 and thank you for coming. This is the first of five programs on criminal justice in Vermont, and we're really excited about this series. The mission statement of the league is empowering voters and defending democracy, and we hope that these programs advance that mission. And there's information about the league on the back table, and we'd be very happy if you had to join us. Our moderator is Carrie Brown, Executive Director of the Vermont Commission on Women. The commission is a state agency working to help women achieve legal, economic, social, and politically quality in Vermont. And Carrie will introduce our panel. Thank you, Kate. We have an amazing panel here today, and I'm so honored to be able to be here to talk with you about them. Let me find their bias. Here we go. Okay. I wish I had all my rooms memorized, but unfortunately no. So I'm gonna start right here. Ashley Messier is the smart justice organizer for the ACLU of Vermont. She's also a consultant for the Cabot Centenary Entry Project. Ashley's worked on reforming the criminal justice system for several years, and quite a while, I've got a good history with that actually, and currently works on several social issue and direct service projects from re-entry to domestic and sexual violence. Ashley is a passionate advocate, public speaker, and formerly incarcerated woman. She's also a mom, a wife, and a lifelong Vermonter. Thank you for joining us. And then we have Cassie Tibbet. Next, she started volunteering with Vermont's incarcerated women in 2016. She was an instructor for the Speak Debate Prison Initiative, and later she joined Writing Inside Vermont as a writing assistant and a co-editor of the organization Second Publication, which has titled Lifelines, Rewriting Eyes from the Inside Out. Cassie's also hosted discussion groups and voter registration drives for the women at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility. She's dedicated to empowering others through education and community building, and in her, the rest of the time, she's not the only thing I just said, she's the coordinator of the Community Legal Information Center, which is a research fellow for the Center for Justice Reform at Vermont Law School and a volunteer advocate at criminal record expungement clinics and a community, circles of support and accountability COSA volunteer, which you may hear more about when she speaks. And Mary Beth Redmond, finally, it was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in November of 2018. She currently serves on the House Human Services Committee and the Joint Legislative Child Protection Committee. She's helping to lead the women's legislative caucus in its advocacy for more transformative alternatives to it. Oh, sure. Do I have more? I don't. More transformative alternatives to incarceration for women. In 2017, she was appointed one of 16 commissioners to the Vermont Commission on Women, which makes her one of my bosses. So stay nice, don't worry about it. Mary Beth is a longtime writer and journalist. Her working career has focused on utilizing writing and public communications to raise up the voices of women, girls and the most marginalized residing in our state. She currently serves as a partner in the Vermont Story Lab project, training nonprofit communicators to leave storytelling to the fabric of their organizations to increase impact and reach. She co-founded a program for Vermont's incarcerated women, which I mentioned before that Cassie has worked with, called Writing Inside Vermont, which utilizes writing as a tool for self-change. This effort resulted in a nationally published book of the women's poetry and prose, entitled Here We See Me in 2013. We have two books that have come out of this program. Mary Beth also directed the development and communications efforts of Vermont Works for Women, a nonprofit organization training vulnerable women for meaningful, liberal wage employment. While there, she served on the Steering Committee of Change the Story Vermont, an innovative project that aligns policy program and philanthropy to fast-track women's economic status in the state. Prior to making her remarks in 2003, Mary Beth worked as an on-air TV reporter in Connecticut, New York, and Indiana. She holds a master's degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's from the University of New York. OK, so are you all impressed with our panel? Yeah, I am. Thank you so much for coming here, everyone. And thanks to all of you for coming here to hear about this incredibly important topic. So as Kate said, I work for the Vermont Commission on Women. And we have been working to advance rights and opportunities for women in Vermont since 1964. And we have been working very hard on issues related to incarcerated women for much, many of those years, and much of that time. And I started this job seven years ago. And I was actually a member of the commission as Mary Beth is before that. And so in my time working with the commission, I have seen tremendous changes happen for incarcerated women in Vermont. So 20 years or so ago, we had, what, maybe 35, 40 women who were incarcerated. They were in Waterbury at the state complex there. That's where the prison for women was. And as we saw nationally, the numbers of women who were incarcerated really began to decline quite dramatically. And Vermont was no exception. And so the women were actually moved out of that facility in Waterbury maybe like 15 years ago. Not sure of the exact date. And they were moved to Windsor, to the Southeast State Correctional Facility. And Windsor used to be its farm. And it has had various incarnations in its life. Only by the state and women there were able to move from building to building. They had lots of outdoor space. They had space for a program that Vermont Works for Women ran called the Modular Home Program, where they actually built modular homes. They built houses. And then those houses were donated to people in the community through Habitat for Human Advaita. And so it was a really incredible program where you could learn trades. You could learn carpentry. You could also learn about what was involved in giving an estimate on a job site and all the other skills that go along with being employed in general. And then for, I don't know exactly what the reasons were. But one thing we find is that when budgets need to be cut and things need to be rearranged in state budgets and state operations, there's a little bit of a pecking order sometimes. And people who are in prison are definitely down near the bottom of that. And so the women were moved to St. Albans. And they were moved to actually not a bad facility. In the Pots of Rune, they were able to continue, for example, the modular home projects, along with lots of other kinds of programming and education that gave people real job skills that they might use when they left. But then the next round, much of the pressures came. And behind the scenes, machinations, and the women were moved in 2011 to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility. So this is a building in South Burlington that was built as a detention facility. So it was intense for people who were arrested. Their fate was unknown. They were just being detained and hanging out for a while. And now it's housing people who are living there, who are actually serving out their sentences and living there. And there are, I don't know how many there are today, but probably about 150 in there now. And at its most crowded, it's been up to maybe 185 or so. 186. 186, OK. Yeah, so it's a little bit down from where it's been at its highest, but it's past the gills. And there's no room for the modular home program was gone. There were many, I'm editorializing a little bit here. You'll bear with me. But there were many visions for things that might happen with a prison located in Chittenden County that have not necessarily come to pass. And so the options for programming and education are possibly not what they could be in an ideal world. But we may hear more about that as we go. So this is really significant to all of us, because when we look at how we treat our most vulnerable people, it tells us a lot about what our values are as a society. And so tonight, I'm really pleased that we'll get to hear from three people who have worked very extensively in lots of different aspects of this system. And you can give us a little bit of insight about how things are, where they might go, what might happen. OK. So we're going to have some questions for them. I'm going to have some questions that I have posed to them. And we're going to talk for a little while. And then we will have an opportunity for questions from all of you. All right, so I wanted to just give everybody a chance, first of all, to just start and tell us, think about five minutes, and tell us what it is that you would like to know, what you'd like us to know about your experience and about your perspective. And we'll just start with Ashley and work our way down to Mary Beth. All right. Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming out this evening. Important things from my perspective, I think today's kind of an exciting day. So yesterday, we launched our blueprint for Vermont, looking at sort of every point in the system and opportunities for reform and change. And that was really informed by not only my experience, but looking at Vermont as a whole and opportunities to really shine. I think one thing that makes us as Vermonters really special is our connection to each other. Usually, you can't go five people here without figuring out that you know somebody or you're even related. They're like one to school with their sister. And it's just a really close-knit community that makes us Vermont. And so when you take especially a woman out of her community, a lot of times women are the primary parents like I was. So now you've not only incarcerated me, but now you've created a cycle for my child. So now our foster care system in Vermont is completely inundated with many, many kids. And there are opportunities to keep kids with parents and keep them safe. It's not always an either or in a lot of situations. A lot of the women, including myself, who are incarcerated at CRCF, deal with things like trauma, domestic violence, human trafficking, substance abuse, mental health conditions, all of those are better served in the community. So the blueprint really gets to building alternatives to incarceration, keeping things rooted in community, which then creates healthier communities, right? And it keeps families together and it keeps people employed. And it helps Vermont in sort of every aspect from economics to community to family to holidays to just sort of every topic that you can go through. And myself being at CRCF, while I will agree that the conditions there are awful, I mean very awful, I mean, just I don't need to get into graphic detail, but yes, that's like everybody can agree with that, right? That something needs to be done. But before we jump to spending hundreds of millions of dollars of your money, your taxpayer money, we need to study alternatives. We need to study smarter ways to spend the money and have better outcomes and keep communities safe. And so my work has really been both from my perspective and my children's perspective, but also looking at policy and opportunity for Vermont to move forward and do better because we can be leaders we have before here, right? Vermont has a small population and we might have smaller numbers than any other state, but that's also an opportunity, right? To make change and to come out in front and to be really committed to our community is the way that we say that we are. The answer. When you live it, it's easy to have a good answer. All right. So I'll just, I'm Cassie and I'll just share the story of how I ended up here and we'll start there. So I moved to Vermont four years ago and I moved here to start law school and I came with the intent to pursue a career as a public defender. And in my first semester, they set up mock interviews with attorneys in the area. And so I sat down with a public defender in the area and she asked me why I wanted to be a public defender. And my answer, just without thinking, of course, is, well, everyone deserves a second chance. And she said, I'm really glad you feel that way, but it's not a public defender's job to advocate for a second chance, you know, innocent until proven guilty. You're assuming that the individual's guilty. She asked me to try again. So I did. And I said, well, I wanna be a voice for others. And without putting her hand on mine and saying, sweetie, she said, I think you should spend a summer in a public defender's office and then you'll know what a public defender does. So the interview was over. Thank goodness it was not real. I kind of walked out and was feeling a little frustrated, but also a little confused, you know, and I decided I needed to go on like a soul searching mission, like what did it mean to me to be a voice for others? And why did I want to do that? So I just started reading piles of nonfiction and taking any criminal law class that I could. And then I started volunteering at CRCF. And I started, as mentioned, with a debate program. It was very structured. It was a really great program, but then I sought flyer on the wall for a writers group, which was writing inside Vermont. And they did poetry and that was a little bit more of my alley. So I switched groups. And there was nothing that could have prepared me, like none of the books or the classes I took or people I talked to for the emotion that was in those rooms during those writers groups, just the emotions that were shared, the emotions I felt and that I witnessed. And then I realized that these women in particular at CRCF, they don't need me to speak for them. What they need is for their own voices to be heard. And so then that inspired me to get involved with the second publication of Writing Inside Vermont, which is Lifelines also mentioned. And it just was published and launched in August, but I ordered a box and they're on back order. So did not bring any with me, but that's not the point of why we're here tonight. So I'm not trying to sell books, but yeah. So and then that's where I am. And I realized that, yeah, I don't need to be the voice for them and their own voices need to be heard because they do deserve a second chance. And so, yeah, I am a licensed practicing attorney now, not a public defender, yet I'm focusing a lot on reentry and helping individuals transition back into the communities. Wow, very cool. So I really appreciate what you mentioned about people being given an opportunity to voice their lives and their experiences because that's very much the auspices around Writing Inside and how it was really why it was created. It wasn't for us to go in and create this book. It was for really to give women a space to speak for themselves and then put their words out on the blog so that the whole larger world could really hear their voices. Thus hear me see me, which is the title of the first book. I really, I'm a deep believer in the fact that we need to be in mutual relationship with other people. It's not just a one way thing. And I really believe deeply that I have learned more about my life from inside women and people who live on the margins than any course or academic institution could ever teach me. So really the program was founded as a way to give voice to the women. It was started up in St. Albans. Carrie mentioned the women were moved four times in 10 years. And so we started the program up in St. Albans and I got to see, St. Albans wasn't a great, Northwest is not a great facility, but at least the women could walk. They have a big, huge walking space outside so they would walk for miles every day and had a garden and different things and it just became so obvious when they moved to Chinden what they lost. I mean, all of their training, they were learning how to be electricians and plumbers and all of that went away and the vision was that they would move outside of the facility during the day and get that training and education then come back at night and it quickly became obvious to many of us that that was not gonna happen. It was never gonna happen. So that work of listening to stories and hearing these stories and just thinking, you know, but for the circumstances I was born in, that could be my complete trajectory in life. It was so obvious. And then the other thing I did for a short time, I didn't mention it in my bio is I ran Dismiss of Vermont for a year which is a program, a nonprofit that runs transitional housing in Vermont and I had to go and cite a house for transitional housing in White River Junction and I started to see what people were up against like having to go door to door and knocking on the door and saying we wanna cite this house in your neighborhood and it's actually gonna improve your neighborhood and amazingly people were really open to that but there were a lot of people including a nearby church unfortunately that really fought it for a long time for several years before it actually came to be and it's in White River Junction, Hartford right on the line there now but those two experiences really showed me how nearly impossible it is to successfully return to your community and actually be successful. The system is set up for people to fail completely in terms of being subjected to a life of poverty, getting into situations with your children where you lose custody or whatever and then having to navigate that. Transportation issues, employment, trying to get a job that pays anything above minimum wage. I started to see the systemic forces that really keep women from re-entering successfully so when I was elected to the legislature one of the main things I wanted to do even though I was placed on the Human Services Committee which I love being on Human Services but I knew that I had to somehow continue my work around women and incarceration and so the women's caucus has been the place where and the women's commission, serving on the women's commission that I can kind of continue to further changes at the systemic level so I'll stop there. Thank you. So if you follow up question through you all, Ashley you had talked about, you mentioned a little bit about the work that you're doing with ACLU right now and the six proposals that they have for change under the SMART Justice Program. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what does that term mean? Why are you calling it SMART Justice and what are some of the proposals that you have? Yeah, so SMART Justice was a national campaign that ACLU came up with to really start talking about mass incarceration so the United States jails more people than any other country, democratic country in the world, right? And so to be like a world power and how the US is seen, but to know that we have more people incarcerated under sort of the worst conditions and for the smallest reasons, really spoke to the ACLU and many other organizations nationally and in Vermont. And so SMART Justice was launched in every state and sort of tailored for that state's issues, right? Like the issues that Los Angeles might have is very different from what we need here in Vermont and what would work for us. And so we launched SMART Justice here in Vermont in January of 2018 and there's sort of different boxes, right? Everything from bail reform to prosecutorial accountability, state's attorneys accountability to looking at probation and parole reform, sentencing reform. And so it's sort of every aspect of the system and how people become involved in the first place. And so the first year we really focused on state's attorneys. They're elected officials, just doing, we don't endorse candidates, but encouraging all of you as voters and taxpayers to understand that the state's attorneys are actually some of the most powerful people in the entire system. They decide who's charged, what they're charged for, how their sentence, what the sentence recommendations are and in a state where 98% of all charges and employee agreements, there is huge discretion there. And when there's parts of our state that are sending twice as many people to prison as other parts of our state, it raises a lot of questions about that discretion, right? And so when they're elected officials and they're coming to communities and they're saying, you know, vote for us. Here's what we believe in. Are they really holding up to that? That's something that's important for you as voters to think about and to ask questions about. And so that's what we really started with the first year. The second year, this year, we really had some great work with the women's caucus, great conversations with the women's commission. The legislature really stepped up and at the end of the session, added language that said that they were willing to take steps to create a smarter criminal justice system here in Vermont and how great for our state government to be willing to start having this conversation in real ways and we're really excited because then we're working very closely with them on a process called justice reinvestment two. So at the height, Vermont's prison population was a little over 2,200 and they did justice reinvestment one, which is where they looked at policies, looked at where they could make changes, looked at where they could lower the population of people incarcerated and that number came down to where we are now at about 1,700, right? So they did great work the first time around and it saved money and community justice centers were built and that's the point of reinvesting the money and so they're willing to take that step but now it's a little bit harder, right? Some of the low-hanging fruit was sort of picked and the easy conversations were had the first time of round and so now we're moving into things like looking at removing furlough, which you heard Mary Beth talk about when people come out of corrections, they're on community supervision here in Vermont, it's known as FSU or furlough, we're one of only like two states that even have that system, most other states you're paroled from a facility and so that is also one of the largest drivers of reincarceration, it's not even necessarily new crime, people are returned to the facility in Vermont for what they call technical violations. So to know that those are policies we highlight in the blueprint, those are conversations, the legislature's really willing to have now and we're very excited about the progress that is hopefully gonna be made. Thank you. So Cassie actually talked a little bit about challenges of when you come out of prison and if you're on furlough and technical violations can send somebody right back to prison and so people can be sent back to prison for not committing the whole new crime but for just violating the conditions of their release. But I know that even folks who come out who are not on furlough or not on parole find a lot of challenges in coming back to the lives that they left behind and I know you've done some work around that and you talk a little bit more about how that is. Yes, an individual who comes out and everyone is their own individual so every case is different, has just a lot of obstacles that you just wouldn't think exist but of course there's the made ones which are housing, employment and then education, those seem to be big ones. The state does have a lot of different programs that are implemented to assist. My personal experience is with COSA, the circles of support and accountability which all of you have a community or restorative justice center in your county please consider getting trained and volunteering. And so there's that but then, so criminal records once an individual has served a sentence and then time passes there's a certain list of offenses that are eligible for expungement which means it's deleted or sealing which means it's not destroyed but there's only certain offices like the police department that keeps the record. And so we've been working and by we I mean just the state generally, many stakeholders have been working on expanding that list of eligible offenses and making it easier to get a record expunged or sealed and there's just a lot of different moving parts and it's been a very interesting process but so while we await for it to be magical and automatic and just drop off like points on our licenses, I'm working to help individuals with petitions to then file with the court once they've become eligible. So I just yeah reentry is it's so I don't wanna use the word fascinating but it just it blows my mind just the obstacles that are there and with every individual it's so different and so it's just you know ear to the ground and then just like one person at a time see what you can do to help them. So Mary Beth you're in the legislature now and it's on some ways you have some power that the rest of us don't have and in other ways probably don't have nearly as much power as we'd like to think you do. That's true. But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the women's caucus has been exclusively focusing or almost exclusively focusing on issues around incarcerated women this session but just in general what the legislature has done and what can do and what you might see in the future. Yeah I mean I think the most important thing to you kind of alluded to this Ashley I mean the amount of money that we as a state are spending on this system is massive. I mean it's a massive I don't know the number off the top of my head and I should but it is a massive amount of money so the question is how do we spend that money in a way that's truly where we're going to have really success and people are going to transition back successfully. So the legislature has been you know since justice reinvestment one which was in the year 2007 and that basically means that we bring in a nonprofit that digs into our data and really looks at our data and says okay here's why your numbers are going up in this particular area so we did that in 2007 and then out of that came some reforms in policy in 2008 and beyond. So we invested more in a little bit of transitional housing we defined recidivism we never had a definition for recidivism so we defined that in statute we created court diversion we recently in 2018 made medication assisted treatment available to people inside people who are opiate addicted and need a way to kind of get off not completely have to recover in prison without any kind of medication assistance so we've done things but there is so much more that we need to do I mean these are kind of drops in the bucket and so justice reinvestment two is again working with this council on state governments to say what can we you know because our numbers are starting to trend up again they're trending up again in various areas in this area of technical violations you know where literally someone could drive across the county line to go see a relative and if they're caught out of the geography they're supposed to be in they can get hauled back to prison so that kind of thing is not that's not that's not that's not smart justice I mean why are we doing this so the question is how do we begin to look at all of these intersections of probation and parole of having to you know people who who can't come up with bail are people who are impoverished those are the people who can't come up with bail so why are we creating a system that keeps the impoverished trapped in prison facilities so that they can't be you know home maybe on a with a monitoring bracelet or something and working on their case getting an attorney you know figuring out how to get you know how to be defended when you're in a prison facility you're pretty much isolated no internet access so there's there's it's really impossible to get the kind of defense and help legal advice that you really need you're relying on people who have huge caseloads and can spend about two minutes with you so the women's caucus that's a sorry that's a long winded answer to the when I joined the legislature the women's caucus made a commitment to focus on women and incarceration for the whole biennium so for two sessions and I've been working with the Vermont commission on women on this issue of women's incarceration so for me it was like a no-brainer how do we start to link up all these people and you know kind of a herding cats exercise really and get everybody kind of working together on how to move things forward and the ACLU has been working on this for many many years so how do we bring their voice in and attempt to really get policy that is going to bend the curve on this whole thing so I really feel like that's my primary job with the caucus and the commission is really getting people to talk to one another getting committees of jurisdiction like corrections and institutions in the House and Senate getting those committees to really be in good communication about what the best policies are that we need and so a lot of that work once Justice Reinvestment 2 is completed in December they will deliver a report explaining kind of the reasons for this numbers creep up and then we can kind of as legislators really sit down and start hammering out policies but for me it's really I feel like there are different pockets of people who really hold knowledge and wisdom about what needs to happen so my goal is to get everybody kind of like in communication I think that's an unbelievably important piece of this so thank you so I have a question now for any or all of you Ashley had touched on the idea of the harm that happens to families when a woman is incarcerated and that you're incarcerated you may think you're incarcerated in one person but you're really impacting an entire family for years to come potentially and so I invite any of you or all of you to address what are some of the challenges what are some of the ways that it really impacts families and that we all of us the rest of us should be concerned about yeah so my daughter and I participated in a film project called Downstream I don't know if any of you have seen it and it's about the effects of parental incarceration on children because my voice matters a lot less than hers and so my now almost 15 year old daughter is in the film and several other children and their families and experiences but I think collectively a couple of great sound bites for the film I'm really happy the one's my daughter's but a couple of the kids say really amazing things I mean they were just all wonderful kids and did the film project by choice to lift up their voices but more importantly that there's a huge stigma around having a parent that's incarcerated for kids we're starting to talk about people's gender identities we're starting to talk about violence in the home and divorce and homelessness we're starting to have these conversations with kids now in 2019 but one of the topics that's still really taboo and really hush hush and sort of stigmatized is having a parent that's in jail or having to live with your grandparents because your parents in jail or be in foster care or however it looks for those kids and so a couple things that the kids say is my daughter said a great thing and I wasn't part of her interview so I'm always still amazed when I see it up on the screen she said at the end of the day my mom is still a human being and she's still my mom so for a child that has a corrections involved parent they don't see that they don't see what they did wrong they don't care about any of that all they know is that mom or dad is gone that's all they know and it can be for a multitude of reasons I was incarcerated for cashing two bed checks I had a 14 month of four year sentence to serve for that and they knew that I had done that because I was an addict they knew that I had small kids at home my story is an opportunity where treatment community support there were things I could have done in the community that would have been much cheaper I wasn't a safety risk I wasn't abusing my children or neglecting like they had food and clothes but that's just an example and my story is not special it happens to women all the time for a multitude of crimes and reasons but at the end of the day it's still those kids that are left to pick up the pieces to number one try to understand what do I do without my mom what do I do when I have my first heartbreak and I can't go to my mom to get a hug what do I do when I had a bad day at school and the only way I get to talk to my mom is when she calls me from a prison phone and that's only if she has the money to make the call my Saturdays are now taken up because that's the only day the jail does visiting so the only day I can see my mom is to give up my weekend for kids that have dads in jail the dads don't even get nice kids what they call kids apart visits they have to sit across from their dads at a regular visiting room table and drive across the state and some dads are in Mississippi right now at a private prison so there are kids that can't even see their dads right so we know that the primary relationships between kids and their parents as long as we can create safety and that they're actually physically safe is the most important relationship for a child when you break that attachment you break those kids in ways that sometimes is really unfixable so how do we do better for families right also when you take people out of community they can't go to work so whether it's a woman that's sitting in jail cause she can't pay her bail or a man that's sitting in jail cause she can't pay her bill or a gender non-conforming person is in jail cause they can't pay their bail they no longer work they're no longer helping you pay taxes they're no longer taking care of their children their children are now in foster care or with other family and there's a burden on the taxpayers you're paying between 65 and $85,000 a year per in May when much more money could be saved and much better solutions could be provided and sometimes I people say well I don't know anybody that's been to jail why don't they just not commit the crime right don't do the crime can't do the time right we've all heard that right it's not that simple it's not an episode of law and order I didn't wake up and say I think a great idea to be an addict and I'm gonna go cash the budget checks and go to prison right like that was not my thinking my thinking was I am a victim of childhood trauma I'm a victim of very violent domestic assault I'm a victim of sexual assault and I had no other way to survive to deal with the trauma of everything that I had faced and then now I'm a mom and like I can't show my kids that I'm struggling and I have to be strong and I have to take care of them how do I do all that I'm only one person and so drugs is what kept me going right and so now I'm using drugs and I gotta figure out a way to keep food on the table and keep clothes on their backs and diapers on them and so yeah I absolutely did I absolutely did what I was accused of I absolutely cash those bad checks I am 100% accountable but how do you foster accountability it's not cause you threw me in jail right it's not because like I'm not better today I don't work for the ACLU today because I went to jail like my children healed and I healed because we got support in our community we found great therapists we found great mentors we had great friends and family that believed that I was worthy and believed in my children's success and we had great schools you know I walked into schools and I wasn't met with judgment and stigma my kids schools accepted me always looked at me like I was their mom and nothing else mattered right and that was healing for my children so it's not just one piece of a conversation when you're talking about kids and families you have to look at how this spins out it's not just about the person you're putting in jail there's a whole world that you decimate by doing that jail should be our last option right you don't use your worst punishment right if you're a parent cause your kid knocked a glass of milk off the table punishment and the offense need to go together and then you teach kids how to you know do the right thing the next time and what not to do the next time so just because I'm 25 or 35 I don't deserve that same value that same love that same encouragement we all come from different walks of life we all need something different sometimes Well said I think you painted a really amazing picture of what happens for women I mean women's pathways to incarceration are unique they're unique pathways they're different than they are for men they very much the trauma that you mentioned there's one woman I think of all the time who shoplifted but because it was over a certain amount of money she went to jail and she's been in the criminal justice system incarcerated for almost 12 years now because she's a terrible addiction a terrible problem with cocaine and so what she does is she goes on what they call escape where she'll be you know not in the house she's supposed to be or she'll leave and go drug or whatever and so they haul her back and she's now been in the system for over 12 years based on that one thing that happened which was you know a mistake but you know again it was to fuel a drug habit because of incredible trauma being in the foster care system which was very difficult for her as a young girl so it's like we've got to get a grip on what's really going on here and get away from this unbelievably punitive system that actually sends people out in worse shape than they went in and I will just add a couple statistics with close to 80% of the women who are currently incarcerated are in for nonviolent offenses and just about the same number of those women or the single caregivers for their children so it just can go a lot of ways with that but just putting those out there to maybe show just how in Vermont it's children are affected, right? Thank you. So another question kind of for all of you this is a much bigger picture, broader question kind of about the philosophy behind why we do what we do and you know there are different, people have different attitudes about what the purpose of incarceration is whether it's about punishment or about rehabilitation the department that it's housed under is called corrections which kind of implies that maybe there's some correction that needs to be made but it's hard not to look at the system that we have and not conclude that it seems to be primarily fueled by a desire for punishment or for avoidance you know trying to not deal with problems but just kind of lock them away so I wonder if you have any perspectives on that if you wanna disagree with me or maybe you want to talk about your own thoughts about that or what you see as changes that we might like to envision or how we might get to something that serves everybody better than it does now. Let me just go ahead. Oh. So in our blueprint there's a line and it's sort of at the ACLU especially in Vermont right we don't wanna talk about the why why do we do things, why do things matter here and so you know our why is really because we believe Vermont can create a system that is fair and equitable and rooted in community solutions we believe that Vermont can do a better job it can create a smarter criminal justice program it's literally that simple right I explained to people that smart justice if you just flipped around it's like using justice smartly right for everyone. People that commit acts of harm matter the victims of those acts of harm matter in the communities that that situation is seated in matter right I've lived in Vermont my whole life I've also been many other places in my life and seeing it Vermont is very unique and so I think that things to really highlight you know when we were talking about embarking on justice reinvestment too is our lack of data. So while in previous years the Department of Corrections did provide data and they did provide information to the public they no longer do that and so when council and state governments came in this time around to do justice reinvestment too along with the Urban Institute that we partnered with to author the blueprint that was released yesterday it's noted across both that there is a huge lack of data in many points in the system thankfully the law enforcement community has done a much better job in the last couple of years of collecting some data and that's great and we hope that they continue and do more but sort of after that at most of all of the points in the system from the state's attorneys to the corrections department to reentry there's very little data available to understand things like why do we have the highest racial disparity in the nation? This is Vermont. That's not, that doesn't sound like us, right? Like some of these questions why are people going back to jail for driving to Hanifers because Shaw didn't have the formula they needed and they're out of place. I heard that is the term I heard audience members say that earlier. Why are, that's not a new crime. So I'm spending $80,000 a year to re-incarcerate someone for something that's not a new crime, right? And what are crimes? So Vermont has one of the lowest felony thresholds you were talking about the theft. It's $900. That is the lowest felony threshold in all of New England, right? So where other things are misdemeanors in every state around us in Vermont it's a felony and then it sets us off as you heard those criminal records I can't get hired a big loss. So before I worked at the ACLU when I got out of corrections I applied to McDonald's. I applied at big lots, right? Entry level, minimum wage jobs and I got told no because my crimes are what they call honesty crimes, right? Because they involved money but I work for the ACLU now. So the way that I'm even what they call the nonviolent low level offender which we need to change that conversation as well but I couldn't even get a job so imagine for anybody that has anything above what I have. So there's many points in the system that we have an opportunity for change in. I think the data point that you brought up is really important and I wanna just a little bit of a disclaimer. I mean DOC, Department of Corrections is overseeing this whole thing but we as legislators and policy makers we've set up the system so it's not there. They're basically just following what's the system, what the law says. So they definitely on probation and parole at times make calls that I wouldn't agree with but I feel like we've gotta get the data together. We've gotta figure out like what's happening with this unbelievable rise and the number of black Vermonters who are ending up in cart. Like what is going on? Like how is that happening? 10% of incarcerated people now in the state of Vermont are black and that doesn't even match our demographic, what our population is. So we need to start disaggregating data and recording it by gender, by race. We need to really understand that and that will inform smart policy. We can't, we all have as legislators ideas about what could kind of be the lever to kind of change things here and there but we need the data in the end to really look at what's gonna truly work, what's gonna be effective. So I think the data piece is huge. I was really thrilled to see that in the smart justice recommendations because I do think that's what policy makers are looking for. Every time we go to DOC and say can we have this data and they're like, well we don't really collect that but we haven't demanded that they, and we haven't asked them to collect it. So we've got to start being very specific about the data that we need. So that's one thing I can think of. I don't know if you can see. Well there's so many changes that could occur in the system and so then because I realize everyone is focusing on that, we've got a lot going on and I'm just like, oh go to the outside. When children are young, kind of divert if any or on their way and then again just okay you were in, there's a lot that needs to change for those who will maybe end in the future but let's focus on keeping you out and I think it's interesting you mentioned defining recidivism because I could talk for the next hour about how I think that definition needs to actually be updated, changed a little bit and it comes around to the furlough and then the technical violations and someone's considered recidivating because they went back in for a technical violation and that's not a new crime and so it'll be interesting to see how all of this data does but I just, it's, and change is slow especially when we're talking about policy so it's why it's like don't get frustrated, let them keep working on it and then all of us can just find our ways to trickle into people's lives and just find common ground with other people and realize that an individual who is incarcerated is not that different from us. And I just wanna add before Carrie tells me to be quiet, do any of you feel unsafe with me in the room? Anybody? Well I'm asking that and it's kind of funny but I'm a felon, those labels we give to people, I'm a junkie, I was a heroin addict, right? Like I'm a criminal. So these scary labels that we put on people is not defining who they are, right? I am more than the worst thing I've ever done and trust me, caching those bad checks is not the worst thing I've ever done. Okay, let's just keep it real. But to be like, I'm more than that and look at who I am today, right? And that was because my community and the people that cared about me rallied around me. How many of us have needed us at one point in our life, right? Like we've all made mistakes, we've all done things, we've all, some people have cheated on their spouse, some people lie on their taxes, like there's a multitude of things, right? Stealing office supplies, we're like one decision or one unfortunate circumstance from being those people that are sitting in jail, right? Not everybody that comes in contact with the system are the worst of the worst like we see on TV every day. That is not the case. That for me was the value of hearing the stories. You hear the stories and you hear the stories and you think to yourself, oh my gosh, that could be me. But for my circumstances, that could absolutely be me. And so it really changed my perspective in huge ways about, right, we are way more than our worst decision. I mean, yeah, we all have those little caverns of incredibly bad decisions, you know? And yeah, I really appreciate you saying that. So you mentioned stories, Mary Beth, and you all have kind of touched on this writing inside Vermont program we've heard about it. The program that it has is in the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility and women are learning about writing and learning about different skills associated with that. And all of you have had some kind of involvement with it in some way and it's a pretty powerful, pretty amazing program. And we have somebody here tonight who can do a reading, I believe, from the latest book. And so I would like to invite her to do that. My name's Danielle Benoit. I just recently did three years in Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility. I too am a dangerous villain. When I got arrested for my sale, I had already been clean for about two months. I went to rehab on my own. I actually geographically relocated to Kentucky and did everything in my power to get off dope. I don't know if I'm supposed to say something bad about jail, but jail saved my life. I honestly believe that if I didn't get taken out of what I was doing, I probably wouldn't have been clean as long as I have been. I'll be 36 months and not next month, but the month after. So it's been, it's been a long road, but like because of going to jail, I have a scholarship to UVM. I also have a 3.8 GPA from there. I have multiple certificates, flagging OSHA, and I serve safe, you know, like I took jail and I used it for everything that they still give us. So writing inside was like my favorite thing to do. Cassie picked a few, but after hearing the discussion on like kids and what we lose, I kind of picked a different one more about, you know, what addiction does to people and what jail does to people. So this is called normalizing the abnormal. The mind is such an amusing organ. Not amusing as in funny or a gesture, drawing attention of royalty. Amusing as a perfect reason to be imperfect. Just when you believe yourself to be complacent, something comes around to tear apart your self-appointed magnificence. It's amazing what a person can survive. Every kind of pain listed with a check mark next to it, like a roll call of every undeserving tear. You get the smallest of battles and she loses the ability to thrive. I've woken up at age 12 when most are hoping to go to the movies past 10 p.m. and because of being enlisted, my abortion had to be done in time to catch the school bus. At 17, I lived alone. My daughter, a cat, and Ren all looking at me for, what, something I wasn't sure of. But the cat liked the milk so much that it chewed up most of the baby's bottles. By 21, I had three kids and no one to help us, but I didn't mind. I worked every day sun up to sundown with no fuss. My girls deserve the world and I had no shame in that. My spiritual integrity broke the day I joined the game. I've become a broken record playing the mishaps, mishaps, playing the mishaps over again. My insecurities grow like a seed that was put in the pot in the garden with razor wire holding out the smile with the pain. I miss being just a little bit around the rain. I miss the tiny hugs that made me feel loved by the ones whose eyes gave me the shine to begin with. Why can't I keep that as my normal? I'd like to have normal as my normal, but my normal is abnormal, so how will I know which normal is normal because abnormal sure feels normal to me. Laborings in my blood, the hustle is most called it, it was nothing but lame, and I was about as good at selling drugs as Keller was at coloring in the lines. Before I knew it, I was paying Vermont Restitution fines, 260 pounds of confidence to fill a truck. I could be anything, a carpenter, a chef, photographer, a landscaper, a carny, a little bit of boringly deserved, but all that said, I've dealt with some shit and dealt with it all smiling. All right, maybe my teeth were a little grit. Beat raped, overworked and alone. Sometimes I didn't have a home, but I was fine with a smile, but here this place can kill the light. A woman who is unequivocally valued herself became fearful of her own thoughts, ashamed of her weight when she'd never been in any physically different state. Her once impermeable thoughts became bended and worn, what is normal? In order to solidify, he must stop being so vulnerable. I never knew that I could feel this way again. Normalizing normal is harder than normalizing a bad habit, I can tell you that for free. It was easy to pick up a needle and become used and washed up and frail. Yet an AA meeting or playing a sport can be worth picking on somebody. You get teased for being a good person around here. You get laughed at for having manners. How can it be normal to laugh at someone with scars on their frail arms because of some sad underlying reason? To viciously take it out on every kind, sad, equally broken soul around you. Thank you so much for that. I'm so glad you were here. Anyone wish you know what else? Thank you. So we have some time now for questions from the audience. And I'm wondering who it has anything that they would like to ask any of our panelists. Yes? Hi, my name's Jacob. So I've had a close-up of all of you here for about five years, one of the Justice Secretary's. And I recognize that my comments are so much erroneous, it's focused on what I've seen. Folks come out on a furlough. The white people in the Recidivism War, we across the region, seem so highly. For two reasons. First of all, when people come out in many cases, they have no support in their form. They have no skills. They may still be addicted to one form or another. Filing, housing, and corners are impossible, especially in my view. Finding a job is incredibly difficult. It's invariably minimally extraordinary. That's the first part, but come out unprepared and the lack of support in the community seems so massive. We who serve on a close-up panel do our best, but we're not caring, we read, we're not therapists, we're not case managers, we don't have any support to give. We are de facto community members, de facto family members. That's the first problem. The second problem actually bothers me more. And that is that there are policies and practices that make it, by the correction system, that make it incredibly difficult for people to succeed. They have to do restitution out of their minimum wage pay. They have to go out of therapy, meeting with some things like this in the middle of the day, making it extra hard to get work. They are limited where they're gonna live, and then they have to get to work somehow. In one situation, somebody who's living on a bus route far out with occasional bus service, he can't get a job, because he's living in a rural community. So all of these, the second policy is really coldly, because it seems to me that the efforts that we have built in patient and restoration are hobbled by what I suspect and fear is a desire for vengeance, for punishment. I just wanna be interested in your thoughts and comments about that. I have a couple of thoughts. You brought up sort of the first part, right, which is coming out sort of unprepared and with not that many supports, especially in a lot of our communities in Vermont, right? Unless you live in pretty much Chittenden County, public transportation gets a little bit difficult. I mean, some places have a little bit, like here is a little bit, St. Albans has a little bit. But let me give you an example of a day in the life of somebody on furlough, okay? So if you're lucky, you get curfew. So your curfew is 7 a.m. to 7 at night. So you have to be at your house until 7 a.m. You have to be in the door at 7 o'clock on the dot at night. So in that time, it's actually not 7 o'clock because at your transitional living house, you have to be there for dinner and that's 6 o'clock. So now we're 7 a.m. to 6 o'clock. And you have to be there to sit down and eat and interact. Right, it's a requirement or you lose your house, you lose your housing, okay? So in the morning, if you even are lucky enough to get to take a bus, you have to take a bus. Most bus rides, even in Chitton County, average about 45 minutes. So now we're at 8 o'clock, you have to see your probation officer. So that takes about an hour, we're at 9 o'clock. But then your probation officer has decided that you need to go to programming, right? They want you to go to a risk reduction class, which is anywhere from three times a week to once a week from 9 to 11 o'clock. So now you do that. Well, now you need to find a job though, right? Because you need to pay restitution, you need to pay rent where you live. How are you supposed to do all that in one day? And then go to AA and NA and go to individual counseling and try to reconnect with your family and your children and still manage to get the bus schedule in there and all the transportation. That is literally what it, there's not enough time in there, correct? Right, like there's only so many hours between those times. And so it is, it's impossible. It is a setup for failure. Why is that? Most people in Vermont, like less than 1% of people that are incarcerated get life. So that means everyone else is coming back to your community. So my question always to community members is if they're a call coming out of corrections anyway, and they're gonna move in next door to you and your family and your loved ones, how do you want them to come out? Would you rather someone got a lengthy jail sentence and come out the way the system currently is and with the lack of resources that they're currently is? Or would you rather someone get no jail time or very, or maybe a very small sentence but get support, come out to community resources, come out to therapy, come out to the things that they need to be successful because they're moving in next door either way. So how do you want your community to look? How are we creating public safety? Right? That's exactly my point. Can I say something about that? Yeah, please do. So I personally have gone back to jail on furlough once for taking an extra shift at work because I didn't call my PO to change my schedule. And the second time I posted a picture with somebody that my mom didn't like on Facebook. She called my PO said I was hanging out. Bad people went back to jail. Both those times I did nothing wrong at all. Also there's probably like more than half of the women at Chittin and Regional that are in there for lack of residence and probably more than half of those women have somewhere to go, but furlough won't approve it. My mom called every day for about two months, my case worker, central office. I wrote to people at central office. They wouldn't let me go to my parents' house because my dad had guns. He was willing to move those guns. He was willing to bring them to my brother-in-law's house but they said because he owned them and they were all in his name that it was still a risk for me. None of my charges have anything to do with weapons but because I'm a felon, I can't be near or around them. These are the kinds of things that have to, we've got to change, we've got to change. And there is tremendous discretion on the part of probation and parole in making these decisions. So it's also looking at that, like how are we going to change that system? Because depending, also I've seen, depending on what county you are in, people will make different decisions. So we need to really, we need to have some kind of process that's gonna set people up for success. I would add though, we need to address what I believe is a desire for a hundred engines. Yeah, totally, it's a culture, it's a culture, culture change. The other thing I want to say just because I have to get this in, having tried to cite a house for people coming out of prison. This was a community in White River Junction. It was a dilapidated house that the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board wanted to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in it was a historic home to bring it back to its original beauty and they did that and have it be a home for eight to 12 people coming out of incarceration with supervision there. Don't fight those houses in your community. People do, I'm from Essex and right now there are community members fighting sober housing in our community. We need this housing, people need to be relocated to their communities. So we need, and it was surprising to me to people who were fighting it. There are people like me. So, you know, do what you can to grease the wheels and make those projects possible in your communities. These are community members and like Ashley said, 98% are coming back to the community where they came from. So are we setting them up for success? That's a huge piece. And also affordable housing. There are a lot of the Monters who were fighting investments in VHCB to create affordable housing. We need this housing desperately. There are 500 Vermonters in prison now for lack of housing, for lack of safe housing. And to just kind of expand, when an individual is sentenced in Vermont, they have a minimum and a maximum sentence. So once they've hit the minimum time served and have been on good behavior, they then become eligible to spend the rest of their sentence out in the community. And those, so they say lack of housing, those are all the people who could, if they got housing approved, there was housing available, could be out in the community now. So they're just sitting there waiting. Again, kind of like with Danny, she had the housing, it wasn't approved. So she waited even longer. So that's what we're doing. We have that question right here. How do we prevent the activities that lead to the initial incarceration? So I would say the same way we deal with the people coming out, right? Like if we have solutions rooted in communities, those solutions are also there to support people at the entry points. There's a lot of on-ramps to being corrections involved. There's very few offerings, right? So if we were to expand diversion programs, if we were to expand restorative justice centers and practices, if we were to expand mental health and housing, right? If we were to address some of the issues around poverty and homelessness and all of the issues that get people there, right? The same things we need to help people come back to community, then people would have somewhere to go for the help that they need. People would have the resources to deal with some of the issues that lead them to commit crime. Yes, ma'am. I wanted to ask you about, you say there's a lot of people in prison that just don't have a place to go. Well, I've been on the board of the business house in Burlington for about six years. And I think in the last year or so, they said no more women. But who about that? I mean, that was for 30 years they were having men and women together. And it was good for everybody. And then the Department of Correction says no more. Was it a Department of Correction's decision? Yes. Okay, it was. I don't know. So, I mean, I have the actual answer to that. Hey, I lived in the Dismiss House, a co-edismiss house. I lived in the Manuski House. It's an amazing program that made me feel at home and gave me a family and really great dinners every night. I'm sorry, everyone. Yeah, yeah. I speak of my story transparent. I always tell people that know me in different ways. Like feel free to say that you know me. I was in jail with Danny in a silver picture that she drew me, whether she knows what I'm talking about. So, what happened was a female house resident made an accusation of sexual assault against a male resident. It was like just patting her on the back or something. I can't get into details. What I can say is that was the accusation. And so, the Chittenden County, it started with just Chittenden County, the Approbation and Parole Office decided that despite the fact that there was two houses, one in Manuski and one in Burlington, so maybe they could have made one for women, one for men, et cetera, they decided to block women from going to Dismiss House collectively in Chittenden County. At the same time, the Tavestry program in Brattleboro, which was a transitional program for women, also closed. So in the last 18 months, women have lost 40 transitional housing beds with nothing to replace it. And so, the rest of Dismiss House of Vermont collectively followed suit and have now blocked women from going to any. So all four houses now? Yes. So that's why. And so, my question is, we could get into a whole conversation about that's an example of how a woman was a victim in that case and then all women were penalized because of it. So, that's an example of what we're talking about. So, what's going to do about that? So, honestly, anybody that has a contract with DOC and receives funding for them, like many of the transitional housing programs, pretty much all of the transitional housing programs in Vermont, receive money from the Department of Corrections and are required to adhere to their policies and directives. For every one women's overhouse, there's five men's houses and for every one bed, there's nine beds for men. So, I came in late, so I apologize, this was a lot of discussion, I didn't hear it, but I'm under my impression that it's about $67,000 a year to house somebody in the prison. And did you already discuss what are the barriers to getting that money shifted over and the other? So, you did already discuss that. We talked about the cost. Right, okay. Yeah, yeah. Because it's higher than that. It's higher than that. Yeah, oh yeah. Because that question of how to get that money shifted, if we've got 500 people in jail who could be out, 500 times 70,000 or whatever, how do we get that money shifted? And the other thing I'd just say about the comment about the women's beds and business house, there's at least 35 people in here, who to call, who to put pressure on. I mean, I think that's the piece about all of us pushing the system. Absolutely, absolutely. I would say call your, well, most of you are probably Montpelier. Call your representative, call your senator, call the speaker. I mean, you know, make it a priority. You know, I mean, that's how a lot of issues in the state house get, you know, get a focus and a sessions for people to really say this needs to change. I don't want my money funding this anymore. We need to figure out, it is such a complex system the way it is set up now that it's not as easy as like, oh, let's just move the money there. We need the housing in the community. We don't have the proper housing. We don't, we need really wraparound reentry. That's gonna really, you know, that's gonna provide the mental health counseling, all of the workforce training, all of those pieces. And the money right now, you know, we don't have the money for that. I mean, the other thing I wanna say about dismiss, having worked for dismiss, do you know what, in the days when I work there, do you know what the DOC pays them per day, per person? $18 in the day that I work there. It's not much more now. Okay, okay, good to know. But like, how can you truly, so that's the thing, that the money, the funding has to be reinvested into the, or truly rehabilitative programs. But they have to be developed. And they have to be invested and my husband runs a nonprofit in Burlington. And one of the issues they're really dealing with right now is being level funded by the state for so many years. They offer these services for people at risk. And, you know, it's really hard. You know, we have limited state dollars. So it's very tricky. How do we make sure that we're investing in the programs that really work, that really are successful? So that's a whole piece of determination that needs to happen too. But like I said, it's $18 for business versus, I know. I know, I know. All right, we're getting close to the end of our time. I think I'll have to have one more. This is the question that for those people who don't, you know, the statewide organization, VIA. Yeah, CITAMIN-A, I'm meeting at St. Paul's Cathedral in Burlington on October 29th of the evening to talk to the Commissioner of Corrections and a couple of other people. Actually, it's like that. Yeah, it's just, it's not everywhere, I mean. It's just would be interesting. What's the organization? So it's VIA, it's Vermont Interfaith Action. And what they do is they study an issue for a year and they have an action, they organize, they get people together to really kind of put a stake in the ground around a certain issue. And their issue is incarceration. When is incarceration, or is, I think it's incarceration. So they're specifically talking about CRCF. Oh, they are. No, okay. Okay, great. So they have this event coming up. And I think the other group of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, they're doing a lot of good work. I think that people organizing and coming together and really insisting that some of these changes come down the pike is really, really important. I wanna know that big Vermont corporations that live and love and work and build in Vermont, like Ben and Jerry's partner for the ACLU and Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform to come out with Justice Remix and start having these conversations. Cabot has begun building the Cabot Centennial Reentry Project. So I mean, talk about what you're doing with that. That's really interesting. Sure, so Cabot began the Cabot Centennial Reentry Project, specifically focusing on the women right now. Really talking about, so our agricultural community is aging up, right? And it's getting more difficult for families to keep their farms to produce the milk and the items, obviously, that go into the trees. So the group of farmers that own Cabot, we're like, man, how can we do something different? How can we keep our farms, keep our communities going? Like this is Vermont, right? These rural communities and how can we figure this out? And so building a reentry project around women coming out of corrections, how do we support them? How do we link them up with farms that need help? How do we link them up with jobs in our reduction plants? How do we keep this conversation going? And so there are many, there are large corporations in Vermont that are really starting to get into this conversation because everyone can say that there's a need for change. So I wanna thank all of you so much. We can certainly talk about this for hours. We don't have one after, but we have another reading. You're in charge. Oh, it's your show, absolutely, of course. Are you willing to do that? Yeah, okay, great. And then we will, Cassie actually picked a few that I thought were so strong. So, yeah. This is called Pain in Your Life. My world began in white and black. You're not black and white, but you typically expect most of the whites to be full of change and mostly to gray, but the older I got, one day when I got a cut, I saw a deep burgundy trick from my veins. Whenever I craved to see color, I knew where to turn the neck here or raise it where it's there until black was the color that ran out of me. The next color was a small blue line, and when I snorted it, the scratcher blue. A green pill invested and crushed made me see green grass. I cracked the code and I finally found a way to live without all the blacks and greys. But it always ran out. You'll have to start over. So the more I did, the brighter life became, but the darker my picture was when my primary paint was done. Till one day there was no color. I tried and tried, but color never came. I put the paint straight to my veins and it didn't blow paint to the distance. More I thought, more is what I did. But what was all I saw when I woke up, it went straight to black. You think that it all figured out when you start with one color, it makes the light, but the more you add, the darker you'll get. You can't make yellow with black and gray, and you can't make blue with all of your paint. At the end of the day, when your canvas is white, just start slowly. You'll make it right. Your attitude is like a palette of colors constantly painting your life. Thank you. Our next program is on November 13th and it will be on healthcare and prisons. And since re-entry was of so much interest, our last program on March 15th will be dedicated to re-entry and how to get back into the community. Thank you.