 I think we should probably get started or could get started, so why not? Welcome to the, what is it, June meeting of the Racial Disparities in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice System Advisory Panel. Can we begin with introductions? I will go down my list this time, perhaps after two years of this, I will get it right. Chris, could you please introduce yourself, start us off. Sure, Christopher Loris, Research Associate with Crime Research Group here observing for Karen and Dr. Joy, and full disclosure, I am also wanna pointy to the Criminal Justice Council, but I'm not wearing that at tonight. Great, thank you. Jen, Furpo, hello. I'm Jen Furpo. I am a training coordinator at the Vermont Criminal Justice Council and my areas are domestic violence and fair and impartial policing. Great, thanks. Grant Taylor. Grant is our, he cannot speak for the moment. He is our scribe, our secretary in a sense who is taking all of our notes and is just very dedicated to that particular thing. Thank you, Grant. Jay Green. Yes, thank you for welcoming me. I'm Jay Green, I use they, them pronouns. I'm the Racial Equity Policy and Research Analyst for the Office for Racial Equity. I am partially filling in for Suzana while she is joining a little later in the meeting and also here to introduce myself since it's kind of, it's been about three and a half months since I joined the Office of Racial Equity. So I thought it was finally time to come to one of these meetings. So thank you for having me. Great, thank you. Erin. Hi everyone, Erin Jacobson, she, her. I am the co-director of the Community Justice Division at the Attorney General's Office. Thank you. Jennifer Pullman. Hi, I'm Jennifer Pullman. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services. And I'm grateful to be here in the company of so many amazing people and just trying to figure out how the center could be a part of this conversation moving things forward. So thank you. Thanks, Jessica. Hi everyone, my name is Jessica Brown. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am an Attorney General's Office appointee from the community to the Racial Disparities Panel. And I am an assistant professor of criminal law and the associate director of the Center for Justice Reform at Vermont Law School. Thanks. Elizabeth. Hello, I'm Elizabeth Morris. I am the juvenile justice coordinator at DCF. Great. Qing. Hi, I'm Qing Ren. I'm a Evaluation and Program Analyst at Shelburne Farms. I'm also a community member on this panel. Great, thank you. Sheila. Hello, everybody. Sheila Linton, she, her, hers, the Root Social Justice Center and appointed by the Attorney General. Great. Julio. Hi, I'm Julio Thompson. I'm a member at large here to watch, but I'm also Director of Civil Rights at the Attorney General's Office. Thank you. Rebecca. Hi, everyone. Rebecca Turner at the Defender General's Office. Thank you. Monica, you're muted. Okay. Well, while you're figuring it out, let me judge Zonae. Good evening, Tom Zonae, Chief Superior Judge. I get the sense that Monica may have caught whatever Grant has for the muting there. I don't know. It could be a computer virus. We have to be careful. And I'm really paranoid about viruses at this point in history. Yeah. Monica, are you, are you? I'll try. Can you hear me now? Oh, there you are. I have a new computer and I'm figuring out all the different settings I have to adjust. So sorry about that. Anyway, I'm Monica Weber. She, her. I am with the Department of Corrections. Great. Thank you all. And that is everyone that I have on my list. Have I forgotten anyone? Speak now or you know how it goes. Have been meeting with the Department of State's Attorneys. Yep. Well, screwed it up. Knew that would happen. Hi, Evan. I even said hello to you earlier. Anybody else? Names, Wichee Ardopernos, he is data warehouse and social expert in social justice advocate. Thank you, Wichee. Anybody else? Clearly I need to work on this. No. All right. Let me start out with a few announcements. No, no, no. Actually, I'm gonna just use my prerogative. Switch things around. I'd like to start with the approval of the minutes from the April meeting, which I sent to you all. Are there comments, suggestions, errors, things to add? Anything of that sort, because poor Grant has been working on these and I keep giving them back to him going, no, do this, no, do this. But I also said to him that any final good comments of things that I might have missed would come from the panel. He's developing a template so that he can just sort of run it for each meeting. So anything you all can offer that is obviously going to be different from what I've done would be good, but you may think it's fine. So anybody? Monica. Do we have to make a motion first before we have discussion about the minutes? Is that? That's right, we do have to do that. Sorry, I totally screwed that up. Can I have a motion? No, I can make a motion to... Go for it. And then we'll have discussion. Okay, because I did have a comment. Okay, you're making a motion to... We need to know what your motion is. Well, I guess I'd like to make a motion to come up with a different template for the minutes. Okay. Second? Oh, hell, I'll second it because I want to hear it. Discussion, Monica, I'm assuming. Sure. And I appreciate it. And this is just a question. I'm not really sure we've had this conversation. And so I'm just going to put it out there and then I'll just kind of back off of it. Generally, in other organizations that I've been a part of where minutes are being taken, they aren't usually this detailed and they usually aren't sort of like by person, explicitly what they said. They more capture points of discussion and generally and decisions that might have been made by the group. So while I appreciate this as a really good document about what happened at the meeting, I feel like that as minutes, they're probably too extensive. And so that's the comments I'm making. Okay, others, thank you. Sheila. So while I appreciate what Monica said, I think there's a yes and to it, that for those who are sort of depending on this as the modell to receive that information, it allows people to understand a little bit more what was said and maybe with more accuracy, allowing for more understanding. And so I think that different people learn and take an information different ways. And so I really appreciate the work that is done. And I think it's accountability measure. I think that it allows us as those who are in the space and choose to use our voice in the space to, one, be checking the minutes and reading them over to make sure they're accurate of what we feel like we've stated and two, to hold us accountable to what we believe, want to discuss or have put into the space. So I think that yes, Monica's correct. And though that may be the traditional way of doing things, doesn't mean that that has to be the way that we continue to do them. And I do believe in fluidity. So I understand about creating a consistent system and structure, but I also believe that if this is how the note taker wants to take notes now and that it can work for the majority of us or we can come to consensus of what can work for us, great. And if a new person comes in and wants to switch it up a little bit, I think we should all be fluid to be open to that. Okay. Thank you. Qing. I agree with both Monica and Sheila. This is very, I really appreciate this is really expensive. And actually today, I went into one of our minute documents in the past in a specific looking for like some quotes from people who said just not for anything just for my own memory purposes. So I really appreciate the detailed notes. I do understand there might be places where we want to have some sort of overarching kind of summary of the meetings, but I don't really want to lose this sort of detail if that's achievable. And I really appreciate the fact that it's organized by person, like by the speaker. So that gives me an idea of like when I'm looking back at the notes and I know, okay. So who said this and that information is important to me. Okay. Thank you. Anyone, Evan. So I think that I agree with Monica that the minutes are more detailed than I'm used to seeing from other public bodies. But I also agree that there's no prohibition on the minutes being this detailed. I think that they can generally be as detailed as we would like them to be. But I thought that it might be helpful just to mention what the minimum content of minutes has to be under the law just to sort of give some perspective. So in the open meetings law, it says that the minutes shall cover all topics and motions that arise at the meeting and give a true indication of the business of the meeting. So what the heck does that mean, right? And it goes on to say that the minutes have to include the following minimum information, all members of the public body present, all other active participants in the meeting, all motions, proposals and resolutions made, offered and considered and what the disposition of those were. And then the results of any votes with a record of the individual vote of each member if a roll call is taken. So that minimum list is pretty bare bones. But again, that's just the loss that's worth with the minimum information is not the maximum to the best of my knowledge anyway. Mm-hmm. Anyone else? Okay then. Oh, Rebecca. Well, just short, I love them. Thank you, Grant. Appreciate the detail. It almost reads like a transcript but not. It's shorter than a transcript and I can't read those as a living. And so I think thanks Evan for reminding us what the minimums are. It sounds like too that under law it's flexible as to what else you can do besides that. So I am very thrilled and grateful, Grant, that you're there doing this for us. I don't even know how much you're being paid for this work. And I think for transparency purposes, we have Orca here. Our whole reason for being is to make sure we have access and accountability on multiple levels. If we have more detailed minutes than usual in government committee meetings, I say that is a wonderful thing and I wish that could happen across the board but we can't, so we have them here. Thank you. Hi. Say no change. Right. Then Mamaka. Well, I just wanted to thank everyone for the conversation because that's really all I wanted to have was make a comment and I had to make a motion to do that. So I'm very happy to withdraw my motion because I understand all the points. I just want him to be able to have a conversation about the expectation for the minutes. Great. Does anyone want to make a motion since there don't seem to be any suggestions for changes or anything? I make a motion to accept the minutes as they exist. I can second. Or so moved. So moved. Okay. I'll make a move. Okay, so great. Thank you. I guess I'll second it. I guess I'll second it. Braggs. All in favor accepting the minutes. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed. All abstaining. Motion is carried. We accept the minutes. Thank you, Grant. And I will, I'll worry about getting those Grant to Anne Walker tomorrow morning probably so she can post them on the Attorney General's website. Thank you. All right, now announcements. Does anybody have any that they need to bring forth? I do, but okay. What I wanted to say was just sort of in a way, look over where we're going right now just in terms of our legislative responsibilities. As you'll recall from Act 54 of 2017 or maybe you won't recall, but that's our enabling legislation. And the reports such as the one we wrote in 2019, there's one due every biennium. So technically we have one due at the end of 2021 while we did that. We also did one at the end of 2020. We've been like turned them out year after year, frankly for a bit here. So I am assuming and no one has corrected me including in the legislature that our next report is a year from this coming December, in other words, 18 months from now. And what I'm hoping we're doing with this process of figuring out what we wanna look at, what we wanna talk about for a future direction is to put it eventually in that document which will be for December of 2023. And that I just wanted to put that out there. We probably, and I'm not, I can't believe I'm legitimately saying this. We probably could even go to 2024 because we've just been running these damn things through cranking them out. But now in terms of given what the content was of the report in 2019, we really ought to do this for December of next year. So that, I just wanted to put that out there. I would recommend that again, as I have said before, people take a look at the December 2019 report, December 4th of 2019. If you don't have it, let me know. I've certainly sent it out a few times. That doesn't mean you don't have it. And if you don't, I can send it again. Take a look at it, get a sense of it. Again, look at it in terms of positives and negatives, all that sort of work because we're about to do that again. Well, about 18 months from now. Finally, Susanna has asked to go later than she is listed in the minutes. So we're not gonna start with the needs of the Office of Racial Equity as regards what is now Act 146. She'll come in later on, as Jay has told us. And we will take up her issues then. In other words, what the RDAP will need to do in facilitating the new division of racial justice statistics. Cause of course, we do have some responsibilities under that. I also wanted to thank Monica. Monica, you were really wonderful. When things were looking really grim there for a bit with H546 and I had sort of had a moment, let's say, with a particular legislative committee around the issue of data. And I'm always being quoted as saying we are not the RDAP that does data. Monica reigned it in a little bit and said, I think we're always gonna have to be thinking of something about data. And I was very grateful for that. And in fact, it's quite true, I think. And a lot of what Susanna is gonna bring up has to do precisely with those issues because that's a data organization and there's stuff we've got to do about it. So anyway, I just wanna put that out there. Moving on, we're gonna continue the discussion of our future directions. And I'd like to start this evening with the next group on the list, which would be, well, Tyler Allen isn't here this evening. He had a family obligation that he had to meet. But Elizabeth's here. And I would like to invite her to speak further about juvenile justice. There was another email this afternoon that I did not send you all because I thought people would be like, oh my God, he wants us to read this before the meeting. And I didn't wanna do that to everybody. So Elizabeth, take it over. Thanks, Etan. So as Etan mentioned, Tyler isn't able to be here today. So I will try to embody him as much as I can as I'm going over this, but I'm sure this will be an ongoing conversation and a document that continues to be added to and expanded upon in future meetings and such. So I will start off by saying, I do think the comments you just made, Etan, about data and Monica's discussion on, we're always gonna have to talk a little bit of data is relevant for the JJ portion. I did not put in a large pieces of data into the document that was sent out to you this morning. However, I can. I'm happy to go through and add more into that on data that we have. But even if there are certain issues with the data, I'll be clear with that on arrest, diversion, pre-trial detention, et cetera. And the other piece I wanna make clear is as I'm looking at the document, I'm realizing there aren't necessarily links to all of the reports themselves. So I'll make sure that that's updated so everybody can read in detail all of the pieces that we reviewed on. But Tyler and I mainly focused on JJ and we understand the link between JJ and child welfare, but we did mainly focus on the juvenile justice side of things given our main charge within our data. So if it's okay, Etan, do you think it'd be best for I just share my screen and go through the additions? I think it'd be lovely. Do I know how to help you do that? Well, I'm pretty used to sharing in teams. So I should be sad. So just give me one second. God bless. It's the benefit of being a stay employee, right? Okay. So does everybody see my screen? Yeah, that's exciting. So what we did is we actually just added right into the original document, JJ aspects of it. So just for the sake of everybody's ease, we highlighted the sections we added in blue. So if you're trying to scroll through and look at what was added in, that's the easiest way to see it. I think going forward, we can probably all change it to the right, the right black font, but just so you guys could easily scroll and see. So the biggest aspect and the biggest report that we added in here is a report that I actually put together that is submitted to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention annually. They require as part of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act which DCF receives a formula grant every, theoretically we're supposed to receive a formula grant every annual year that requires us to monitor and create a plan to address disparities in the Juvenile Justice system. I think that that's pretty surprising to people to hear. And it's been in federal law since 1988, which means the feds have acknowledged these disparities in the system and have charged states to utilize federal dollars to come up with programming to address these disparities for decades. So that's always something that I want people to be aware of and we might, you know, the federal government might not be as progressive when it comes to adults, but they have for decades been aware of it for youth. So this report that I'm referring to includes all of that arrest, data diversion, data, et cetera, that I was just referring to. The, there is a state advisory group that is made up of members who are appointed by the governor that create a plan based on that data. And they utilize the federal dollars in order to create programs in attempts to address all of those disparities. The feds give us pretty wide overarching ability to focus on what they believe is important. And it's made up of, especially our ethnic and racial disparity committee is made up of mainly community members in the Chittin County area. So this first piece is added in to the section on, I'll just scroll up on diversion and pre-child services. And it's related to some work that that state advisory group has implemented based on some of that diversion data. So they are currently funding and promoting statewide restorative justice training of law enforcement focused on juvenile justice. So this is a program that they are in the infancy of. They posted an RFP I believe last summer that was awarded to Burlington Community Justice Center. And they are in concert with some other contractors about to start doing statewide training on the benefits of pre-charge for sort of justice for youth with a highlight on anti-racism and the disparities of access to pre-charge for youth of color. And this is based on a lot of data that we have seen nationally and in Vermont that shows that youth of color are not referred to diversion at the same rates as their white counterparts. And that program, they are first piloting it regionally with law enforcement and state's attorneys. And hopefully we will see this summer that really filter out. They have not quite done their first training yet. So do you think it would be a beneficial maybe if I pause for questions before going out to the next section? Or I can just... Sure, sure. Questions, folks? Sheila had one, but it's been answered already. Rebecca? Elizabeth, I know you and I have been going back and forth earlier today on these reports that you're referencing that DCF submits annually to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention on those five data points that I put in the chat. And you talked about the disparities. You said that there are disparities that show on all five of those data collection points and they're pretty substantial, right? Yeah. But also I didn't hear but I just want to make sure this group here is because we'll get these reports hyperlinked into the memo later so we can see them. That the most current reporting year is for which year and that there are similar numbers for the past how many years? Like is this an aberration or is this something that we see year and year and year? Yeah, this is something we see consistently year after year after year. The feds of course are a little bit behind on everything. So for instance, they just posted last week our most recent solicitation. So I will be working on a report that is due this fall for this past federal fiscal year. So the one that is currently public, the most up-to-date one that everybody can access is for federal fiscal year 2020. And like I said, I'll be working on federal fiscal year 2021 because they're behind the eight ball, takes them a little bit to get to it. And to be fair, it also takes some time to gather the data from the courts and the data from arrest rates, et cetera, and to put all of that together. The report does look at a overview of three years to try for a variety of different reasons. One, regarding our small population, with our small population, small discrepancies can create large impacts with the number of youth that we are looking at. And then two also to deal with that year to year consistency of what we see the data. And I will be absolutely clear in every contact point, that's with the, or discretion point, that's what the federal government refers to these as. There are high disparity rates in every single one of them. For instance, arrest rates are significantly higher for youth of color. For instance, Burlington Police Department sends me their individual arrest data for all youth who are under the age of 25. And they, 46% of their youth arrests are black youth. And as we know that it's nowhere close to what the population of black youth is in the Burlington area. And it's, I just wanna make that really clear. Every single contact point, when Woodside was up and running, we had about 18% of the Woodside population were in takes that were youth of color. That obviously is not our statewide population of youth of color. So we see this throughout the entire system. It's interesting, the federal government really cares about secure detention. So given our current status, our system of care status within DCF and our lack of secure facility options, it does screw the data up a little bit because we currently do not have a secure facility within the state of Vermont. Is that how I answer some of your questions? And I'm also, I'm also happy to go through that report and that data, I can do that now or I can also do that in another hour at a time as well. If we wanna really set aside some time to chew through it. Let's get these questions for, Erin, why don't you go first? Thanks. Elizabeth, I'm just wondering about the trainings that law enforcement will be getting. Who exactly is law enforcement? Does that include states attorneys as well? And will any trainings be open to the public? So it is for law enforcement in the broader sense. So it does include states attorneys. They are not available to the broader public. However, they are specifically for law enforcement. There was a lot of back and forth on how best to reach law enforcement. And law enforcement is involved in the training. So they do have law enforcement officers who are part of that localized to the region. Okay. Rebecca, did you take your hand down? I did only because my only comment though is I do think those the data, Elizabeth, that you guys are sharing year and year out is remarkable, striking, difficult for me to accept and get my head around. But I would recommend we just land on it with more focused time at some near point in the future. But I just wanna make sure that people knew about it at least. Yeah, I appreciate it, Rebecca. And I would be happy to do that. And I would agree. I do think we would need some substantial time and I don't wanna rush through it because I do think it does take some time to conceptualize also some of the federal definitions of arrest and what the feds mean by diversion. So exactly what we're tracking and what the feds care about and then applying it to Vermont. It can be a lot of information to take in and to try to internalize and I don't wanna rush through for, especially for if there's members on the call who aren't as ingrained into the justice system and know some of the lingo. So then what I'll do is I'll just make out, I already have an agenda item for next month. Okay, great. Evan. Just a quick question, Elizabeth, that training that you said was gonna be open to state's attorneys, is that talking about the training referenced in this second hollow bullet point there from the BCJC? Yeah. Exactly. And is that gonna be something that will be, well, I guess, do you know what the timing of that is and whether or not that's gonna be available remotely so that's deputy state's attorneys and state's attorneys and other parts of the state would be able to attend if their schedule's permitted? Yeah, so they're actually trying to figure that out right now. As you can imagine, they're trying to pilot it in two different areas and trying to get a time where they can get law enforcement obviously is tricky, right? So I think they've landed on doing it on a Saturday morning because that's the easiest for a shift change, et cetera. I do not believe they're doing a virtual option for a multitude of reasons about how they're trying to engage the law enforcement officers on restorative justice, but I'm also happy to connect you with Mark Weinberg and Rachel Jolly who leads on that training and make sure you're up to date and aware of all of that because Evan, not to put you on the spot, but if you can encourage those in the region who are doing that training to attend and participate, I think that would be really valuable. Yeah, no, I'm happy to do that. I didn't realize that you were talking about a training that Mark was putting on. He reached out to us, boy, I don't know. Time is playing tricky things right now. I wanna say maybe if like four to six weeks ago or something like that, and he had a conversation with John Campbell and I in which he mentioned this training. And we said, great, fantastic, but he didn't have many details on the timing of it. Yeah, so that was exactly what this training is. Mark is one of the contractors who's one of the main leads on this training. It's just funded through this state advisory group and the federal money. So I'm glad, Mark is fantastic. So I'm glad to hear he's already reached out to you and have that connection. My understanding is the time is very flexible because they're trying to find a time that's best for states, attorneys and law enforcement. So it changes based on what and when those members can attend. Okay, Jay and then Jennifer Pullman. Thank you, I just wanted to say there was a comment in the chat asking if you could just repeat the percentage of, I believe it was Youth of Color who were arrested by a Burlington Police Department. Was that 36 or 46%? Yeah, it was 46% over a three-year period. So that's looking at three-year period of time from federal fiscal year 2018 to 2020. Thank you. And I just had a question because I'm sort of new to the criminal justice and juvenile justice space. You mentioned a facility named Woodside, is that correct? I would just appreciate some context there. Yeah, absolutely. So Woodside Rehabilitation Center was our former only secure juvenile facility in the state of Vermont that DCF utilized for placement of delinquent youth and youth who were accused of delinquent charges. That facility closed in October of 2020 and we have been utilizing a variety of other options since that closed. Okay, Jennifer, do you still have a question? Jennifer Pullman. I don't have a question. I just put it in the chat. I'm actually meeting with Mark tomorrow. So I'm happy to just forward the pieces that I heard to him in terms of moving that forward. So thank you. Great. All right. Anything else for anyone? There's a question in the chat before we leave the subject. Oh, all right. I'm sorry, folks. I'm trying to keep up. Qing has a question. What was the reason for closing? Woodside, I'm assuming. Yeah, so there were a variety of reasons for closing Woodside. One, low utilization. Two, to be quite frank, there were quite a few federal lawsuits coming out of Woodside Rehabilitation Center for very good reasons. And for those two main reasons, the facility was closed. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. So Elizabeth, we'll do a longer breakout since it really, as it sounds, you feel like we aren't gonna have the time with everything else we have to do. We'll do that next time. Okay. I can keep going through this report though. If that works, I can do three. Please. Okay, great. So I'll scroll down to, this is right in the section of education. Another project that is stemming from the same state advisory group based on the same results that they review on that data that's submitted to OJJDP is recommendations regarding education. There is a very clear link between school discipline and the juvenile justice system in the school-to-prison pipeline. Even though perhaps utilizing the phrase school-to-prison pipeline isn't quite as applicable in Vermont because we do not necessarily have a juvenile detention facility, but the link between involvement in the justice system is very clearly still there. So two current projects and work that they are approaching on is really to integrate restorative justice within school discipline and to keep the justice system out of schools as much as possible. So they currently, after an RFP process, are funding both Burlington School District and Spectrum Youth and Family Services funds to address these issues. Spectrum is implementing their work within Winooski High School, and then Burlington School District is mainly focusing on two of their middle schools. And they're in adjacent towns in Chittin County and given the high arrest rates that we see in that area, the state advisory group thinks it's really important to be focusing on those two areas of work. It's interesting because, and I'm happy to share any reports and information from those two schools. We're about a year and a half, almost two years into those programming and the state advisory group is continuing to fund both of those entities as long as funding allows. So their work is nowhere close to being done. Burlington School District is doing a variety of different positive behavior intervention and supports work and Spectrum Youth and Family Services does a variety of different but similarly oriented work within the school district to reduce disparities. I'm happy to provide any more information on either of those programs. I will say the overarching goal is to reduce disparities within their school discipline, expulsion, suspension, et cetera. That data has been very skewy since the start of this because a few months after they started funding these programs, COVID hit, right? So suspensions, expulsions look very, and looked very different during a COVID time period. So that's something that the state advisory group is looking on pretty closely, especially now that I'm knocking on wood over here or moving out of a COVID time period for our school system. But the overall recommendation from this ag regarding education is to implement restorative justice practices within school discipline instead of more punitive ones. If there aren't questions, I don't see anything in the chat. And I also know we're at 6.45, so I'll keep going. But if anybody has anything, please put it in the chat and I can always come back. So these are some other recommendations from this same state advisory group, I know keep bringing it up, but since they do have federal dollars that they can utilize to really work on this issue, they obviously are pretty relevant in this document. So they would, these are programs that they have not yet funded ODJDP actually put a hold on title two funding for every single state in the nation. And for a variety of reasons that I won't go into right now. So we've had a delay in our dollars. We are hoping to receive two years worth of funding this fall though. So hopefully that'll reinvigorate some of these other programs and projects that they're looking to work on. The first is regarding workforce development specifically for youth from marginalized communities. This includes insisting juveniles making the transition to the word of work and self-sufficiency. A lot of people on the state of advisory group feel that there are a lot of youth who are having a variety of different issues within their schools because they need to work to support their families and that has a negative impact on their involvement in the justice system and their school discipline overall and truancy issues, et cetera. They're also advocating to promote raising the baseline age of juvenile court jurisdiction. They are working to hopefully fund and promote anti-racism training for stakeholders in the broader juvenile justice system. So that might include education, youth mental health service, et cetera. This, I believe we discussed last, issues of unknown and not reported race and ethnicity data. I know that Evan, you mentioned some work that's coming from the Family Rules Committee that was spurred from a letter that this state advisory group sent in from Judge Davenport. So Form 101 that law enforcement officers utilize has a race and ethnicity area in their form. It's not always filled out and it causes issues in the court database. About 16% consistently of the court database have unknown race, which when we're talking our population of youth can make a really big impact on how big the disparity actually is. So there's some data here as well on the issues with unknown and not reported race or ethnicity. And hopefully we'll see some changes on that. And then enhancing and developing resources and services within communities that minimize their overall reliance on law enforcement to begin with. And also working with DCF to assess family and community engagement and case planning for youth of color who are involved in the juvenile justice system. So that's an overarching review of the work that the state advisory group is doing, although they are involved in some of this information that's included down below. But I'll pause in case there are any questions before moving on to some other work from DCF. Okay. So DCF is working to release practice guidance for assessing cultural context of the families and youth that we work with. We have not quite finalized that. We've been doing some work with our staff. But as soon as it is finalized, I will definitely send it out to this group. It's essentially a guide for assessing the cultural context and practice, both when assessing safety and throughout a case and to learn how culture shapes and influences, beliefs and values and gives our workers more of an ability to set that tone and engage families in that dialogue. This next piece is a report actually from CRG. And I know we have CRG on the line. So if there's anything you guys want to add in, feel free to do so and interrupt me. But this is a report that our state advisory group also funded, utilizing federal dollars, that they wanted to provide a baseline recidivism analysis for youth ages 18 and 19 who were convicted in an adult criminal court. And this was essentially because as some of you may be aware, we are the first state of the nation to raise the age of original juvenile court jurisdiction to include 18-year-olds. And as of July, now that S-224 has passed, as of July of next year, we will be including 19-year-olds. So given that the state advisory group wanted to create a baseline recidivism analysis, so we can actually track how we're doing and if that change in practice and policy has an impact on recidivism rates. One clear aspect that CRG found that they noted should be looked into in more detail is that 14% of all 18 and 19-year-old black youth were excluded from the study because they were charged with something that is called a Big 12. For those of you who aren't aware, Big 12 crimes are a set of crimes that if a youth is charged with it, they are charged in the criminal division. So because this was a recidivism analysis that is supposed to review the youth who are moving into family court, those youth are excluded from the study. By doing so, CRG learned that it means that they excluded 14% of all 18 and 19-year-olds who are black but only 8% of white youth were excluded for the same research, which is creating a disparity or unveiling a disparity. And they had recommended that further research into this issue should be looked into and conducted because it's possible that the excluded defendants might have had charges when they were younger that would now be processed in juvenile court. But I'll pause, because I know we have CRG on the group, but I also know that Robin probably is the one who would go into a lot of detail on that, so. Evan? Yeah, Evan? Thanks, yeah, I'm just, I'm having trouble following that last point in exactly sort of what it means. And I was just hoping that Elizabeth, either you or someone at CRG might be able to help flush that out a little bit, what it meant to be excluded and what inferences we can or not supposed to draw from that last bullet point. That there are of the black youth who are involved in the justice system, they're more likely to be charged with a Big 12 or have maybe not more likely, I will retract that exact phrase. They, more of them have Big 12 charges in more of a percentage of the overall black population, youth black population has Big 12 charges than their white counterparts. So they are saying that that is a question mark as to why that is and where that disparity is coming from and they are recommending that further research needs to happen in order to go into why we see that difference. They did make it really cool as a statistically significant difference in their research, but perhaps for our next meeting, we can ask Robin to talk about it a little bit more for this group too. Yeah, that'd be great. And so, does that, when this says that they were excluded from the study, does that mean that individuals, regardless of their race who were charged with Big 12 crimes, the study did not take a look at what their recidivism was? Is that what that means? Exactly, and the reason why that's how this study was conducted was because it was supposed to create a baseline recidivism analysis of the youth that will be coming or already are now for a 18 year old system. So it's to basically try to evaluate 201, try to see if 201 actually has an impact on reducing recidivism rates, which based on the brain development, adolescent brain development, that is the theory it's that youth are better served in the family division for a variety of reasons, including their recidivism, their likelihood to commit another crime. So, yeah, so they were excluded, yeah. This study doesn't answer that question though, it establishes the baseline to answer that question at a future date. Am I following? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so the state advisory group will most likely, unless somebody else wants to pay for it, I guess, will conduct another recidivism analysis like five years down the line, maybe later, depending on what happens with 19 year olds, right? Because you do need, I think you need like five years. This is a Robin question for the exact report in order to look at all of those youth and if they actually recidivate, right? So further down the line, we'll be able to look at the 18 and 19 year olds who are now in family and see did they, is there likelihood to recidivate lower? Does that answer everybody's questions? And if I can just jump in, I just wanna say I've got nothing to add. Elizabeth did a great job and with Evan's question that he surmised correctly in his conclusion and absolutely the most important thing that Elizabeth spoke to was bringing Robin in to discuss the specifics. The only thing I would offer up that I know we had in internal discussions that Elizabeth did not mention, which is really a function for this group and the policy makers to decide is what definition of recidivism will be used into the future and I see Elizabeth nodding. So go run with it, you clearly understand what I'm talking about, so go Elizabeth. Yeah, the recidivism definition in statute as I think CRG told us is pretty useless. So, and I'm sure many of you guys know that. So the State Advisory Group did kind of have a conversation about I think there were three different versions of recidivism and to answer the question that's in the chat, CRG's contract with us actually ends at the end of this month. So I believe we should be able to release kind of the final report and I can make sure that that is sent out to everybody. And I do believe the legislature has asked to see it as well so it'll be sent to them and should be public to everybody. And then we have a question from Monica. I was just gonna make a comment on the recidivism. So it was developed several years ago, the methodology and put into statute that Elizabeth's got reference here and it really was developed primarily for the adult system and it was developed because Vermont is a unified correction system and it was a way to separate out jail and prison and be able technically to compare us to other states but nobody does recidivism calculations the same across the state anyway. But the Department of Corrections has to produce the recidivism report based on that statute for adults. Robin and I have this conversation all the time. So I can feel the pain there. Yes, yes, yeah. We, yeah. And you can see here in this bullet that CRG said is essentially not possible because there were only two defendants who had been sentenced to more than one year in jail and they were simply just not eligible to recidivate until after the data for the study was collected. So take with that what you will. And I'm sure Robin can go into more detail next month if she's available to join us. Okay, great. Chris? Yeah, and the last thing just as a, this is more housekeeping than anything else. We've had this discussion internally and both Dr. Joy Robin and Karen have been very clear in educating me, so I'm just passing it on that this report belongs to DCF. So in order to get the information, Elizabeth and DCF will be the ones to release it. So if anyone's on the call here wanting to see that, the response you'll get is, hey, we were just a research partner and DCF owns the study. So I'm just gonna reiterate that because I've been told that a number of times by two women who are much smarter than I. Thanks for that, Chris. I appreciate it. But I think that the answer will be is that you can send it to anybody who asks. I certainly don't wanna be holding back any data from the public in any way. Okay. Okay, so I'm just gonna scroll to the next section. I know I'm trying to keep an eye on time. I know there's two more people after me. So DCF does have a statewide racial equity workgroup that we created in 2020 and they've got a variety of different work that we actually co-chair that workgroup along with one of our district staff members. So there's five different subcommittees on a variety of different issues within DCF. But in this report here, I've put in some work that's happening specifically related to the juvenile justice portion of work. And that has to do with Yazi. So for members who are not familiar with Yazi, it is an evidence-based risk and needs assessment and case planning tool that we utilize to ensure that youth, one, we receive a level of services that's appropriate to their, each individual youth's risk of recidivism. So it does a variety of different things, but it measures essentially both risk and the strength of each of the youth. It does pre-screening in addition to a full screen and is utilized in a variety of different ways. If those of you have questions on exactly how Yazi is implemented and how DCF workers and Barge utilize Yazi and how it's conducted, I'm happy to bring Lindy in. Lindy Boudreau is our Juvenile Justice Director and our main point of contact when it comes to Yazi. And she is very, very well-expert in on the intricacies of Yazi. But for purposes of this conversation, there are some really specific consequences with that we have realized about racial disparities and utilizing Yazi. I did hear, I don't see your faces, but I heard something, so I'm gonna pause. Sheila has her hand up. I'll wait, because it's not related to this directly, I'll wait until you're finished with what you're saying, because it was an overall general question. Okay, thank you. So one thing, we looked at Yazi data based on race of every single youth who has ever taken Yazi in the state of Vermont. And we noted that the legal risk of black youth is higher than their white counterparts. And that is stemming from their criminal history. And they have the same approximately, the same overall risk and overall strength rating. But what is happening is because the legal risk of these black youth is higher than their white counterparts, it results in a larger percentage of black youth being rated as high risk in comparison to white youth. So what does that mean, right? So the Yazi rates, each individual is high risk, medium risk and low risk. And that comes into consideration in a variety of different ways regarding placement and their probation and recommendations that are stemming from DCF. So that can have a pretty large impact on how these youth are treated in our justice system. So not to bring in our state advisory group again, but our state advisory group has been willing to utilize some of their federal dollars to do a extensive series of analysis on Yazi. And to look at gender and race and attempt to reduce these disparities by changing the scoring weights and caught off points that cause certain youth to be categorized as high or medium or low. And the reason why we are beginning to approach this project is because DCF connected with New York state, which also utilizes Yazi and they had similar issues with the tool. They had a higher percentage of black youth who were being categorized as high risk because of their legal history. Now we know that communities of color are overpoliced and more likely to be caught doing something or to be pulled over than their white counterparts. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they actually have a higher risk than their white counterparts. So they were able to change their cutoff points and to decrease the overarching number of youth who are categorized as high youth and essentially increase how many youth are medium risk. And that decreased the racial disparities. So we are currently right now working on that contract with Orbis. Orbis is the entity that owns Yazi. So they're the ones who have to complete this analysis. So we are at the very, very beginning of this process and that contract has not been finalized. But I'm gonna pause because I know that Yazi can be a lot. And I wanna make sure there aren't any questions. Doesn't seem to be. Okay. Sheila still has her general question. Okay, Sheila, are you okay with me going into the UVM legislative report drivers of custody or would you like to ask your more general question? I'll just ask my general question now if that's okay. And then you can decide whether to answer at the end or not. And I apologize if I missed this or if I'm not retaining this. I'm trying to, you know, taking all that is being said and processed at all. And it's a lot of information. And so my overall general question is curious of what is mandated of you all with regards to the things, initiatives, projects that you're involved in or engaging like all of these things. What is being like mandated and what is the recommendation of other committees and what is stuff that you've all sort of worked on yourself. So I'm wondering if there's like a cheat sheet of that for people to understand, okay, this is mandated either by the feds or by the state or whatever it is. This is what we need to be in compliance because my other question with that is, is that there's been a few questions around, well, why did this happen? Well, Woodside, and why did this happen? And so I know that isn't necessarily the focus but it helps inform us of the transparency and accountability within the system of DCF and understanding that are there things that were mandated and they weren't fulfilled legally. And that's why some of these things are either shifting or changing or required of DCF. And so I'm just wondering around that transparency around the different things that you're talking about, whether they're again, been mandated, what's sort of the timeline of these initiatives. And again, if I'm missing that kind of information or if it's all over the place and I'm not missing it but it's in different spots, I apologize but I'm curious about those things. No, I think that's wonderful. And I'm happy also to follow up. I swear I have a cheat sheet regarding ERD, that's well, the federal government refers it to refers to it as RED, racial and ethnic disparities but we know that that acronym has some racial connotations to it, so Vermont refers to it as ERD, ethnic and racial disparities. And I'm happy to send an overview so I know it's a lot of information to hear and needing to read it is really important. But the federal government requires DCF if we to perform these activities, essentially to address racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, as long as we continue to receive and receive this formula grant. If we were to choose to no longer apply for that solicitation, theoretically, we would be saying, nope, we don't want the money, we don't have to do this. And that's pretty typical with the feds, they'll link requirements and mandates to federal dollars. So essentially what just the kind of dirty overview is that DCF by accepting these dollars is saying that they will, one, gather this information. Now it's a little difficult because if you've noticed, arrest and diversion data and court data, et cetera is not actually owned by DCF. So most of the data we submit to OJJDP is via me gathering all of this information from our partners and then aggregating it and submitting it to OJJDP. And I'm not a statistician. So I have to admit, I'm very happy and excited about this future division of racial justice statistics that I'm hoping might be able to help gather this data for this federal report. I'm seeing Eton shaking his head, yes. So I'm very excited about it because I think it'll make my life a lot easier because there'll be one agency that theoretically has this data, but we're required to report this annually in our solicitation. And then when we receive the dollars, we are required to utilize at least a portion of the funds because the state advisory group does work on other juvenile justice system improvement areas on reducing these disparities. The feds don't necessarily say, hey, if you have a horrifically high rate of black youth who are arrested in Burlington, they're not saying that we have to focus on the area that has the highest disparity rate. They let the state advisory group decide based on the data what they wanna focus on. Essentially what the feds wanna see is that we are doing something and the state advisory group mainly has to be made up of non-state employees. So that is a really key piece to it as well because they don't want the state's agency, not just DCF, but other state employees to be really in charge of what and how we're going to address those disparities. And they're the supervisory group, which means they have full authority over the dollars. DCF can't decide to do something with those funds without that a group approving it. Does that help kind of clarify? And then I can follow up with an overview too. Yes, it's helpful. And I think that what would be really helpful is having that blurb before your report. So people really understand what is mandated and then what is, where things come from and what things are I think would be really helpful as people are looking at this information. Yeah, I'm happy to send that out along with the full data too before we go over it in the last. Okay. Okay, so this next piece is not just involving the JJ system. You know, custody rates obviously include child welfare and juvenile justice, but I did think it would be remiss to not include this report. So this was a UVM legislative report that was submitted, I believe this past fall that had a variety of different recommendations, not just for DCF, also for the courts, also for other entities that are involved in the system, but essentially it's one of the most relevant topics into our DAP is it's made it really clear that between the years of 2005 and 2018, Black, African American children were more likely than other children to enter custody. That is the dirty overview of what this is. They had some recommendations for us to minimize our decision-making bias. This is directly from that report. This is public and I'll put this right into the chat as well for those of you who are interested, it was submitted to the legislature. Some of the recommendations I have to admit I have some issues with, but they are right down here. They want us to be embedding training on decision-making, bias a new employee onboarding. They want us to implement blind team decision-making. That is the recommendation that I know are, we have a contractor here at FSD that works with us specifically with our racial equity work. And she went on high alert and she said, please do not do this. This has been shown to actually have really harmful impacts. Ignoring a youth's race can be incredibly harmful. So I do want to just progress this. And I will, as my role as co-chair of that group, continue to advocate that DCF should not implement that because of it. The third recommendation is that they believe we should be promoting a culture of data informed practice by FSD and the courts. And then they want us to engage the media to explain the impact of the sensationalized high profile cases. We see really common in the child welfare side of things when there is a death or something that really atrocious happens that is publicly reported on in the media. We will see a swing in custody and a swing in how our workers approach cases that are similar. And this is a phenomenon that happens, not just in for it is a phenomenon that happens nationally in the child welfare system. And it, you know, our social workers are human and react to the atmosphere that they are in. I do just want to preface this and I apologize because I realized I didn't say why this study was conducted to begin with. And that is that Vermont has significantly higher rates of custody than other nations. I don't remember off the top of my head but I think we're like number five in the nation for our percent of youth who are in custody in proportion to our population. So that is the end of my report. And I know I just threw a lot of information out there but I also know we're at 715. But I see Evan. Yeah, I just had a quick question about that last study, the UVM legislative report. I think I'm following along correctly but I could be wrong. It sounds like that's talking about children who are taken into custody in CHIN's cases as opposed to juveniles and young adults who are placed under the state's custody as part of a delinquency or a youthful offender case. Am I following that correctly? Yeah, you absolutely are. We, you know, Tyler and I went back and forth and whether or not to include this but you know, there is obviously a link between child welfare and the JJ system and Sheila not to put you on the spot but I know you mentioned it a lot especially in this group. So we thought it'd be really remiss to not include this especially since it is such a recent report and DCF is in the process of going through it. But yes, this information is way more relevant to our child welfare than our JJ system but it just shows that, you know, these disparities are within all aspects. It's not just, hey, these are the JJ kids we should only be focusing on them. And to be frank, you know, we see youth we'll see the same kid in both aspects of the system and we'll engage. So there are huge ramifications. And I see that the chat warrants an apology for using an acronym that maybe not everyone is familiar with but Rebecca beat me to the punch. Yeah, children in need of care and supervision. It's not necessarily when the child engaged in any wrongdoing where they need to be held responsible or found culpable. It's when, well as the name indicates they need assistance or their parents need assistance in making sure that they have all of the sufficient care and supervision that they need. Rebecca. Elizabeth, I wanted to thank you for adding all of this information to this memo. And we should clarify, I think, in that UVM legislative report in the writing that custody is, I mean, I don't know what your percentage breakdown would be when you talk about custody. I mean, I think of custody family division DCF as 90% chins, child welfare, 10% or less, juvenile justice. And so as Evan's point is, and it is important, like I like that you brought it in but let's make sure that people reading this outside of this meeting context can know that this is in the context of something different. General comments but appreciation that you're adding this because I think certainly from my perspective it has been hard to get reports and access to these. And I mean, the little details here like the New York Yaazi realization of lowering cutoff points has a direct impact on lessening disparities. I mean, to the extent that you can share those kinds of reports if they're public from New York I'd love to hyperlink it to this, right? Just because this is such a gift of that's what we're building here on top of it as sort of focusing our direction of where we go to next. My comment though pulling back in terms of what you're sharing on the substantive level knowing that and looking forward to sort of a deeper dive on the OJJDP annual report on disparities on those five data points for juvenile justice. I'd like, because I see why I was reading the recommendations closely. And I think it struck me particularly when I and I know people here haven't read those reports but when you read those reports and see the data and sort of what you write up, DCF writes up in response to those in those reports it strikes me that we should make sure we understand and land on what the problem is so that we can then make appropriate recommendations to fix those problems. Because my overall comment here is that the recommendations that I see here don't address what I think is the problem which is that we have an issue on disparities on enforcement towards youth of color and Vermont in particular counties, right? Disparate treatment of youth of color at the enforcement side and at the sentencing or custody side. And when we talk about this and you talk about this we focus on juvenile justice being family courts but what this reporting is showing is also how youth of color are landing in our adult criminal courts at a disparate rate from white youth. And so when we think about recommendations how we can focus on those categories straddling these two systems, right? So I'd hope that next time we around when you come and talk we can think about landing on what the problem is so that we can then focus on what the recommendation should be to address those. Yeah, Rebekah, it's so funny you bring that up. So, and I can go into so much more detail on this next month as well. You know, as I mentioned to Sheila with her question about like what are we required to do from the feds? And I said that, you know, the feds give the state advisory group really complete authority over to decide how they want to approach addressing those disparities. And as long as I have been involved in, you know I'm not an appointed member I support the group I'm the admin for the state advisory group and try to make what they want to do come to reality is they like to focus on more prevention than enforcement and law enforcement. And for probably for a variety of different reasons but I think that that is incredibly important to discuss in terms of RDAF. And especially if we're thinking about, okay, what are other groups doing and what is RDAF want to do going forward that is not being duplicative? And if RDAF wants to make recommendations to the state advisory group, I think that would be appropriate. I think there's a lot of different things that we could think about doing in engaging that work. So I'm actually really excited that you bring that up because that's something that I discussed with them pretty frequently about, okay, how are you going to actually reduce this rate? And do you actually think that this project is going to do that? Or is it gonna take 10 years because you're approaching it through the school system? And while that is incredibly important, it's also important to make sure that the youth who are currently in the system are not left hanging, that we're not only focusing on prevention, that we're focusing on prevention. So it's a conversation that is continuous and I have frequently and I'm excited to have it with this group. So thank you. Okay, anything else from anyone? Okay, Elizabeth, thank you. This is exactly what we've been hoping for. I mean, I'm certainly not trying to speak for Sheila, but she has been really leading a charge in this group for a long time about including JJ system and this really goes over the top. It's really lovely to see this level of granularity in detail. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Etan. I do just wanna say that I, so I actually put this report together a few weeks ago and I am realizing that it doesn't have our most recent race data for just entrance and custody. So I'm gonna put that in the chat right now as well. And keep in mind, and I wanna make it very clear, just as Rebecca said, that this is all youth who are entering custody. So this is JJ and these chins youth. This is encompassing of our entire overview, not just the JJ portion, but I will put that right into the chat. And it's for calendar year 2021. Great, thank you. Moving, in fact, backwards. I know that Susanna has come in and I would like, I had sort of had a preliminary chat with her about as it says in the agenda, what the RDAP will need to do in Ray facilitating the new division. She has some thoughts on that, things we need to be thinking about. And so I'd like to give the floor to her, Susanna. Great, thank you. Hello, good evening. Hi. And I am actually very happy when I can be brief and I can be brief here. And Elizabeth, we can still see your share. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. So yes, I can be very brief here. I just wanted to let the panel know that we have been thinking about how to streamline our communications with the RDAP and the Division of Racial Justice Statistics. As you know, the Office of Racial Equity currently reports to the Racial Equity Advisory Panel that was created alongside the Executive Director role back in 2018. And with the passage of Act 142, more commonly known to us as H546, we will now be reporting to not only that advisory panel but also to the RDAP and to the new RJSAC, Racial Justice Statistics Advisory Council. I'm trying to make that a thing. So we will now be reporting to three panels and two of you specifically, the RDAP and RJSAC would be about criminal justice-related data. So what I would like to do is just make sure that you all are aware, first of all, that that is going to happen. Considering, again, we have slash a point three seats on this panel. It feels a little bit weird to be reporting to oneself. But more importantly, I just wanted to know, it's not clear to me that the RDAP has ever been in a position to be reported to. That is to say, you've never really been in people's manager as far as I can tell. I hope I'm not being reductive. But so I just wanna know what it is that you all as a team want to see in this kind of reporting. I believe specifically we're supposed to report monthly to you. And also I think the RJSAC is also supposed to report to you on our activities, the whole thing is quite confusing, but it would be helpful for me to get a sense from you all about what you want that to look like. And I think I just took me three minutes to say something that basic, but that's what I'm asking. So we need to spend some time talking about that, about what we need from the groups that will be reporting to us. I am not convinced everyone has an idea of that because I'm sure not everyone's looked at the reporting requirements under Act 142. But if I'm wrong on that and people feel that they're ready to weigh in, please wait on in. Rebecca. Susanna, I have such a questions questions. I don't have answers yet either, but what are your reporting requirements supposed to begin? Excellent question. Please hold while we connect your call. I don't mean to put you under pressure. No, it's all good. Just give me one quick second. Okay, so this is the division. The division is gonna report to you on a monthly basis. It does not exactly say when that's supposed to begin. I guess whenever we start the work. Also, we are reporting in January to the legislature. And then I think the advisory council reports to you. And I think I heard somebody is gonna jump in there. I was gonna jump in. I beat Susanna to it because I wasn't talking. I was looking up the bill while she was talking. So members of the council, the Racial Justice Statistics Advisory Council, shall be appointed honored before November 1st, 2022. So there's a bit of lead time on that. And the Racial Justice Statistics Advisory Council has to report monthly on its findings to RDAB and on January 15th and 2023 and annually thereafter to the House and Senate committees on the judiciary and government operations. Thank you, Jay. Thanks, Jay. I just typed what you said and put it in chat. So we need to discuss how we want that to look, what that reporting should look like, okay? Again, I'm not feeling like that's necessarily a conversation to be had now, but it does mean that everybody needs to really look at the act and really think about what that means. What does that look like? What needs to be reported? In what ways? Those are the big questions that I think need to be answered. And there are a number of different ways of doing it depending on what we're reporting. So give some thought to that please because it will come up again next month. So I would recommend, go ahead. Thanks, A-Time. And I just want to clarify also my ask. What I don't want is for you all to tell me what the bill says because that's not your job, that's my job and I need to do that. What I'm really looking for from you is just what level of formality do you want? Like do you want a one pager every month do you want it delivered at your regular RDAP meeting? Should it be separate? Should it be in writing? Should it be just a casual report out for me when we meet? So that's kind of what I'm asking is how do you want all of this information? Ching? So I think the format probably would depend on what kind of feedback you want to have from RDAP. So I'm not sure that's to be discussed in the future where you actually have some rough idea of what kind of feedback or what RDAP will serve after seeing the report. Anything else? That's a great point. I would say it's probably a little early to tell only because this is all kind of a new endeavor. I would guesstimate that since RDAP generated the initial report and recommendation for this that I would look closely to you all just for a sense of whether you think that we're on the right track in terms of what data we're chasing. I also, one thing that I do like is that when we did this exercise of revisiting all of the past reports or recent reports part of that was to surface topic areas that we may want to consider for further exploration or to revisit. And considering that the data we get from the division of racial justice statistics is going to point us in the direction of certain upstream factors, that may also be a good point of intersection for the RDAP to consider because I remember in our conversations around this, one of the things we said was, well, it's criminal justice data, but it very much speaks to broader systemic and institutional problems that arise in housing, education, you name it, right? Elizabeth talked a lot about the pipeline, et cetera. So that also may be part of the feedback, which is help us identify the links that are worth chasing or delegating to sister agencies who have subject matter expertise. Right. And I'm just thinking now what I was about to say made no grammatical sense. Off the top of my head, I think a certain amount of formality, like a written document might be a good thing in just in terms of transparency in the same way that the minutes are posted to be able to post those reports as well. It seems to me is very important. That's just a brief take on that. Anyway, as I say, no one needs an answer right now. Think on this. Read Act 142, think on it, this will come up again next month. Recommendations for what that looks like, what's in it, et cetera, all right? Are there questions about that homework? Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you, Susanna. Witchie, can you talk some about what I'm just calling at the moment, the community safety review? Sure, I'll talk a little bit about it. Eitan, you're free to chime in. And I know Sheila, you know a lot of it, so you can also feel free to chime in. So essentially, we all know Brother Borrow did a community safety review. They had an implementation table, and when we met with the town manager and the chief, it seemed sort of things that stood out was like, you know, this report really centered marginalized folks and those who often get, whose voices are not heard, which was good. I think some limitations that we're needing to consider is that within that implementation, there were some things that were not possible at the town level or even legal within state or federal guidelines. And Eitan made a really good point of like, our DAP is a state, our focus is the state. So while it's nice to be able to look out what's happening specifically in Brother Borrow, we wanna broaden it up a little bit to see if there are common themes with other community safety reviews, such as that one that happened in Burlington and other areas. So we tried to meet as a follow-up not too long ago and that didn't work out, but I did send a new one to me to try to coordinate that. If you haven't responded, let me know. And if you have responded and haven't heard from me, also let me know. Yeah, so that's sort of like where we're going to go. I don't know that there is another step beyond that. So Eitan and Sheila, feel free to chime in or we can open it up also. Okay, Sheila, just if you wanna go, go. She said, got it, sorry, it takes me a minute to move. Now, we were just, I just had a conversation with Witchie earlier this afternoon where I was saying exactly what he said that we needed to broaden this out, but those issues that are being brought up in those reports might well be useful. It was frustrating, I think, for a lot of people. We weren't able to do the meeting for the subcommittee that we had planned. I suddenly couldn't be there. Somebody else suddenly couldn't be there, but I'm less frustrated about that now because it means we've all actually got some more reading to do of these reports from other communities that we can look at and get a sense of what the thinking is in these other places, so that this really can be a more statewide initiative. That is really about where we're at with that. And if others are interested in that, particularly since it's not just focusing on Brattleboro, that ought to be something that you should drop a lot, Witchie, is it okay if people drop a line to you like an email? Please. Great, thank you. If you guys are interested, if someone's interested in being on that subcommittee, just wanted to talk a little bit about its reframing that it really is going to be broader than Brattleboro and Wyndham County and you should drop Witchie a line in case that's something that interests you. All right, any questions, come. Oh, Jennifer Pullman's written something. Give me a second, I'm reading. I'm reading. Jeffrey, this goes back to what we were talking about with Elizabeth, yes? Exactly, exactly. Okay. I think that so many times what I hear from advocates who work in the system is that victims are basically not treated as seriously based upon where they, how they identify in their culture and their identity and they're brushed off and not given the same treatment that they should have been. And that happens definitely in the juvenile justice system. I mean, I've worked in that in Boston and I know what that looks like for different, especially young men, young black men and that things were handled differently when it was really a trauma situation versus an incarcerated piece. So I just wanna think about as we're doing this piece and I don't know how to gather the data because we don't but I just wanna think about how we brush off people that present with trauma, present differently than how we might expect the traditional victim to look like and how we handle that piece and how we don't and how are we supporting people? So I'm just thinking about, are we bringing people back into the system? Are we turning people away and then creating a system where they become back involved? So I just wanna think about that lens as well because I think that our system does a really poor job right now in terms of really thinking about how we support people who are presenting and looking for help and are not being supported. So just my thoughts moving forward, I'm not even a person on this actual panel but I just wanted to put that piece out there and I think it's an intersection. I think that people who are victimized come from trauma and then trauma presents itself as also people creating harm when perhaps if we'd done something differently then that wouldn't be the case. So I just wanted to put that lens on it from my perspective and just grateful to be a part of it. So again, I'm not a part of the panel but just happy to be here to just ask that we think about that as well. Okay, thank you. And we're not snobby about where we got our information. No, but it's hard because I've been thinking about this a lot but I don't have any data. So I just go by what I'm hearing from advocates who are doing the work is that there's not the same treatment when there's a report that comes in. There's a pushing off or as well, you deal with it, it's not the same treatment. And again, you all know I'm preaching the choir about the intersection between trauma and why people keep coming back into the system whether it's because they've committed harm or keep suffering harm. So just wanted to say again, thank you and that was my piece that I wrote about. Okay, thank you. Sheila. Okay, I guess I wanted to say something now. Thanks, Eitan. So I just wanted to let people know that if they are interested in the report, the safety committee report that Wiji is talking about, if you're interested in community policing, you might be interested in this. If you're looking for alternatives to policing, you might be interested in this. And if you're looking at alternatives to sort of that deconstructing of what safe and safety means, it might be interesting to you, this report. This report, I think it's like 264 pages or something. I can't remember, but it's anyway, it's long. And I want people to understand that this came, not only was this work done, but there's money attached to it to where what came out of this effort is not just the shifting and changing of the culture of how we do policing or how we think of safety within our community, but we're actually taking dollars to help implement things like that, like taking dollars that we once would maybe put to fund the police and putting that into what we're calling, whether it's mutual age or community policing or trying to figure out what can we do as the community, what have we done as a community to support each other in being safe? So if you're interested in alternatives to traditional policing and interested in how to maybe you could pilot this kind of study in your community, then I definitely please reach out to Wichee or if other people have some questions, they can also reach out to me. Okay, thank you. Okay, Rebecca, are you gonna hate me? No, never. But can I ask a follow-up question of Wichee and- Of course. Of course, if you would. Thanks for the, for a meeting with those guys and sharing. Let me, I'm trying to understand what your, what are your next proposed moves? Are you exploring sort of these similar initiatives in other areas? Next. That's what I proposed, but- Well, my understanding in Wichee, you can speak if you want, but my understanding is this was a brownaburr thing because we needed to do a brownaburr thing. But there is the opportunity to host this all over the state and to create the same thing. The facilitators who took us and guided us and meaning us, the community through this process were absolutely phenomenal. And if they, and they did it at a very, very low rate, but I really recommend either them or somebody doing something similar within their communities, I'm gonna do a shameless plug. We found out that the Root Social Justice Center was one of the number one places that across the board, no matter how people identified, said that we were a safer place for them and their people and their community. And it came out over and over again, what the community sees as safe, what they consider safe nets, where they consider where they get their resources. It was very enlightening and very interesting. And it really is not only shifting the conversation, but like I said before, it is shifting how we fund things here. And whether that's the actual peace department or indoor initiatives, or whether that's how we fund our human service or non-profit organizations that are actually the ones on the ground serving the people to create that safer community. Yeah, I agree with Sheila that a lot of great stuff came out of thought and really has affected even outside of the Root our approaches to just safety in general. And that kind of information allowed us to push back against some systems that were in place that weren't really helpful, but there wasn't really the data to back it up. When we were able to use those narratives, those experiences that collected a collective narrative to really push back against some things that were already there. I have thought, I have like really big hesitation against trying to replicate that for the whole entire state. I think that what we're gonna see is that it's different in every town, every county. And I was part of creating the RFP for that and was involved and the people who facilitated it, Sheila knows that I also know them. And honestly, it was like in six months, they worked like, it was crazy amount of hours that they worked. And I don't wanna repeat that process. I think it was a lot of good stuff that came out of it, but I think it might be worth it to explore things that are already done or people are wanting to do that things and seeing how we can support things that are already happening and bringing that information to the state and creating themes across these different reviews to be able to report on specific limitations or specific pathways or specific common themes that would be really helpful when we implement state policy. Jennifer. I just wanna ask Wichee and Sheila, is this the grant that we submitted the center with Chris Lucasic and Tracy on behalf of the project that in Wyndham? No, this is a separate initiative. Okay, all right, thank you. No, we have lots of good boilerplate ready to go. So we worked with Christopher and with Tracy as well. So just, we're happy to help in any way shape or form. So thank you for the clarification. But we've got language. Wait, can I get, Jennifer, can I get a clarification? Maybe I missed something. Are you saying that you've submitted a proposal to do this kind of review in different places or? No, we did a piece with Christopher and Tracy wanted to do the piece with the racial bias advocate. And we basically worked with them to submit the earmark request to Leahy and Welch and Sanders. And that did not go through, but we... Oh, for the resource advocate, got it, okay. Got it, thank you. Okay. Anything else on this particular topic, the community safety review and it's sort of statewide application. Okay. Again, if you're interested in looking at that, the ways in which it's been handled and other parts of the state, looking at the commonalities, please get in touch with Witchie because he is organizing the next meeting of that group since the first meeting didn't work, just because of people's schedules. Okay. Now it's time for Rebecca to hate me because the last group on the list is the second group, so-called subcommittee. And we've got 12 minutes and I don't know what we're gonna be able to do. This is gonna obviously bleed over to next month. Or if you wanna just wait until then, that's fine. I leave it to you, Rebecca. Why don't I take five minutes or less to give everyone an update on where that subcommittee, what we did and maybe make some suggestions since Adele will have a chance to fully discuss and decide whether we do wanna pursue it further. So, okay, going there, the group of us met a few weeks ago, two weeks ago on exploring the subject generally of what second look is comprised of, right? And you may recall last time, last meeting, we talked about how this recommendations reports memo was short on focusing on addressing people of color who have been already incarcerated, who are sitting in jail. And not just, and while we talked about adult courts, we left open the possibility of exploring this concept on in the juvenile justice side, including family dispositions and not necessarily in adult courts. So second look is a short way of saying, let's take a relook at what was previously ordered as a sentence of incarceration. It's a traditional way of looking at it. And so there are certain guidelines for when that's done, which populations you're focusing on. So as a subcommittee, we sort of reviewed sort of general trends across the country where legislation has already taken place, taken hold. We talked also about where model legislation also focuses on. We talked about how focusing on, and again, the premise is to address and correct errors that may have inadvertently happened at the time of sentencing, could not be corrected at time of sentencing or perhaps new information enters the picture. All these years later, while someone is serving a sentence on new information specific to that case, new information in terms of as a society policy priorities, why do we punish and have we changed our attitudes towards it, all sorts of things that allows sort of time to revisit, right? Focus has been on focusing on the most serious offenses, longest serving sentences, those serving life imprisonment, some have focused on age, trying to get to the youth, recognizing that youth children at the time of committing the underlying offense warrants special second look, given what we are increasingly knowing about science in the adolescent brain and how criminally responsible they should or shouldn't be based on that scientifically more advanced understanding, on and on and on. What we also talked briefly was we're not aware of any second look at legislation that is focusing on racial disparities, right? So we talked about that, we talked about how these laws have objective criteria set up so that try to strip away discretionary decision-making points along the way from the judges and stuff and how to protect all interested parties in that process. And so we talked about what Vermont has currently that's remotely close to it and the bottom line of that reveal was little to none. Like we have very little by way of current laws allowing for a review of sentencing, very short. We gave a little history of current or most recent reform efforts to change it and why they didn't go forward. We shared how sentencing commission for which I'm a vice chair and Judge Zone here is the chair has a similar subcommittee looking at the same issue. We talked about whether or not that would be duplicative. We talked about whether or not there was a role for us to play and whether or not we should be coordinated. We talked about second look legislations, duplicity in terms of other aspects of our system like post-conviction relief. So a lot of big legal issues where we landed was we as a group and Erin and others here who were on it, please speak up. And I think where we landed was we wanted to share that I think we had learned enough about it. I think we, before we dive deeper into what we want to do and by way of, but maybe zeroing in on priorities within those groups, like who do we want to focus on? Youth, youth of color, just youth of color, what types of offenses, all those types of things. Before we land on those details to which we can then sort of reach out to experts with the end game being of recommended proposed legislative language for the session. We also wanted to make sure the panel was interested in us pursuing this further. So that's the nutshell summary. We've got six minutes left. In terms of that last point that Rebecca raised that the subcommittee was concerned with, pursuing this further and what the panel's feeling is on that, could we have a little bit of discussion or at least commentary from folks on that? That would be really useful at this moment. I think it's essential, personally, go subcommittee. Just say it like that if you want. I agree, I agree. We talk about if we don't give a second look, then what are we doing here? Because I mean, so it's a no-brainer. Yes, we need to be looking into it and yes, we need to have it be one of our priorities. Got it. Thank you, Sheila. Anyone else? Can I add another little piece to Rebecca's excellent nutshell? Because we really did talk for a long time and it was a really dynamic and productive conversation. One aspect we talked about is what would this legislation look like and how would it work? And we talked about the possibility of restorative justice principles underlying the second look that players in the system embark upon so that we're also considering some of these other lenses we've all been talking about tonight. Like was this person a juvenile at the time? What about the victims? And that restorative justice can present that opportunity to be thinking about this from a holistic perspective because if we leave but just as an example, if we kind of look at it and we leave aside the victims, this is not going to be popular and it's not going to be something that communities get on board with and it's not going to be a meaningful, progressive response. Got it. Thank you, Erin. Okay. And what I think what I just wanna say is they're gonna be really neat moments of overlap. Erin was just talking about restorative justice and the second look commit subcommittee and Elizabeth was talking about that with looking at what needs to be done that got left out when we were talking about the juvenile justice system in the 2019 report. What I'm trying to point out is I think there's gonna be a lot of overlap. And I think also that there'll be a lot of opportunities for people even if they're not on a specific subcommittee to act as critics for that for the other committees to be able to put other eyes on what it is we do so that this report actually would be a very flushed out fully written thing that would include pros and cons which I think would be quite useful to the legislature and it is not something we did specifically with the 2019 report. So I just wanted to put that out as another thing that I've been thinking about on my own and then more as I've been listening through the last couple of hours. Okay. I'm just being thorough. Is there anything anyone else wants to be putting in? Cause we are winding it up. All right. We already know what some of the agenda is gonna be for next month. It's gonna be a continuation on the second look subcommittee. Elizabeth's gonna be getting a bunch of documents to us that we're gonna be looking at. I would like people to think about the kind and quality of the response that, I'm sorry, of the reports that we will be getting from the new division. That's one of Susanna's asks. So if you need to look at Act 142, do remember it is no longer H546. It is Act 142. I love how they do this. It's like, how can we make this as complicated and impossible to follow as possible? And by God, they did it. Yeah. But please look at Act 142 to get some answers to the questions that Susanna brought up. Any new business, cause we just did a lot of new business. Okay. Our next meeting is the 12th of July, next month. I will try talking with Robin Joy, see if she can come. Since she was one of the people we've just identified as being useful. And on that, does anyone wanna start a conversation about going home or like focusing on home? That was a really weird way of saying did someone wanna make a motion? I'll make a move to adjourn the meeting and to say happy Juneteenth to my people and to please donate to black owned organizations and businesses. Thank you, Sheila, for all of that. Thank you. Is that seconded by anyone? Yes, me. All in favor, please signify by saying aye and raising your hands. Aye. Aye. All opposed. And all abstaining. Motion is carried. Everybody have a great month and a lot of you I'll probably be seeing on subcommittees. So take care. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Bye. Be well, thank you.