 Let us just start. I think everyone who is going to be here is in fact here, if not, they will take care of themselves. Welcome to the August 2020 meeting of the Racial Disparities and the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Systems Advisory Panel. I would like, as always, to begin with introductions, which is always such a fascinating thing to do on this technology. Apparently, I've become famous for not being able to do it properly. Sorry, I'll just start. I'm Eitan Ness, Red and Longo. I am the chair, and then I'm going down a list I have here. Jessica, could you introduce yourself, please? Sure. Hi, I'm Jessica Brown. On our DAP, I was appointed by the attorney general as a community member at large, and I am also the supervising attorney of the public defender office in Chittenden County. Thank you. Chief Stevens, good to hear you. I think you're muted. Yep. I'm Chief Stevens from the Nalhegan-Avanaki tribe. I was also appointed by the attorney general, and happy to be with you. Christopher Loras. Hello? Yeah, I'm right here. Christopher Loras. I am with Crime Research Group joining Robin, who you'll be introducing in a little bit. Thank you. Susanna Davis, please. Hi, when I started this, I'm Susanna Davis, racial equity director for the state. I am here as an observer. Great. Jeff? Hi, I'm Jeff Jones, another appointee at LARCH. Hi, Julie. I have to say hi to Julie because she used to live across the street since yesterday she moved. Okay, thanks. Paul Gross, please. Hi, I'm filling in for Rebecca Turner. I work at the Defender General in Franklin County as a public defender. Thank you. Representative LaLonde? Laund. Yes, Martin LaLonde from South Burlington, and I'm joining just as an observer today. Thanks. Kristen McClure. Hi, I'm Kristen McClure. I'm the chief data officer for the state, and I'm listening in today. Thanks for having me. Pepper. Hi, James Pepper with the Department of State's Turnies and Sheriff's. Thank you. Jeff Pippinger. Good evening. My name is Jeffrey Pippinger. I'm the senior advisor to the Commissioner for the Children and Families. If I apologize now, I need to get off the call at seven o'clock tonight. Thank you. Ruben Jennings. Hello. Yes, how you doing? I'm Ruben Jennings. I'm with the Prisoner's Rights Office, and I'm here along with Paul and Jessica. Thank you. Gary Scott. Hello, Gary Scott. I'm the captain with the state police director of Farron and partial policing, and I'm the Department of Public Safety's designee to the panel. Julie Scribner, please. Hi, I'm Julie Scribner, captain with Vermont State Police. I will be attempting to replace Gary when he retires this fall. Thank you. Heather Simons. Hi, Heather Simons from the Department of Corrections. I'm a guest and observer. Great. Stephanie Seguino. Hi there. Stephanie Seguino. I'm on the racial equity advisory panel and just sitting in tonight. Thanks. Thank you. And then I have someone with the name of Unknown User, which tells us, you know, I don't even have a phone number for the Unknown User. It's probably me, Eitan. It's Robin. Robin. Hi. Okay. Hi. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Sure. So I'm Robin Joy and the director of research for Crime Research Group. Thank you. Monica. Monica Weber. Hi everyone. I'm Monica Weber. I am the Department of Corrections designee to the panel. Great. And then we have 802-505-9147. Yep. That's me. That's Robin. Sorry. Oh, never mind. There's someone else who's a mystery guest. Okay. That is everyone I have. Did I forget anyone? If I did, this would be a really good time to introduce yourself. Hey, Eitan. Yes. This is Becca. Am I your mystery guest? You may be. Okay. This is Senator Becca Ballant. I'm representing Senate leadership and I'm just listening in. Thank you. Great. Thanks. And Eitan, it's Representative Sarah Coffey joining you all. Thank you. Hi. I sit on House Corrections and I'm listening in as a guest. Thank you. Great. Anyone else that I don't have on my list and who hasn't introduced themselves? Okay. We move on to the announcements. I should point out that we do not have Judge Grierson this evening. Paul Gross is sitting in, as you know, for Rebecca Turner. Sheila Linton is unable to be here as well as is Jen Firipo. Julio will be late as Jeff Pippinger said he needs to leave early. I do understand that August should be a vacation, but of course, 2020 to say the very least is not a year like any other. The work on Section 19 of Act 148, the Justice Reinvestment Act, and that section, as I sent to you all, is on data, needs to be considered now, given the resumption of the legislative session, which I don't think I need to characterize for everyone as extraordinary. You're aware there are many legislators who are with us this evening. They clearly want to listen in on our conversation and perhaps certainly participate after the panel's discussion. I understand for the panel, this is not where we've been. You will recall that after our meeting last month, we had decided that we were going to take another dive at the report. That the report was going to be, we were going to take the recommendations that we came up with and make them more full, I should say, if not indeed fulsome, and in fact probably come to loggerheads about some of this, and that that was going to be the basis for an addendum for that report. For those of you who are listening in, that is where we have been, and that is where we were going. So that addendum that we were projecting last month, I'm afraid I'm going to have to table because the only person, well, let me not put that way, one person got back to me with recommendations for the recommendations. So it really doesn't give us much to move on. It doesn't really matter, however, because in fact what we are doing as the addendum that I sent you makes clear is we are going to talk about data, which as you recall was a major theme in the report. It was required by Act 54 of 2017, the act that brought the panel into existence. So we're not actually going in a different direction. I would suggest that we're getting to where we're going by a slightly different route. We need to discuss this in any event, and we have certainly gotten a request from various legislators to move in this direction right now. So I think it behooves us to do so. I think that's all I need to say about this, and then we move on now without much to do to the discussions. And I'd like to start with Jessica Brown. If there are no questions, I should say, I'm being bad teacher here and just bombing through my lecture notes. Is there anything anyone needs to or like to put in at this moment? My God, this is bizarre. There is no one in my room that I'm asking questions. I guess of the rhododendron. Thank you. We're moving on to the next item, which is an update on the search for the Executive Director of the Vermont Police Academy, and also an update on a meeting of the Symposium of Racial Equity Work Groups, which certainly involves this panel. And the person who's going to bring us up to date on that is Jessica Brown. So take it away, Jessica. Thank you, Aiton. You make it sound much more dramatic than it's going to be. It should be pretty brief. So I'll start with there's a hiring process going on for the Executive Director, and I want to get it right, which is why I'm scaring at my file, the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council Executive Director. And Aiton was contacted as the chair of ARDAP to participate on the hiring committee and bring along one other member of the ARDAP panel, and he asked me if I would do it, and I said yes. So he and I, and actually other people on this call, I know Curtis, maybe Ingrid and or Gary, were involved on the committee as well. Those of us who were on the committee interviewed for candidates, and the process is still going on. So I'm not going to name names or identify anybody or give disclosed details because it's a confidential process, but two people were moved forward. And I do think I can say that there was a real strong consensus about one candidate in particular who happens to be a black male, which would be, you know, I mean, he was qualified for many, many reasons. And the fact that he is an African American man, I think I'll just say for me personally, I think could be a real bonus and a real, a real just benefit to our state at this point in time. And I will also say that whoever gets the position, I think is really going to be open to hearing from a lot of different voices about our interests in reform, in policing in Vermont. And I don't know if that would be something that our panel would engage in with that person or, you know, there are a lot of other groups that might be more appropriate. But so I think that's really my only update about that. If anyone else on here from that committee has any other details that they think are important to share, like I said, that hiring committee, that was like the first stage. And two people were moved forward. And I honestly, I'm not super sure of the timing of the rest of the process for them, but I think it was going to move fairly quickly. So I hope that we'll hear, you know, in the next in coming weeks or month or two about a decision about that. And I would say that both candidates that got moved forward were me very exciting. So if anyone, does anyone else on this call want to add anything about that process? Okay. Then the other thing I'll just mention is, and I'm going to try to be really precise because Susanna Davis is very precise about what she calls this group. But it is a symposium of racial equity working groups, I guess, is the best way to describe it. And it's very informal. It is not an official committee or panel in any way. But it is basically an effort to get together people who are on various racial equity groups like RDAP, like fair and impartial policing, like REAP, which I cannot remember what it fully stands for, but the group Stephanie's from, Bo Yang comes to the meetings from Human Rights Commission. So it's really, like I said, an informal effort to have various groups that are working on, you know, similar and closely aligned racial equity and justice projects to kind of make sure that or well to to educate each other about our efforts to make sure that nobody's reinventing the wheel, that we're not all doing the same thing, that we're not doing duplicative work. But one of the things that came out of our most recent meeting that is relevant to this panel is that we, members of a lot of different groups that were participating in the most recent meeting of the symposium kind of identified. Frustration sounds a little too negative, a concern, I guess, and I'm actually going to read from some of the minutes really briefly. Members expressed concern and frustration regarding their collective reporting mandates and the sense that their outputs are not utilized effectively. Members consider jointly drafting an open letter to the legislature on this topic but would need confirmation from all the respective work groups to take this action. So what we talked about was sort of, you know, events since May really after George Floyd was killed in Minnesota really have spotlighted and highlighted the need to address certain issues around racial equity and justice in Vermont and the legislature has really shown an interest in addressing some of those issues and we're going to talk about some of that as we move forward tonight. But there was definitely a feeling among a lot of the representatives of various agencies and committees and panels that were participating in this symposium that, you know, we want to make sure that the work that we've already done, that the reports that we've already submitted to the legislature are being considered and utilized effectively. So certainly we don't need to do it tonight, but I think a conversation that this group can have probably next month is about whether we want to participate as a panel in any sort of letter addressing those concerns or whether, you know, it's not going to be something that we have consensus on and maybe have to do as individuals or, you know, or somehow in conjunction with our thoughts about submitting any addendums to our previous report work that we've already submitted to the legislature. Susanna or Etan, do you have anything to add to that summary? All right. Then that's all I have. Thanks. Okay. Susanna, did I hear you in the background? You did. I was just thanking Jessica for a great summary. I have nothing else to add. Okay. Thank you. And thank you, Jessica. That was great. Questions? Comments? I have a question. Was there any discussions or concerns around the numerous amount of committees that seem to be doing the same work or overlapping? You know, we had talked about this in our committee when we were doing our reports is that it seems like there's always a task force created or someone to inquiry about making recommendations or, you know, they pop up and it's like there's a lot of overlap or trying to figure out who's responsible for what. I was just wondering if there was any concerns about either trying to work together, all of us work together or if there's or how do we collaborate in order to, so we're not duplicating efforts. Jessica, do you want to take that or Susanna, you have your hand up. Thank you. Yeah, Chief. I'm 100% with you. It's really startling, I think, the first time that you look at the list and see all the groups that are doing some kind of work around racial equity. And so the two meetings that we had in this quote unquote symposium have touched on the fact that there are so many groups and another group was created between our first meeting and our second meeting, which is the racial equity task force. And so the short answer is yes, there has been discussion about that. And I think part of it is us working together. And one of the things that I'm really pleased about is that the people who have been coming to these meetings have said let's do this quarterly so we can stay updated on one another's work and progress so we're not duplicating efforts so we can read each other's reports and lift them up appropriately. So yes, one of them is we want to collaborate. And the second thing is that it helps us guide and keeping in mind that we have esteemed reps from the General Assembly here. I don't want to be presumptuous, but I think in some sense, us having a good picture of the landscape of all these groups and working together helps us guide them when they consider creating another group. It makes it easier for us to say well, actually, we and two other work groups are already doing this work, you may consider some alternate paths, not to presume to tell them how to do their jobs, but I think it's it's it's a way to manage up so to speak. Can I add one more thing quickly just to say this, as I said at the outset, it's a totally informal gathering of people who want to get together to compare what our different groups are doing. So certainly anyone who wants to add another quarterly meeting to their schedule should feel free to come. And I'm sure Susana could give you the date of our next get together. Great. Okay. Any other questions, comments? Four, three, two, one. Moving on. I did forget one announcement and this is critical for the panel. You will recall that we are we were talking about basically reintroducing the report given the frustrations that we were feeling around its reception or lack thereof after December 4th of last year. You may recall that Attorney General Donovan was at our last meeting and was listening in. He has been able to arrange a press conference for us and also to secure the attendance of Senator Dick Sears. That is going to happen pretty much at our pleasure, honestly. We need to figure out a good date. And to that end, I, yes, I, the person who does not understand how to turn his computer on, is going to come up with what I believe is called a doodle poll. And we will figure out a time because I'm smart and can figure this out. And I will send that around sometime this coming week. I just want you to be aware of that. We're going to try to figure out a time that as many of us as possible can show up. We'll make other determinations when I see how many of us can be there. But that's where I'd like to start. So I just wanted to announce that, that that has come to be, come to pass. Moving right along, let's get to Act 148, Justice Reinvestment 2, I guess. And I would like to ask James Pepper to take over because he knows about this and he's been actually working on it and preparing for this. So, Pepper, please. Okay. And I'll just, I would like to just start by saying there's a lot of members on this panel that work very closely on this piece of legislation. So I'm certainly not the only one that could speak about it, but I will start out by just kind of giving some background about the bill and then talking specifically about Section 19, which enlists the racial disparities panel as well as some specific stakeholders, including Zuzana Davis and CRG. So just, I think this panel will probably remember last year we talked about the kind of steady drumbeat in the legislature about eliminating the need for out-of-state prisons for the Vermont incarcerated population. And that culminated in a call for a tri-branch call, including, you know, key members of the legislature and the governor's office and the Chief Justice calling for the Council of State Governments to come in and do a deep dive into our prison population and try and formulate strategies for reducing the number of our incarcerated population. So CSG, Council for State Government, is a think tank that, based out of, I think, D.C. in New York, and they offer technical assistance to state governments for these sorts of policy initiatives. They came in to Vermont and worked very closely with a working group that included legislators and members of the administration and members of the judiciary to look at, you know, strategies that might be helpful in reducing our prison population. Their main finding, I think, the high-level finding that gets repeated a lot is that 78 percent of the sentence corrections, the sentence admissions into the prison population are from technical violations either through, these are violations that don't constitute a new crime for people that are on furlough status, parole status, or probation status. And so the idea of justice reinvestment, and this is actually our second time through this process, is to make investments that are targeted at reducing recidivism on the front end and then using the eventual savings in the corrections budget to, you know, backfill those initial outlay of funds. So what we have in the justice reinvestment bill that passed Act 148 is a $2 million investment in programming, in housing, in just investments that are targeted at reducing recidivism. And then you also have a number of policy initiatives that are targeted at creating more due process around things like furlough or parole violations. And so all that's great. And I think, you know, there's some real transformative things that we're going to be doing in Vermont that no other state has even contemplated, which is pretty exciting, I think. But then there's also this idea that we need to be thinking about what's next. And part of that is this Section 19 group, stakeholder group, that, you know, Aiton shared with you the exact legislation. I'm just going to review it quickly with everyone right now. So the membership of this stakeholder group includes the racial disparities panel, and then a bunch of people that are on the racial disparities panel, including the Chief Superior Judge, Brian Greerson, the Attorney General, the Defender General, Department of Corrections, State Detainees and Sheriffs, but then also the Crime Research group who's represented here today, and Susanna Davis, the Executive Director of Racial Equity. So I'm really glad that everyone is here today, because I kind of see this as maybe just a preliminary discussion and initial convening of this group. And so what is the group supposed to do? And I'll just kind of give my own version of it, but you all have the language. We're supposed to look at all of the existing data points that we collect throughout the criminal justice system that explore the relationship between demographic factors and sentencing outcomes. Now, the way that I read that is, let's look at those high discretion, high impact decision points that happen from the time of the initial stop, police stop, all the way through to the time when an individual is no longer in state custody, whether that's at the end of the police stop, or whether that's when DOC is releasing them. Some of the data points are spelled out in the legislation. You know, they're looking at plea agreements, sentence types and length, criminal history, offence severity, but then the legislature also asks us to think about any other metric that may further explain or help elucidate why our incarcerated population of minorities exceeds their kind of demographic representation in the state. The legislation asks us further to just look at the current data systems and find where they're insufficient or where we need additional analysis. And then very importantly for me is what staffing and resources are needed to support a more robust reporting. So that was the initial charge. And then throughout the course of debate on this bill, it seemed like, well, okay, we're gonna do this analysis and figure out what data we have and what data we need in order to kind of help explain some of these disparities that we're seeing. But what if we see something very obvious right off the bat where we could make a recommendation outright? Why do we have to wait for us to come back with this report and then why do we have to wait for the legislature to act? It could be two years before something that might be obvious to us at this first blush gets acted upon. So then the legislature added a subsequent section that said perform an initial analysis of sentencing patterns across the state to identify where the use and length of incarceration might result in or exacerbate racial disparities and make any related proposals for legislative action. So and then what's gonna happen from there, I didn't include this, but if anyone wants to just do a deeper dive in Act 148, we need to present our findings and our recommendations by December 1st to both the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee, which is a committee made up of members from the House and the Senate. It's mostly the leadership from the House or from the Judiciary Committees and the Corrections and Institutions committees with other folks mixed in. We need to make recommendations to them by December 1st, but we also have to make recommendations to the Sentencing Commission, which again a lot of members of this committee are participants in that as well, for them to look at immediate changes in sentencing structures that might be exacerbating racial disparities. So it's a complicated project and honestly, we don't have a lot of time. I hate to say December 1st, you know, if you think about it, what do we have, you know, just a handful of meetings between now and then three meetings. And the way that I see it is, you know, we might need to call in some experts on how to do this right, especially with respect to that resourcing issue. And, you know, I think that I would just, if I could just say there is already a, as we all know, there is already a data requirement, a data collection requirement for law enforcement agencies and the fair and impartial policing sections of the statutes. And I think, you know, if we can recall back to Professor Seguino's report to us when she came into our council, there are some efficiencies in that process. And it's been around for a couple of years now that we want to make sure that we learn from those mistakes and get this right, because you just run the risk of making incomplete, you having incomplete information, and we just need to, you know, what I have been telling the legislature from, you know, committee to committee is, you know, we need to have a consistent, high quality data collection, where one, where we're coding things, you know, state's attorneys are coding the same things the same way that the police are, and the, and the state and the USC is coding things the same way that the state's attorneys are, and the courts are doing the same thing. Otherwise, it's really hard to draw conclusions and track, you know, a single case, as it's from the starting point to the ending point, unless these agencies are all able to kind of integrate their data with one another. So with that, I mean, I'm happy to answer any questions on this piece of legislation specifically, but I think that, you know, given our tight turnaround, this section 19 requires some conversation from this group. Thanks, Pepper. This is Bob, and can I address some of the data questions or do you want me to wait? Give me one second. I might wear well right now, but I know that Monica was thinking of something and I wanted to give her a moment in case she had raised her hand. And I just want to see if Monica is, do you still have something you want to bring up or did you? Well, I was listening to Pepper give the overview of the bill, and mostly what the thing I wanted to mention is not related to the report, but he did mention a $2 million appropriation that came with this bill. But in fact, that appropriation has not been added to S338. And so I understand that I know there are some legislators on the call that there was an intention to try and find that. But at this point, there is no implementation money for all the other aspects of Act 148. Can I ask a question of you? So that was in there was actually the very specific funding request. And as the act now exists, it's not, correct? The act that was passed and signed by the governor does not have that appropriation in there. Sounds like first recommendation to me, but okay, thank you. Robin, you wanted to please Sure. So I guess a few things. One, I sent out to Aton and I had posted it in that data summit meeting. A list of what's a data request and what's a research question. This actually came out of your panel when I was there last time explaining internet security agreements and all the stuff that we have to go through to do research. And this was just a kind of handy guide of what are public data? What can you download now? What can we look at? And how can we do this? And so to answer some of the questions or at least also into kind of why we're in this bill as CRG is because we actually have already received funding to do some of this work and have started the process on the on the security agreements and the data sharing agreements to get at some of these questions. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has awarded us through DPS several research projects that address the issue of race and disparities. One in particular has been underway for a year and was scheduled to be kind of complete before the pandemic hit. And that is DOC. We have an agreement with them. They gave us data on everyone who was incarcerated at a point in time, including their risk assessment scores, age of the age of the Cayman as marital status, age of highest education obtained, et cetera. Then what I did is I pulled their criminal histories from Vermont because we have a research agreement with VCIC to do that. But what we know from further research is that those out of state criminal histories are a problem. They're used a lot in our system and impact sentences. So I need to access those in order to really get at the root of the problem. And we have begun that process with the FBI. We have what's called IRB approval. The FBI IRB has approved my research design and my security agreements. We're now waiting for NLETS, which is the national... So for you guys that see criminal histories on a daily basis, what happens is a computer pings all 50 states and comes back with this jumble of stuff that you get. We have an agreement. We're working with NLETS to get all of that electronically, which would be nice. The last time they sent me data, it was 10,000 actual pages of criminal histories that I had a blackout and get college students to code, et cetera. But we have an electronic process in place to do this. And then we have hired... We've taken some of the money that the feds have given us to pay an organization to create the scripts in R, which is open source. And so anyone will be able to do this afterwards to code all those criminal histories. Like I said, this was already in process, which is one of the reasons why we're there, because we're able to answer a lot of these questions with that data. But because of the pandemic, we're behind on that one. The other thing I wanted to address was the NIBERS data, which has been in use for 30 some of years in Vermont, is audited, has some problems, but it's better than the traffic stop and race data. From that data, I have the incident number. And I can track that incident number into the data that we get directly from the courts. I can also then get the docket number and track that into DOC data. So we have an ability to actually track people across the system. It's not elegance. It's not instance, but it can be done. So I do want to say that there are some data points that are available right now and that we will be beginning that work on. There are some data points that we haven't worked with. So at the Sentencing Commission, I was asked about plea bargaining. And the answer is I'd have to pull a lot of paper files, read all of the narratives, come up with a coding scheme with the victim cooperative, for example. All of the myriad of things that go into a charging decision and then analyze the data that way. What I do have access to is what the original charge was and what the final charge was and what the sentence was. So we can do some things by proxy, but the deep dives do take a lot of a lot of work. So that's just a quick primer on the data. Does anyone have any questions on that? I know that Gary Scott has his hand up. I'm not sure. Gary? Yeah, I guess I wanted to piggyback off what Pepper was saying about the rollout of data and traffic stop data. And, you know, Stephanie's on the line and Robin's on here. And I think they could also just say that the inconsistencies of the starting of the reporting of all this data, I think very clearly leads back to we never funded properly how to train law enforcement to consistently put this data in correctly. And we still see those problems today. And that's 2014, from 2010 to 2009, to the start of this process with the uncommon alliance of how we actually captured traffic stop data. All the way till today with the state police is we're still having station commanders fix data that is being entered in by the road trooper and still a huge amount of inconsistency and uncertainty of how to actually put this all in. And we've also get more and more requests about what we want from a traffic stop. And I think really the upfront part of anywhere where we go with this data, there has to be a significant amount of time and effort put into people capturing it correctly so we can understand really what we want and what we want to get out of this data. And that has just been, the ball in that has been dropped so badly when it comes to traffic stop data that it's unfortunate and it's difficult to deal with in the paints of picture that is not accurate when you're looking at it in a lot of different ways. And I just, I guess I hopefully would just reiterate the fact that the pepper said is that we really want to make sure we're doing this right from the start and learn from our mistakes. Okay, thank you. Robin, I have a question that I think you and possibly Professor Saguino could weigh in on here, not to put you on spot, but it sounds to me as though, first of all, that the deeper dive is necessary. I mean, I could certainly say that from my involvement with the traffic stop data that it was a mess, frankly, when it first started. If that's in fact the case, and I mean, I was listening to you, I hope carefully, it sounds like you don't even have the resources to do that dive. Is that correct? That's a tricky question. I'm sorry. So here's what I do have funding for through BJS. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, we're here is that we've been listening to for a long time and trying to get a grasp on what is driving these disparities, especially in the facilities. So here's what we have funding for. One is that big study that I just told you about about just let's track back to the circumstances of the offense to the prior criminal histories. Let me do some math, because as I have said in this body before, I'm not entirely convinced that the use of criminal histories, especially coming out of police departments and areas where we know that there's been blatant racism, we're still using those criminal histories in our criminal justice system here. And I'm not sure that that's appropriate, but at least want to document that and let you all decide that. So to do the qualitative study, to really get in on the plea bargaining, no, we don't have funding for that. We do have funding on another project that will be a part of this that is about the alternative programs. And this came out of a discussion with the Vermont's Commission on Human Rights, Curtis's, the federal baby. And we were having this really great discussion and knowing what I know about the data for our alternative programs like treatment courts and so on, those programs that divert people from the criminal justice system may not be serving people of color at the rate that they could be. And so that compounds the problem. And so we have a grant that's looking at that right now. That will be done relatively soon. But here's the kicker. I can tell you that most of the community justice centers aren't collecting race data of the people that they serve. So I have to triangulate that through the criminal histories or through other data sources that I have to try to identify the race of the participants. But that one we should have done by the end of the year. But yeah, in order to do the type of data integration that I've heard talked about, you need to fund it. In order to do the really good qualitative analysis, which I think needs to be done, that needs to be funded. Thank you. I have a follow-up, but anyone else? I have a question, Anton. I don't have the option to raise my hand, so I have to just ask for forgiveness. I have a question for Pepper. I know you had mentioned that part of the committee was providing reports to two entities. But if you saw something blatant that could be corrected, you would lean towards maybe being able to go to those departments potentially so they could make changes because of the length of time it takes to get through the legislative process. Is there provisions to be able to do that if the departments are receptive to those recommendations to make changes or is that frowned upon because they want an overall view of how a recommendation might affect something else? So in other words, they have to look at the totality of the data instead of the departments deciding what's best. I just want to make sure, A, there's not a restriction for you that you only have to provide for these two entities, but B, what are the safety nets or safeguards in place to make sure they're following the recommendations that you want based on what you're providing? Does that make sense? I think I understand, and there's certainly the ability of executive branch agencies, including corrections and the state's attorneys and under general's office and whomever else to make corrective actions immediately. They don't need to wait for legislation unless what the corrective action contravenes some other piece of legislation. We said that the race data that they're collecting isn't making any sense. They can't just stop collecting it. They have to do that. But no, there's nothing that would prevent an agency if they decided something was a good idea to start doing it right away. The legislature included that second section. Again, this is my interpretation, something that's hard to pin down legislative intent, but it was my reflection on their intent that if we saw something that required legislative action, we shouldn't be shy about including it in the report, the December report. Originally, this was a race data collection report without any sort of real recommendations about statutory changes. But if we saw something, we shouldn't be shy about including it. I think that was the impetus behind that change. We do have legislators on the phone or on this call that could certainly chime in if they wanted to about what their intent was in including that. But that was my impression. Yeah, for example, I just wanted to use the fact like in our committee we talked about when it comes to tickets, for instance, that it's kind of at the judgment of the trooper to kind of judge what the race of the person is. And we were thinking, could it be at the bottom of the ticket where the person would fill it out themselves? And that may be great for Vermont State Police, but it might be good for the other agencies to do that too. The local police to share, all that. So that was kind of an example that maybe the State Police could make the change, but it might take legislative action to make sure all the departments do it or something like that. That's right, right. Exactly. Anyone else? Comments? Questions? I have one for you again, Robin. Thinking out loud, which is always disastrous. Would you be, you're doing, I mean, you're the research arm of this entire proceeding, correct? Yeah. Okay. So it feels to me, and I could be wrong, that what might serve you best to do the research is for this body with its sort of far-flung expertise to perhaps make some kind of list of these high-impact, high-discretion moments to speak with you about them and get some grasp of perhaps what it might take to do that. And when I say that, I'm also speaking about like money. Sure. Is that? Yeah, I mean, I can certainly, and I think, you know, the legislator who just spoke, and I'm sorry, I'm on the phone as well, so I can't see who's speaking brings up a good point. And so one of the things I think that we have to map out that I perhaps haven't mapped out well for you is where the race data in particular comes from and how it gets transferred from one agency to another, and what gets lost in the transfer process. And so who is, so for example, I was looking at a file today out of the new Odyssey system on the court filings that the court is going to. And ethnicity was all blank. And I was expecting that because ethnicity is actually all blank in our criminal histories as well. And it's a data transfer process, a problem that we have to fix. And so even some of those tiny fixes can be helpful. And I can help map people, I can help map out for people where the data lie and what it does tell you and what it doesn't tell you. So yeah. And then I think from there, you can make the decisions on what is worth the public investment on. So you can make a document that would actually outline those things for us? Is that great? I mean, it sounds like a lot of work. Well, it's all in my head. I mean, I just want to download my head. That's fun. I don't know. Kristen, can you download my head yet? I'll throw it over to Kristen. Yeah, so it's all in my head. And so I can tell you what the risks are for the various data things. And I can go back and do what I call validation interviews with the people who like, you know, the Niber's auditor and with my connections at the court. And DOC is always so helpful. And I'm being honest. So people really do have a vested interest in getting these data to be accurate and out there. So yes, it's actually pretty, it's not as, yeah, it's bad I can do. Okay. Before I charge ahead with my thinking, anybody else? Okay. What I'm thinking, and you know me, I'm like action points always. If, if that document could come forth and then be disseminated, and that's me, to the panel, that it would seem would be where the next meeting next month has to go is outlining those points that would give us some structure for recommendations, because I don't know, it's seeming to me that this is all coming back to a question of funding, that if we had a sense of where the looks, the long looks need to be directed, we then not only have a sense of what the, what the panel would recommend to the legislature in the, at the beginning of December, but also frankly, how much money it might cost. Is that unreasonable? A-Tan, I have just one, and maybe this is something I could just throw out to the panel, maybe someone else, maybe Robin, you know, but you know, in 2019, Connecticut passed SB Senate Bill 880, which became public law 1959, that was a data collection bill, and it had a fiscal note on it, and you know, it laid out all of the things that people wanted to see collected, and then the prosecutors got together and they came up with a fiscal note and said, you know, cost X number of dollars. It was their first report was supposed to come out July 1st, but I actually just haven't, I called one of my, you know, I called the prosecutor in Connecticut and asked them how it was going, but I haven't heard back from them yet, and I'm wondering maybe Robin, do you know, but that could be a starting point, but Robin, do you know the status? Yeah, I haven't seen the report. I am familiar with Connecticut does great work. Yes, so I can certainly reach out to people that I know down there on some of the work that they've done, and one of the things I'm thinking of is I'm hearing this, is that maybe what I will also do is, because I think, you know, one of the things that goes to that fiscal cost, for example, you know, when I set up an agreement with DOC to get something that's beyond their original data reporting cons, you know, I have to pay for somebody to write that report. I think pepper, it's going to be the same thing for your for your system that you've got a bunch of standard reports that you can run, and then if it's something deep, we're going to have to pay your vendor to do it. That was what I heard the last time I talked to your vendor. I don't know if that's still true. Okay, so I think we need to start with those high discretion points that people are talking about. But I also want to point out that structural racism isn't just about the individual discretion points, it's the structure. So we also have to be thinking broader, I think, beyond just those individual discretion points, but really getting at these questions, what, you know, where does the data live, what is the cost to get it out, and what does that look like? So I can start that process if people want to feel any questions about different aspects of the system that you want answered. I can do that. I would just note, sorry, Anytime, I saw you taking a breath there. No. I would just note also that, you know, the state's attorneys have actively been looking at alternative case management software. And so this is a good time for us to start at the ground level and kind of build the system that we're looking for. And it's one that's fully integrated with the judiciary's new case management software. So that it's one step in the right direction already. Wow, didn't you guys just get your new software? A couple years ago. Okay, well, that was quick. All right. And it's the defender out of curiosity, since we have defenders on here. Is the defender general also thinking of moving on from that case management system? I can tell you that they've been in the initial conversations just as we have, but it's been very initial. Okay. Good to know. Thank you. You had a question or a comment or something? A contribution. I had a comment. I had, yes, a contribution. I like the way that sounds. And some of us are also on this other group, the National Criminal Justice Reform Project, that's also, you know, it's run out of public safety. Well, because I feel it's Robin and Pepper and, you know, others of you who are part of that probably, this conversation sounds familiar to that project as well, which is how do you take criminal justice data from disparate systems and bring it together so that you have a set of data that's going to answer sort of these, you know, really deep, deep questions. And I'm just wondering if there's some synergy here, because with the Department of Public Safety Project, or the NCJRP project, I think it's trying to do, and Robin, correct me if I'm wrong, is thinking about really what is the foundational IT structure to put into place? You know, how can you take data from different places and bring it together and store it in a way so that then you can combine data sets? And I think there's an overlap here, but so I just wanted to sort of bring that into the conversation. So we submitted on that project to let people know what it is. Part of it is this data integration. Part of it is testing the Arnold Pre-Trial Assessment Tool that predicts whether somebody will failure to appear, commit a new crime, or commit a new crime of violence. It doesn't work for Vermont, but we still have to do this other stuff too, which is the data integration. Where we kind of left off, but this was because before Kristen joined, so we were in that limbo for a while with the data structure. One of the things that we put in our plan that was approved by the Department of Public Safety and other people like Monica and other people read into it, ADS, certainly the start and just to give you an example how a decision can be made that affects everybody's downstream research. So the judiciary changed the way that they coded probation and split sentences and didn't tell us, didn't tell anyone. And so I go to run a report and it turns out nobody was sentenced to probation in 2019, which is wrong, but nobody told us that they changed it. And so then when they changed it, we have to go back. VCIC changed some data that they shared and that didn't work. So getting people to communicate about their systems and what they're changing is also something that we're recommending that you don't operate in a vacuum. Other people use your data, so yeah. But now that Kristen's here, we can talk about that integration. Okay. Anyone else? Comments? Questions? This is the time. We're gonna come up with an action plan by the end of this meeting. Okay. Robin, what would you need from this body to produce the work that actually synergistically we need to go forward with our work? Sure. Well, if you just, we're just talking about the, you guys give me questions that you want answered from the data and I tell you what we can and can't do. That may be a good, I encourage people to look over that sheet that I did put together of like what's the data request and what's researched to get an idea. So that, because it does live inside my head and I do have to get it out someday, that's that I can get to you by, if people get me questions by the end of next week, I can get it to you by the time you meet next. Okay. Can I ask you, Robin, can you get that document back to me because I don't remember getting it? Okay. Yep. I will send that on to you and you can share it. That doesn't mean it didn't come. Okay. Thank you. And then I can get that back to the, to the panel. Pepper, you had some interesting thoughts that you shared with me about how to proceed. Would you be willing to sort of make that more general right now? Because I think we have to, I mean, you've been very clear as is the legislation. We really don't have very much time to do this. You had recommended to me next month that we should have a meeting with our experts. I would very much like to start drilling down on, okay, we want these data points collected consistently from the moment. And I am oversimplifying this because believe me, there are people like some of the people on the call tonight that specialize in this. And I'm coming at it as a layperson who, but I think that what we need if we're going to have a report by December 1st is to start to vote at least some portion of next meeting to listening to people that specialize in data systems tell us, like, okay, like you want to collect, you know, every time there's a plea agreement offered or any time that there is a diversion referral, and what is the outcome of that case long term, you know, that we're going to need to start hearing from some legitimate experts, including, you know, even my IT director to say what are the capabilities of our data, what are our case management system, what are the capabilities of the one that we're looking at, so that we can start putting some dollars behind what we're going to do and how we're going to collect it. I mean, I think a lot of the decision points that we're talking about fall on prosecution. But there are the kind of the law enforcement end and the corrections end and the sentencing in the court's perspective where we're going to need some integration. I don't know, like, it's sounding to me from what I'm hearing that that's a very expensive proposition, but it sounds like if we really want to track a case from beginning to end, that there's going to have to be some form of integration or some at least consistency in the way that we code things. Okay. It's not very helpful. I understand that, but like, you know, my advice would be to start like drilling down on who we need to talk to and get them set up for the next meeting to really bring in some people that think about these things, including CRG, including Stephanie Seguino, including Kristen McCor, about how how would we do this, including Monica? It's our hand pop up. Yeah, Monica. Only when my hand pops up. Pepper, you said something. I think it was Pepper or Robin. I can't remember. One of you said something that just sort of sparks an idea because I think one of the goals of this work is, as you say, sort of mapping someone from beginning to end. And I feel like in other projects that I've done that it's been really successful to map out the process, map out the decision points, and have that map available. And then at those places where there are decision points, you understand, okay, here's a place where we could actually maybe get some data. That's just the way I think in terms of the way that I like to approach things, it might not work for everyone else. I'm just thinking about a way to structure a conversation. So it's clear sort of where we are, and maybe we need to have some sort of mapping session a little bit different than what you proposed. And again, it could just be the way I think. So if that made sense to people. It did. Yes. Thank you. I guess what we it seems to me not trying to be coercive, but that we really need to talk about the next step. The problem has been outlined repeatedly in some ways, but there's a report now on December 1. I think I personally agree with Pepper that we really need to get input from a lot of people on this. Robin is going to produce this document that outlines a lot of this. Given those, I think we need to sort of come up with a synthesis that gives us an action point. I mean, I'm perfectly fine with setting up a meeting for next month that in fact, you know, we invite people, but I'd like some feedback from everyone about who that would be. I personally am happy and I've already enlisted him to bring our director of IIT for all the state's attorneys who could discuss, kind of lift up the hood of our case management system and see what's possible from the, you know, prosecution end. Okay. Monica, your hand up again. Not that sounded awful. I'm sorry. You did what I meant. My hand had, sorry, I had not lowered it previously. It was not up, but I will tell you that, yes, I mean, I think based on the conversation that we're having, I can represent the department's data structure and bring forward what we can do at the Department of Corrections at that meeting. Okay. Thank you. Jessica. I'm not about to volunteer anyone from the Defender General's Office, but I know who to talk to, and I can find out where we're at with our case management system. And we definitely, like my understanding is that we are transitioning to a new one, but I have no idea where we are in that process. But I can sort of ask these questions around what capabilities we're going to have to collect this kind of data. Great. Thank you. Gary. Yeah. The good thing about retiring shortly is I'm going to volunteer people that and I won't be around for, but Betty will definitely can help with that. And Kristen McClure was on this call, I think would also be a good resource that could step in there as well. Yeah. I'm sorry. Who was that? Hi, Aetan. This is Kristen. Hi, Kristen. I was thinking maybe a smaller kind of technical meeting with the IT leads from the different areas. So we could know what systems are used, but also kind of the data experts to have a data dictionary as well from each area. I think that would be helpful to lay the groundwork on what data do we have in each element and has it flow upstream and downstream. I'm digesting that. That's all. And I would just say that that is actually the first charge of the section 19 report is to examine what we have right now. And so I think that's a great recommendation. So it would be helpful if we have the technical team from all the different areas together having that conversation so we can hear how one system works and how the challenges around that and what another area needs to make sure they're getting the data that you need out of that system. Thank you. Jessica, are you Jessica? Yes. I thought I see your hand up. I thought you wanted to speak. Nope. I don't know how to unraise my hand. Okay. It may be my job. I don't know. All right. Thank you. So can I, Chris, can I ask you, given that you're an expert here, would it be more useful to put up a meeting with all of the IT people from the various departments? I'm not trying to get out of something here, but what I am thinking is there's a level of technical discourse that you need to have that most people, lay people, don't necessarily have, and that that might slow you down if you're in that process of basically translating. Would it, is that A true and B, if it is, does it make sense to try to put a meeting together with the IT people and you and then figure out after that some kind of presentation to the panel? Well, I was thinking kind of in the next maybe two weeks or whatever time frame works to have a small working meeting of technical people, so IT and data, to map it out and understand each step in the process and then bring that back to the greater team here in a way that can be digested to say these are the major elements, by the way, this is how we need to collect it going forward. Kind of these are three, four key action items as a result of that. Great. I'd love it. Anybody else? I can help facilitate that, Kristen. I know the Defender General is folks and I know I mean, I can just try and help. Excellent. Thank you. I think where we're moving on then, if I'm just to encapsulate, is that there's going to be this smaller meeting of people who know what they're talking about. Let me just use that as shorthand and that then we will look at having them come or a representative to the next ARCAT meeting present us with some proposals. At the same time, we will have this document from Robin, which I will then disseminate and get feedback from everybody on. Does that seem like where we're at at this moment, quarter past seven? I think that's good. Anton, this is Don. I think I would also suggest for the lay people or people who aren't technical that maybe a workflow or a flow chart might be handy of each organization they're speaking with so they can see where maybe bottlenecks are or where that could be consolidated or like I think they're saying one data dictionary may be different than another data dictionary. Anyway, it's just a suggestion because more visual. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Sorry to keep chiming in. I really feel like I'm talking a lot tonight. Other than from the Criminal Justice Training Council, I don't really know if the local PDs and the sheriffs I know aren't really represented and they're doing a lot of the data collection that's required. I just feel like they should be a part of this conversation. I can help with that, Pepper. That's not a problem. It's basically two systems and Spillman being the major and then Val Corp. Betty has a lot of the ins and outs and sits on the Val Corp committee with Tim Sharlan, so that's an easy crossover. Excellent. Great. I don't know that we actually need a motion because it seems to be moving in this direction. I'm trying to figure out how to make one anyway. It's in two parts, I guess. One, well, probably even more. The first would be to arrange a meeting that involves CRG, so we would be inviting Robin back because they are the primary research organ for this initiative. Certainly Kristen, probably some other presently unidentified individuals, all of whom work on data and be to invite them to our next meeting, which will be on the 8th of September. The second would be to work at, and I guess that would involve everyone who spoke there. It would be Pepper and it would be Jessica and it would be Gary. I'm looking through my list. Certainly Kristen, if she's willing. I seem to be drafting people like I'm important. To come together and put the meeting together in the next two weeks that we've just described, and I'm not going to get more predictive than that. I want to see what comes out of that. I think to be more predictive is also to be prescriptive and I don't want to do that. I think that's inappropriate. And then to consider the document that Robin very graciously sent to me, and I don't think I have it. I'm sorry. And to disseminate that again, to get feedback from the panelists, and I'm assuming on that that people will have additions, frankly, about areas that they think are left off. That would be my assumption. So I would put those three things together. Experts at the meeting in September facilitate this meeting in the next two weeks with the data people, the experts, and three to disseminate the document that Robin has come up with. Can anyone think of anything else? Great. I don't really want to repeat that. However, I'm going to think that we can all keep that in our heads. And I move that we make that three pronged approach. That took me 10 minutes to outline. I'll second. Okay. Yeah, all in favor, find your little hand and raise it. Okay. Thank you. All opposed. Rand, thank you. All abstaining. There it is. Motion is carried. Three pronged approach. That took me 10 minutes to outline. We will in that be having that on the agenda at the next meeting will be a lot of experts helping us make some clear decisions about these high impact, high discretion points that need to be outlined, need to be investigated. As Robin points out, we also need to look more broadly. I think that's important too. The other thing will be we will, I will certainly talk to Kristin about outlining or setting up this meeting in the next couple of weeks with the experts so that they can sit and talk in a way that is not limited by those of us who don't know. And then ask them to the meeting in September on the 8th. The last point was yes, and I will get the document from Robin and circulate it to everyone. I feel pretty good about that. Is there anything that we are missing? This is the big question, I guess, that needs to be looked at between now and the 8th of September that that three-pronged approach does not take into account. Okay, that's where we're going. If no one has anything else, that was the main bit of work for this meeting, and I'm really pleased. I think we have a good action plan and we will work on that. Oh, you've sort of got a sense. Oh, Monica's hand is up. Hold on. Monica. It's not to change anything. Pardon? I don't know why I'm... Oh, you don't mean to have your hand up. I'm sorry. Okay. I did mean to have my hand by hand, but I'm caring myself. I don't know why. All day I've been getting feedback from someone who probably used to mute themselves. Why don't we all mute ourselves so Monica can talk? Thank you. It's not ever that I can hold it. It frustrates me that the technology is keeping you from speaking. She's using headphones? She should not use the headphones. Monica, are you using headphones? Hold on. Yep, she's taken them out. She took them out. It's not that. It took them out, but maybe... Is this better now? They're in now, so anyway, I apologize. I wanted to share something that I thought was interesting for the panel, just so you know. I think at the last meeting I did talk about the fact that the department was spending a lot of time responding to a lot of data requests and making new reports. We have made a new report that we put on our website specifically to highlight race information. We have a population report that talks about the entire population. We took those data points and broke it down by race. We just put the first one up today, and I can put the link to it in the chat for this meeting so people can go and get it. What I would want to say is that it's the start. It's not the end, and I'm just looking for people to check it out, and maybe give us some feedback. Great. Thank you. So for those of you who would like me or technologically impaired, please look at the meeting chat, and I'm sure I'm the only one saying that to myself. Given that we've gone there, our next item is public commentary, so that means everyone who is not actually a member of the RDAP, this is the time to feel free to wait in on what we have the discussion, to add to it, to detract from it, whatever you need to do. I will do my level best to find who you are, good lord. I think there's a show participants or something somewhere here. Oh look, there, and I will please speak, feel free. This is the time. We hope to limit people to five minutes, but please, please feel free to speak or not. So Eitan, this is Martin, the lone. Please come. Yes, representative. Just very quickly, I really appreciate, I'm delighted that I sat in. It looks like you got a good direction to kick this off, and I'm really pleased to see where you all are going with this, and I'll look forward to hopefully sitting in on the future meetings as well, and I apologize for that December 1st deadline. This has happened. Thank you, representative. Anyone else? Eitan, it's Sarah. Hi, I just want to say I appreciate it. I'm really delighted to hear how you were all working together, and I apologize for those deadlines. Believe it or not, we required fewer reports than what was originally proposed in that bill. And I just wanted to say to Monica, I just quickly looked on the link, and it's pretty impressive, Monica, that you've done. So anyway, I hope to follow some of the work too, and also happy to be hearing from people if you hear how things are going. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Others, other people, this is your moment. I mean, I hesitate to think that we've actually done it. I mean, I know it's hot and everybody's tired. I feel, however, I don't think I have anything to add. It seems like we have a good action plan. And if that's in fact true, and nobody else has anything they'd like to say, this is a moment for new business. If anybody has that, this would be a moment for the panelists to bring that up. Jeff Jones, you had something you wanted us to consider. You might want to speak to that at this moment. Jeff? Yeah, I'll probably write it, but thank you. Okay. And I can't, I could not raise my hand because I'm guest as the chief. And so... I'm sorry. No, it's all right. I took the whole entire meeting to figure out why there's no recent way I should blame you. I know, I think it's appropriate for me to write my comments. I think everybody's tired. It's 90 degrees, right? So I'll wait. I can write. Okay. Then the last thing I need to say is that the next meeting, as I indicated earlier, is on the 8th of September. We always meet for those who do not know this on the second Tuesday of every month from 6 to 8 p.m. When we're in neat space, it's usually somewhere along the I-89 corridor. None of us have to worry about that right now, though. So we will be here in Fiberland on the 8th of September. That's about it. May I have a motion to adjourn, if that's where people are at? This is Jessica. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Right. Second. I'll second the motion. Wonderful. All in favor? Hi. All opposed? All abstaining? Go in peace. I will see you all next month. Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks, Eitan. You're welcome. Thank you.