You are live. Okay. Welcome, folks. This is Tuesday, February 23rd. This is the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. We're going to spend the next half hour with our legal counsel, Eric Fitzpatrick, doing a walkthrough of S 18, which passed the Senate last week. It came out of Senate Judiciary Committee. I'm going to turn it over to Eric. This deals with a very limited carb out of earned good time reductions. For some folks who are currently sentenced. And it's on our webpage. S 18. And I'm going to turn it over to Eric. So Eric, if you could introduce yourself for the record and give us a walkthrough. Thank you. Sure. This is Eric Fitzpatrick. This is my first time in House Corrections and Institutions this year. So great to see everybody. We'll see more of you. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure. So for the record, this is Eric Fitzpatrick. I'm with the office of the legislative council. And here to talk today with the committee and give the introductory walkthrough of S 18, which is entitled an act relating to limiting earn good time for offenders convicted of certain crimes. What I had thought, and I realize I probably should have asked Phillip about this beforehand, I represented them and. But I thought I would just talk for a minute or two, give the committee the big picture of what goes on in the bill. And then. Do you like to have a shared screen so that you can see the bill as I walk through it or do you prefer I don't either way is fine, but whatever you like to, I think everyone has access to the bill. Do they? Okay. That sounds good. Okay. Excellent. Thanks. So before I even look at the language, I like to, in terms of a walkthrough often. Because sometimes when you look at, when you dive right into the word, you can get a little lost in the weeds when it's nice to sort of at first just have a minute or two of the big picture of what's going on. So S 18 really did four things to the earn good time program. And I know this committee is very familiar with the earn good time program. I've been in here myself over the years as has brand. And I know you spent a lot of time with it. I've seen some people are familiar with it. It's a program that the department of corrections runs that. Allows an inmate to earn reductions in their sentence. If they behave well and don't commit any major disciplinary violations while they're under DOC supervision. So, I believe the. The setup right now is there's an opportunity for the inmate assuming they don't get any of these major disciplinary. Violations. minimum and maximum per month. So again, it's conditioned on their behavior. So this program's been in effect, actually, interestingly, it was in effect for 40 years until 2005 when the legislature repealed it. And then you reinstated it again, or I should say reinstated it, put it back on the books again in 2019. And this committee spent a lot of time with Act 56 that year, so the good time program was reestablished in 2019. There was another bill you worked on last year to do some tweaking of it, and now it's before you again. And essentially what's going on in S18 is four proposed modifications to the good time program that were made, as the chair mentioned, in Senate judiciary. So the first one is really a terminology issue. You may notice that the earned good time program in the Senate bill becomes the earned time program. So the word good is struck in each instance. And the concept behind that was that the committee felt that in some ways, calling it a good time program isn't really accurate. It's really not a question of whether an inmate has been good or not good. It's a question of whether they have not committed major disciplinary violations or been re-incarcerated for a violation of conditions of release. And that's not really the good or not good is really not necessarily an accurate term for that. It's whether someone has complied with their requirements in such a way that they have earned the right to have their sentence reduced. So that's what it really is, is earned time. So that's why the proposal from the Senate is to refer to call the program the earned time program. So that's change number one. I should say there are four changes to four primary substantive changes here. And that's the first one. The second one the chair alluded to already. You may recall that the statute as it came out of this committee in the legislature pretty much permitted earned time. I may refer to, it's hard to get used to referring to it as earned time. All the time you forget not to use the word good. So you know what I refer to if I say it one way or the other. But as the statute has been on the books the earned time program permitted pretty much any inmate to earn time with a couple of exceptions. So it didn't matter what a person was convicted of as long as they weren't convicted of an offense that got them sentenced to life without parole. A life without parole sentence did not qualify for earned good time. But other offenses did as long as the person was not in probation even furlough they would still qualify. So in terms of the offense that a person had committed as long as it wasn't life without parole a person could earn good time. Again, it doesn't mean they automatically get it but provided that they didn't commit any violation. So the proposal from an essay team is to as the chair mentioned they carved out beyond life without parole offenses. Now what this does the carve out is it names a certain group of offenses a disqualifying offense.  Those are the disqualifying offenses. So if a person is incarcerated already again this does not apply in the future only applies to people who are incarcerated as of the time that this legislation goes into effect. If a person is incarcerated or one of those disqualifying offenses that I just mentioned then that person will not qualify for the earn or sorry, the good, the earn time program in the future. Now that if they've, remember you probably think this committee has already heard the department has already, the rule is already in effect. It went into effect on January 1st of this year. So people are earning good time already and they have been for the last, where are we now? Almost a month and a half, two months roughly. So you can't take away good time that someone has already earned. So the language when we look at it specifically says this doesn't affect any good time that a person has already earned. But going forward after this act takes, if it takes effect, but after the effective day to be act a person who was incarcerated for one of those disqualifying offenses at the time the act passes would not earn any additional good time in the future. So that as the chair mentioned is a carve out. Now it's taking a universe of people, people who have been incarcerated for one of those offenses and saying going forward, you can earn good time. Now, if someone commits one of those offenses on September 1st of this year or January 1st of next year, sometime in the future, that person can still qualify for good time. But the ones who are incarcerated already will not be able to. And as you may have heard that that policy decision by the Senate judiciary committee was driven by the way that the good time program when it was reinstituted impacted certain crime victims. And the issue behind that was that if you think about it, someone for example who has been convicted of one of those offenses three, five, 10 years ago whenever it was in the past, well over 90% of those criminal cases get resolved by plea bargains in Vermont. And during that plea bargaining process, typically the crime victim has a voice through the state's attorney to be able to participate and articulate their point of view. Those agreements about what sentence a defendant would serve are reached. And the concern that the Senate Judiciary Committee had was that at the time there was no good time program in fact. So there was no discussion of how a defendant's future earning of good time might reduce their sentence. So that was not something that anyone could have any or would have any perspective about because it didn't exist. So now in retrospect, I think the committee saw that as a result of those same folks, those same folks who reached a plea bargain say, as I said in the past, earned good time starts January 1st of 2021. They start earning good time over time it reduces their sentence. And it becomes, it could become years less than what the state's attorney, the crime victims and everybody else who were involved in that plea agreement thought that it would be the court as well for that matter. So that's what drove that decision. And that's why the, as I mentioned, it only applies retrospectively. Doesn't apply to people in the future. Only applies to people who are already incarcerated because it rests upon the assumption or the policy assumption that those folks had already reached the plea agreement that didn't incorporate the idea of good time because good time didn't exist at the time. So there was no notice to any victims or anybody else that a person's sentence might be reduced on account of good time because there was no good time. So that's the reason for that second major change in the bill. And it sort of segues me right into the third change. As I mentioned, that really turns upon notice to the victim, right? It's driven by this concern that the committee had about, well, it isn't really fair to reduce the sentence now because there was no notice at the time that that might have happened. That might be an occurrence in the future that could happen, that a person's sentence could be reduced as a result of them earning good time while incarcerated. So what the sort of part and parcel with permitting defendants in the future to earn good time is to make sure victims get notice in the future. So that's the third change in the bill, that it provides specifically that at sentencing and you already have a statute, there's already a statute that lists certain information that has to be provided by the state's attorney to crime victims. So all it does is add something to that list. And what it adds to that list is, as you would expect, the fact that somebody could earn, it has to be an estimate of how much good time a person could earn, has to be disclosed to them by the prosecution, as well as the fact that, you know, that earned time reduced, you know, sort of the practical effect of it is not that someone automatically gets released, it's that they are able to appear before the parole board earlier and argue for release, but it doesn't mean that the parole board necessarily will decide in each case that the person should get out, it just means that there's an earlier time when they get to make that argument. So those two points are clarified that that information has to be provided from the state's attorney to the victim. And in that sense, I think the judiciary committee in the Senate felt comfortable allowing folks even committed of these offenses to participate in good time in the future, because in those situations, the victim will have plenty of opportunity to have input if they want to. So that is change number three. That's, and the last one was something actually that the department had asked for, the DOC asked to clarify that, and remember I just said that, you know, under the current statute, there's a list of sort of what categories of folks qualify for the earned good time program and who don't, who does not, sorry. And that list, who doesn't include a life without parole and furlough sentences as well. Oh, no, sorry, furlough does qualify, but I think probation does not. So the DOC had noticed that there's needed to be some clarification that what's known as interrupted sentences, or what they're actually referring to as, well, the term is used as DOC understanding. If someone ascends to an interrupted sentence, which the bill defines, you'll see as a sentence that is intermittently served. And that means a sentence, for example, of serving your time on weekends or on work crew.  Those are interrupted sentences and the department felt that, you know, those sentences are served not continuously anywhere. They're only served in intervals and it doesn't really make sense for earned time to apply to those sentences. So in response to that request from the department, the Judiciary Committee put that in as well. So those are your four things that the bill does right there. It's the change in name from earn good time to earn time, the exclusion from the earned time program of those who've defendants who are already incarcerated who committed one of those disqualifying offenses. The also exclusion from the program of what I just referred to as interrupted sentences. And what did I forget? What was the fourth one? Notifying the victims of- Oh, thank you. The bargaining. Thank you. And the victim notification piece. Thank you, thank you, Representative Evans. So those are them. That's the big picture. We can certainly look at the language. Hopefully it will confirm what I just explained, but I certainly can pause here if there's any questions sort of on the concepts or I can move right in whatever you prefer. Eric, we do have a couple of questions, but I do want to clarify one thing. When you say it's folks who are incarcerated, the current folks who are incarcerated, there would be a carve out for them. I want to be very clear. It's current folks who are sentenced and incarcerated. It's not the detainees who have been charged with these crimes yet, correct? Because they have not gone through sentencing. They have not been convicted. They've been charged. So this bill does not pertain to those folks, correct? Yes, correct. Thank you for that clarification, exactly. It's a person who has been sentenced to one of those crimes already. Not a detainee who has been charged for one of those crimes. And if that detainee after this bill becomes law, this bill becomes law in a current detainee who's charged under some of these carve out crimes are sentenced after the bill becomes law, they would qualify for earned time because that would be part of the plea agreement between the state's attorney, the defense counsel and the victims. That's absolutely right. Yep, the sentencing is the key moment in time as to whether you are covered by the carve out or not. If you've been sentenced already, then yes, you wouldn't be able to earn it for one of those offenses. But if you're sentenced anytime after just picking a date, say July 1st, if that's when it went into effect, sentenced anytime after that, then yes, even if you are detained now, if you're not sentenced until then, then you would be able to earn good time. I just wanted to make sure that was really clear for the committee members. Yes, thank you. So we do have a couple of questions, Scott. And some of this, again, through folks who are asking question, maybe addressed as we do the walkthrough with the language. Scott and then Linda. Thank you. This is sort of a background question. I don't know if there's time to talk about it now, but I'm just wondering why good time was suspended or ended in 2005. What were the arguments about? Want me to answer that one, Eric? Yes, Eric, you know better than I. I came through this committee and it was suspended, it was done away with because there was a push from the public for truth and sentencing. And it really was feeling that you have a sentenced when you are given a sentence in court and it's been agreed to through a plea bargain.  So it was truth and sentencing. So what happened at that point when we did away with good time, when it became law, those folks who were sentenced after it became law were not eligible for good time, but those folks who were currently sentenced could continue to receive their good time until I don't think, we didn't do away with it, Eric. I don't think for those current folks who are sentenced. I don't remember that if we did. No, you didn't. And in a very interesting bit of history, you actually, there was what was known as a true up program had to be done. So that those folks who were already sentenced with the under a good time program, they were awarded all of the good time that they would have earned in the future at once, all in the, you folks passed the statute to award them that they called it the true up program. So they were true it up. And then everybody started from zero, which as you say, was not having the good time program anymore. And we did that because we wanted to make it easy for DOC in calculating good time because it is very, very difficult in calculation of good time with DOC. And we can get into that when we bring them in for testimony. The other thing that we also put in place when we did away with good time, we put in reintegration furlough. I think it was called reintegration furlough, not conditional reentry. I think it was reintegration furlough. At the time we said, you know, there are offenders who are playing by the rules and they should have some initiative to continue playing by the rules and DOC needs some management tools. So we put this in place, I think it was called reintegration furlough where a person who played by the rules and would have normally received good time could be eligible for furlough three months prior to their minimum date. So we put that in as sort of a release valve that if they participate in their programming didn't have any DRs, the three months prior to when their minimum was up, they could possibly be released on that status of reintegration furlough. Okay, well, that's a very complicated data calculate. Welcome to DOC. Thank you. Linda. Thank you, I load my hand because my question was answered by your questions. Thank you. Kurt. Well, I gotta say the change of the name or earn time doesn't make any sense to me as well, it almost sounds like they're earning more time. I would... But they're not having a good time doing it. And I would make it earned reduction in sentence. If it were named earned reduction in sentence or just ERS for those people who don't like three words, it might be clearer exactly what it's doing. Something to think about. Something to think about. So we'll be doing more work on this bill. So keep that in mind, Kurt. Okay, Eric, why don't you give us a walkthrough here? Sure. So now we'll proceed to the language of the bill. And you'll see that the very first section is the victim notification piece, member of the four substantive changes to the good time program made in S18. The first one you see in the bill has to do with the victim crime victim being provided. Notice that this program exists and that the defendant has an opportunity to earn a sentence reduction for that reason. So you see, as I mentioned, there's an existing statute on what victims' rights are. That's entitled 13 section 5321. That's section one of the bill. And this just adds, there's already a number of disclosures that the state's attorney has to make to the victim in those situations. Prosecutor has to tell them enlisted crimes, what the incarceration period might be. Do you start on line 16? This is the sentence that gets added to the, in existing law, the prosecutor's office has to explain the significance of a minimum and maximum sentence to the victim. I'm on line 18 now, explain the function of parole and how that may affect the actual amount of time the defendant may be incarcerated. So you see it conceptually makes sense to add this here. It's sort of a similar concept. And then you add, and the proposal here is to add to that list of disclosures and inform the victim of the maximum amount of earned time that the defendant could accrue. I'm turning over on to page two now. Oh, excuse me, excuse me, Madam Chair. Yeah. The copies that we have have line numbers and the zeroes have line numbers. They don't. So I'm just, while he's going through the bill, he's not going to be able to cite line numbers. Oh, you don't have line numbers on your copies? No. So we're in section 1D. At the bottom of our first page. Right. So everybody with that new line so far, that the very first underlined new language requires that the state's attorney inform the victim of the maximum amount of earned time that the defendant could accrue. And now I'm turning over on to page 2. Is that consistent with everybody's copy? Does that go on to page 2 now? Page 2 starts with section 2. Oh, interesting. In that case, I'm still on your page 1. Because at the end of that subsection D provides, and additionally, that the state's attorney has to notify the victim of the fact that earned time only affects when a defendant is eligible for parole consideration, but does not necessarily result in the defendant's release. It might, but it might not. So that's added to the disclosures that the state's attorney has to make to the victim. So Eric, do you want to stop at each section just to see if folks have questions? Yeah, that's fine. OK. So whenever a person reaches their minimum, whatever they may be currently, they are eligible for furlough. And under Act 148 that we put in place last year for some certain crimes which would not pertain here, they would be eligible for presumptive parole. Going forward, there would be more crimes that are sentenced that will qualify for presumptive parole. So when they say parole here, they're referring to the presumptive parole, which is going to be taking over the furlough. So Eric, I do have a question on this, because there will be some folks with this carve out. Well, this is going forward, though, right? Correct. This is going forward. This doesn't pertain to those folks who are currently sentenced. So this is going forward when the bill becomes law for those folks who will be sentenced for any crime. Not just, is it just listed? It's just listed crimes, right? It's just for listed crimes, this section, correct? That's what it looks like. The prosecutor's office shall instruct the victim of a listed crime. That's in the beginning of D. Yes, that's an issue question. The first sentence definitely applies only to listed crimes. And I think that didn't come up in the Senate because it does say in addition. The second sentence starts in addition. So that would seem to suggest that it would also only apply to listed crimes. But I'd want to double check on that to be certain. So if it only applies to listed crimes, how many of those listed crimes, as we go forward in the presumptive parole, would not qualify for presumptive parole and still only qualify for furlough? Because I'm asking that because on the next to the last line where it says, earned time effects when a defendant is eligible for parole consideration, they may also at some point be only eligible for furlough at their minimum. Because we did carve out a few crimes on the presumptive parole going forward. You know, what do you understand what I'm saying? I don't. I'm not familiar with those programs. OK, I think we're in this. Because we phased in presumptive parole. So we're doing the real misdemeanor crimes first. And then we're doing the next step up. And I don't know if we're doing the big 12 for presumptive parole or not. Yeah, I'm not sure either. And I don't know to what extent that would interplay with this defendant disclosure here. But I can check with Brent on that. Yeah, why don't you check with Brent on that? Because some of the folks may not even qualify for presumptive parole. But there would be a minimum that they could reach that they would qualify for furlough. Madam Chair, could you define listed crimes? Eric. There's a lengthy list of several dozen offenses that are in Title 13. So I can send that to the committee. But you're more violent crimes that are felonies that pertain to violence against a person, basically. Typically, although there are some, for example, of like driving with a license suspended with death or serious body injury resulting or reckless endangerment, that sort of thing. So it's a broad list. But I can send it to the committee. It's in statute. So Eric, if you could, at some point, it would be after town meeting break or after crossover. If we can work with Brent to make sure this language is reflective of what we did in Act 148 with presumptive parole and when some of those crimes will be eligible or not eligible. Yeah, definitely. Because we may also want to indicate here that those folks might be sentenced and they won't be eligible for parole status. Right. They'll be eligible for furlough prior to a parole status. Yes, definitely. I will check in with her for sure. OK. Kurt. Madam Chair, I have that list of listed crimes in Big 12 from last session. Do you want me to send that to the committee or to? Why don't you send it to Phil and then we can do that? OK. Yeah. I'll do that. It's very, it's not really clear. Your Big 12, your listed crimes. It's hard to follow in some cases. OK. Anything. So we'll flag this, OK, for folks. OK. So I have to note that I'm mindful of the time. I know. I have to be in Senate judiciary in about 10 minutes. OK, let's keep moving. I can move through as quickly as we can there. Yeah. So you'll see in section two that the second main change that I mentioned, you'll see starts right away in the title of section 818 in that the word good is struck. So this is the name change piece. Remember, you'll see. And pretty much every time you see the word good, it will be struck through because the proposal is to rename the program from the earned good time program to the earned time program. So that's major change number two. Also in section two, if you start in, if you go to subdivision B1, you'll see, and this is the third main change that I mentioned, this is the list for whom the earned time program is available to. So existing law, if you go to B1, you'll see the program is available to all sentence defenders, including furlough defenders, provided that the program shall not be available to offenders on probation or parole to offenders eligible for reduction of term under section 811. And then it adds to offenders sentence to serve an interrupted sentence. So it's also not going to be available to folks who serve an interrupted sentence. Now, it's somewhat out of order, but as we often do things, the definition section is at the end of this statute. So if you were to turn to the very last page of the bill, in fact, the very last couple of lines of the bill right above the effective date, that's where the definition section is and you'll see the interrupted sentence is defined. That's why I'm turning you to there right now. Interrupted sentence means a sentence that is not served continuously, including a sentence to be served at intervals or a sentence to the work group. Now, according to Monica Weaver, I worked on that language with, the interrupted sentence is a common term within the department. Everyone knows what that means. And a sentence to be served at intervals is a reference to a weekend sentence as well. That's the way they refer to that. So that's where that definitional language came from. And again, the reason that it's there is because as we just noted, offenders who are serving an interrupted sentence would not be able to earn time under the proposal. So that's change number three. And now we get to the last change, change number four, which is also in subdivision B1, although this is really just pointing us to where it is. But you look at that last new language, just as notwithstanding the subdivision one, that means notwithstanding everything else that was just said about who qualifies and who doesn't. When an offender has been convicted of a disqualifying offense, right? Then the ability, that offender's ability to participate and earn time is gonna be determined pursuant to a separate subdivision of the section. So that's basically just redirecting you to where the disqualifying offense procedure is gonna be described. So let's follow the instructions of that subdivision and go right to subdivision five, which is at the very second to last page of the bill, page four. So this is the new language regarding disqualifying offenses and how that's handled. You see this new subdivision five here. And it says that notwithstanding one BSA 214 and that's the statutory provision that legislation generally applies prospectively into the future, but not retroactively into the past. And we have to say that because in this case, it is applying retroactively into the past. It's applying to people who have been sentenced already. So notwithstanding that provision, an offender who is serving a sentence for a disqualifying offense on the effective date of this subdivision five, this is the key point that the chair mentioned earlier. So they're serving a sentence on the effective date of this subdivision. So when this goes into effect, they're already served, they're already sentenced. We move on, shall not earn any earned time sense reductions under the section after the effective date of this act. So again, just it may not be July 1st, but just picking a date to help us understand it. Let's say the act goes into effect on July 1st, someone who was sentenced as of that date for disqualifying offense is not gonna earn any earned time sentence reductions after the effective date or after July 1st. However, this goes into the second sentence, this subdivision five shall not be construed to limit or affect earned time that an offender has earned on or before the effective date of this act. So any earned time that they have already, again, using that July 1st date as our sort of hypothetical example, as of July 1st, those disqualifying offense offenders aren't gonna earn any more good time in the future if they've been sentenced on that date, but any earned time that they accumulated prior to July 1st, they get to keep. You can't take that away. So that's the proposal for how that would work. And then of course, the crucial question is, well, what's a disqualifying offense then? If that's the universe to whom this applies and that's defined in the definition subsection which you see next.  So those are the disqualifying offenses that if someone is sentenced for one of those offenses as of the effective date of the act, they keep the good time that they have so far, they don't earn any more in the future. Great. Thank you, Eric. Sure. Any questions? I know this is a quick walkthrough. We'll be taking a lot more testimony on the bill. Any further questions? So it's a very limited carve out for particular crimes, only for those folks who are currently serving a sentence for those crimes. They can keep the good time or earn time that they've already accrued until this bill becomes law, so if the bill becomes law in April, then that's when they stop earning good time, but they get to keep what they've already earned. And going forward, anyone who is convicted and sentenced for these crimes, they will earn time. And the victim will be notified by the state's attorney's office in the plea agreement realm that these are the possibilities of when the person might be eligible for parole or possibly for a law. We can straighten that one out. So that's- Yeah, I think that's it exactly. Yeah. Okay. Questions, people confused. Can I see some confusion on people's faces? Okay. Oh, good. Any questions from anyone? Lynn, are you, Lynn, any questions? Marsha? No, I went through it when I was working for the prison, so I understand it pretty well. Thank you. Marsha, any questions? You're muted. This last thing that you just talked about where they would earn good time going forward after this has passed, this isn't for the disqualifying offenses though, right? Yes, it is. It's for folks who have not been sentenced yet. They have been charged, they've been charged, but they haven't been sentenced. So if they're gonna be sentenced after this becomes law, they will qualify to have earned time for these crimes because it's part of the plea agreement that has worked up with the victim. So the victim is really clear. Okay, thank you. Okay. Linda, any questions? Kurt? Sarah? I know we'll be discussing it more, so. Okay, Mary, anything? I think I'm good at the moment. I'll probably have further questions when we do a deeper dive. Okay, how about you, Michelle? Anything? Yeah, I don't have a question right now. Scott? I do have questions, but I'm gonna wait until we are talking about it in more depth. Okay, and Karen? Yeah, same as Scott. I've written down some questions, but feel like we'll have opportunities to address them. We'll have plenty of opportunity. Trust me. Okay, thank you, Eric. Yeah, short that you're welcome. Glad to help out. Just let me know when you're gonna take the bill up again and we'll see you then. Okay, well, make sure you have enough time to do the work with the other committees that you need to do for crossover. Thank you. Nice to see everybody. Yep, thank you. It's very helpful. All right, good, bye now. Okay, let's quickly shift gears here a little bit. And I'm assuming that Karen Gannat is in the waiting room. He is, Madam Chair. Okay, why don't we let Karen, let me do that quicker. Why don't we let Karen in? This afternoon, we're just gonna spend time really getting some background information. If folks remember, if folks remember a couple of weeks ago, we did some really deep dives into the numbers of folks who are incarcerated and their crime serious felony versus the misdemeanors and calculated the numbers of folks. We're about 85 to 90, about 95% of our folks who are incarcerated are incarcerated for sentences of felony, felony sentences. And we wanted to do a deeper dive behind those numbers. And one thing that we talked about and we're going to be dealing with this afternoon is what is called sequential intercept model, which some folks are familiar with here in the committee and some are not. And also we wanted to look at reentry programs, transitional housing programs. So we're going to be moving into that as well this afternoon. So I know a person who's done a tremendous amount of work with this committee in the past with initiatives that we've put in place to really look at the whole spectrum of the criminal justice system from the time someone is arrested, either by local police officers, state police, and then goes through the criminal justice system, the court system, and then is incarcerated. And then at the end of the incarceration is re-entered into the community. That's what we call the sequential process. And there's certain points that you can intercept that and maybe break the cycle of people continually going through the system. We worked a lot back in 2008, 2009 with Karen Gannett, who was also at that point working within our judicial system under Chief Justice Ryber. And Karen worked a lot on the sequential intercept model as well as really helping us with justice reinvestment too. So I thought it would be really good to bring Karen back in and just sort of give us the history of the sequential model and the sequential intercept. So welcome, Karen. Good to see you. Thank you. Wish we were in the room with you. I have been thinking that more and more every day is I really miss face-to-face meetings. So for the record, I'm Karen Gannett. I'm the executive director of crime research group. And yes, it would be fun to be back at the state house with you all. So I started just to, so my plan for today is I'll give you a little information about what I'm doing now, what crime research group is and how we might be able to be of assistance to you in our current role. And then talk a little bit about the sequential intercept model and how it came to be in Vermont. And I gave a handout around CRG, and I gave a handout that actually from the time Madam Chair and I worked on the sequential intercept model, SAMHSA and the policy research institute have come a long way in some of their information, which is great. And I also gave you something that we worked on years ago that shows, and Phil and I have been in contact about this. I think what you have right now in your documents is Addison County's sequential intercept. And there is one. I sent an Excel spreadsheet, but Excel spreadsheets don't translate well to PDFs. So I did send Phil a rather large document that's an Excel spreadsheet that shows statewide sequential intercept and then one for every county. It's old. It was done back in 2015, but it gives you an idea of the work that we did back then. So what you see for Addison County now is what we have for every county and we have one for the whole state. I can talk a little bit about that when we get to it. Pardon me, Karen, but I did send to the committee while we were chatting moments ago that spreadsheet. So now they can open it up on their own device and see everything. Awesome. Thank you, Phil. But on our web page, just to clarify, we do have the updated sequential intercept model County charts, which is really the Addison chart, which we could work off of that, that pretty, that shows some of the intercepts and what was done. Yeah. Yes. And yes, absolutely. I just thought it would be fun for committee members to have their own County and have the information from their own County. So I work for crime research group now. I started there about six and a half years ago. Crime research group is a relatively small, private nonprofit research center. We do crime and juvenile justice research. We have a contract with the department of public safety to provide statistical analysis center services for Vermont. So we work for you as well as other criminal justice stakeholders in Vermont, not just for DPS, just because the contract is with DPS. Our work is broader than work with just DPS. We also have other contracts with other state departments and nonprofits in the state when they need research or evaluation services. Every state has a statistical analysis center. And they do primarily what we do as well. We provide data requests. We provide technical assistance around criminal justice issues. And we are, because we do the work as the SAC, we're allowed to apply for Bureau of Justice statistics funding to create studies that work in benefit for the state of Vermont. So on that sheet you have right now, it gives you some information on the technical assistance we've provided in the past. So we work with the sentencing commission and we've reviewed all crimes and penalties to assist with the reclassification of the criminal code. They're doing work on that right now. We've worked with the national criminal justice reform project. And we analyzed 1,500 surveys on the police reform initiatives that the social equity caucus and representative coffee had a strong hand in that. And we analyzed the tax from those surveys. Some of our current projects under the BJS branch are we, we're doing a program, a study that looks at equal access to alternative programs to look at racial disparities. We're doing a human trafficking study with the human trafficking task force and you can read the rest of that. I don't have to go through all of what we do. One of the, I think really interesting and most important things we do for people in the state is we do what's called the going rate for sentences. So attorneys, judges, you all can send in a data request to us and ask what's a normal sentence for a DUI one with a single sentence. And you can do that for any crime. So we have access, we have a data sharing agreement with the courts. We have access to 30 years of court data. And so my researchers can go in and pull those, that sentencing data from the court data and give you information on what sentences are for specific cases. And we can do that for any crime. So we have access, we have a data sharing agreement with the courts. So we have access to 30 years of court data to give you information on what sentences are for specific crimes. A lot of attorneys right into us and ask this. And in a way, it's, it's a great way to kind of allow them to see what is tolerable in Vermont for sentences. And that's one of the, one of the things we're working on with the sentencing commission is really going through the crimes and looking at what it is and what does, what is Vermont tolerating for that penalty? So one of the examples it's given is the penalty for trafficking heroin is really high. And I'm not going to remember what it is off the top of my head, possibly 30 years. And nobody's gotten over 10 years for trafficking heroin. So that's the kind of thing we kind of take a look at what the statute says and what's actually happening and present the information to the sentencing commission so they can see what is going on. Do they want to make some changes in some of the penalties based on what actually is happening out in the field? So that's crime research group. Does anyone have any questions about that so far? Questions. We have one. Kurt. Yes. How detailed is with the net report that you're giving on the sentencing? Is it just say this is the average sentence or does it give some information about what the minimums were, what the maximum of all of this? How detailed? Oh, that's a great question. It does give, so if it's an incarcerated sentence, it gives the minimums and the maximum days to serve. If it's a deferred, it gives the length of time of the deferred. If it's a split sentence, which is partially incarcerated and partially served in the community, it gives the minimum and maximum and the days to serve. And it tells you how many records there were, and it depends on what you ask us to some extent. It gives you how many records there were. And it also gives, if folks want the docket numbers, we can provide the docket numbers. We can break it down by county. If someone wants something more extensive. So for the center of crime victim services, we'll ask us to take a look at domestic violence, crimes and sexual assault crimes and give them a breakdown over years and by county. And we can do that. We can add age in sometime. So we do a little more extensive data requests for some of the organizations that we work with. Okay. Okay. The basic report then is kind of a tool to help plea bargain. Excuse me. I missed the last part of that. The basic tool is, is a way to help plea bargaining. It sounds like. Yes, exactly. They'll fill right in attorneys will write in, they'll send us a data request. And we have a form on our website and they'll say, this is for, you know, an offer or for, you know, taking a look at an offer. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question, sir. I don't know if this is appropriate now. You can tell me. I just had a question. Hello, Karen. I had a question. You referenced that in other states, the way that other states deal with data and data analysis, it's more baked into state government. And you are a separate nonprofit organization. And I'm just looking forward to hearing. This committee with work that we did last year on justice reinvestment, you know, how we analyze data. In our state, especially around racial, racial data is a real concern. And I know you've been involved with some of that work. So, and there are a lot of different ideas about how we can do that. And it seems like crime research group is an incredible resource to help us. And we shouldn't overlook this as a, as a resource, but how we best tap those, your services. It remains to be a question for me about like how we organize agencies, resources around this. So it's, I hope that we'll get to talk a little bit about that. I can tell you, I can tell you as far as other states go. There are 32 statistical analysis centers that are embedded in their. State organizations such as DPS or some other state organization. There are eight statistical analysis centers that are connected to universities. And then, and ours is really DPS is the name statistical analysis center in Vermont. I know our, our national association is called the DPS. And so they have us listed as the SAC. And we're the long red state that shows that we're a non-profit where the second we're a nonprofit, but technically it's a, it's an executive order from the governor. And it, and DPS is named the sack because they don't have the research staff to conduct all the studies that we're able to do. We're actually in the state. all the studies that we're able to do. We're actually a good bang for the buck. They couldn't hire all the people that I have on staff. I have three other people besides myself on staff, and it's a fairly good deal to hire us to do this work, and then we help them apply for the grant. So the grants actually come through DPS, but they are technically the statistical analysis center. We just do the work through a contract with them. And I think a lot, I know that the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel is doing a lot of thinking around where best to put racial disparities analysis. And I attended their last meeting and they had a lot of good thinking. It was more of a brainstorming session, but there was a lot of good thinking around that. And it is, we do do some of that work. And I would be happy to talk more about that at some other time when it seems appropriate. Yeah, that's exactly where I'm coming from. And our committee's heard some of that. But we've got a report from our DAP, and I know they're grappling with some of this and figuring out the best way to do it. So I look forward to a deeper dive, but I know that's not really why you're here today. So thank you. And then the deeper dive is happening in House Judiciary. And they're doing a lot of good thinking on this. I think there's a lot of good thinking around this. So, so intercept. Yeah, let's go because, okay, great. Do you want me to move it along? Yeah, well, sort of. I know we've got someone at quarter of two, but we've got the word out that they're going to be delayed a little bit. It's DOC. So that'll be fine. We went to, we went longer on with Eric. So don't worry, Karen. All right. Okay. So the sequential intercept model. So back in 2007, the Chief Justice convened a group to look at mental health and substance abuse issues in the criminal justice system. And we called it the Chief Justice Task Force on Mental Health and Criminal Justice Collaboration. And we, I worked for the judiciary at the time. So I worked with the Chief Justice to coordinate this project. And we pulled together legislators, commissioners, the agency secretary, and judges to sit around the table and talk about what we do about people with mental health and substance abuse issues. A couple years after that, and some advocates were at the table as well, a couple of years after that, it changed its name to the tri branch task force on co-occurring disorders and started developing a strategic plan. And during that time, we started looking at what was being developed at the Gaines Center under SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association. And it was called the sequential intercept model. And it really is a conceptual framework for the criminal justice system.  I think it's a great visual of the criminal justice system and all the points in the system where you can intervene and apply evidence-based practices to address people with mental health, substance abuse, and co-occurring disorders. And so since we worked with it back in the tri branch task force, they've added on sequential intercept point zero. And it goes zero through, whoops, zero through five. And so it just gives you a really nice snapshot of the criminal justice system. And in that document, it tells you below the actual continuum, it gives you an idea of, so what are the practices that can be employed at each one of those points to help people as they're making their way through the criminal justice system? One of the things that is not evident in that document is also looking at people based on their risk and need.  And this primarily looks at need, but there's also a piece where risk should be also identified and so the treatment options or the intervention should be tailored for someone's risk and need. And so that just lays out a really nice document for taking a look at the criminal justice system. So the other document that you have that in the document shows just Addison, but you have received the SIM chart for all the counties in Vermont really is the work we did in what was called the core team underneath the tri-branch task force. And like I said, that document has not been updated since 2015, but I thought it would be interesting for you to see some of the work that we did in Vermont. Folks working on this in Vermont decided that some of the intercepts looked a little bit different. So you'll see some of the names are a little bit different than the brochure itself and we didn't have intercept zero at the time. However, when you look at it you can see what's available at each intercept in each county, which we were working on how do you develop an evidence-based criminal justice system using the sequential intercept model and plugging in what we already have and then taking a look at what's needed. And this is actually one of the ways that we identified that pretrial services was a need in the state of Vermont. Pretrial services didn't exist at this time. And when you look at the statewide, the first chart on the one you received in the Excel spreadsheet actually shows the state of Vermont and what was available statewide. And you can see that gap in intercept point two where there's court diversion pretty much. And so there wasn't anything else that was going on in that at that time that was addressing people's needs, pre-sentence, post-arrainment, pre-sentence. And the approach that the core team and the tri-branch task force took was what can we do to keep people from being incarcerated and going deeper into the criminal justice system? And if we focus on that intercept point and try and address the needs of people before they get to sentencing and maybe alleviate some of the sentencing that was happening, then there was a lot of focus on re-entry and it was really important to this group that they focus on pre-sentence. And so that's how pretrial services really was born in the state. And then Tamarack came along and some of the other options that we have in that intercept point now. So I'll stop for a minute. So we do have a question. Scott? Thank you. You have some new information for me. I just want to make sure that I'm understanding the concept. So the idea of the word intercept is this is an opportunity to get somebody out of the system. So these are various points in which a person could be involved with the justice system and the concept of intercept is this is an opportunity to get them out. Am I understanding that correctly? I think that's part of it. I think it's to get them out or to address their needs before their sentence so that they stay out of trouble during that pretrial period. Right. Right.  Yes, in part to get them out and in part to address their needs while they're in the system so they don't get in more trouble. Okay. Okay. So one part of that. So for example, violations of the release. Go ahead. Now, one part of that would be, and this is again, we went through this in Justice Reinvestment One and the same theme is popping up in Justice Reinvestment Two in that the judges need more information about what is happening with that defendant. What are their needs? What are their risks and what are their needs? Do they have substance abuse issues? Do they have mental health issues? Do they have homelessness as an issue so that the more information that that judge has in the pretrial arena, but also when it comes up for sentencing, the prosecution and the defense and the judicial, the judge needs more information beyond what that crime they're being charged with. They need to know what the person's risk is. They need to know what areas they're really struggling with in their life that then they can tailor a sentence accordingly. This is the way of structuring that information so that everybody knows what's going on with this individual and what the appropriate treatment is in terms of the justice system or in terms of helping them with their needs. Is that child life? Am I getting it? Yes, I would say yes. Any other questions? So Karen, do you want to go through the Addison County one? If you want me to, I think it's the information in there is old enough so I don't think we necessarily have to go through that in detail. What I'd like the committee members to see is at each intercept what are some of the initiatives or programs that are in place that work at that level? Okay, sure. That's what I'm trying to get. It may be old data, but at least so that they can see what can be applied at that particular intercept. Okay, yeah. Yes, so if we look at intercept point one, which is law enforcement and emergency services. We're on for folks who are looking at this on our webpage. We're on the Addison County, the county by county document. That's Addison County. Sorry, Karen. That's okay. Is everybody there? Yes. Okay, good. So if you look at law enforcement and emergency services at intercept point one, the team thought it was really important to look at what that meant in particular. So we're looking at pre-charge. We're looking at population-based approaches before seeing the prosecutor. And in Addison at that point, they had counseling services of Addison County, the Community Mental Health Center, which I think is still in existence. Grace House was there, which did public inebriate and detox. Brattle Bar Retreat, Porter Emergency Services Department, Emergency Department, Charter House, John Graham Shelter, Turning Point, and the CSAC Crisis Bed. Go ahead. Well, at that point, so they've been arrested. And then the question is, does law enforcement officer press charges? And instead of maybe pressing charges, they could reach out to some of these entities to intercept. Yes. And even if it's not, I mean, a lot of what law enforcement does is responding to quality of life issues as opposed to actual crimes. And we're doing some work on studying that to see what they're spending their time doing. So a lot of times they might come across people with mental health issues, or they might come across homeless people, they might come across someone who's calling the police over and over again to come and do something for them, and it has nothing to do with criminal behavior. And so the police have, for those incidents, the police have the option of linking people with other services in their community, which they do. And then sometimes it's criminal, borderline criminal activity that they can hook someone else, someone up with other services in their activity. So it's a lot of the pre-charge options are done through the what we have now are the community justice centers. And I don't think they're on, I don't know how many charts they're on here in 2015, but we have a network of community justice centers that work with the police on direct referrals. So we have other options in the communities now. So we have another question, Karen, I think it pertains to CJC's. Karen? I guess it could. So I work at the Essex Community Justice Center. So nice to meet you, Karen. There you go. And the one thing with the community justice centers I'll just share is that it's different on each county, whether we work with direct referrals or not. So some counties have that ability and some don't. So that maybe gets to my question of appreciating this intercept model, because I'm in it, but I didn't realize that my work was part of this intercept model. The intercept zero, I think is a real key one that I see on your brochure. And then I see in the chart, it's not listed there. And I understand it probably pretty extensive, but I feel like that's a key part of it is communities and counties that have probably extensive intercept zero services and programs, probably fair better than those that had zero. So I don't know if, if that is part of future, you know, spreadsheets or something, or if that's demonstrated anywhere. Yeah, that it's a really good question. The, I'm not planning on updating the spreadsheet, at least not right now with the work I'm doing. But what one of the things we are doing that I think is actually really, really exciting work is one of our 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics grants has a project in it that's called law enforcement and mental health. And it's not so much intercept point zero. It's more intercept point one at this point in time. But at the point we put together the Vermont charts, the Vermont tables on the sequential intercept point services, no one had captured anything about what law enforcement was doing. There's nothing, and there is nothing today. There is no list of law enforcement agencies and what they're doing to intervene with people. And some of them have some creative programming. Some of it's based on other models and other states, but there's no list of anything. So in our, in our mental health law enforcement project, we're actually going to categorize all the strategies and programs that law enforcement have put into place to intervene with people who have mental health issues and substance abuse issues and, and what the strategies that they're using. We also have some other things going on in that, in that project as well. But I think that's one of the things I wanted to capture was something that's never been done here in Vermont. The other thing I'll mention is that the Policy Research Institute just put together intercept point zero. That is kind of hot off the press. If you go to their website, they actually have a whole brochure just around intercept point zero. So as they developed this idea, this conceptual framework, it was always one through five. And everybody, even in the tri branch task force in the core team, which ended in 2015, even back then we were talking about yes, but there are things that can go on before that to prevent even, even necessary interventions with law enforcement. And what are those things? And people talked about what are schools doing for kids and keeping them out of trouble. We didn't get into that, but we did talk a lot about what happens before intercept point one. And it would seem that a lot of people were having that same conversation. So then they put together intercept point zero. So I can share when I get the, when I, we get the law enforcement categorization done, I can certainly share that with you all. So I'm going to move this along a little bit. Go right ahead. So if we could get to the second intercept. Sure. I can go through this fairly quickly. So intercept point two is post-arrest. So we're looking at the police arrest them. They haven't been arraigned yet. They may be detained and they haven't seen the judge yet. And so court diversion kicks in here. And that's it for that intercept. Now we have pretrial services. We have Tamarack. We have other options in that intercept. Intercept point three is pretrial serve. Well, I'm sorry. Intercept point three is pretrial services. And that's when we were using home detention. The rapid intervention community court was being used in Chittenden County and Addison County. And there wasn't a lot going on in that, at that intercept point either. So when we were looking at intercept points two and three, we were seeing a need for more things to be happening there, which is, like I said, we put together the idea of pretrial services and came out of the work looking at what was missing under intercept point four is court disposition. So you see this is where the judiciary is involved, court based outcomes and corrections based outcomes. So we have the DOC risk reduction program at this point, home confinement or incarceration, the different sentences that people can get, a direct reparative referral and the crash program comes in here. For reentry, intercept point five, that's reentry from jail prison and forensic hospitalization is probation reintegration and you are all familiar with all this. Even though it's changing under our feet as we speak reintegration for low conditional reentry parole and other programming. And then intercept point six was community corrections and community supports, which they've, which is in this model is really probation and parole. But this is the point where this kind of for our chart, this turned into intercept point zero, where you have all the community supports for folks, which is kind of interesting the way they did it. So you'll see all the residential programming that that goes on at that point. So that's go ahead Karen. I was going to say so that's that's really all I have on the the intercept point process. But I did want to say briefly before I get off is that I still use this to frame up our research. And when I write a BJS grant, I have referred to this from 2015 to 2020. I referred to the sequential intercept model. One of the things we have failed to do and I think David DeMora's talk talks about this in CSG quite frequently is in Vermont, we need to be looking at our populations. We had a tendency to develop programs without reviewing who's in the criminal justice system. And what are their characteristics, what are their risks and needs and then developing programs to meet those risks and needs. So every time I not every time almost every time I develop a program, I take a look at who have we not described well yet. And so we have projects like I said the law enforcement and mental health project 2020 that's going to look at law enforcement and intercept there. We're doing a project that's looking at all the alternative programs. And Representative Dolan I'm assuming someone's been in touch with your organization at this point. So we're going to be collecting data from all the alternative programs to look at racial disparities in the system. And see if everyone's being served that can be served based on the people coming through with arraignment. We're doing we've done evaluations of the treatment boards. We're looking for the Sentencing Commission and for our DAP we're looking at racial disparities and sentencing and see what we can find there. And we're looking at we had a project looking at offender characteristics but we had a really hard time getting Department of Corrections data. So we did a partial study of that and we were also looking to get out of state criminal histories which are really hard to get. Next to impossible but we haven't given up yet. And then we're looking at we have a project on probation and parole. So as I develop research studies we're trying to tie them into what's the research that goes along with each intercept point and what can we learn about the populations of those intercepts and what we might need to ensure that people are better off and getting their needs met. So I hope this is helpful to the committee because we've been working on this for as Karen said for a number of years in terms of really making sure that we have certain initiatives or programs or entities kick in different different times during this continuum in the justice centers starting from time of arrest or maybe a little bit before arrest to charges going through the judicial the court system to being sentenced to being incarcerated and then to re-enter the community so that you stop this cycle going through the system and also you start addressing the real risks and needs of those folks which then in turn would decrease your corrections populations that are incarcerated and keep those hard beds that are expensive for folks who need to be there whether we like it or not. And we've put in a lot of initiatives and that's why when you see the data for Department of Corrections in terms of those folks who are sentenced you see only a handful of folks with misdemeanors because we have put in these initiatives over the last 15 years. So that's been the policy of the state and it's being reflected now in terms of who who's making up our incarcerated population what are those crimes and convictions what are they and then when you start doing the deeper dive I'm sorry so it's all reflected within the sequential intercept and that's the deeper dive in terms of our numbers if you go back to the numbers that we received from DOC in terms of our 1,288 folks who are incarcerated over 1,200 of them are there convicted for felony charges felony crimes and as a previous Commissioner of Corrections said to us way back in the late 90s why do we need to spend money on a hard bed for folks who are there who are low risk to reoffend low to moderate risk and severity of crime why are we taking up a hard bed for those folks well maybe it'd be more appropriate to put in services for them in the community and leave those hard beds for your high risk to reoffend and high severity of crime so that's where we've been working and I think that's what the data in terms of the looking at who is incarcerated and the convictions I think that's the path we've been on for 15-20 years for that so questions folks anything for Karen okay Karen that was easy that was easy I just want to offer that if someone's interested in in doing data request on sentences please feel free to send something in and we can get something back out to you or email me and I can send you an example of something we've already done which would be fine if you're interested in seeing that I'm sure a few members will be reaching out Karen that would be fine and we do have a question Michelle I was looking at the documents that we had and I'm not seeing the one that you said was county by county showing what different counties offered was that sent is that posted on our website or that was sent to an email it's sent to us by email okay I'll check with Phil later because I haven't been able to find that and I am curious to look at my county thanks yeah it's Phil sent it out when we began the testimony with Karen okay Scott keep in mind it's old it's old yeah you've been busy with other things I don't know thank you I don't know if this is the right time to bring up sort of the philosophy of what we're doing here one of my one of my mentors in this area is John Perry who I think all of you know or the chair and and Karen know and he's been kind enough to give me some background about how all this what's been going on with all this and one of the concepts he mentioned one of our conversations that really stuck with me was the idea of reciprocity the idea of of doing something not only doing something for the the inmates for for the offenders but asking them to do something for for us for the community as a way of reintegrating them into the community and so you know this might be a long conversation and maybe not it's not the right time to do it but I'm just wondering how much that concept is has also percolated into this into the sequential intercepts and these other things that we're going to talk about what I'll say is back when we wrapped this up in 2015 there wasn't there weren't a lot of restorative justice practices in Vermont there were some and I think at that point we were just starting to learn about restorative justice practices and now and Representative Dolan probably has more to say about this than I do but the the CJC's the community justice centers court diversion and have adopted a lot of restorative justice practices which is very similar to what you're talking about Representative Campbell and if you see John please tell him I send my best same here he was so wonderful to work with he lives in the committee he was in the community oh he was just he was just so great to have a round he was really good and um and so there's more of that going on now and I think people are having community meetings that are using circle processes to have more respectful conversations I think the CJC's are utilizing restorative justice practices and and court diversion as well so I think there is some of that going on beginning to infiltrate the the the institution the institutional models that we've set up you would say okay that's that's that's good to know because it really sounds like a much more holistic approach to to helping people become you know sort of rejoin society and become become useful members of the community I think more can be done but I think I think we've got a good start great great good enough thank you the big thing that John Perry and and John Gorchek commissioner DOC at the time because they were like this the two of them was um really putting initiatives in place to repair the harm for the the defendant the offender would repair the harm that that's the for them and make the community whole for that other questions anyone don't all speak up okay thank you Karen I appreciate you for having me it was very nice to meet you all very nice to be back in front of the committee and I'm sure you'll be back at some point thank you do folks want to take anytime you need me I'm sure you're going to get you're going to get some questions from some of the members I'm sure that would be fine I look forward to it great everybody thank you Karen yeah bye bye do members want to take a quick five minute break let's do that let's take a really fast five minute break and we're coming back with a DOC to talk about a report that's on our web page under our reports section that deals with it says graduated sanctions and reentry housing we want to look at the reentry housing piece with Dale Cook so remember to block your video and