole office or an assigned person in the local probation and parole office for initial screening and that probation and parole office is really looking at an appropriate referral based on everyone we're supporting in the community right now. Does this make sense? And they give it a thumbs up and then it comes to us and then typically we have really few barriers to accepting people into our program we'll accept if we have capacity or we'll wait for early act capacity. Are you seeing more difficult to house women than males or males than females? Do you see a difference there? I wouldn't say there's a dramatic difference based on someone's sex or gender. We do have some housing stack that we keep in the community so we do all independent apartments with mostly private landlords. The department of corrections funding we have a little over a million dollars of funding from the department of corrections. It funds both our services as well as for the pass through for rental assistance on those units. So we see the biggest challenge in terms of what people's abundance types might be and also what their tenancy histories look like in terms of finding the right fit for a unit. But one of the benefits to using the scatter site model is that we do, we can look for housing that's really individualized for that person's needs. So if somebody has certain restrictions imposed by the department of corrections on where they can live or what kind of amenities they need in their housing, we can look for housing that's right for that individual which allows us to serve a little bit different populations than some other programs can. We have some stats from last fiscal year. Over 82% of our populations during last fiscal year had either a moderate high or very high or a risk score or a risk assessment score. So we're serving a population of people who are at higher risk potentially to commit additional crimes. 89% had a violent crime about a fifth of our population were people with sexual offenses. And we believe that part of the reason that we're able to be really head effective with folks that have challenging criminal histories is because of this very individualized support plan. So we heard from the DOC that the scatter site programs is a really good program for them. It has a pretty high utilization rate. But I'm from Lone County and I'm a little bit concerned that you're only serving five counties statewide. So can you comment on that and why day, why you're not in Lone County and be from the impediments of DOD and all? Yeah, I think we, as Lindsay said, we believe that these services should be available statewide. Our constraints are budgetary at the state level. So we would love to be able to provide these services in Rutland, in the Bennington County, in the Northeast Kingdom. The service that they're funding isn't there currently. Like I said, we would love to be able to set that up. So I understand why you're sitting in the county of Lone County. It's just been based on the request for proposals process that DOC folks were alluding to. So for us, our limitation to getting into a community is the funding to support a team and rental assistance and all those things there. And we've grown throughout the state. We started, we've been in the state for just about ten years and we've partnered with the state to support a team and rental assistance and all those things there. We've been in the state for just about ten years and we've partnered with the Department of Corrections for about ten years. When we started, we were in Just Chittenden County and then we've grown to five counties in our DOC program, six counties in our permanent supportive housing department of mental health funded programs. And we've done that by just applying the funding as it's available. Sorry, mental health in six counties? Yes. Yes, that's right. What's the county that doesn't have corrections but has mental health? It's Windsor County. So and we have been approached by the district managers of Springfield probation and parole several times over the years expressing interest in having us in that community. We've been approached by Dennington and we've had some conversations with Rotland. And again, it's just been based on where the funding... So I guess understanding your own limits of being statewide is fine. Exactly. And we... Yeah. If the funding was there, we would expand. Absolutely. And we've demonstrated our ability to do that by going from one community to six and growing our population. When we first started, we were tasked with serving 40 people out of homelessness at this point. We supported over 700 people into the community. So I think we have developed a model that's scalable and it's just about resource, financial resources. Can you say here in Windham County, does that mean the whole county or does that mean just Browbro? That's the whole county, yes. So if somebody needed to be in Bell's Falls, then somebody needed to be in Bloomington, they could. Yes. Who do you contract out with in Windham County? Is it the Windham Windsor Housing Trust or is it... It's private landlords. It's private landlords. Exactly. The ones, the pathways that you've had down in Windham County. Yeah. We do some work with the Windham Windsor Housing Trust, but for our department of corrections program, we're primarily working with private landlords on the pop shops with independent one bedroom units in the community that we provide their rental assistance for. And our tenants, when they have income, they contribute 30% of their income towards their rent, mirroring what Section E and other subsidized housing programs. We have Senator... You mentioned your capacity. So what is your capacity in the community? Yeah, so we're funded to support an amount of 62 people across the state in our department of corrections program, and I can give you the breakdown across the state right now. We actually have that. You've got it. Okay. I'll charge you. You can buy it if you need it. Okay. If you need it. We have to go to the neighborhood counties and see that. For example, Chitton and I believe pathways... It's 20 in Chitton and Washington, 20 each. It's eight in Franklin County, four in Madison County, and 10 in Wendell County. Just for context, I was on the economic development housing committee for a number of years. Five or six years ago, Housing First came in, Kevin Mullin was the chair, and he asked the exact same question, when will you expand into Wendell County? And got a very hopeful answer, but clearly the funding has not... We've had some proposals over the past couple of years at the state, and run to various places, but it just hasn't happened for us. But there are, you know, if you total up Wendell County, there's a lot of housing provided. This was for housing prevention, there were nine, Graham Shelter III, Chief of the Center, Wendell House 812, Vermont Chief of the Center, Sanctuary House. So there's quite a few housing options in Wendell County. I think there are options where we specialize in, right, is working with those folks that those other programs don't... No, I hear you. What I'm saying is, though, that the department has contract, you know, maybe one of the region they're not in Bennington, none is because the department contracts to see off. Maybe one of the reasons you're not in New Orleans is because the department's chosen to contract with the other chief and center for 20 minutes. I don't know. I'm just suggesting. Yeah. Also, you're really depending on Wendell it's coming forward. But I can see that being a real problem in some communities. Actually, so I used to run our housing team and what we've proven over 10 years is that we really specialize in those landlord's relationships. So we have this dedicated team in each community that works with landlords. So we... Last time I checked that it's probably much more in this now. We work with 150 landlords around the state. And it's very important to us to keep those relationships healthy and intact because that's how we make this program work. So we're always working for core housing, but really what we've done is create solid relationships with community landlords. Many of them have multiple properties and have learned that they can trust us. I think, you know, a lot of other programs landlords feel permed and we work very hard to make sure that they have someone to communicate with at all times regarding who we're placing in their car. But some of the landlords might get a lot of pushback from the community to not have us. They do. So there's a lot of work to be done and we work to make them feel comfortable and we work to find people who are interested in making a difference in the community and helping people. That's true. This is a very strong partnership. What is the obligation of the offender when they really go into your housing? What is the obligation that they make? Their obligation is to agree to sign a standard lease agreement and do their best to adhere by the standard condition that they make. Their obligation is to adhere by the standard conditions of a lease to any person within the community to have an ongoing service relationship with our services team to work towards their goals and they agree to sign an agreement to have open collaboration and communication with the Department of Corrections District Office and pathways themselves throughout their tenure in their program so that we can support them to adhere to the conditions that they release. So I'm in jail and I need to get out of jail. What happens when I fail in that agreement for example I don't know what the requirements are but are they automatically technically violated and sent back to jail and lose your housing? No. What if they take three steps backwards? Yeah, so I think the benefit to this really individualized approach and why we see higher success rates than ponderate living or programs that have a lot of their own program rules is that there are very few things that our program would ever do that would say hey, you're out and you're out for good. Of course if someone is violating the conditions of their release the Department of Corrections and Provision and Role Office's responsibility to see if that is contending with community safety but as our DOC partners were talking about really the culture has changed and the DOC offices are really vested in supporting people to stay in community so if things aren't working it tends to be a conversation that can be managed in the community unless someone is really at risk of committing a new crime or had a rest of violating community safety and we see people we do see people who go into jail on technical violation and part of the program is that we're able to keep that residence secure if somebody's in short term so if someone goes in for five days or ten days we lock up their apartment we make sure it's secure we notify the land they're out but they're coming back and then right after that five or ten days they're right back in their apartment there's no delay in that we've also seen people that we've served multiple times in this program we know that for each individual we can't predict what is going to be the successful structure right but it would be very very rare that our program would say we won't give it another shot with somebody if that's part of the model this is really a sort of engagement approach and a desire to try and try again and that's you know what's been demonstrated that's highly successful in working with the chronically homeless population which is where the housing first model started with and is now being demonstrated as highly successful at an institution could can you estimate how many people you've been on the serve there are 232 how many people are out of state today do you know 276 276 276 how much of that is due to the construction at Newport very little probably it's in Newport say there's 275 people out of state how many of those could you serve not the out of state but how many people what's your capacity of additional population that you think you could serve if money you know if the money was available if money were available and no object we believe we have we've created something that we can scale as big as it would need to be and our what we would love to be able to do is to be able to offer this service to anybody in the state who's in need of it how much did it cost per individual I can get you I don't have my per individual number right here $43 it's about I was going to say it's about $45 $45 a day yeah and that's $365 a day something in the range of $16,000 a year for both rental assistance and supportive services okay so and that's on average right right and out of state we're paying around $27,000 it's probably $30,000 total say $30,000 you can do it for say $17,000 roughly so each person you took out state would say $13,000 they're real investors give or take that's the what do you mean well I don't know if that would work out in corrections math quite like that because we've dealt with that in terms of bed savings in trying to equate it without a state beds but there's it's not linear line off base math not at all no I think that because of the churn of folks coming in that unless we truly are reducing out of state beds there we don't see the savings that is if you have they serve the hundred people that are currently out of state I mean they serve the hundred more people you ever reduce out of state population by a hundred I can't believe there wouldn't be significant savings that's actually that's great I'm not talking about each one bed I'm talking about number of beds so the problem is let's say 270 you know I think the the goal of the hash plan ASHE plan senator hash not ass the plan was eliminate out of state beds by 20 whatever so pathways for some other program develop the model to remove 100 to reduce our population currently incarcerated by a hundred and you were able to to reduce the out of state population to 170 there'd be the savings of calling it 30,000 times a hundred step in I'm not sure I believe that but that's differential so I figured in rough if it's 16,000 per year for an offender to house them how much would they out of state 27 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000 I figured 10,000 times whatever just to you know saving if they can actually do if people are currently incarcerated and obviously you don't know what the crime rate might be and how many people new people might come in but it's just a conversation that I think happens if you have if you have that population but it sounds like the difference between pathways and some of the other programs is the openness to take anyone versus the the the the I don't know I won't use the term but the ability to take anyone who is eligible for release department of corrections feels released so I'm just going by those numbers which is an example great it's quarter to one we're just getting the soft the quarter to one when we get back at 1.30 so huh should I start in yeah please do oh okay okay so for the record my name is Rebecca Turner head of the health division of the Office of Defense of General here in my capacity as vice chair for the sentencing commission I cannot make it but I'm here because the committee requested I need some full-out discussion on a portion of the sentencing report that we submitted last month on the 27th you have the entire copy of the purposes of today the question was starting to change you know jurisdiction statute that's the last three of two papers and I don't think I'll be able to get the time for the electronic version but we all have the hard time so I'm here because the sentencing commission received a request from the legislature I think the timing possibly was last session for this commission to come on with proposed solution to what I'll call jurisdictional gaps that were inadvertently created when the jurisdictional jurisdictional statute sort of passed in 2015 and this gap we're talking about concerns certain offenses that are committed by individuals under 18 where the prosecutor charges on the final term after the 2018 so there were categories of offenses in cases where it wasn't clear it wasn't clear who had jurisdiction criminal courts or family courts now the proposal here addresses the less serious crimes that being the not listed crimes or the 812 because the legislature fixed those gaps relating to the 812s long time ago 2011 predating with the jurisdictional statute back to 153 in terms of the legislature's work last year fixed that gap the focus was on listed offenses and so that gap was fixed and you'll see that fixed here going through the statute 81 capital B right and so that was addressed little a 1a the a addresses the big 12 offenses capital B addresses the list of offenses C that follows with the underlying language contains the proposed fix to address offenses that are don't fall into the 12 and are not listed so unless there is to help me kids steal the car that would that be in C it could be if it's not a robbery it's always a right and it could be what six months misdemeanor so nonviolent families usually misdemeanors would be it would be a nonviolent misdemeanor so so that would be so that would be so that would be under this provision now that would be a juvenile would be under juvenile court that's right so that's what this does yes and this is again to address the situation with a prosecutor doesn't find a reason to go after the team so the proposed language was reached by a subcommittee of the sentencing commission came together and worked out touched out to the language that you see here that subcommittee was made up of the state's attorneys the general the judge Grayson as well and the DOC so it was the critical stakeholders on reaching this consensus on this language they blocked the language to the full body and the commission building out and I just wanted to pull it out and so that language and then again the proposed language they're underlined under subsection C3 that again spells out in detail establishing that these are going to lead to emergencies and that it extends the family course supervisory which one of these cases until the defendant's 20th birthday and so again that is the proposed language that was worked out by consensus on these groups I just wanted to point out because these are questions actually the language here in C they see the age 17 years old but before it's been 18 years old just for the record those aren't to be locked in stone that reflects current law but of course what was passed was the graduated 2020 those ages changed and so just view those as sort of placeholders from when this goes to drafting things something that follows what passed just like current and then all of the gradually passed I think there's a bill on this if I'm not mistaken is there not Bryn? we have a bill on the youth book that changes the bill but it doesn't have the language but we could ask and that is is we already have the bill or is it we have a bill that is working within the these statutes these full thunder and jubilee chapters and so it could fit in there once you take up the bill it's already in committee right it's been yes it's been it is a bill I think I introduced a bill this year we'll all look into it maybe Eric has a long package but you're all so good that you do these things and I can't remember what I did that's why we have staff that's why we have a list that's why we have staff but that is the standard that I wanted to share today with the community I've been to fill many questions that's simple so go ahead please okay so yesterday a working group the justice team came with a form of meetings since late August at prior meetings we had worked to identify the design of the state supervision system to talk about diversion programs and opportunities that Vermont has built through the department of correction and through other means and statutory changes that have gone on in November presented on reporting crime trends and sentencing trends but yesterday was sort of the big long meeting to look at corrections data that had taken us up to yesterday essentially to really analyze and understand and one of the key goals of justice reinvestment to here in Vermont is was always to understand the role that revocations from community supervision play the focus of a lot of what we talked about yesterday this is a summary slide that I will walk through some pieces that inform this that the key our key takeaways we look at that corrections data are that the state's incarcerated population has grown in recent years even though historically Vermont has seen a decline in its corrections populations from people being incarcerated for detention or sentenced probation parole and furlough in more recent years there are actually increases in the number of people who are incarcerated for a prison sentence or who are being detained even as that's happening the department of corrections has been receiving level funding like other state agencies in that same period of time which we would argue actually constitutes sort of a cut in many programs and services the department I think understandably can't stop paying for more people coming in to maintain and provide healthcare to those folks to see nothing of other fixed costs and so the reality is other things end up being decreased over the last three years the average this is I want to rewrite this full point essentially 78% of prison since prison admissions in the state are driven by people who are coming off of probation parole or furlough those are revocations from probation and sorry probation and parole they are returns to prison for people on furlough because some of those folks are being revoked some of those folks are experiencing something called a furlough interrupt which is a graduated sanction it's a very short period of time that they're coming in for up to five days oh great yeah so that could be the same person coming into our homes we don't think it is and we actually look at the data to see how often people are returning and it looks like on average in a four year period when people return to incarceration off of furlough it's happening about twice there are some folks where it's 8% of people who returned in that period returned off of furlough five times or more but that was a smaller percentage the average is two times we have heard from people who are incarcerated or on supervision that they cycle over a longer period of time many times technical violations make up the largest percentages of supervision returns and revocations particularly for the furlough population and I'll show what that breakdown looks like between probation parole and furlough the length of stay for people who return or go to prison is generally short that also varies depending on where people are coming from which supervision status but it's always for a few months generally speaking research indicates that most people and this is not just research on Vermont just general research and several studies have shown that people are most likely to re-offend in the first years after their release from prison so there's a sort of a window of time and focus when people are in more need potentially of services programs and supervision that will support them being successful in the community and as there's a graph that we showed yesterday that you can see they continue to succeed for the remain on community supervision the longer that goes the less likely they are to re-offend and so we would just argue that that's the importance of front-learning services and programs for folks which I think the testimony I heard about the pathways housing first of all is very focused on that as well and then level funding for DOC and combined with limited community-based resources across the state have resulted in large numbers of higher risk people not being able to receive the programming services they need that would probably help address their criminogenic risks and behavioral health needs in the community so a few slides that I pulled out of 75 again which we have all of but just for the purposes of today this is the slide I would use to show that growth in the incarcerated population over time between 2016 and 2019 and the other important thing about this slide is that we show where you see Vermont's current DOC facilities being over capacity the prisons were built to hold about 1100 people if you counted the in-state sentence top or in-state incarcerated population which means people were detained and people were sentenced there were almost 1500 people that's 136% capacity counting the people who are serving some other sentences in Mississippi you've got 161% capacity so it's an over crowded correction system and again some of those populations are growing in recent years this is a very simple representation of that level funding that DOC has experienced and the realities of that are inevitably that as incarcerated populations are going up costs associated with those populations will increase as well but level funding won't meet those costs necessarily and so the department any department in this candidate under the situation would have to look for cuts in other places we certainly heard from a lot of people who were related to programming and services inside and outside of correction settings describing how they used to offer more but they had to offer less now because contracts have gotten necessarily smaller so can I ask a question on just the numbers previous chart actually housed in state which is 1493 does that include the federal the marshals or not that's a great question I don't know let me get back to you on that I'm going to move from corrections it's on the jail I just don't know would that include our fellow marshals it's everyone it's the team and the descent actually housed in state 1493 would that include our federal marshals if we're counting everyone has it would include that so we don't have any control over who comes and goes for the federal marshals they contract for the beds but they're the ones who control who comes in and who goes out correct and how many beds do we have for the marshals I don't know that's a little bit 60 we could not contract with them I'm just curious to see about the 1493 when will you give me a few minutes to find out and continue on and I can go back to Ed my colleague if you look at if you look at the funding issue then you'd have more of a problem funding correction if you didn't have the marshals but they take up some of the beds well they do but they pay higher than what we're paying how to state them little known fact yeah they are this next slide was sort of the kickoff to the conversation that we had yesterday around the goal that revocations and returns to prisons play in the prison admissions population so just people coming into DOC facilities on sentenced incarcerations not people who are detained for trial new court commitments make up 20% of prison admissions sentenced prison admissions parole violators make up only 5% probation violators make up 20% but furlough violators make up 53% and I'll just say again this is a combination that data doesn't allow us to exactly pull out how many of those furlough violators are people coming in on graduated sanctions for very short days up to 5 days and how many are staying because for longer up to usually around 90 days or most people are only staying but so that is a combined population for the furlough folks it's still having said that a very high percentage of prison admissions that is driven by folks coming off of supervision something else I want to note that my colleague who did all this analysis and joined us yesterday by phone said at the end of the meeting which I should have noted earlier is that as you all know Vermont's a unified system so there are no jails for people to go that's why you have a detainee population in the state prisons it's also why you'll see folks with graduated sanctions for up to 5 days going into your prison system because in other places where that policy exists people are usually serving those short stints of 1, 2, 3 days in their local jail or in a jail where there's a contracted bed space available in Vermont it's all going into your prison system so it's just worth reminding that there aren't any prisons because of that unified system that you all have half of Vermont's sentenced prison population at the end of almost half 46% at the end of this year were made up of people who had returned from community supervision and again that's primarily coming from furlough violators so new court commitments are on 41% of the population and then all the supervision status is combined is 46% so did you look at some of those furlough violations in new court you had 13, 18 total people so those are unique individuals this isn't someone doesn't capture someone who may have committed a crime and also a furlough violator it's one person yes not multiple my understanding is that because this is the snapshot so admissions can be someone coming in multiple times it could be the same person for different reasons I believe the prison population this is sort of sad because it's a snapshot so it's almost like if you looked today these numbers would look a little different today than they did yesterday but you know in a moment in time who was incarcerated and that's unique so they may be the same person there may be for this snapshot population no I don't believe that oh sorry I think these are all one person it's not multiple cases counted this is more of if you look at your beds kind of who's in those beds the other piece that we presented on yesterday was looking at how this all plays out for women in Vermont women who were incarcerated for sentenced prison terms and bear in mind this is a very small population only 106 women in this snapshot there are two things happening on this slide the first is that the pie chart shows the underlying offense for which women were sentenced to prison so the vast majority are there for violent or property crimes or convictions for those crimes but when you look at the immediate reason why people are incarcerated that's where we see that revocation and return to prison being another key driver so 58% of women who are incarcerated today are there off of a violation from supervision of some kind but their underlying sentences are for fairly serious offenses almost half for violent crimes so I had a question last night I was going through this and the property crimes burglary or tree fraud one stolen property are those crimes that involve a person a victim? I don't know because that's what I was going to ask I didn't know how it went so we were looking at which in terms of property crime because then those are felons they involve the person also burglary is an unoccupied dwelling but is that a listed 11 burglary it's a listed it's a felon well it says underlying offenses so it could be burglary was the highest but there may have been a series of crimes that actually is important so something that I did was he looked at the most serious so everything here it's right it's not necessarily the entirety of a person's if their case had multiple convictions or charges associated with it Ed kind of rounded out if you will to the most serious in all of these any slide that shows that kind of underlying offense is meant to reflect the more serious of the conviction because we often hear particularly for the women's folks who are incarcerated are there for bad checks that's what we hear a lot we hear that a lot is it an anecdote or is it real that they're there for bad checks I mean, without knowing this is again such a small population so a hundred people ten people can have a pretty big impact on how any of these percentages change so this is just the snapshot that we saw when Ed looked at it but I do know that having looked at this only for a few months but versions of this the impact of violent offenses some of the reason why women are incarcerated from what we saw this also in the sentencing data as well it's sort of skewing towards the more violent offenses than others but a reminder again that the additional piece here is still more than having women more incarcerated today have come off of supervision and that's why they are incarcerated so they may have originally been convicted for these things they were but also a lot of them are coming back they could have had a bad check on the criminal and then have been violated on probation had their probation violated then they get a furlough then they get sent back on their furlough blah blah blah keep going keep going it's not it's not easy to and when I think I heard you say that women coming back in don't want to be supervised by the police oh no they're being supervised still are well their community supervision I mean they're not under community supervision and they're being incarcerated then there are facilities and then they're leading on to community supervision again when they when they go back so they're still a criminal under some sort of supervision and then they're they're involved in a re-accusation yes yes and let's say max doctor sent they're coming out with a sentence to serve or split probation they're still under supervision do you know how many people that have just been maxed out well no that's a great question I'll ask it if we can look into that I know that when we're talking about revocations or returns we're talking about people who were who had not maxed out who were on supervision they were you know on probation or furlough and then they came back into prison right from that status from that supervision so it's made it possible that people they complete their supervision they've maxed it out and then they're in the community and then they're not going to be violated to come back in they will be arrested and be convicted to be crime and that might be why they come back in it was quite a conversation yesterday about people who burned their bridges and then you know they run out of family members will take them run out of friends that will take them and then they're they're back in jail and they may be bad checks but there's also unreported crime oh yeah sure stealing from family members to buy drugs for them but and I think the folks who come into this would fall into that new court commission new court commitment really rather so the 41% of people so someone if I left prison and I was on furlough and I did well eventually on furlough and I ended up on parole and then I served out my whole parole term and I was discharged from parole and then I commit a robbery and I'm re-arrested and then I would in this pie chart fall into the yellow new court commitment because even though I had previously been on supervision I was not actively on supervision when I came back into prison but it's a point while seeing longer criminal histories than just this one one thing may encompass we drilled a little bit into the where we could the reasons why people are the types of violations that are leading to people returning from furlough or being revoked from probation and parole and in the case of furlough returns the vast majority of these reasons are for technical violations rather than new offence or new crime violations and these are the types of technical violations that were flagged in the data that indicates some of the reasons why folks are the types of violations that people are committing and being returned for again potentially for very short periods of time and then in other cases for longer periods of time so many I want to point out that's in the black text here on the bottom left is that we talked about this a lot yesterday from our perspective a key structural challenge in what is going on with furlough is that it is statutorily defined essentially as an extension of a person's incarceration sentence so it was established as in part and expanded on as a legal status and there are multiple versions of it now partly to provide an opportunity for people to be released early pretty minimum into the community and that just creates a response mechanism inherently built into that definition that a person is essentially incarcerated but outside and so we would argue that in part one of the reasons why there's a higher rate of technical violations leading to people going back into prison even for short periods of time which is quite different than when you compare to other populations of people who are supervised by the same department of corrections with many of the same policies and certainly the same staff these differences might partly be explained by just the definition of furlough as treating or responding to a person as though they are serving up a period of their incarceration outside of prison something else that is true however is that currently very few people on furlough were released before they reached their minimum in prison most people are leaving prison at or after their minimum sentence so furlough sort of thought of and designed to be an early release mechanism but functionally it's not operating that way so in many cases you know we at our national organization we work for the United States I would look at that for the furlough system and I say another state that's a person who would be on parole that's what the furlough system that would sort of take over that person which can look very different in different places and we've talked a lot as a working group about the peculiarities and the complexities of Vermont's supervision system which is quite complex this is also where we show again the reasons for medications on furlough and probation are much more evenly split between a person having committed a new crime or having committed technical violations such that they are revoked but that furlough return category just sort of dips into a much higher rate of the technical violations that are leading to a person going back into prison we also talked a lot yesterday about the impact that this kind of repeated return has on individuals and on the system and so this is just one representation of just the numbers that we're talking about almost 3,000 people had a furlough return over the last four years that constituted over maybe exactly 5,800 furlough return events which means people to what we were saying earlier people are having multiple furlough returns in four year periods on average that's about two per person if they return it happens about twice in four years and the median length of time that a person is on furlough before they are returned if they become part of that furlough return cohort is in four months so again that speaks to the vulnerability and the riskiness if you will of that initial period of time when a person comes out of prison and again this is just bears out in research anywhere that people are at higher risk of re-offending and recidivating in the first months in years particularly that first year post release and so in Vermont the status under which the people are being supervised is furlough which again is the status that is uniquely defined the extension of someone's incarceration and so you've got really high risk folks with kind of a different response mechanism built into the status of their being supervised under and we talked yesterday about the this puts a lot of strain on your correction system undoubtedly in many ways it's also a huge amount of disruption to a person's life and to the individual who is facing enormous challenges and struggling in their own way to try to re-enter their community successfully we also then looked at sort of what it looks like to move from furlough to furlough or what that interaction is and 90% of people who were granted furlough had already been in the community on furlough so there's a pretty clear path that people are following when they get to furlough and it's that they're on furlough first and on average looking at a sample of about 500 people folks who were approved for furlough had been on furlough for seven to eight months so it's somewhat reductive on my part but I keep thinking about if people fail they tend to fail within four months if they succeed and they get to furlough it's within seven to eight months and so that's kind of a window of opportunity and certainly of high risk for folks as well and the other thing I'll point out is that you've got a furlough board with a pretty steady rate these are the last three years of their grants and denials for for all for folks who have applied for that and then another really big topic of conversations that came up yesterday and you'll see a lot of slides on this I think that this is the one that I would zero in on this and the following which are going back to that level of funding and sort of the strain that puts on a corrections department with growing populations and other fixed costs that they have to meet is that inevitably there are people who are not necessarily when it's very hard to make available and to develop around evidence-based practices and curricula so the Department of Corrections offers people who are assessed as medium to high risk and who are convicted of illicit offense those folks have access inside DOC facilities and in the community to something called risk reduction programming which is robust programming that is made available to people who meet the criteria about nine to 18 months before they leave it's available across the state it's a well-accessed widely available program for anyone who again medium to high risk listed offense medium to high risk makes all the sense in the world that you want to be focusing on the people of high risk when you're giving them this type of intensive intervention or supervision programming what's hard is that DOC is limited in being able to provide all medium to high risk people with this second necessary piece that people have to have which is being convicted of illicit offense so what we wanted to look at was who's left behind when you have that criteria who might otherwise be benefiting from that risk production programming and when looking at medium to high risk people who are not convicted of illicit offense that's almost a quarter of the total people you might otherwise want to get that programming because they are not getting that programming while they're incarcerated when you look at the community side where the populations are bigger the medium to high risk people who are supervised in the community who are not receiving programming again because they're not convicted of illicit offense that's almost half of the total medium to high risk population so there are two and that's a big gap we also talked a little bit about how there are a lot of people who are lower risk and in the community that's almost 5,000 people who probably shouldn't receive risk reduction programming that is well designed and focused on meeting the high risk people but there are people with lower risks but other needs that may not be met in other places and it doesn't mean there's no need it's just a resource problem so I just wanted to highlight that there are lower risk people who will have different needs that don't rise to the level of meeting DOC's really intensive programming but they are probably having any number of things go unmet locally as well and then this was the last data slide I wanted to share with you all prison admissions made up of people coming off of supervision and the prison population made up of people coming off of supervision where that places Vermont so if you were to just look at probation and parole populations combined Vermont would have the sixth lowest admissions rate if you will made up of people who were revoked in the country if you add furlough violators to that however Vermont would have the highest that 78% than any other other state again caveats because furlough is unique in Vermont and unified systems you've got a mixture of populations but it's still well above most other places and then the percentage of the prison population that's comprised of people who are revoked from probation and parole Vermont would be 16th lowest it was just those two populations adding in furlough Vermont would be sixth highest so again it's there's a lot of returning into the state which is driving a lot of what's going on with prison populations and admissions and putting a lot of pressure on the correction system we then have also present well can we stop and just see are there any I was going to shift into a new section but I just want to see if there are any questions on any of that there are many more slides that I just pulled out the summary for here that addressed through site visits and sitting in on programming that was offered inside prisons and in the community and then also meeting with staff across the state supervision staff across the state in a few different places and so there there's a lot of information the whole presentation around we're going to see Vermont doing really excellent work and where there's opportunity for improvements or for improvements something that we said yesterday I hope it was well delivered or that people really hurt us is that Vermont's in a in a rare position the state and the department corrections through legislative actions through agency leadership actions through the training of staff down to the interactions we've observed with staff is doing really good job of making sure that people who are lower risk with lower criminal or shorter criminal histories are essentially having much less interaction with the criminal justice system the state has done a really wonderful job of working with people to lower recidivism particularly among people who have lower risk many states are working to get to where Vermont is both in implementing and adopting of its base policies and in significantly shifting the populations of people who are in corrections today the challenge is that because of that good work the people who remain in the correction system under DOC control one kind or another are higher risk and higher need and so it's a critical moment for the state to evolve and step up a little bit in what the interventions and the programs look like for those higher risk higher needs people if the state really wants to continue moving forward in safely reducing populations and helping people be successful in the community so a big piece of what we presented on yesterday was identifying the strengths that we see in Vermont and also again identifying where there are to get to that next level of working with a harder population of folks and so this is the summary of a lot of that that I can walk through but again there are many slides that support this in greater detail I would say that the key takeaway for us is that larger text at the bottom which is the positives of what Vermont has built and then the realities of what limited resources have resulted in and the need for some stronger implementation that exists today and then we also spent time yesterday looking at how people with behavioral health needs are worked with or how those needs are met and addressed in the criminal justice system and this is again a summary of several slides that was based on our observations and conversations of people across the state I think the key a lot of this is that similar to what I described in questions which was we had with someone say at some point was it's sort of a triage mentality again we don't have enough to give everyone we want to so we have to focus on who we most immediately have to give that to I think something similar is happening a little bit on the behavioral health side where you have more resources available for people who rise the level of having serious mental illness or who have opioid addiction because Vermont's doing a lot of research for people in between many of whom have co-occurring disorders or mental health needs that are not at the level of serious mental illness and what's available to them is also very disparate and variable across the state and there's probably areas where coordination of care really needs to be improved in order for supervision officers to even know more about what their clients need which is a really good outline and it's something I appreciate that going back to slide 15 at the bottom the Vermont's Connect correction system is increasingly popular by people with higher risk of needs that can be addressed through effective treatment practice and access but limited resources to help the state back I think maybe more of the critical takeaways for me is having our colleagues in the House and Senate administration and others recognize that we are now dealing with a much more difficult group of people in our correction system that we might have been talking about 10 to 15 years ago but the resources that we haven't put into that population require much more intensive resources to hold them accountable but at the same time to have them you know get rehabilitated I think that would be the most important takeaway for all of us to read the full and in that part of the difficulty in getting good people working in corrections when we met at St. Alvin's one of the things that I came away from that meeting with the officers for us how many people they start out with who don't even last a month because it's a really difficult group to work with now and I live you know I'm sure the same thing in Ruffins so I I appreciate this it's very helpful something I want to say Senator I would agree I think that is that's the story I see in Vermont that again you have a harder population than that a lot of states are trying to get there the other side is it's not impossible to work with those folks it just to what you're saying it takes a little bit more and I do want to note something that my colleague David emphasized yesterday which is that from our observations of supervision officers and their interactions with their clients in the community who are really strong and that's not just luck that's training as well the Department of corrections is invested in training that we see how in the quality of the supervision in the officers who we witness and so in that sort of limited view but it gives us optimism that it's an example where Vermont has a strong infrastructure to build on to work with higher higher risk higher needs but it is kind of a critical next step that the state needs to take can I just get definition of higher risk and what types of crimes have these people it's not the crimes it's me yes so crying so when I say risk the and I'm not going to do as good a job as my colleague who's an expert on risk assessments but there are validated risk assessment tools and screeners that the Department of corrections uses to assess a person for their criminogenic risk so an offense and crime is actually not part of it it's a number of other factors it can be the age of their first interaction with the criminal justice system criminal history to an extent comes into that in that same way there are associations there are a number of factors that are assessed that statistically indicate a person's greater likelihood of reoffending and so criminogenic risk in some cases sort of counterintuitively you may have someone who's been convicted of a very serious offense but actually is low risk meaning they'll probably never do that again and that's for a variety of reasons so and oftentimes people who are very high criminogenic risk are not necessarily convicted of serious offenses but other factors in their life lead to a higher likelihood that they will continue to move through the criminal justice system through reoffending and violation behaviors it's a little bit of a different concept and just someone who will go do the exact same thing necessarily but it's based on the number of factors and I'm sure Dale actually will speak to that from much greater detail it's tough to move from crime-oriented discussion to a risk-oriented discussion and that difficulty we fall into that trap as legislators there's a certain crime that we find so important that we want to make sure that there's a long sentence attached to it could be murder it could be aggravated sexual assault but take some of the cases that have been really out-profiled understatement or somebody murdered someone who had tormented them who had sold them into slavery as a sex slave I think there's a woman in Tennessee that received the pardon from the governor who had killed her the person who was trafficking her though she'd probably had no risk to ever commit another crime like that because of all circumstances but somebody else who may be high-risk who's main crime has been forging but continuing to the desire to get the drugs I think when I met with Jim Baker last earlier this week we got talking last Friday he was talking about it in Rutland when he was chief they figured 75,000 was the cost per year to keep a heroin habit going you need to think of all the people in Rutland five years ago that made 75 grand and that was before they put food on the table housing whatever else you need 75,000 just for your heroin so the amount of money that went into that but if you solve that heroin problem I look at what you're saying senator about moving from an offense or crime-based to a risk-based system something else that is not adequately represented in these slides but it's in the larger presentation is where we see the state overall and the Department of Corrections in particular doing that and there are also a lot of slides where we try to represent many different places where the Department of Corrections is conducting risk assessments identifying people based on their criminogenic risk and then how you see that play out in their failure or success rates on probation and furlough and so the good news is again you've got a corrections department that going back quite a few years at this point has and moved in the direction of well let's use these tools to identify people and then specifically connect them to the types of supervision and the types of programs that make the most sense for them and that's again Vermont has moved to that place and now understanding that you know that you have a higher risk population of people it's the next level of what can we make available to them and how can we work with them a little bit differently Any other questions? Mary? Thank you I'm sorry that I missed the beginning and forgive me if I'm asking do you have set of recommendations for next steps we should be taking? Not yet that's the next the working group is coming back together January 22nd and that will be when we come make specific policy recommendations and as much as possible estimates for in tax of what those policies might mean essentially where that might lower populations allow for some savings etc And there's good news Mary Yes with M.I.C. Diane sitting there She's there for the money Oh because When we implement it in the last legislation based upon these recommendations from the Justice Center federal money will be available to us to help implement those policies for the next two years Yep So the funding for this phase of the work comes from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and for those for those oh we ever lose an hour Yeah I would for those states that do pass and reinvest they're eligible to apply for additional funding for colleagues of mine who come and work with the state for a year or two to help implement them and to monitor what the impacts of the policies are and make adjustments to make sure that they're doing what this goes to So funding for monitoring not necessarily federal funding for like housing programs or No it's not direct funding for that necessarily but it is real You said the bridge Yeah I think it is sort of a bridge into you know you just pass me laws now they need to how do they actually work The other piece I'll say though some states can apply for something called the sub-award which is I think up to $500,000 that is sort of direct money to the state for an identified need that would assist in the implementation of those policies further So some states and some other areas that I don't know that they've ever been I can double check I don't know that it's been telling us direct is sort of transitional housing it's a one I mean it's only one chunk of money so it won't be something that would come regularly but states can identify where agency improvements or implementation improvements could be boosted significantly by some additional direct funds from the state what so my first plush at this by the time or anything else I don't want to get the clouds roughly representative Hammond's opinions so my first do you actually say yeah I did we go back I did and it's 514 okay 14 or no yeah my first statement when we get that says you're still pretty early process that we learn pretty well and pp but we're failing pretty measurably and furlough is that a reasonable assessment at this night I would temper that a little which is I want to because it is furlough is just very unique right it's just a different more different wow I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I to our assumption is those are the folks who are coming in and graduated sanctions. So a decent chunk of them are coming in in response to violations that's not a full revocation that in other places where that might happen, it wouldn't go in your prison system and so it wouldn't have this impact. And also, you've just sort of got an interesting design again in the way that Furlow has defined that kind of inherently means the response is going to be a little more punitive perhaps than it would otherwise. So it does stand out, it's very high, but we think there's structural reasons for that, some of which could be addressed through potentially some policy changes. And I'm wondering if some of those structural issues to Furlow is, you know, DOC and what just later has been under a lot of pressure for the last five, six, seven years to release folks to bring down our prison population. And I'm wondering, is there any correlation with that and that the folks who DOC has released because there's been so much pressure, not to incarcerate so many people, that folks have been released, they needed more community support than what we have in place. I would say that would be true almost no matter what with the population you have. I think because we have a harder population than we did 10 years ago. A lot of people coming out of very high residences. That's true for anyone coming out of prison, right? Any post-release, immediate post-release prison or community population is going to have higher risk. And I think the fact that you already have a higher than perhaps normal risk population as far as who's making up your correction system means that you absolutely, there aren't a lot of low-risk folks coming out on Furlow, we just know that that's true. And so yes, they are people who need more in the community and they are not succeeding and when they're not succeeding repeatedly, it's not the first time they're being returned to prison for different reasons and different lengths of time, but not for very long. They're getting grossly up to 90 days. And so it's absolutely a two-pronged thing of the structure of Furlow is problematic probably and then also the lack of other necessary supports in the community for people who absolutely need those things is going to be contributing to that as well. And then that contributes to the churn in DOC. But then can't provide the adequate program and space to the folks who are there that could use it because of the constant churn in DOC's causing moving people around facilities to make space. Yeah, again, we're referring to them as events but 5,800 Furlow return events in four years. That's a lot of events. That's a lot of events. Plus they're getting other folks coming in and out. How many folks do you have coming in on a yearly basis for admission, 5,000? Derby. Yeah, Diane Derby. If I may just add, talking about the federal funding on this front. So we're talking largely NeoJay funding, BJA funding, which is largely technical assistance with a bunch of appropriations that's now passing through the House today in the Senate by the end of the week. It has a lot, I think at the federal level they're starting to see the whole government approach. That's kind of breaking down the barriers. So there's the SAMHSA funding, for example, and some things to really take a good look at because they're, I mean, the MAT treatment that's happening right now in the prisons in Vermont is funded through federal funding as coming to the state opioid response. As is recovery housing, as is transitional, some transitional recovery coaching in the hospital. So I think just to encourage legislators to think beyond NeoJay when you're thinking about these funding. Appreciate that. Absolutely. And the funding bill that's passing right now is really stepped up on that. You were missing, but I didn't thank the Senator for all his hard work on these issues. We didn't meet anywhere near where we are without him and a few others down in Washington on these issues. That's great. I'm happy to keep that in mind. Please pass that on from my entire committee, I think. We're all very thankful that we have them down there. Any other Senator? Is that, are there any questions for them? Well, thank you very much. I think we're gonna be looking at January 22nd and our final meeting, and then on the 23rd, we plan to meet with the various standing committees with the Justice Center on what the bills will look like. The good news bill that Senator Judd shared will start the bill. It'll be a committee bill, and I hope to get it done. We'll clean it up. Absolutely. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Representative Brad, Representative Edmunds, Representative Hoover comes to clean it up when it gets over there. I want to represent the pass, and Shaw will stay out of it. You promised to not mess it up. I thought I'll tell my work partner. Thank you so much. Thank you all very much. Thanks, and have a enjoyable holiday season.