 So we are continuing our deliberations on S7 and like to now turn to the attorney general's office and welcome David share good afternoon. Good afternoon Madam chair and good afternoon committee for the record David share assistant attorney general. The attorney general strongly supports this bill as the committee as many on the committee know he's been a long time supporter of expungements. This bill actually comes out of a process and I let me say in advance I apologize I've been able to be present for all of the testimony around this bill. Lots of hearings going on but until I try to give give a pretty brief overview and try and hopefully not belabor points that have already been discussed, but just go over a few highlights here. The bill comes out of a process that happened in the sentencing commission in 2019. Sentencing Commission designated a subcommittee that included members of the commission and also other individuals who work on expungements and who would be affected by expungements. And so the bill you see in front of you is really the sort of statutory embodiment of the agreement that came out of that process and that I'd say I think it's fair to say that while different entities on the commission had a different ideal version of what it might look like this was an agreement that everybody could at least agree on as a good way to move forward and as the committee knows now you know there's a basic sort of tiered process here whereas crimes increase in severity. There's longer timelines for before expungement eligibility comes up and there's some differences in ceiling versus expungement. So that is sort of the embodiment of the compromise this is the result of that compromise the statutory language that resulted from it we certainly support it on the whole. I do need to note for the record one small piece of it that got added in the other body at the request of the states attorneys and sheriffs and I am pulling that up right now give me one. One second. There is a chunk of it that where the states attorneys and it specifies that for a certain category of offenses. The only the office where it was prosecuted would be allowed to stipulate to the expungement or the ceiling request. It's currently the case that the attorney general's office does retain concurrent jurisdiction on all possible expungement requests. And that is something we'd like to retain. I understand that the states attorneys concern is that an office with less specific knowledge about the case or other pending cases might step in and interfere. But we do think it's an important met and I but let me say as a matter of practice you know we currently do have concurrent jurisdiction on all possible expungements as the law currently stands. We are very careful not to use that it is our practice not to use that without consulting with the state's attorney whose office the prosecution originally came out of. I do currently, I'm the person who does expungements for our office both in terms of policy but also in terms of when we get expungement requests, or when we work on expungement clinics. And, you know, I have standing permission from the chin and states attorney's office to stipulate on their behalf. And that is possible because of concurrent jurisdiction, and I have in the past had provision from other states attorney's offices I need to update that to make sure I still have it. But in Windsor, for example, the states attorney has turned over since I had that so I just need to check but the point being we think it's a useful tool. We think it can be a volume management tool to help states attorneys who are willing to sort of let us have the ability to do it. And we also think it's an important way for a centralized office to be checking around with states attorney's offices and saying hey you know we think this is this came to our attention. It's out of your office we think it's a good one to appropriate for expungement or ceiling, and we hope that you will take a look at it and sort of it provides a mechanism to require that conversation, and again we think it's a valuable mechanism. I don't want to, you know, we support the bill whether that's in or out you know we think it's a good bill it's a relatively small point because it doesn't it only applies to a specific category, not to all possible expungement so it's not like it's making a huge difference we would still have concurrent jurisdiction on most things, but did just need to note that for the record. That was a disagreement we had on the other side. And it's one that we, you know, we wanted to note our position on that. David before you go on can you just point me to the language again please section. Yeah, let me apologize I clicked away from it and had trouble finding it okay. It is on page nine of 24 on the as passed by the Senate, and it's at the bottom on subdivision to. So it applies in though it's the underlying language at the bottom of page nine. And so it only does apply in those circumstances where the application is prior to the date of eligibility. And one of the aspects of our expungement system is that in many cases that not all states attorneys are allowed to wave the deadlines essentially and stipulate ahead of when they would otherwise be eligible. This is basically taking away the ability of the Attorney General to do that for those cases where the person's asking for a waiver of the deadline so it's not for all cases I do want to be clear on that it's not a complete. We shift on the policy it's just for that category. And in terms of I there was some comment on the study that's being assigned to the Vermont sentencing Commission and looking at ways to make expungement smoother and easier and unless burdensome on courts and states attorneys offices. It's it's a position of our office that the bill as it stands is a good bill. It's a workable bill. It's a bill that can be that does not need to await the outcome of that work in order for to become law and to be effective. The work we hope will do is exactly what I said make it a little bit smoother and easier there's a number of different mechanisms we've been thinking about to lower reduce the number of hearings or perhaps increase the number of petition less hearings that may happen for certain cases we shy away from automatic expungement as the courts repeatedly remind us nothing is truly automatic and I think that's a fair point but but but not having petitions does reduce a lot of work it reduces hearing time it reduces burden on individuals who are trying to access expungements so there have been in the past a lot of system obstacles to making that happen it does seem like Odyssey will reduce some of those system obstacles and there may be other ways that we can reduce some of them. Judge Greerson was alluding to communications with the Department of Corrections to the judiciary about when somebody's finished their sentence. Things like that where we could get creative about how that information is being transferred back and forth in ways that it is not right now and that could in fact reduce the burden on the courts but I do want to emphasize we think this is good legislation it doesn't need to await the outcome of that that could simply make a good bill better. And it is a drastic increase in expungements as the committee well knows and the Attorney General has always viewed these types of policy changes as jobs bills in many ways because they have such a significant effect on people's ability to finance economically and have economically secure existences. I'll just note two pieces of data that I think is really valuable and I'm guessing that's another witness has already stated them but I'll just briefly restate them in case it hasn't been said. Studies in other states have looked at the effects of people who access expungements and there is a really dramatic increase in income and job stability after somebody has an offense expunge these these are very real effects these are not on the margin we're not guessing at it. We know that this has a really dramatic effect and that's good for the individuals it's good for the state you have a workforce that can access more positions and that's more qualified. And so that's a really good thing. The other thing that I think is really important to know and that I have found that's persuasive for me but has been persuasive to many people I talked to is the risk of reoffence and the data on risks to reoffend a study that I believe was initially done by the Bureau of Justice statistics from the Federal Department of Justice found that even for people who've been convicted of relatively serious offenses including offenses like burglaries and so forth. If they didn't reoffend for a period of seven years after that conviction, their risk to reoffend drop all the way down to the level of the general population. In other words, those individuals were no more likely to reoffend than anybody in the general population will be likely to commit an offense. And I think that's a really important point to make is that when obviously we're trying to balance public safety here that's why we have this tiered system that is a little bit complex but I think it's navigable. But that's why we have the tiered system we're trying to balance public safety with sort of making sure that people do have the ability to be complete participants in our economy in our communities. And it's important to note as we do that that we do have data showing that once somebody has waited out a decent period they are not in fact any more of a risk to public safety than anybody else is so there isn't really a compelling public safety reason to keep these records open forever. So that's a summary. I know it's a big bill. There's a lot of details in there and I'm certainly happy to answer any questions that folks may have. And then thank you for pointing out that that the sentencing commission's report being my, you know, my concern or possible concern about the the report being due in November when the actual when the bill is to take, take effect on passage so so that's helpful to understand. And the study that you were referring to was that at the University of Michigan, do you know or do you want about the access to jobs and economic that was that was a mission I believe you're right that was a Michigan study but I can check that and be sure but I'm fairly certain that's correct. I think we've had it on our committee page in the past but it'd be good to get that that one again. Barbara, you're on it. I can I can redistribute it. Okay, yeah and if you could have even posted that that would be great. Anything else. Okay, any other. Thank you David just looking to see if there any other hands. Barbara. So David, I'm curious about two things one is. It's not automatic expungement because the courts, there's a lot of steps for the courts. And I'm assuming that's always the case and that what we're talking about is it being as automatic as possible for the consumer. So I'm wondering if you said there are some changes made at the Senate side. Or any, and I know you support this so I guess I'd love to know what areas if any got changed that would make it more friendly from the consumer side or if you're worried about the state attorney being able to stop it in a particular case if those were parts of your concerns. I'd say the only change that concerned us was the one that I testified about reducing or eliminating our current jurisdiction in that category of cases. Again, we still mostly retain it. Otherwise, I actually think most of the changes that were made were good changes on the Senate side. The changes that we're talking about with reference to that study committee out of the Vermont sentencing commission and I'm on that group of people who are working on it would be much bigger changes and certainly not. It'd be very difficult to do that in the next, say a few weeks. There are really big structural changes that would require a bunch of administrative groundwork to be laid. And I do think it's a promising path forward I think it'd be very difficult to do it quickly, if not impossible. I, but I will say I think on the Senate side, some of the changes that were made were positive there was a change that was made that for those people who had been sentenced and restitution was a part of their sentence. It's a little bit easier to make sure that those people can access expungement without having to wait an unduly long period of time I thought that was a good change. So for the most part, I think the tweaks that were made there were positive tweaks and moved into a sort of liberalizing direction in terms of access, and eventually my hope is that we can do some increasingly petition less type of I actually think there's a, on some, you know, all the stuff has controversy to it but there are some points that we've already talked about where I think there's broad agreement that we can do it but for example, the current structure and visions that for many offenses are forced to ceiling period and then later a an expungement period or it becomes expunged, and there is an idea that that step, moving from the ceiling to the expungement could be made, could be done without any action on that on the part of the individual concern. That would be a really big change, one that I think actually has a lot of agreement and does require however some very heavy lifting on the administrative side, but that's one thing that we're hoping to have a proposal on through this through the work of this subcommittee. Sorry, my phone is ringing I was trying to avoid the noise here. I'll bury it here on my it's so annoying. So, you said that there was some pushback related to or balancing public safety. So, I'm wondering because we're, we still would be not the certainly not the most aggressive state in doing expungement, even with these changes so was that the main objection that you were hearing was public safety risk. I think there is some concern about that on some of these more serious offenses which is why you see the longer timelines and it's also why you see the ceiling as a first step. ceiling is still a huge benefit to the people involved in my view and not everybody agrees with this fully but in my view that's the single bait most important step which is covering it over so employers can't see what's happening and people have a real opportunity to get jobs in a much sort of broader way than they are when they're saddled with a conviction. And that was actually that so I think that the ceiling piece is really important and I think to me that's like the key date. And I think this expands that even though you have to wait a good amount of time for the ceiling comes up much earlier under this bill. And I think that it's a really huge step forward in terms of the volume of offenses but yes there are people who are who are concerned about some of the more serious offenses, making sure that there has been sufficient time passing so that there's sort of proof of rehabilitation. And I think that's what we're trying to balance on the commission is folks who are concerned about that and you know there are some, I think that's a valid concern. You know there are people who suffer harm as a result of some of these offenses, and making sure that those people can see that somebody has in fact serve out their penalty whatever that might be and then has been on the straight for a while I think does also is a public interest that is a reasonable one for us to balance. Thanks. Thank you, David. Anybody else not seeing any hands but I'll. Any members a chance to jump in. Okay. Kate. I apologize if this has been answered before but to just to get clear. Crimes that are listed in this bill as a quote listed crime. Is there is not currently a pathway for expungement for those crimes is that accurate. And I'll just add a little wrinkle on that one of the many projects since the commission is engaging in is actually potential narrowing of the listed offenses. Categories that's just something to keep in mind in the next year or two you might see a bit of a reduction in that but that's, you know, obviously ultimately up to the legislature to decide on but just want to let you know that might be coming down the pike at some point but yes the short answer is listed offenses remain ineligible for expungement or for ceiling. Okay, thank you. And Barbara I'm going to submit your hand was that's from before. Right. Okay. So I think that is it for this bill in terms of testimony today. As I said we will be getting written testimony from James Pepper and I don't see that as of yet but we'll look out for that and we will certainly get get back to this to this bill. Kate. Sorry, one more question when you mentioned the results of the research that talked about, you know, if someone doesn't reoffend within seven years like their odds of free offense. You know, essentially it's sort of like anyone else within the community. Is that do you do you know if that applies to folks who have committed at any variety of offense. You know regardless of funny misdemeanor anything or was it looking at specific offenses. My memory of the study is that it was looking at not all offenses but it was looking at it went sort of up to fairly serious violent felonies, including aggravated assaults and burglaries things that frankly are not eligible for expungement under our strategy we're still a little bit more, you know, carry you know, a little more conservative than that, in terms of what we're putting into the bill but I think the point being is that, even for much more serious behavior that creates more intense harm in many ways than some of what's becoming eligible. I think it's not reoffended, as you correctly put it their their risk to reoffend drops down to the level of the general population. And so I think many of us working on this have taken from that the notion that even for these quite serious offenses that happens and my understanding is that the study didn't do everything it didn't do like, like time penalty offenses. So it didn't look at the most serious offenses which of course we're not adding into this bill anyway. So they looked at sort of up to those fairly serious felonies and below, and the sort of even the conclusion the study was that even for those more serious ones that they looked at. There was this seven year statistical drop down to the level of risk of any anybody in the population, and for other offenses it was lower than that, but I don't believe that they looked at the most serious sort of lifetime felony offenses. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and maybe bring can help us either either now or in the future but that was talked about in terms of with justice reinvestment that same seven years came up as well so so we might be able to look into it a little bit deeper in terms of the study or studies. So. Okay, great. All right, well thank you, everybody.