 justice systems and the head of the panel, and I always get the first name right but the last name I fumbled with. Well it's actually A-ton. A-ton. I get the first name wrong too. So and Rebecca Turner here from the panel on racial disparities in the justice system. And you have filed your report and it's on our website, the committee webpage, the report is. And right now I'm actually looking at appendix I which are basically your where you think we should be prioritizing. But committee members, we can follow it there. If you'd rather we can have Phil try to post it right here on the webpage. I don't know what people prefer. Okay, well please go right ahead with your report. Ah, okay. Good morning. I thought that what would be useful was giving you some background and then going through just sort of an overview of what the panel did with this particular document. We it of course. I just want to as way of introduction represent that Brad and I are going to invite you to, assuming I'm chair of judiciary again, assuming she's chair of judiciary again in the new legislative biennium, we would like to have a joint meeting of both committees. Great. Okay, go ahead. This all went back as has everything in 2020 to the pandemic. Really, I believe this bill was s 338. It's hard for me to remember all the numbers just like all the acronyms I get lost. And that this became then act 148 and we were told, I was told before the pandemic that this was a shoe in. And then when the pandemic struck, I was told that nothing that was not pandemic related would go through. I live down in Putney. I'm not a legislator. And so I have informants who run around the state house and every so often I get a phone call and email going, Oh, you really need to worry about this in regard to the RDAP, which I am very grateful for because otherwise nothing would happen if I were the chair. So this summer in a very serendipitous moment that I did not expect I was suddenly informed that the bill had gone through was signed and was now act 148. And I mean, I literally did not know someone said asked me in a meeting that I didn't think was about this. And so what is the RDAP doing about act 148? And I literally said, What would that be? And I guess nothing. But that changed relatively quickly because it became clear that the RDAP had responsibilities in regard to this new act. And specifically in section 19, which directed the panel to consider data that could be used for the amelioration of racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Before this task fell to us, we were as a panel looking to amplify many of the points that we had made in our report that we submitted to this body. In fact, almost exactly a year ago, that really asked us in fact predominantly initially to focus on data. And there was a feeling on the part of the panel at this point this year that there should be a deeper dive in regard to a lot of the recommendations that we made in that document. And we were at that point, and this is, oh, I don't know late June or so, starting to turn our attention to this proposed deeper dive. When we looked at act 148, of course, section 19 asks us to consider data again. And for us, this was a reconsideration of data. Given that we had spoken and had been directed by statute to speak very directly about data in act 54 of 2017. So this really wasn't a stretch and it wasn't completely out of what we were hoping to do. The timeframe was quite a reach, I have to say. Doing it by the first of December, when we were told about it in early summer was a bit difficult. And we weren't sure that it was possible. And we spent a great deal of time discussing what could and could not realistically be done. I'm happy to say I'm really pleased with the result. I think people did an enormous lift on this. The entire panel did. Put in a lot of extra time. We meet two hours a month. And five members of the 13 are community members. So it's really quite difficult in some ways to get this kind of work done. And yet we did. There was some initial feeling that we were repeating ourselves and some irritation about this. Endless reports are something that tend to annoy people of color who would like to see more emotion and perhaps a bit less verbiage. But we did turn our attention to producing whatever it was that we could produce in what was then roughly 10 hours of meeting time with the full panel. And I'm spreading that out over around five months. The lack of time meant that we convened a subcommittee to do a great deal of the heavy lifting. People who were particularly concerned about this and who felt that they had the extra time. We were meeting weekly. Sometimes a little more than that. We did that with the assistance and the support of the council of state governments. And also quite notably with the tremendous assistance of the crime research group, which was statutorily required to help with the data collection that this new report would necessitate. And as I say, that group met weekly. And we were also on the phone in innumerable times between the weeks. Initially, even a smaller group of this subcommittee met with Kristen McClure, the head of the agency of digital services, without whose help, frankly, this document would not exist. That smaller group met with also a collection of IT officials from various state agencies to get a sense of several things. First, what data do exist at this moment? In what form they exist? And three, the possibilities of communication between the various data systems that exist in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. The result of those meetings, and I believe that there were two of them, that's my memory. I should ask James Pepper about that. He was central to those. The results of those are contained within appendix four of what you have. It's entitled the current state of data and data flows regarding racially relevant data among various state agencies in Vermont. If you have that particular appendix up with that chart, you'll note this was created by Kristen McClure, and it's really quite suitable for framing, I think. But it more importantly shows the unbelievably tangled web that are the data flows regarding racially relevant data among various agencies. It is crazy. I use that word in the technical sense. It is crazy when we began this meeting. Kristen started out with a very, very clean document, and as people would speak, she draw another line. And I remember at about 45 minutes into this, I started in with a migraine. And I thought I was getting an ocular one and realized I wasn't. It was just all the lines she was drawing. A lot of the data don't exist. There are very peculiar systems that conflate race and ethnicity, which as an anthropologist made me cringe. No one should ever make that mistake, by the way. And as the report notes, this is a snapshot of a state of affairs from September, and it cannot be said to depict matters as they presently stand, because several agencies were in the process of changing data systems over, even as we were speaking, and are still in that process now from what I understand. They are getting better from what I'm told. They're changing not necessarily because of the need for cross-agency communication, but rather because of internal needs that the agencies themselves have. So it won't help to assume for the purposes of this act, Act 148, that the data flows are more comprehensible or indeed usable. The subcommittee continued its work from this point of looking at this chart that just gave me a migraine. What do we do? That would be the huge question here. It seemed to the subcommittee and to the full panel that without some sort of standardization, which by the way is a point that the RDAP addressed in its report of December of last year, that this would be another failed effort concerning the effacement of racial disparity. That standardization is truly central to this effort. This had been and continues to be a dominant theme for the panel as the current report makes quite clear. Without some serious and focused standardization regarding data, the aims of Act 148 with reference to data cannot be achieved. That cannot be overstated. This was perhaps a guiding notion that shaped the panel's efforts throughout the summer and fall as it prepared the present document. Another important moment that concerned the panel had to do with identifying high impact, high discretion moments in the criminal and juvenile justice systems at which either conscious or unconscious bias can make an entrance. This was a task that had occupied our collective imagination in last year's report. But we certainly did not take it as far then as we have here. All of the lawyers that are on the panel put their heads together to make an extremely comprehensive list of these high impact, high discretion moments. And you have those tables in the report, in the body of the report. And this took no small amount of time, as you can imagine. As I say, we tried to do this for last year's report and for whatever reason, couldn't quite pull it off. We did here. And the community members were able to add other moments that might seem to be outside of the legal framework. Moments such as interactions between students, students of color and guidance counselors in the school, which for many people is the beginning of the school to prison pipeline. It's easy now, of course, to give you a resume of these acts. And I really do have to note the enormous amount of time it took to compile these lists. And I'm very glad that Rebecca Turner's here because she was really central to a lot of this. It seemed endless and people dedicated enormous amounts of time and energy to this compilation. What happened at the same time was the compilation of the data that do presently exist. And with the help of the crime research group, we created a sense of where those data might reside. The crime research group also worked to give us a sense of what data just don't exist. And that's in fact something you're going to need to look at because there are places within the system that data just isn't there. And once the panel determined what data would nevertheless be of great importance, crime research group went back and filled in on our tables, what was there, what was not there, and so on. Again, it was a focus upon the high impact, high discretion moments, sentencing, charging, arraignment, you know, those, I mean, that's just to mention three, you know what I mean. In the end, the panel came up with a compilation not merely of those data, but their locations as a result of working on the creation of this report. We joked actually about printing these documents out and then burying them in a kind of time capsule that was secure somewhere up on Campbell's Humph because it had taken so much to get this together and we were like, oh my god, it's all in one place for a moment here. What subsequently became clear were the relatively high number of high impact, high discretion moments in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. We were also mindful of what might be perceived as the relative impossibility of getting to all of these moments in one fell swoop. We then set our minds to prioritizing these moments to the best of our abilities. And that was a difficult task. You're saying at certain moments in a way, at certain moments in a way racial disparity doesn't matter. And that's a very hard thing to say because it's not true. It's just a question of prioritizing. Where should our efforts initially be focused? We deeply believe that all of the moments are of great concern and need focus and attention, but we show the moments that we believe to have the greatest priority and what data do and do not exist concerning those moments. At this point, we had a spread of the high impact, high discretion moments and racially relevant data or lack thereof. And the question became what to do with this kind of mess in a way. It seemed clear to many of us that there was no one presently in state government who could on their own do the huge, and I mean really, truly enormous. Once you look at this, I think you'll get a sense of the enormity of what I'm talking about. There was no one who on their own could do the huge lift that was required here, not only to just create the needed data, but even more fundamentally and radically to define it, to define the data, then to gather it and certainly then to analyze it. Given that there is data that simply doesn't exist, or we're not sure where it is, or it's not easily available at this point. And there were moments in this where people just couldn't find things even after spending two or three weeks working at it. From the early meetings with Kristen McClure and those IT officials, it really became clear that no one actually has the time to do all of this. Again, I'd say refer to that lovely flow chart on page 24. That's the one that gave me a headache. The council of state governments came to our rescue, or at least to mine at that point, because I was a little overwhelmed and losing sleep. This work, it turns out, is already underway in Connecticut, quite nearby. And also, I believe, and Rebecca can correct me on this, I believe also in Colorado I was reading. And the council of state government people facilitated a meeting between the panel and three officials from the state of Connecticut's Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division in the Office of Policy and Management. These people are involved in the implementation of that state's own efforts regarding the collection and analysis of data concerning the effacement of racial disparities in the two systems, criminal justice systems. The panel had a very productive meeting with these three officials. I believe it was on the 3rd of November, and they offered rather useful insight. And the panel felt that their input gained from actual experience in exactly the process that we're being asked to consider would be invaluable. And we met with Mark Pelka. This is in the report. He is the Undersecretary of Connecticut's Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division in the Office of Policy and Management. And two of his colleagues, Kyle Bodwin and Kevin Neary, who are planning analysts with whom he works. That meeting led to several additional recommendations from the panel to the legislature. We felt that building upon their experience would be useful and that there was no need to reinvent the wheel, especially since the movement on the matter of disparity is really so pressing. And you have those recommendations there. And it's a big lift that a body be charged with the definition, collection, and analysis of data pertaining to racial disparities. And Connecticut has shown, as those individuals with whom we met would demonstrate, that they needed three staff people to do that work. Also bear in mind, Connecticut, in terms of population, is rather a great deal larger than Vermont. That this body is housed in an entity that is not subject to the vagaries of the political process, nor in any entity that is politically constituted. Disparities, we really felt, must not be seen as a partisan issue. And there must be no opportunity for them to be so seen. That funding be provided for positions within state agencies that need to extract the data concerning racial disparity. And that that would be provided to this new body. That extraction is both time consuming and possibly quite lengthy. We were also hoping that, as Connecticut does, that this body would produce timely reports. They do things monthly that are distinctly and deliberately aimed at the legislature and also at broader communities, including historically impacted communities, pertaining to racial disparities in both justice systems that are concerned, certainly with basic demographic information, transparency, we felt must be prime in the reports. We also felt that there should be an advisory body. And Connecticut has this, of course, consisting of stakeholders from historically impacted communities, BIPOC communities, neurodivergent communities, communities of gender and sexual minorities. And that that body would concern itself with definition of data, because it's not always clear what those data should be. An example of that would be what I mentioned earlier, this notion that somehow race and ethnicity in certain systems can be combined. I cannot tell you how horrifying I find that. I mean, I would either be a Jew or Black. I'm both. And then finally, that the legislature both expect to create this body and further be prepared to consider legislation that supports its work as its needs change over time. I'd finally just like to put a little post-scriptum in here about funding, because I know that that always makes everyone's eyes cross. And I did a little bit of research, because that's kind of what I do in life is research. And I want to point out how much disparity, the maintenance of disparity cost. And I want to point it out in the middle of the 19th century. And I want to start by noting that in today's dollars, a very common salary, and this was for a laborer in the South in 1850, was $6 a week, which comes to what? $312 for a year. Slaves themselves cost, depending on what source you're looking at, between $23,000 and $40,000 a piece. Many plantations had 50 or fewer slaves. But even at the low figure, 10 slaves means $230,000, or the annual income of just under 767 free laborers. $50 would mean $1.15 million in today's money. Now, slave ships that came out of Bristol cost $62,000, roughly $83,000. And again, the annual salary of 277 people in the United States. None of this addresses the cost of feeding slaves, feeding the slavers, maintaining the ships, which of course had to be cleaned and refitted after the transport of slaves to transport goods such as cotton or sugar to Europe, as was part of the triangle trade. The point that I want to make here is the outlay of capital. It is huge, absolutely phenomenally huge. The dedication of capital to an economic system in which white supremacy played a central role. Sadly, the resonances of this system are still with us today and are not anachronistic. These are huge sums of money that have gone into the perpetuation of racial discrimination. And one can profitably ask what it cost to support the repressive efforts that went into reconstruction and Jim Crow. None of this is ever free. To undo this is also not going to be free. It's not simply a matter, as we all know, of not buying slaves or slave ships. If it were, there'd be no need for this report or this hearing or anything that we're doing. What there does need to be, as this body recognized when it authored Act 148, is a move toward understanding through data personal impacts of white supremacy and racial disparity upon people in our own systems of justice. But this is going to involve an outlay of capital. Justice the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did. And it continues to do. There are constant arguments involving, and you can find all sorts of legal articles about the extent to which employers can legally justify discriminatory practices on the basis of cost containment and profit maximization. And put another way, what kind of costs can courts ask businesses to sustain in the effort to enforce equal opportunity? And that happens all the time. So there's obviously a cost to undoing this. What I'm trying to say here is that to say that there's no money may be two things at once. It may certainly be true. But it also supports the very system that this body seeks to interrogate and to dismantle. It becomes a question of an extremely hard and likely intensely creative and probably unprecedented decision. But I do want to make very clear that when we say that there's no money, we're actually making an ideological statement when we're discussing the dismantling of systems of oppression. There's no money means that the money's being used elsewhere, and that choices are being made about the dispersal of capital, just as they've always been. If that seems reasonable, if saying that there's no money seems reasonable, I'm asking all of us to consider why that's so and how that's so. And I'm asserting that none of this, none of this effort, nothing that's in this report, is going to come for free. Justice slave ships and indeed the slaves themselves cost the ruling establishment money in the first place. And I'm done. Thank you. Abolario has to leave. And so I want to thank him for everything this year in justice oversight. And all his efforts. Thank you very much. I wonder, I'm sure there's questions, but holding on to them until Rebecca has an opportunity to make a comment if she would like. Thank you, Senator Sears. And I'll try to be brief. I understand though, if maybe 15 more minutes, I want to make sure that there are issues. We can go to 1130. Okay, great. Great. Well, thank you, Rebecca Turner, head of the appellate division defender generals office and the defender generals designate on this panel. And so I'm here in my capacity as a member of this panel, a town asked me to join him and I appreciate the invite and also appreciate hearing Senator Sears that the intent is to have the panel or a town come back to talk with the judiciary judiciary committees more about this report. And as a part of that team that pulled together this report, I have to say that I'm happy to have this report filed with you. It is extraordinarily satisfying to have pulled together sort of what I see a tangible amount of information on how you could draft, legislate and pass and move forward a comprehensive data collection analysis system for the criminal juvenile justice systems that I think would be would have profound impact here. And I wanted to just start with where Etan mentioned, which was the process of this report led to us pulling various studies, data analyses out of the closets. And what we realized was that, well, we're all well aware of the national pervasive problem of disparities. Right. What we didn't realize was how much we had in various different capacities come up with our own snapshots of data analysis of racial disparities in our criminal juvenile systems. You know, we are well aware of the traffic stop data that we now know, based on the legislation that was passed. And that's been fantastic to see that snapshot as to traffic stops. We got Burlington Police Department shared with us some bail data that they were collecting out of the Chittenden courts between 2017-2019. Again, just a snapshot in time of one court where their data tracking showed disparities in bail being imposed based on race and gender, but race for these purposes as well as who was who was being granted bail, as well as disparities in the amount of bail. And that was, again, one snapshot. There we also came across the recent reporting from, again, Burlington Police Department in terms of racial disparities in arrests in 2019. And I think that data showed that black people were being arrested at a rate of about 3.7 times that of white people in Burlington. So just our quick look, trying to pull together, we were seeing the disparities in our known data analyses. And so the exercise that the panel and the subcommittee went through was, well, what is going on that results in these disparities? What decision-making points, along the way, from one case enter as a system, whether it's the juvenile delinquency system or the criminal justice, what decisions are involved? And we went about identifying all of those decisions. And as you pointed out, it's captured in appendix one, where we have two different charts. And we just wanted to identify every possible point. So the initial encounter that brings someone into the system to when they exit, later down the round to who's getting the dispositions expunged. So we were trying to be extraordinarily comprehensive. And in that, we were trying to understand, well, why is it useful to identify these decisions? And implicitly, we're recognized that there are values-based judgments that are being made at these decisions. And that discretionary decision-making points is happening everywhere, not just at the point of stopping a vehicle, not just at the point of making the initial charges. But it was to extraordinary terms of, who's getting diverted to pre-charge or post-charge diversion programs? Who's getting accepted? Who is finishing them? Who's having to move around? All of this missing data as to giving us a full picture of what's going on. How do pretrial decisions impact upon ultimate sentencing dispositions later on? And so one of our questions we had is, how do these decisions compound the effect of racism, as a particular case, as a person moves through the system? And we wondered, does less discretion, will that show that that results in less disparities? Does more transparency and accountability result in less disparities? Of course, we don't know. But this is the process of identifying these decisions illuminated the potential of what we could stand to learn. And really what we are trying to stand and learn is understanding what it actually means when we say systemic racism, when we say institutional racism. Where are these decisions happening at an individual level? But where are they being tolerated? Because once they come into the system, why isn't it being corrected by the subsequent decision makers? And so that it is our beginning in terms of addressing and identifying those decision-making points. I think one of the things that we learned specifically talking with the Connecticut folks in their sharing of their process, both in developing the draft legislation, getting that legislation passed. And now they're one year out of implementing that legislation. So they're starting to get the data and they're starting to report back what they're finding. What was fascinating to hear from them was their identifying benefits, such tangible benefits right away from the data that they were collecting. The data was informing policy decision making in terms of where were the needs greatest? Which programs were people being diverted to more and less? Where was there a need? And so that was interesting. Essentially provided performance metrics to give insight into whether these programs are working, whether recidivism rates were happening here or there and they talked about projecting correctional population forecasts as well. So they also talked about how you can better understand and manage hopefully better your case flow. Where cases are getting stuck and sitting. And understanding where to devote resources to get things moving. Again, the obvious benefit was seeing where there were trends and patterns between blacks and whites. And specifically they looked at trends with the original charges that black and white defendants faced and what were the ultimate dispositions at the end. So a lot of interesting different layers to look at how the disparities came about. Not just the ultimate sentence and was there a difference between similarly situated defendants. But really seeing how the disparities played out in different ways. So you have a pretty comprehensive list. And we thought it would be useful for the legislature to see what we thought could be a prioritization of data collection areas. And in that regard, you can see it as highlighted in the appendix. But as a theme, it's basically decision-making points that are front-loaded pre-trial. Again, because we thought that that would be having that information have the greatest impact in terms of getting ahead of it before the compounding effect of the decisions. Kind of took a case away from correcting it as easily. And Nathan also talked about this. But I just wanted to stress another great thing that we discovered through this process of preparing for this report was that how much we're not starting from ground zero, right? We had CRG, of course, providing support. And in the appendix too, I just want to make sure that you see there where we identified decision-making points that should be collected. CRG provided a second column there to say what data was already available on those decision-making points and what data wasn't. CSG, by the way. CSG? Yeah. But I think, Aetan, will you correct me? No, are we a different group? No, no, you're right. C, it was confusing because we had both CSG and CRG. And I think this part, but Aetan, I want to make sure we give credit to CRG. That was CRG. That was CRG. That was problem joy in particular. Yes. So once we identified the decision-making points we thought should be collected, she and there may be some other helpers of her who went to the different organizations and asked is that so. But what's useful there is that it's a reveal that we don't have to, it's data already there, right? And what we realize that there's a lot of silo data that just isn't being connected, that isn't just isn't being shared. And so that was illuminating. So again, not starting from ground zero, but we have this data available. Another fun thing to have discovered through this process was the National Center on Restorative Justice. The National Center on Restorative Justice is an organization that was established just this year in April, one of the bright spots of 2020. And if you're not familiar with Center yet, like something that should be on your list, it's an organization, it's actually three academic institutions, Vermont Law School, University of Vermont and the University of San Diego have come together and formed this National Center on Restorative Justice that is being hosted by VLS. And they received a fantastic grant from USDOJ for the next few years. And they came to talk to us about what they're doing. Again, talking about sort of the thinking about what resources are available in state to build and improve upon the capacity to undertake this kind of project. And what they shared with us is that they have their principle and their focus is on improving the criminal justice system and policies in the United States. And they're doing this partly through education, but there is also a research arm research and data arm of this project. And that is particularly being handled by the UVMs Justice Research Initiative. And so they came and talked to us. And we learned that not only is this this organization just newly up, but it's building upon what UVMs Justice Research Initiative has has already been working on. And they've been looking at data for Vermont criminal justice data as well. And so it was interesting and useful to hear from them that they're they're prioritizing head work that will hopefully address disparities in the in the journal. Well, I don't know of journal justice systems, but certainly the criminal is justice systems. Again, overlapping interests, overlapping work areas that we discovered. Etan talked about Connecticut, and they are a wonderful resource. And I bet they would be willing to come and talk to committees about about the experience. But I wanted to just point out in this report, we did include a copy of the legislation that they passed. And so you can see an example of what data collection legislation looks like after the fact, after the hard work of getting that through. That was, as I understand, a result of of considerable support consensus across the board. And I just want to are you both suggesting that we should introduce something similar to Connecticut's legislation? Yes, I think Etan, I think that was really, I think that was definitely a feeling that the panel had as a whole. I'm happy to do that. I'm sure the House members are as well. Bryn, if you could make that a drafting request and anybody on the committee who wants to sign on either version. I realize you may not be the drafter, but that enforce those based on Connecticut. One thing that jumped in my mind and such Woodside's closed, I feel free to speak about it. It would have been interesting to know the restraints at Woodside, which was one of the reasons probably not. Were they based upon any bias, racial bias, or they based upon a bias against those who are seriously mentally ill? Were they not able to deal with that? Who was being restrained? That would have been interesting to know, but also to be able to deal with that particular population. I don't know that we know that. I don't either. I don't know that you know. It would be, I have a sense, based upon what I've heard from people at a program here in Bennington that I used to run, that the majority of the restraints are on a small number of the residents. In other words, most residents don't get restrained, but some get restrained numerous times because of behavior or whatever, but I don't know. Even that little data point would be helpful to know. That's basically what you're talking about. We learned through that process that DCF has mandatory reporting requirements to the federal government on various points, including race data. Again, I'm definitely don't know about the specifics you're asking about. I'm just using that as an example of a point where we don't know exactly because I don't know. Maybe they do have it, but I was using that as merely an example of places where we don't know. But how useful would it be to know? Also, what we realize is how easy it is potentially to just capture that information and then to be able to review it. As Ayton said, one of the key suggestions here is not just what decisions and data points to collect. I'm going to go take care of the dog who's working. But to make sure that we get timely reporting, that it's not something that you work and work and work and work and work it up for a final report once a year because how much usefulness is that ultimately to all of us, whether it's the policymakers and you, the legislators or the attorneys on the ground, the officers and corrections, all the judges, to make real-time adjustments and to correct as quickly as we can these things. That was another important recommendation in there in terms of what we're hoping is not just what data to collect, what is the prioritization, but who and how this data will be collected and analyzed. And Ayton stressed it, having whatever it is, the body have the capacity, looking beyond what we are doing now, but looking broader because we have some potential help in state, learning from Connecticut and our nearby neighbors how they're doing it. We've learned that and it was shocking how quickly they got this spot up. And it was pointed out to us that certainly in some respect, some of that data, they were collecting in a larger amount and so it was easier to collect, but also they weren't under perfect environment there too. I think the prosecutors were getting a new data system, right, database system and so that was holding things up. But we learned that they had help or others have had help with sort of the preliminary planning where they would hire essentially a data mapping consultant to come in and quickly identify and suggest how to do it. And then there was the actual body that got created to sort of analyze it. So it was interesting. It wasn't some multi-year project where we could expect not until 2030 to find the results, but it was one year later. Senator Lyons has a question. Excuse me. Thank you. This is really terrific, but what I'm hearing you say, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that as people were exposed to the information that it automatically made a change in behavior? Is that in Connecticut? Is that accurate, inaccurate? And then I do have a couple, I do have a couple questions. Hey, Ton, I don't know if the Connecticut folks shared how quickly or what they were doing to adjust it. I know that they issued their first report in January, right? Right, but what they did say was it certainly got legislative responses extremely quickly. In terms of actual changes in behaviors out in the real world, we don't know yet, but it certainly did get it got legislative responses very quickly. And it may be in the future we could see if Pepper would be willing to talk on this point. I know that the Connecticut prosecuting office did a training for national training for prosecutors that Pepper shared with us. And they shared the data and the conclusions that they learned and how that was impacting their management of cases, of how they were dealing with all sorts of things, right? And I mean the decisions to defer. You know, that's another data point. If we find out and see through this that there aren't the numbers being sent to diversion, does that support, again, policy decisions in terms of expanding who can send folks, right, to diversion? Again, the data will be the start, but it will be so informative in terms of how we choose to use it to then address the issue, right? And that's going to be a different set. But the data itself will certainly raise questions. I'm looking at page 24 of the report. It's the appendix four. And it has the current flow state high level data flow system. And you brought up the idea of having an integrated IT. I think you said something about that. But communication is absolutely key here. Having criteria for assessment and how to interpret information is absolutely key. So someone has to do that. But then having the linkages so that people don't fall through the cracks, but there's some consistent data flow and data information. And that for me, then it begins to suggest, I know that it's a step down the road. Obviously, I think first data collection interpretation and then working with people to make some changes. So important. And we've seen that in my district in particular, I'm in Chittenden County. But then the reality hits us as legislators and the cost associated with doing some of this is there. And Etan mentioned the cost. And the cost of not doing it, I think, is even more significant. So does Connecticut have any sort of printout or indication of the initial cost to going through the data collection and then what they may be doing beyond that in terms of IT? Certainly, we're smaller. Might be less costly. We got so many. The documents we got are the documents. I don't think we asked for that. I'm afraid. Forgive me. I'd be afraid too, but that's okay. That's good. I'm sure they'd be willing to share their experiences. And again, it's not to just overstress, but I think that there is a lot of potential supporters out there, partners, in terms of this, who are already doing the data collection. Again, I just learned about the National Center on Restorative Justice. So just one. But the other thing I wanted to leave, I wanted to point out, which is that, yes, this is going to be hard. Right? Yes, this is hard. But I think the reason why is not only worthy. I mean, we're trying to understand, I mean, how can we understand and fix systemic racism if we don't know how to effectively do it, but also how to efficiently do it with our resources, right? Our limited resources. If we're going to try to fix it, let's really have the targeted sense of where we should put those dollars or shift things, if that's where the problem is. But the other thing, I know it's hard, but one of the things I'm left feeling after filing this report, Atan, is that this was a consensus report, right? I'm coming from the Defender General's Office, but I referenced Pepper. Judge Grierson didn't have one point on it. I forget what it was, a decision-making point. Yeah, he abstained for the judiciary on section three. But ultimately, there's a consensus across the board. And again, for what it's worth, that was also the case in Connecticut. And I think you have to have a consensus to get something this big to work. But I think we're there. I think all of us understand. I hope we do that. Yeah. You first have to recognize there's a problem, and then you have to fully understand the problem before you can fix it. And to me, most of us recognize there's a certainly a problem. Now getting the data to fully understand the problem and try to fix the problem is the step. And I really appreciate the presentation this morning. I don't know if there's other questions. I did want to save a little time to thank one of our committee members who's no longer going to be with us for a service on this committee over the years, represented past as represented so ably. I want to make sure we mentioned that before we adjourn our last meeting of the year and turn it over to the House members for the next year as leadership. Thank you so much, Sandy, for everything you've done and your work on this committee. Thank you. It has been a great, great pleasure to work with all of you for all these years. Yes. And I did want to make sure I said that before we break, but I know Senator Hooker, I believe that's a question. Just a quick question. Eitan, you mentioned that you wanted the body to be housed in a place that was nonpartisan. And where does the Connecticut body sit and where would you suggest? Well, I'm not sure we have the same thing. It is in the office of policy and management. They are the criminal justice policy and planning division. That was, I believe, under the governor's office. I think Mike Waller used to be. And I believe that's an appointment from the governor, so it is an administrative office if I got the right office. I believe you do. He was more like the defender general and that his survival, I don't know, depended upon the governor. That's one way to make it more independent, make it like the defender general for a certain amount of time. And speaking of which, I believe the defender general is not the new planning division. But it's every, I think it's every five years. And so it doesn't, it doesn't get that political. Butch, did you have a question? Comment? No, thank you, Senator. I will say. I know Representative Hooker just wrote a note to all of us on the chat, but those of you who can't see the chat, I would second that. I think the entire committee really thanks both of you for your presentation, for the hard work on this. And thank you very much. And it doesn't end here. This is the beginning. Right. And hopefully we will see you in January. Great. Till then, have a happy holiday, both of you. Thank you. Thank you very much. You too. Bye-bye. Committee, we made it. Two minutes to spare. Bryn and Phil, Philip and Peggy, thank you for all your help in making this happen the last two years. Without you, it would have been impossible. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's been a lot of work and we all appreciate the time that you put in to make it so effective. Well, with that, I guess we're adjourned and say goodbye and happy holidays to everybody. Oh, Senator? Yes, Representative. I do have something to say to the committee and I want to bring this forward before Sandy goes upon her merry way and leaves us since I've been on this committee. Anyway, for many years, every time this committee met, I would pick Sandy up in Rochester on my way to Montpelier. We were able to solve every problem in state government, maybe not the same way, but we were able to do that and I have missed that over this fall. We haven't had our spirited discussions, which always ended up friendly, with many times no agreement, but I'm going to miss that, Sandy, and I wish you well. Thank you, Bush. Very helpful. Sandy, thank you. All right, I guess we're adjourned. Thank you all very much. Thank you. January. I know. Until January.