records. So everything you're saying can be recorded in the posterity range. Next week we're meeting again on Friday. And we have a compromise between the I think between the Justice Oversight Committee and the Jungle District Committee on the language for the I'm going to call it the Women's Prison Correctional facilities. So we're going to hand out, we're going to hand out that language to all of us. But we won't take it up until next Friday at 10 a.m. So if you have questions about it, you can either call Gaffron, Chris Cole or anyone. So briefly, it is a compromise, Jane Kittsall were coming, I think how she's got it. So we'll take it up next week, but it didn't have time on this week's agenda. So it says propose motion. Oh, it's right here on your back. Thank you so much. So can I just ask for clarification? This language here does not replace the work of Justice Reinvestment in the Kansas State Government. It works in tandem with that. And also because it deals a lot here with programming, which CSG can weigh in on. But CSG also does not look at doing any analysis of facility models or site locations of correctional facilities. That's not their role. Their role is programming. This does not take a long time. They may suggest that we do better off with 30 women in transitional housing than in the prison. They may suggest we better off with 30 men in transitional housing, too. And not in prison. But they could come up with all kinds of suggestions based on the data. But that doesn't, we have to act on those suggestions. So it doesn't include at all where we're going to? All right, so next Friday at 10 a.m. Any questions? At that time. So our first item on today is the update on the CHIN working group. And I thought that it would be helpful to have Jeff Peterson go over the working group. But I wanted to make it clear that our focus is on the opioid crisis and the infant and toddler cases that are being seen in our courts that are backing up the defense, prosecution, the courts, and taking away from other things that court might be doing. And in particular, we have money put aside two years ago in the budget of the year. I think last year. Last year in the budget. Some nine million dollars. Seven million. Seven million. I'd like to inflate. We'd take nine. To come up with some ideas, the committees approved some, didn't approve other proposals from the working group. So I thought it would be good for us to get an update on that. Don't go on and step on the toes of the Child Protection Committee, which is also looking at the CHIN's profit. With that. I think I can bring on one of the plan. We see the statistics in Brentwood County, for example, which are so high as compared to the rest of the state and even compared to Chittenden County. And those are some of the things that I thought better understood. So I don't know if by the end of my talk or anyone else's this morning will better understand, but I will tell the committee that that's one of hopefully our focus of the CHIN's reform group. And I can explain that in more detail. But for the record, Brian Greerson, Chief Superior Judge reporting on the CHIN's reform group. I can tell the committee that we have met twice since the session ended. And I think to try to outline a plan to go forward on the areas that were approved by the legislature. And one of our last meeting also included contacts that I think Ken can go in. We'll probably go into more detail than I will with the Arizona courts on some ideas for future requests to the legislature around the idea of mediation. But in short, so the committee understands where we are, there are actually three items that were approved in the last legislative session. The first was a home visiting study. We have identified an individual, Kay Johnson, who will be doing that study for us. And we expect that contract with her to be finalized this week, and we hope she starts her work either by mid-September, late September. And we hope to have a report from her before the end of the year on that subject. And as I said, Ken Schatz may have some more detail on that. But that is the first piece. That was about $25,000. And so we're going ahead with that and we expect that process to start, as I said, within a week or two. The second piece that I would refer the committee to was the so-called systems evaluation. That was $125,000 to look at the system as a whole and make recommendations. Obviously, that's a much bigger project than the home study. Within our office and the court administrator's office, we put together an internal group to look at the services of the consultants, the entities that could conduct that type of evaluation consistent with the legislation that was passed. So we're still trying to identify. Refresh my memory. Wasn't that also to look at other states? Yes. Yes. There, because other states, I mean, New York can't divide. It's made, I think. The idea, I don't like that language right in front of me, but it speaks to looking not only at what we're doing, but what other states are doing. And I think the words, if I can put my fingers on it. That's okay. But it's supposed to be a broad look at how we are structured and how other states have done it and is there a way to do the process differently. So that obviously is a much more involved project, but we are in the process of trying to identify the entity that could provide that service and also looking at the procurement process, whether it's going to be by contract or whether we have to put out an RFP to start that process. Once we've identified the entities we think can do this, we'll obviously, the judiciary will be talking with the other members of the Chin's reform group under the legislation. We need to consult with them. It's going to be just our decision. And we hope to get that process started so at least we can identify the entity within this calendar year and start that process. The final piece that was approved by the legislature this year was the hiring of a judicial master and related staff. That's coming up at 11. I went into a lot of detail now other than to tell you and I should have made note at the beginning. I have filed with the committee.  The figures that I think you were referring to, Senator Sears showing the numbers in Franklin County, the charts right there. So you have those figures and I have also provided the committee with the job description for the judicial master and I would just tell the committee without going into a lot of detail on that position that we are hopeful of working out the details with the Department of Human Relations in terms of identifying the type of position it is and hopefully start that hiring process within the next week or two. Those are the three areas that the legislature had a code funding for. The funding for the judicial master calls for the use of a judicial master in a multi-county region and it also provides for staff support for that position. And we have identified Chittenden and Franklin County as the proposed pilots and I can go into detail now or later when we talk about the judicial master as to why we arrived at that point. The other area that the legislature did not approve this session that all of the members of the Chittenden form group are interested in discussing further, not necessarily today but letting the committee know that we're interested in the coming session and talking more about the concept of use of mediation in the CHINSS process. In particular, we talked with folks from Arizona who have had significant success in that process. As much as 90% of the cases are resolved somewhere along the lines and we think it's an area that certainly needs further discussion and so we look forward in the coming session to talk more about that. One thing I've been thinking of more and more is the cost of people to go to court today and the fees of that. Have we gone too far in terms of the cost?  Thank you for your advice, by the way. But, you know, have we done any look at why does it cost $140 every time you want to make a motion to... Depending on what the motions are, I mean, that's the fee structure and off the top of my head I don't know what the fees are but that's the process. I was wondering more and more and also, I thought at some point we ought to take up the issues of driving the license to spend it again. The cost of some of these fees that are exorbitant in comparison with the violence. They are and I can tell the committee that on a related matter we met earlier this week to discuss the surcharge system but there are certain entities that are funded to a great extent by that. When we legalized marijuana it cost $180,000 in funding that they were getting funded through the tickets from the marijuana surcharge. If it's the surcharges those are, of course, are imposed. We can't weigh them. It was the worst. I was sitting in Newport last week and a fellow came in with a plea agreement and there were four pages of the plea agreement three charges on each page and every one of them carried $147 from the surcharges. So that's just one case but we have no authority to weigh those. It's a matter of... That's a quick summary of where we are at this point what we hope to talk to the legislature about in the coming session. Would you make note of that in the future meeting about surcharges particularly in terms of license suspension and how people get themselves into a mess very quickly with every one night's activity? Maybe we could have kind of a general discussion not just of the surcharges but the array of fees that are imposed and we just added a fee to offenders for under supervision. We increased that. So it's at the beginning of the system all the way through to the end of the system to know what those fees are funding. It's not your fault. It's certainly a topic that we have been discussing. So the funding sort of functions the government out of the general fund and the funding out of the surcharges. Exactly. It's all the folks that have an interest specifically in surcharges and what amounts they're getting at it. I'll just give you rough numbers of this group that was there the SSI units special investigation units the crime victims restitution I forgot who else was at the table about three and a half million dollars in surcharges on a quick number is coming from strictly from surcharges one hundred and forty seven dollars every time I kind of go to the shop. We'll see how you can discuss it later. I remember we had a bill on our committee a few years ago introduced pertaining to folks who have DLSs and to forgive past charges or so they could be reinstated and part of the issue was their license could be reinstated until they paid all the surcharges that had accumulated and that was what was holding them back. And it was so complicated and so many layers that we didn't do remember that much? That was like three years ago. Particularly here people coming out of corrections. Yeah, let's hope we'll look at it. Getting them back into the area where we went a little off the subject. But it's all those surcharges that have accumulated that prevents them from going forward when they're reinstated. That's the same one more question. Judge if you can just help me understand the process of feeling a little frustration and this is an urgent issue that we're talking about and it seems like it's taking a while to get there and particularly the systems evaluation. We're here in the wintertime and we have great ideas and expect things to be completed by the time we get back but it feels like it's taking a long time given the urgency of the problem. There's no question about the urgency of the problem and everybody on the Chins Reform Group recognizes that. The process of course until the legislative session is over we couldn't take any action until then and so we have met, as I said, twice and we recognize the need to move forward on that but that's a bigger project than the other two which are individual positions. They have some proposals and we rejected many of their proposals and so it really wasn't until the end of the session that the senator saying that... So this is what passed through their proposals where I don't remember all of them but I haven't remember. Ken Schatz could speak to some of them. They were looking at things like having somebody attached to each turning point without the parents. So I remember. I appreciate that during the session it was an iterative process that it took to the end of the session but if I understood you correctly the contract, the systems evaluation you're not sure if you'll award it until we end up this calendar. I hope we can do it sooner than that. That's all I can tell you at this point. We really want to get that process started and find the entity and the procurement process is a little more time consuming than I appreciate it. I will probably say that for myself. I'm sure it's equally frustrating for you. It was just that the end of the year it will probably be another six months or a year before we see something and we're now into the second half of the next biennium before we're able to act on your recommendations. It's a long time for such an urgent problem. I might say that partly I thought. Yeah. So maybe we all allow that to get an urgency of this. Maybe it would be good if this committee could make some recommendations for the future spending of $7 million before we get into the session and go through the budget so that there are other proposals that the committee could look at say in our December meeting or November meeting. We do appreciate the concern and we recognize the urgency. So that would make recommendations to this the committee's own that are involved in this area of appropriations and some welfare and human services. The entire budget. No, no. We'll send you a copy. Thank you, Jess. Ken Schatz. Welcome. Ken Schatz, commissioner of the Department for Children and Families. I look forward to meeting you Mr. National. Going forward, I do want to again start by appreciating this committee's attention on this issue. It is urgent. It is extremely important that we address what I perceive to be a child welfare crisis in our state. The challenges are immense. The fact that you created the working group again is a very positive step. And we did work hard and as Senator Sears indicated we did our best to make some recommendations in response to your request. I appreciate the process that some of those recommendations have not been accepted and some have and we all want to move forward together as efficiently and expeditiously as possible. And so I'll start by appreciating again the particular focus on the opioid crisis as you know. We've talked about that a lot in terms of the challenges to families in our state and in particular how it's impacted the child welfare system. So the attention on that is really welcome. Which goes to the contract that Judge Biersen mentioned with Kay Johnson. So as you may recall what you did approve was in response to our recommendation related to home visiting that we do first a contract with somebody to review both national models and Vermont models to make sure that if we're going to go forward with something it is one that's consistent with best practices. So Kay Johnson is actually a well qualified expert who's actually done a lot of work in Vermont in the early care learning and health arenas. And so I think that that is going to be really helpful in terms of enabling us to move forward. But it also just remind you about that initiative because that's just a contract to get us going with that initiative recommendation which you have not addressed yet in terms of whether or not you will support as a legislature is recognizing that a combination of embedding a private family support person that is not the state but maybe somebody from a parent child center in the pediatric practice and then having the ability to refer families to sustained home visiting is an approach that we believe really can make a positive constructive difference in enabling families to address some issues related to opioids, related to other challenges and barriers that sometimes lead to abuse and neglect. We do see this as a prevention early intervention approach. It's building on some things you can take some credit for which we have a really great system of newborns and parents going to their pediatrician within the first six months after a child is born. It's the documents that we've seen indicate approximately 95% of newborns actually go to their first visit with a pediatrician which provides us for an opportunity to make use of the pediatrician approach as a way to build avoidance and prevention of an early intervention with respect to abuse and neglect. So we're building on that positive. I'm hopeful that when we do come back in January based on the recommendations from Kay Johnson we will have a proposal for you to initiate some embedding of family support workers and sustained home visiting approaches in areas around the state and I'm hopeful that you will support that approach with as Senator Sears mentioned the money that you do have designated for this effort. So from my perspective that's critically important to move forward on. The other thing that Judge Beerson mentioned that we have been working on is related to alternative dispute resolution. Again that is not something that you supported. I don't know that you rejected it although I can be educated. I think that you just weren't quite ready for it is my interpretation but I'm glad to be having further conversation about that. As Judge Beerson indicated we do think that that is a really important tool to have to try to enable some of these matters to move through the system in a more collaborative manner and hopefully have better outcomes and results. So what we did was connect with a court based program in Arizona that is implementing a child welfare mediation approach. I'll step back for a second it's not as if we don't have a very robust mediation practice in Vermont in a variety of areas but what we've learned is that the child welfare issues are somewhat unique in terms of how you approach mediation. So it's not just a cookie cutter thing that if you've got a mediator you can automatically just say please do a child welfare case. What we learned in Arizona was that they have a system that is very prescriptive in terms of how it operates. They put a lot of time and energy into thinking about how it would work. They use a staff approach so that they do have appropriate supervision training and monitoring of how it's working. They use something that they refer to as facilitated settlement conferences. Participation by parents is voluntary. It's not forced but interestingly enough what they told us was out of 1200 cases in the particular county involved approximately 1100 families voluntarily participated. That is almost all of the families who had this opportunity took advantage of it. And in fact they were able to settle 85 to 90 percent of the cases through mediation which again is an incredibly positive statistic in terms of the success. And even when the cases did not successfully resolve they did have shorter court hearings because some of the issues were either clarified or reduced so that they could move through the system more expeditiously. So I give you some of that detail just to let you know we're working on it still that my hope is again that we will come back in January and ask that you do fund us to be able to implement a child welfare mediation approach. In Vermont we think it has great potential. Could you think about having a proposal prepared say mid November or even earlier that would be able to be gone through by this committee at our December meeting which is yet to be figured out but it might be helpful to be able to have the committees know what's coming and it might be a better process for everyone involved. I'm glad to work on that with the other members of our group I think that without turning around and looking to see but I think that that is very doable to give you some sense of our thoughts about the proposal. I was just thinking is that way there we could make recommendations to the standing committees. And we could put that in the BAA even and maybe move it a little faster than waiting for the budget to come. It seems like every year this is just a side note budget adjustment sometimes we're passing the budget adjustment just before the big bill. You just have to agree with us. We also have a budget adjustment you can use that too. Just a question about the home visiting. What's that going to look like? Is this going to be something that is all over the state? So there are pockets of home visiting that actually are going on now so what we had proposed but it may be revised in light of the K. Johnson reports I want to be straightforward about that. But what we had envisioned was doing pilots in two counties to have an opportunity to see if it's actually we really want to look to see whether it works in our state with modality and approach that we implement. We don't want to assume that it's going to work out quickly so the idea we proposed initially was to do pilots in two counties. No this is separate from that's the judicial masters it would not necessarily be the same we haven't gotten there yet in terms of this initiative in terms of where. So then finally I would just close by saying that I do appreciate the concern about the timing of the system of care report process it is challenging and I know that the judiciary is doing the best they can to move it forward I'll share that we're doing our best to support the judiciary in terms of moving that forward I just want you to know that I think we're all committed to moving forward as quickly as possible. Thank you James Senator Tears I thought since folks are talking a little bit about earlier recommendations we printed out a copy of those for y'all and also the language from the budget that created the working group just that I thought you guys seemed to be supporting the pilot. Hi, James Tepper Department of State's trains and shares so you know our Edwin Chin's group was conflicted I think whether to really focus our efforts on the urgency of the immediate crisis in one of us or whether to create proposals around sort of long-term prevention alternatives and I think that what we decided and I think you'll see we had proposals around both of those aspects that were kind of I don't think any one of them is very focused but what we have now focused on is alternative dispute resolution and mediation which seems to have been incredibly successful in resolving cases more quickly in Arizona, it's family centric, family led it's therapeutic and ultimately less traumatic for the children involved and it saved millions of dollars for the court system I have some there's a 2014 report which indicates just how much money has been saved for judicial budget initially but they're not calculating the kind of second and third level effects of resolving these cases quickly and the intergenerational impacts of the trauma that these situations create so as Ken mentioned 95% of the Chin's cases they call them dependency cases out there offer some form of mediation we've focused mostly on the facilitated settlement conferences these are confidential so that nothing that's said in the conference can be used against any of the parties in later proceedings they provide parents ability to modify what's in the affidavits because often times what's in the affidavits can be a very strict bone of contention for one party or another just a slight tweak might be the kind of breaking point that opens up future negotiations there are moderators or mediators but these are self-directed by the family members that mediators job is to kind of work through the issues in a non-judgmental way look at what's possible develop a safety plan help the parties understand what trial will look like what the consequences are going to be what issues will be important for a judge at a trial what's essential here is that they happen incredibly early in the process there's a first meeting within 24 hours of a removal within six days of that they're brought before a judge and and then the judge will set a future mediation within three weeks and I think 65% of those 95 mediation cases come to some sort of resolution at that second meeting so it's just been, you know, it's a way to kind of get through the kind of contentious issues early on and not drag out this process can you give us a I understand what you're saying but so we have a couple who the state is proposing to have their child foster care alternative care or be with one parent or another parent and the prosecutors involved the state the judiciary involved the defense provides an attorney what are I mean how does that all get mediated when you've got all these different interests I guess I'm having a hard time understanding so this guy I'll give you one example of a constriction and complain to me drug addict the mother is a drug addict the father is a drug addict the father says I'm clean now I've been through this program that program why can't I have my kid how do we mediate that I don't think that every case is going to be resolved but it's my understanding that I'm curious as to how you mediate something like that well I mean can you give me an example of what gets mediated I can put you on the spot right and I would like to take that question back to the Arizona folks but I think what gets resolved you know maybe not when it's my understanding that at these mediations you have the mediator you have one or two family members you have separate mediations you have an attorney for the child and that's it so you don't have the and everything is confidential so nothing can be later used against the members or the parties at a future proceeding but you're not having all the attorneys present for all members and I think that the goal is to really think about what's best for this child and to work through the low hanging fruit issues and try and find some sort of common ground you know they base this on the getting to yes model of negotiation and you know with ultimately the kind of best interest of child at heart so I know that that's maybe a rosy colored look at the situation but when I get the complaints from constituents that I said a lot to Karen or Ken or somebody at DCM the best possible you know it's always more located than what the person told me number one they can't tell me much but they can tell me that there's more to the story than what you've got and I'm just not I'm not part of the problem I think when the working group came up with the mediation proposal last year we see in real life situations which I understand how it's going to work because they could already agree from mediation the the people that call me don't a lot of times it's grandma too you don't have to tell her you don't have any rights I know that the parties mediation usually submit for this kind of second the facilitated mediation a worksheet where they kind of list problems and the kind of complaints they have against the other party and so the mediator already has a lot of information going into where they disagree and then the mediator's job is to help them understand that okay even if everything you say is true the judge will still find a dependency in Arizona or will still substantiate the Chin's claim here so you know even if everything you're saying is true you're still in a pretty bad position I didn't put an extra level on you but just those are some of the things that I really would like to understand and I think this may be a question for DCF after the human your temporary question I appreciate that current system mediation is triggered once the child is removed I suspect that we all agree that in fact it's a system failure if we're talking that if we have removed the child and so are you looking at models where can we move this further upstream to have the appropriate intervention so that we're not removing the child which is out of your area yeah we can involved a little bit later but no I think that's absolutely something that we've talked about before kind of pre-petition family group conferencing DCF knows if you're getting to that point where you're going to say in a work and we've got to do something else and it just seems that that might be the opportunity to step in rather than what we're doing with something else maybe some questions so the answer is yes we're definitely talking about the potential for you to whether family group conferencing or potential mediation in advance of an actual decision requested judge I would just mention something about just the numbers in Pima County which is where Tucson is approximately a million people they have 14 juvenile court justices Ken mentioned they have 1200 dependency cases per year mediation sees 1100 of them and they do that with 5 mediators so I think if we were to look at a pilot here it's not it wouldn't be a huge staff increase I think it's something that we can look at and see how it's working and see if we're getting the results that we want so this is the direction we went in obviously it sounds like you might want a couple more options from us for December but I think that this has a lot of potential I'm sorry you mentioned there's a report from Arizona there is a 2014 report can you send that to the county so in order to try to avoid just repeating what everybody else has said I will start by just acknowledging that we're very supportive of the process up to this point we have spent quite a bit of time since the legislative session ends and doing really sort of you know the role of this CHINS reform committee has sort of changed since the legislative session ended because now we are not only putting together proposals for CHINS reform initiatives but also trying to implement the proposals that were funded and we've devoted quite a bit of time on sort of both ends of that both ends of that spectrum and I think for the most part people have really addressed the process up to this point pretty well so that if there's questions about our office's position on everything up to this point I'm happy to answer that but otherwise I'll sort of skip to the next steps question and there was a lot of interest in the mediation proposal that's something that we've been very interested in largely because there's multiple mediation models in child welfare systems around the country and every time we look at them and every time we look at valuations of them we're pretty amazed at the results that they get they do almost always almost every mediation type model whether it's a pre pre-charge model or a post-charge model whether it's one that uses family group conferencing model or whether it uses a more traditional mediator model all of these programs really very clearly result in outcomes that I think are better for really everyone involved you know as Senator Sears says these are complicated cases with a lot of intersecting interests but I think in the vast majority of cases there's actually a real lot of common ground and I've you know I think one of the ways to look at it is just sort of to see the potential that's there is when you look at how cases go through our system right now and how many of those cases actually end in an agreed upon resolution you know we probably we've discussed this in our committee about how to come up with a percentage around that because nobody's really keeping statistics on it but we all guessed that it's probably around 85% of our CHINS cases are adjudicated based on an agreed upon resolution anyway but we spend an awful lot of time getting to that point and because it's such an adversarial system to get to that point I think that there's plenty of cases where we would have more engagement from parents more buy-in from parents and more time you know I think really significantly more time after the adjudication to work with parents before you reach the point where you're looking around saying how is this case going to end are we going to be able to reach some sort of a permanent conclusion in this case soon and anything we can do to speed up that process is going to pay dividends on that end of the process where parents have more time, where families have more time where the state has more time to really devote to providing programming treatment and services to allow these families to reunify if that's going to be possible and I do think as senators here spoke to there's going to be some cases that are to resolve through mediation that's the case in any sort of mediation process but I also would say that I'm always surprised at the number of cases that are very very very contentious up until they reach that critical point right before the hearing and we manage to settle them anyway because I think a lot of times what is contentious is not actually there's not a lot of contention around the facts of the case a lot of times there's a lot of contention by sort of part feelings about how people were treated how the case was brought how whether or not the process seems fair to people and those are all things that are very very mediatable and very very I don't want to say easy because none of this is easy but very very very possible to resolve those cases in a mediated process so we're really hopeful about that and I think we've seen around the country different small examples of places that are using mediation or processes like mediation to really good effect and so I think there's a lot of hope on our committee that piloting some mediation piloting a mediation initiative will really give us something that we can then expand statewide that we'll be able to look at it and see something that really works moves these cases through the system faster and with better results and then we'll have something that we could really grow with regard to after the mediation is there data that shows the long term effect of these cases and how successful the families are after the mediation there is and I don't have it on the top of my head or in my hand but a few of these have really been studied in detail and I know that they've looked at the long term outcomes so I know that's out there and I can try to find some and perhaps bring it the next time that we are up here proposing this. Two questions I'm going to get the words wrong but I believe that when we were having conversations about pre-trial services that was concerned on the part of the defense bar about revealing information in private session that could later be used and this like an mediated process involves putting your cards on the table at some point is this going to be an issue how are you going to resolve this or is there an issue there? I think there will be an issue there and it's an issue we will resolve I think every defense attorney is going to be wary when you propose sharing lots of information in advance of uneducatory hearing and I want them to be suspicious and nervous about things like that that's what we pay them to do and it's our job to make sure that we put something into place that has protections, confidentiality and immunity protections that allow that free sharing of information to resolve the case without turning it around and using it as a tool later and one of the examples of where we've been very successful with that is in the youthful offender legislation we have some pretty robust use and derivative use and immunity in place for information that's exchanged as part of the youthful offender consideration hearing and that was certainly something that when we started introducing that to our defense attorneys there was a lot of concern about the information that would be shared in a consideration hearing process and how that would be used as people have gotten more confident about the immunity provisions that are in the statute we've seen almost all of our attorneys get on board with it and the ones that are recalcitrant we will fix we'll try to and my second question the Defender General's Office has a small program I think we give you about $60,000 actually we gave to DCF that's supposed to give to you about $150,000 and that I think essentially does some alleviation that's all I need you to know no similarity no similarity, no overlap there how much from your perspective when there are a number of children involved in one particular situation and you've got to have a different way of reaching out at stage that's right not in every case only where the children's interests don't line up so just by way of example if you have two children who are both young infants what I would call a normal case when I say normal there's nothing normal about it but the case you see all the time where it's essentially you know a family with drug involvement and things are falling apart and then it's pretty easy to have one attorney that represents two children I think the difficulties come up usually when you have two children and one of the children is accusing another child of having done something in the home or where you have two children and this is a fairly common scenario is two children who may have the same mother but have different fathers and have different interests in terms of where they are going to wind up because one may have a father available that they could with transition to where one might not and that creates conflicts of interest where you can't have the same attorney representing both children but wherever there is no conflict of interest then we do have the same attorney representing however many children are called I get confused by so totally I could see how someone could look at a case where there are conflicts of interest in multiple attorneys and be sort of shocked by that but it's the rare case where that happens I shouldn't say rare, not in terms of like it's not like it almost never happens but it's something that probably happens in 15% of cases with multiple children by no means the majority I would think that makes it the mediation even that much more difficult you know I think that the amazing thing to me is how often even in cases where there's a lot of different interests where there's multiple children multiple attorneys, multiple interests there's so much overlapping and a lot of times what mediation does isn't so much resolve the whole case but resolve every part of the case that you can resolve and then figure out what is left that actually needs to be litigated or sorted out and so in a lot of cases I think that the role that mediation can play leading into an adjudication here may not be to actually resolve the whole thing but to get everybody to agree that like we don't actually dispute any of this factual stuff we can do away with that the real question is, and this would be true in most cases the real question is what are we going to do after this what is DCF going to be recommending what are the I think that in a lot of cases the mediation process won't need to amount to much more than everybody sort of laying out on the table here's what we will be doing down the road here's what we expect to be doing down the road and when everybody can have that kind of frank conversation in a confidential environment I think in a lot of cases there will be situations where parents will be willing to say okay I'm willing to admit that I sort of fell down on the job here and here and I'm willing to do this other stuff and I'm willing to do that because I've been assured that I'm going to you know have a real shot to reunify with my kids I'm not going to be I don't need to fight every single thing tooth and nail at this stage because I have some confidence that at the next stage there will be a recommendation that services be provided for me to reunify with my child that this is not a case that's going to go directly to a termination of parental rights something like that kind of conversation that needs to happen in that sort of collaborative confidential privileged environment thank you very much Mark representative shah representative shah so earlier we talked about the Asian gay people where all of a sudden you don't have to go further it was down on that a little bit about who's driving that that bus at that time recommended how do you how do you give it to the mediator to the parents you know I think in general nobody's really driving the bus it's more of the process really looks like everybody sits in a room and the mediator generally and this is I'm not you know there's multiple mediation processes out there and I'm sort of speaking to the more traditional mediation model that's used you know in simple litigation all the time it's really a question not of sort of trying to drive things to a settlement but starting with let's identify what the actual conflicts are and let's identify what there's actually no conflict about but people are fighting about it nonetheless and try to narrow it down to where there's actual conflict and a lot of times that provides enough clarity to make it actually easy to reach a mediated agreement because when you you know sometimes when everything's stripped away and you look at like here's what we actually disagree about it's very clear how that has to be resolved so I think that it's a process that's not so much driven by any one party as it is driven by the mediator having the flexibility and the freedom to sort of just go from party to party kind of identifying where there's conflict where there's not conflict where there's overlap where there may be some agreement that sits on some real small point of overlap that everybody can get on board with and that allows the case to allows everybody to simply say okay I'm okay with that outcome and that may be something as simple as you know I mean just if you picture this you know I when I do this I'm representing parents or children I don't really see it from the state side so much but when you picture it from the perspective of representing a parent in one of these cases you know I don't I don't often run into a situation where I'm representing a parent who's saying I've not done anything wrong everything about me is perfect there's no there's nothing here there's nothing for them to be like it's almost always a situation where there is quite a bit of openness to saying look here's how I here's what I could be doing better here's what I recognize I need to improve on and simply providing the opportunity to do that but also to give people the you know the ability to say but here's the piece that I don't agree with here's the process I don't agree with here's the outcome that I really need to see that's really important to me results in settling these cases and I think that the statistics and the stories that we see in jurisdictions that have implemented these kinds of programs really are pretty incredible I mean I think that if we can achieve anything like the success in Pima County, Arizona and some of the other jurisdictions that use these processes it's going to be very much worth it so there is this variation process how much is the crisis entering discussions are those cases able to reach the agreement sure I think that the the opioid crisis has given us a lot of cases I don't see the cases as being that much different than the cases that we had before the opioid crisis I think that the cases that involve families that are affected by opioids really aren't going to be that much different in terms of what the outcomes are how they are mediated how they sort of process than other cases I think you know as always the real hang up that we have around the opioid crisis is when we don't have services available that we need where everybody can agree okay we can resolve this if we get this person into treatment and right now for whatever reason we can that's always that's I think the one sort of uniquely opioid hang up that we run into but other than that I don't see these cases as being that much different from cases that we've always seen involving all kinds of things alcohol, other drugs opioids before it was an opioid crisis it's always been substance abuse and substance use and the effects of it on families has always been a big part of the work we do and I don't think that that's any different here or in Pima County, Arizona or in any of the places that have been really successful with these processes so one last question I guess since we've recognized that we have a substance abuse problem and admitted to it have you seen any drop off in these type of cases coming before you I think that if you look at the statistics that were provided by Judge Pierson you'll see that there was a drop off last year we see that reflected in our own numbers not quite as much because we keep track of pending cases rather than added cases so we see changes a little bit slower in our data than they're reflected in the judiciary's data which is added cases however I also if you look at the chart you'll see that two years ago there was also a drop off and I got excited about that one but then it spiked back up so I'm not getting excited about this one one last question you said sometimes it's hard to get people in the treatment we think we're being told that there's no waiting lists and that everybody can get in tomorrow or the sound can in if they want to what is your current experience I think that it has improved a lot that's true in every case that there is no waiting lists we still have waiting lists here and there but I think that a lot of times there's other barriers besides just the waiting list you know if you have a client who really needs a particular kind of treatment because if you have someone who has a job that they can't afford to lose has a house that they can't afford to give up doesn't have any supports around them who can sort of prop them up while they get in the treatment then you're looking at somebody and you need a very unique treatment that's going to work with that's going to meet them where they're at that's very available in some counties and in some counties it's not very available at all so it's a real it's not just whether there's a waiting list or not it's a and there's clients that I have who I don't know if I could find treatment that was appropriate for them even if we had all the treatment and all the waiting lists you know some of our clients are unique enough that they are going to be really hard to get into treatment period because of you know it's not just substance use you know in most of these cases it's co-occurring disorders it's substance use, mental health poverty all kinds of factors that intersect and sometimes some of those factors make substance substance use treatment pretty inaccessible I appreciate that question I do think, I don't know what the appropriate committee is to look at this but we should be doing inventory of the gaps in our system because I run into the same client in bank and we're told that no it's not a waiting list and we're told no no it's two weeks and I'm told well this person can't get counseling they can get a suboxone if they can't get the counseling or this person can't get this I don't know where where the best place is but we need to start to grapple with this because we hear everything is great in that religion thank you very much the next issue is one of the what I think might be the best cut-scene one the about three and a half years ago I think it was 10 chats two stuff was driving me south JVS meeting in Austin, Texas of the 50 states to talk about juvenile justice came back to that meeting with some ideas and they're working with House Judiciary, Senate Judiciary came up with some reforms including the youth with vendor changes to the laws and juvenile justice among the whole find ourselves a leader in the nation we know that we're a leader in the nation because we're always talking about sexual and Iraqi role in the future and how justice doesn't make it to the top make it a list so I'm appreciative of the other day Beth Salizal I've known for years she is the Beddington District Director for DCL I don't know if I was supposed to get a copy but I got a copy of the update about the juvenile justice system and it was a great powerpoint to rent it over and I thought it would be wonderful to hear from them so that's what we're here for in this next tap so can Beth thank you for being on this game of course, yes well I'm going to be brief because I appreciate that introduction to Senator Sears game in some respects I had in mind very similar comments so I think that I do appreciate the attention to the raise the age jurisdiction that we will be the first in the nation as you I'm sure recall as of July 1st 2020, 18 year olds except for certain very serious offenses will primarily be addressed in the family court as opposed to the adult court system there is some potential for transfer for more serious offenses to adult court but it is an incredibly significant change I'm not going to be mindful of the time I think you've heard all of that but one of the things that we also appreciate that you did is give us some time to plan to move forward to make this actually work it is a transformative change it is a big deal so I don't want to minimize the amount of work that's going on we're continuing to do a lot of work with all of the Juvenile Justice stakeholders as you may recall you did ask us to provide a specific report on the status related to this change as of November we are working diligently towards preparing that report we're also working very carefully with the Justice Lab at Columbia University which has a national perspective on crazy age type issues it might be interesting to you to know that the Children and Family Council for Prevention programs is actually having a day long conference on September 27th at the Vermont Law School again to give stakeholders an opportunity to talk more substantively about this change and what changes need to occur to implement it successfully but then I'll get to the point that Senator Sears made, we recognize that part of this change was thinking about how can we really be ready, how do we reach out to others to think about what things need to occur to get ready and we at DCF recognize that Beth Sausville as a long time excellent district director in Bennington had a wealth of relationships and skills that could really help us in terms of getting around the state talking to people and preparing some information that will influence us as we make specific plans to get ready so we did ask that Beth go on special assignment as Senator Sears mentioned and she agreed to do so and she has done some excellent work and so I'm going to introduce Beth now and allow her to present that PowerPoint that Senator Sears mentioned Thank you Beth, welcome to my I'll make the good idea for everybody to introduce themselves Good morning Representative Maxine Braddon Morton and I chair the national street Thank you Representative Woodcock and Mr. The Moon, what's your preferences? Sandy Cross from Rochester and Mr. Cousins Representative Alice Adams from Springfield and chair of the House of Corrections and Institutions Mr. Sears Mr. Hooper, you're on the appropriations So good morning and thank you so much for the opportunity both to come and talk about the work that I've done as well as many thanks to my department division for the opportunity as well So what I've put together is a PowerPoint presentation this morning to kind of highlight and summarize the work that I engaged in around juvenile justice in Vermont over the last several months So I start first with a this is a quote from that was published first in the Bennington banner a year ago based on an article that was written by Senator Sears and Vincent Charali from the Justice Lab around our work and being the first state to address the issue of raised the age and do I have do I have the ability to like I have notes up here like that I see that here some of it's our way to and by the presentation of this some of it's something to fix well actually I guess we're looking for a context some of it's yeah check your signal check your remote check your remote for technical technical the Bennington banner why should we be sure it's going down I'm not aware of it I'm not aware of it I'm looking to research on the site so I apologize but yeah I had some notes to just further kind of explain some of the slides so bear with me on that so also receive national attention through the national reentry resource center through the national justice center so um I have some very cool transitions to anyway technology at its best so Karen Bastian from our commissioner's office who all of you probably know has presented kind of these key pieces of Act 201 before but we wanted to really highlight the fact that we've been doing a lot of work with our juvenile justice stakeholders to create a plan and that will be right for you with the justice center and others this coming fall this has been with these pieces of the legislative task has been a team approach we have worked together tirelessly around trying to figure out how everything could and should come together Karen Bastian has been overseeing the implementation efforts and has been a wealth of knowledge our DCF central office staff has been heavily involved especially with respect to absorbing new cases given the current child protection case load that was also just a note that was also part of part of what I was tasked with was to look at our system and our current system but also to have a lens of child protection so because we're a combined system so we didn't lose lose sight of that fact Judge Davenport completed the data review of 18 and 19 year olds with some very interesting pieces we have been working closely with the justice lab and operations planning policy and operations planning and my role specifically was to gather information from community stakeholders across the state on current resources available to this population how was this accomplished and what did we find out you ask oops this is how we did it so through community focus groups state wide baseline education was provided around the definition of the emerging adult and brain development along with engaging in a discussion around best practice and ideas for moving the work forward so as you can see we I was able to set up these community focus groups in all 12 of our DCF districts there was it was a multidisciplinary gathering of folks and you can see representation from many of the stakeholders in the meetings that were had and then the process was that each meeting included a brief presentation which Senator Sears referenced as being part of my local juvenile justice team in Bennington and we appreciate the pictures from Bennington great it's a beautiful spot it is and I felt like it was important to highlight that so the themes that were gathered through those meetings were consolidated and teased out in different ways to look at the current system as it exists around resources and services what we concluded was that overall our staff and community partners agreed that raise the age is the right thing to do which really kind of provided a baseline sense of hope for us and in addition there's a desire there was a real consensus statewide to have the resources to do it right there's a desire to make sure that we can do it in the best way that we can and that will require appropriate and maybe additional staffing and resources the many meetings that happened we came up with seven strategies for success Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar Bennington Bar We have some legislators. I think you can represent it when we see an iron lining. I think you're a committee member here.  Here you stand. Can you talk to me about that? They're lovely. They're lovely. They're pretty good. They're adorable. They're kind of like, wow. They're adorable. They're cute. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. They're lovely. The survey has roughly 30,000, 100,000 people who are in the community. And we became a public part of the view was we gave up that whole section of Vermont to New York. It wouldn't have been helpful to have a Schmill in New York. We're trying to get it back now. If you remember during everything Alex Miller that you brought, I'm sure you heard. Anyway, that's back on. So I'm back for a moment. So out of all of the things that happened, again, we came up with seven strategies for success. And these were recommendations generated by the communities in our state. The first of which was to strengthen the use of risk and need screening, specifically the youth assessment screening instrument that DCF currently employs. We would recommend that DCF create a brief orientation training that could be shared with community stakeholders, that explains the Yaazi, how it can be used effectively, its strengths and limitations, etc. We felt like there was kind of varying degrees of knowledge of the tool, which was impeding some of the progress and use of it. The next one was to increase and support local collaboration. What we found was that in areas where the state's attorney and or deputy state's attorney that covered the family division have strong commitment to prosecuting cases in family division and have a good working relationship with their DCF office, best practice was easier to achieve. To cultivate juvenile justice specialization and expertise within organizations. So again, what we found was that to foster juvenile justice expertise within DCF state's attorneys and community stakeholders to support current knowledge and best practices in areas where that was stronger there was more kind of focused, good best practice work happening. Number four was to share juvenile justice responsibilities among stakeholders. So when talking about raise the age, it requires a shared system of intervention to ensure that the youths receive the most appropriate intervention based on risk and that those supports and services are available. Number five was to utilize and strengthen diversion practices. So what the consensus was across the board was that folks ultimately want to see youths succeed and recognize that many youth could be served quicker outside of the formal court system which is also supported in research but also based in risk. And to figure out how to have that happen in some areas a little bit more seamlessly. Number six was to enhance supports and services to youth by filling in or addressing current gaps in the service provision. So some of those gaps that we noticed that were pretty wide were transportation, safe and affordable housing. It was noted in many areas the challenges with statutory timelines within the family division, you know, that currently exist so adding an additional population was a concern. More community centers that cater to older adults or emerging adults better tracking to ensure racial equity and availability which we spoke to earlier Senator, availability of mental health services. And then number seven was innovative ideas that could be scaled statewide. So a few that kind of bubbled to the surface in this work were engaging employers, expansion of circles of support and accountability for youth, particularly with youth and the emerging adult population. Those have seen a fair amount of success statewide and many if not all of the districts spoke about wanting to increase that resource. Peer panels and increased restorative justice education in schools and emerging adult mental health intervention. Vote by Eddie Cantor who was a singer and comedian in Vaudeville who said it's not only the scenery you miss by going fast you also miss the sense of where you're going and why. One of the things that we spoke in many of the districts about is being appreciative of the ability to do some of this planning and having the time we often feel like we're trying to play catch-up because of the experience of nature of our system. So we appreciate that. And I thank you again for your time and with the power and responsibility of innovation in Vermont. Thank you. Thank you. Are there questions for Beth or Ken about the process here and the beautiful pictures? Bennington County actually. I can give you a traffic lock on them later. Can you see us traveling here? How many different districts? I did it in all 12 of our districts, yes. What are the numbers of the number of youth we're talking about? I know that the correction is of course that that population is down both probation and incarcerated group. I think it has been slowed and there again I think that that has been primarily the work of the Justice Lab and that you'll be hearing more about that in their operational plan in the fall. I have lots of questions about, so what do we do next? Are we going to hear about that? Well in November we have the report due, but I was so impressed with the PowerPoint that I wanted to get it for anybody else to know about. It wasn't just the picture. It was the information that we're actually that sometimes you see something start through our committee process and then they kind of go on to the next important thing. And these folks, DCF particularly and others have been working on this thing diligently something passed about that year and a half ago. And I really do appreciate that effort going on. I know that in Bennington, Erica Math which has been an helpful from the state's attorney's perspective and from the defense bar, Marshall and his group and I know Judge Gerison and particularly the retired Judge Amy Davenport have been actively involved as well as the, there always escapes me the name of the group. The, I think you mean the children? Children. Children. Children. Children. Prevention. Prevention. Prevention. This was kind of an update. Again, I don't know if you ask people what's going on. I don't think many people are aware of this change. And there is one thing that we need to do and we don't need to do it right now, but I've noticed there's a lot of confusion about the youthful offender law and these changes and we need to make sure that people are aware there's a difference between the two. And that was addressed in the meetings that were had but certainly it was a varying composition of attendance. I think there's a lot of confusion. Some, you know, that's up to age 22 and some confusion that we're going to 22 for kids to be in DCF custody and that's not the case. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I will step out and represent the attendance of the people who are going to be there. I'll take it out there particularly on the traditional masters. Yes. Do they work towards the masters, correct? Yes. And that is the... I'll repeat it. Repeat for just 30 seconds. I'll put it to the conference. I'll present it to the people who are applying. I want to invite everybody to come. I apologize. I don't think... No, no, no. To take a judge period of time but for the record, I'm Karen Basti and I'm an advisor to the commissioner for the proper children family. Sorry for my seat. Girls, that's fine. I wasn't expecting you guys to be here today but I did just want to let you all know that we are putting on this conference that was described earlier at the Vermont Law School and we would like to invite the members of the Joint Justice Oversight Committee to come to the meeting that day for some of the chairs. It's September 27th. But even if you just wanted to come for all our part of the day, Senator Sears didn't mention this but he and Phinea Sheraldi who is considered an internationally renowned expert in emerging adult justice will be kicking off the day and then we'll get a chance to really hear from the justice lab throughout the day. We've been working very closely together on a series of recommendations on how we're going to implement raising the age and it will be an opportunity for people to, in very real time, ask questions and provide feedback. So we're excited about it and just wanted to let you all know. I'll send you the event right which I've just learned how to use. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, Judge. Your sneaker's doing that. I'm working on that. Thank you. Judicial master. Well, I didn't get really started. Identify yourself. Yes. Again, for the record, Brian Greerson, Chief Superior Judge speaking to the agenda item on judicial master. You should have before you the job description. I will tell you that that description is a composite of the statutory definition, if you will, of the judicial master as it relates to juvenile proceedings. And the second paragraph, the smaller paragraph, is the language right out of the bill that authorizes the hiring of the judicial master and in reading them you'll see that essentially what's in the current legislation mirrors to a great extent what the statute was originally designed for. This position just historically was authorized, I want to say in the 2016 session that it's never been funding. So this is the first time that we've had funding and been able to move forward with the position. But as I was preparing for this morning's hearing I look back at the history of what I had in mind in coming up with this position and it really what I envisioned and what I think the Chin's reform group envisions is there's a role for the judicial master clearly in this Chin's docket. We may collectively the four of us disagree on what that role is and because this is in the nature of a pilot we expect to continue those discussions to exactly how this role, how this position will be used. But clearly the statutory language as well as the language from the most recent bill describes in a broad context what this person can do. We as I indicated earlier have decided on the Chin and Franklin counties as a pilot for a lot of reasons and I'll try to explain those but the first one knowing that we wanted to have a multi-county pilot the first practical consideration is having a judicial officer and the bill also provides for staff for staff security is this physical space to locate a judge. And so the Chin and the Franklin reasons lend themselves to that more so than other. We considered other areas of the state but the physical space requirement obviously to make this work was necessary and so that was one of the considerations that drove that but from my perspective and I think the others there are a lot of reasons why Chin and Franklin make sense as a pilot. Primarily one of the things that Senator Sears noted at the very beginning of this morning are the numbers that are in Franklin County and there's been any number of times when I have come before committees and the question is what's going on in Franklin County why are the numbers so high. So it's not only a question of the high numbers but when you compare them for instance to Chin and then we really have two different cultures and I think that's again what lends the role of Chin and County. If you look at the numbers that were provided this morning the numbers are comparable and if you look at the difference over the last two or three years they kind of mirror each other when one comes down the other comes down but when they go up they go up. One of the big differences is that in Chin and County and I view this as a more of a cultural and by that I mean the attorneys and the DCF folks and the court a large number of the cases that come into court end up in what are called conditional custody orders. That's just a reverse in Franklin County where there are very few of those orders so I think this is an opportunity to find out what it counts for that and is are we doing something wrong in Chin? Should there be that many? So it's an opportunity to explore that but as I thought about what has transpired over the last few years since this position was created it's interesting the number of times that the role or the use of a judicial master has come up. This was created I believe in 2016 and later in that year there was a lean analysis that we conducted on the Chin's process. Now there are certainly some that say the Chin's process doesn't lend itself to a lean analysis but nevertheless we went ahead and one of the conclusions in that lean analysis was a place for a judicial master to play a role in trying to a number of roles. Prioritizing cases, case flow, case management getting parents to engage and keep them engaged in other words monitoring. So in a lot of respects I think you can look at this role as at least treatment principles of engaging early and providing monitoring that a presiding judge can't do. Does it mean more, potentially more hearings for the attorneys and guardians? The short answer is in some respects yes but we have to balance the need for more hearings with the idea that if let's talk about parent-child contact for instance. If that request is there isn't it better more beneficial for the family to get an earlier hearing on that parent-child contact than waiting six weeks before the judge can fit into their schedule. So there are certain areas where I think there will be more hearings but I think the need for those hearings balances out the demand that's going to be made on the attorneys and other players. And speaking of parent-child contact, some of you may know from the Justice for Children Task Force we had a study committee for more than a year to try to come up with parent-child contact protocol. We worked very hard at it but we didn't get to the point where we could adopt it primarily because of resource issues but even the language that we used this is from an earlier draft it says the benefits for children with parent-child contact include a reduction in the amount of time spent in out-of-home care. Sufficient parent-child contact helps to maintain the parent's focus on the case plan and that is one of the key considerations in keeping families together and so we think and I think that the use of a traditional master can be helpful in that respect in maintaining identifying families who are prepared to engage and monitor them and I think that is an appropriate role for the master a couple of things that Marshall mentioned that I think are significant of the importance of time to resolution we settle all these cases but it takes so long to get there my hope is with the use of a judicial officer who doesn't have the full authority of a presiding judge but can identify those cases early on for families wanting to engage and work towards a resolution and in the lean analysis they talked about almost the idea of a two track system where if you can identify those families early on and monitor them more closely the idea would be that the case would be dismissed as opposed to just reaching an agreement so again in the lean analysis in this parent-child contact protocol it spoke to a judicial officer that could be involved in that process the other question one of the questions you raised representative Shaw was who is driving the bus and in an earlier version of the legislation and we think that the judicial master could play a role in identifying those families where mediation may be appropriate and send them to mediation and when I was talking earlier about prioritizing cases if we can get the attention early on there are some cases that are just going to go to merits are going to go to hearing try to identify those cases and send them on to the presiding judge those families that want to engage and can engage then those are the ones that we need to work on and again I think that's a role for this position and the only other area where I respectfully disagree with Marshall he said that the problems are the same you asked about the opiate problem and I think anyone involved in this process would understand that that's driving these numbers the difference one of the differences I think is the age of the children that are now coming into custody as opposed to what we were used to before this epidemic so they're much younger children coming in and those are the ones that we have to try to get our hands on early on in the process and the numbers are so large that the courts are packed with hearing time and so we I think this is an opportunity to see how they're doing things in see how they're doing things in Franklin maybe make some changes prioritize some of these cases and it will devote in some respects more hearing time but I think we also can take this as an opportunity is there another way to do this? Are there processes that much like this type of setting where you bring these priorities in it doesn't have to be the formal setting of a courtroom and say what's going on and how can we steer this family into treatment the other point I would make and why I think this is what this position does is give us a great opportunity to pilot I know Representative Grad was on the Family Treatment Court Commission which again in I guess I would say the possibility of that making a difference in this one of the things that they considered was the use of a judicial master in some respects because the idea is with this position and you'll see in the job description the idea is to find people who have experience in substance and mental health issues with families and we would be able to train them so there would be a consistency not only in training them but in their role from one county to another which is lacking in the current rotations so that Family Treatment Court Commission also spoke to the judicial master and the final piece coming back to Chittenden and Franklin there is a group in Chittenden that have put together a proposal for Family Treatment Court and they have worked very hard, very diligently in putting together a proposal that has been accepted by the court and we think again in talking with them they recognize that a judicial master could play the role of the presiding judge in a treatment court setting as opposed to the judge who has to rotate in and out for a lot of other reasons so I think for all of those reasons this it is a pilot there is going to be some I don't want to say mistakes me but it is an opportunity to try different things with different cultures when I look at the Chittenden and the group that put that program together as I said they are very dedicated at least they were when they submitted the proposal it took us too long to accept it but nevertheless they are dedicated as opposed to Franklin County which just recently they have had what has been referred to as an adolescent court for the last ten years usually delinquents in the juvenile setting there haven't been enough referrals either from the state or the defense such that we are down to probably no participants in that court so I look at that again as Chittenden community and I know everyone says Chittenden gets everything but if you have a community that has come together and said we want this court we think it can be beneficial and then you contrast that with apparently what happened in Franklin County for reasons I don't know yet as to why would they let that resource go so I think this is an opportunity to use this master in different ways from treatment court all the way through to encouraging mediation and playing a role in trying to figure out which parents want to engage I think to go to your question about availability of treatment my experience has been if somebody is ready we can get them in within a reasonable time to get them started in the process but my experience with the treatment courts has been whether it's a treatment court or just a personal setting is if they're interested you've got to engage them right away you've got to get them to that person and you've got to then make them come back and make sure that they got there I learned the lesson years ago when my first experience with treatment courts when you can be in the courthouse and you can say there's the assessment across the street and if you don't walk them across the street they're going to get to the end of the sidewalk and go left or right it could be a vehicle that could make that difference for a lot of these folks I have some questions I didn't mean to wind on you how long is the time of project for well I was looking at that it's got to be at least two more years because I think the funding goes through I want to say 2022 if I look at this just so you can see the mayor go ahead it's related to the funding because we allocated 400,000 is that what you're talking about over x period or if you look at the budget going back into the 7 million that is there yes but the way the budget and the projections for the budget it would be 400,000 for 2019 which already has gone by without using any funds and this year presumably it would be continued over the next two years after that so that was my question so the expectation is we'll spend 400,000 in 20 current fiscal year and then we will then allocate another 400,000 for this one position and what else is in them there is staff there is security to open the courtroom and there is I believe it's in the budget it's referred to as a regional coordinate or someone to tie in what this individual is doing in both counties when we get down to budget time it would just be interesting to see and we will certainly have a better understanding of how this person is being used and I don't know what the numbers will ultimately prove to be but that's the way the money was allocated in the budget that we submitted to appropriations with the idea that it would have to continue in order to make this worth investing in at least for the life of the fund next scene can you remind me of the hiring process this is through my office no exactly well the hearing officer the magistrates do go through the appointment process so this is more like the hearing officer thanks I'll have others involved but I'll certainly involve any other questions thank you thank you I thank Representative Emmits for taking over for me the subject is the issue of the mental health and what happens when somebody is found not from a liable because of insanity and David Cahill wrote me and I appreciate David being willing to talk to us about a specific case and he may be limited in the the answer to questions we might have but I thought that would help and we're also going to hear from some victims and this should be a more centered on a victim's point of view in some of these cases so go ahead David I think you're on the phone good afternoon everyone good afternoon thanks for taking time with us my pleasure so I call this today to talk about a case named Ardondo Cruz I think I mentioned previously before he's an individual who has been residing in Springfield and he staffed his girlfriend in a massive shelter he was served with and not guilty by reason of his family who's actually in that situation there is a reason to serve that he was the court did and in December of 2018 Mr. Cruz was committed to the custody of the Minister of Ninety-day Order because that's her inclusion provision, her basic notification the Ninety-day Order inspired and was the subject of a new order issued in family court for continued treatment I think personally because I don't know that that occurred because Mr. Cruz had not been released on the United States so the order for continued treatment does not include any so as I said here today I can't tell you with 100% certainty where Mr. Cruz is right now or where he can be tomorrow nor could I tell the victims that and by victims I mean the family members plus victims too because Mr. Cruz had also threatened their bias and threatened to harm them and they genuinely doubt that he's going to come for the next so why aren't we talking about Mr. Cruz today because at the end of August 2019 it hasn't even been a year that he's been in the custody of the Commissioner of Mental Health and we have already received word through unofficial channels that Mr. Cruz is likely to be released in the coming weeks I say unofficial channels because there is no official channel to notify him and I know that the Commissioner of Mental Health a lot and I am not calling to complain about the Department of Mental Health or to point fingers because they are only following the law that we have given and the law does not permit them to communicate with me to communicate with you regarding Mr. Cruz in specific or to tell us or to tell me or to tell the victims when he's getting out which is why I'm finding out this information through a back channel but I need to share it with you because if you don't know this is happening you can't fix it and you may not fix it for Mr. Cruz and you may not fix it for and you may not be able to control what day he walked out of a facility likely sometime in 2019 but I hope you can consider this information in determining what the policy of the state of Vermont should be what our cloth should be going forward so that other families don't have to go through what the victims' family in this case is going to so with that said I'm happy to take questions I guess next year David thank you for being with us the first question is that aren't even law enforcement able to be notified not officially do they know unofficially the same way I do absolutely and is there a scrambled to try to figure out some legal means to continue him in the custody to state somehow so so he's being released into the community by the Department of Mental Health and there's no notification to the victims they might meet him at Walmart or the local store and run into him there and they're not even aware that he's out this is not the Department of Mental Health at all if they don't notify the victims they will not notify me and that's exactly the right way he could run into them they even notify the local mental health agency this is allosomes I mean David Bobby Sand Bobby Sand he'll look the same and now I lost my question either Bobby see your moment I just to be clear your comments are directed exclusively toward victim notification and you're not suggesting that individuals should be detained longer than be retained in the care and custody of the Department of Mental Health once they're found to not be a danger to themselves or others I have a question because the answer is part yet part no part yet my meeting is concerned with victim notification that they deserve to know this person coming out and frankly one person deserves to know that they may plan to keep community safe but as to the second part I came before the committee that the initial period of custody should be three years rather than 90 days and the rationale behind that is that many of the mental health disorders that cause an individual to manifest so it is not unusual for a person to engage in a period of intensive discharge after some number of months it doesn't mean that they're not going to repeat a cycle that will have them back being insane sometime next year and my point is that in cases as important as homicide that's only a homicide it is worth that trade-off for us to require that that whole cycle episodic behavior be observed in a pictorial environment in a hospital so that perhaps these services this person has to know this is representative Emma's I thought it was Wooster not even you anyway once the 90 days is up and then they're supposedly released do you know what the department of mental health looks to see if they have adequate or appropriate housing to go to? I don't want to speak for them about what their process is for determining that someone is either released in the hospital I have a question Skyler David, Skyler Nash just going back to the case for a second was there any indication prior to the stabbing that Mr. Cruz was trending towards being a danger to those around him? well in hindsight that's being 2020 wanting to see him engaging in a kind of threat and so it's difficult it was difficult at the time to participate in a year on the one hand being a wrapping up a criminal intent to kill this big person versus on the other hand like the same I don't know if you're familiar but in New York State with Kendra's law with assisted outpatient treatment we're able to find a way to get court orders for people that sounds like Mr. Cruz might not necessarily meet that standard of imminent danger but we're able to intervene and get them assisted outpatient treatment before they became that immediate threat where they would be subject to homicidal behavior and so that's been something I know Senator Lines and I have been talking about looking at if that was a program that we could better utilize here in Vermont and it sounds like that somebody like Mr. Cruz with the history of that disturbing behavior that could be somewhere where we could intervene, do a better job of intervening before he got his behavior reached a point where something like this would happen ideally that would be part of the package that in a perfect world we wouldn't be here talking about Mr. Cruz having very good, this is Sandy Haas so you've talked about for the last three years it's my understanding that commitment to the commissioner can include on an order of non-hospitalization are you saying that you want them in either the hospital or the middle sex for three years? We're talking about a very narrow population we're talking about the state murderers that's what government is here for that is why we have to have the ability to block wars I'm not talking about orders of non-hospitalization where someone from halfway or eight years is going to check up on them once a week, that's not going to do I know we had this discussion earlier and you'll see, imagine why it's recognizing the limitations of this part of the mental health facility detention components it may not have a middle sex for what things back to the secure piece I think you may have answered the questions secure setting and I immediately come to the mind of our middle sex type facility a secure residential facility so in thinking about stress on the system should this come to fruition for a length of time to be determined have you been discussing this with the state of Georgia she and I have had this discussion before the judge told her that meeting's live she seemed to be voicing a similar opinion but probably not as strong as yours I think there's a consensus around the state among prosecutors that the folks at the department of mental health do a good job at the task they're given by the law but there's a gap in resources there's a need to protect the public by treating the long term because it could kill a serious mental illness and that that has to do with that so you came up with a number of three years is that just a hunter is that any sort of data about your statement that takes that long for them to get through it? Well, you know I was trying to remember if I would ask this question last time but I knew that New Hampshire did an initial order for five years if I'm remembering correctly and just having been under the gold dome a few times I knew that the argument that this is what New Hampshire does does not hold a lot of water for about three years but there is a logic to it which is just that there really is a difficult nature to to I just want to make sure that we have the chance to have a deep cycle to go by before we let somebody out and their friends can kill you again I think there's two fundamental issues that are going on here they will need to be dealt with by the standing committee one is should the community and victims be notified when somebody is coming out I just read where there are two sex offenders moving to South Burlington that's obviously a question we dealt with that when we were doing the sex offender laws and how much notification what does that do to people who are stigmatized second real issue is should there be a certain amount of time that goes by before somebody can be released and how do we continue to know that somebody is still in in the mental health field for example Elizabeth Teague who committed a heinous murder in my district we still know where she is I know today where she is but 20 years after which we still knew she was in the facility and should there be more formal notifications and how long should that be there is always a chance if you set three years that will be the default and everybody will get out at three years whether they should be or shouldn't be there is a lot of things that will need to be discussed but I wanted to at least build what a bill would look like for me critical that the community be notified I just don't see I mean I understand and one of the witnesses last time commented about they are innocent one state of the nation is made but they still represent a huge danger to the community at one point they were bound and they were guilty of this crime but are innocent by reasonable standards I think those are the issues that will have to be dealt with I have a question where we go David to holding them for a period of time that's longer than 90 days be it a year, be it two years, three years you mentioned in a particular unit is that going to be under the jurisdiction of the department of mental health or is that going to be under department corrections that's the question for you to decide because it's not a clean fit in the other place is this channel that the viewers just said yes these people artificially kill these beyond reasonable standards but they're used from criminal liability because of their mental illness at the time of the offense so one could argue that it's not humane to keep any correction of this building one could also argue that you know in the custody of the department of mental health where the patient's interest comes first there needs to be some sort of combination of the values of DOC and the values of DNA when it comes to how we how we approach these people and I don't know what you're talking about I've got a couple of witnesses waiting on the phone so David I really appreciate your discussing this and I'm glad that you did it and not me because I was a little uncomfortable with repeating what you had written me in an email so I hope thank you now our expert on telephone I'm not missing that if you can call jakesmith hi is this jakesmith oh great this is senator dick sears you're in the you're at the justice oversight committee meeting and we're pleased that you're willing to give us some of your time to talk about your experiences as a relative of a victim or a victim short again in the mental health system in vrman yeah so feel free to go right ahead did anything yeah I mean basically except for administration the whole process I feel like because of a lack of judicial oversight and a lack of communication between the mental health department and the justice department my family was essentially robbed of any kind of pleasure because of someone who was seriously intelligent to take advantage of a system that had a few flaws and managed to avoid trial until the death and as a result of that we're never you know we're never going to be accountable for what you did and frustrating to say the least was it your sister no it's my mother your mother I'm sorry that's okay I joined the night for this year okay maybe you could describe a little bit about your frustration with the system they wouldn't let you know where he was what was happening with him well yeah that's just it we were always kind of left to know I mean even when he was brought to the hospital we found out from the news reporters and then we found out that this arguably very dangerous man was brought to the hospital without any kind of police escort or supervision and that you know that's just one of the many times when there was an adequate communication regarding his medication regarding his court appointments to doctors interviews I mean we were just lost out a lot and in my own experience in the competency trial it really formed like things were very disorganized and that people like justice wasn't attracted to first priority you know it seems a lot more that the various people involved in the system were just trying to cover there on the bus to the seats whereas you know in my opinion serving justice shouldn't be the first priority in any kind of legal cases but especially one that carries so much emotional weight and that frankly shouldn't matter to the life of those gentlemen. And yours was one of the cases, your mother's was one of the cases that wasn't prosecuted in Piton County, am I correct? That's right. Questions? We're certainly looking at from several aspects here to recommend legislation from an obsession to try to deal with this problem here in Vermont and try to look at what other states are doing, how others can deal with it, but it does appear to be we just heard from prosecutor in a case where the person was found not guilty by reason of insanity which was a murder case that he's now, he's learned that he's been let out after a year and only learned it through the break line, not through any official capacity of the prosecutor. Right, and I'm not a part of that and you know not the first case of the prosecution as well. Well, thank you so much. No problem. The committee may be in touch with you in the future as we look at the legislation when it gets drafted. I'd be happy to help in any way that I can and I would also be happy to know what comes to this. If this can't be prevented in the future that would be great. We'll try to make sure that legislative council gets in touch with you when the bills come up for discussion in the senator vows. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Bye now. Joanne Kenney in the hospital but he was one of the cases when Senator George brought what we talked about the last week. Man, this is Senator Dick Sears. Would you mind identifying yourself for the record? Thank you. And this is our Kathleen Smith who was murdered in Chittenden County and the person who allegedly committed the murder wasn't prosecuted and evidently died recently. Right. I have some prepared comments. Do you want me to do some comments? Yeah, please. Thank you. I'm a team member of the committee. I appreciate very much the opportunity to speak today. Thank you. My name is Joanne Cortenich. I call director not in presence. I live in Colorado. And as you know, my sister Kathleen Smith was murdered in her home in Burlington in October of 2010 where two children closed a pay boat died in June of this year and never had a trial for this action. You have been provided that was made at the time until they came to step. So I won't spend time repeating the summary of our family's experiences and interacting with Vermont's criminal justice system and mental health system for the last nine years. I also know my nephew testified before me to repeat some of what he has already seen how he politicized. And that's fine. Jake is very hopeful. Thank you. But it's all right ahead. It's important for you our perspective as we have been impacted by failures in both systems in a very direct way over the last nine years the consequences of which will stay with us for the rest of our lives. There are several things I want to emphasize. One is a lack of communication between the criminal justice system and the mental health system when custody is transferred. This communication failure has consequences for the victims. It's failure of communication further separates the two processes with each pursuing a different interest. Without a continued information stream the accused resides largely forgotten by the criminal justice system. Our family was quite proactive in seeking transformation with the prosecutor's office who in turn would have past the contact of mental health or the attorney general to obtain whatever information they were able to provide. We monitored the duration of the hospitalization and the change of order and found in some instances that they have lacked about motions to extend being brought in the family court before the current order had expired. We were unsure what information if any was being provided to the prosecutor's office in the family court proceeding. We of course received no information. How much better would it be if someone from the mental health system may be the attorney general was required to provide a type of notice to victims mandated to be provided by agencies under the victim's red statute. I would note I have reviewed the victim's red statute and mental health agencies are not referenced as being required to provide any notification victims. The second point I wanted to emphasize is the lack of accountability of each system towards achieving the goal of restoring the accused to competency and bringing the accused to trial. The criminal justice system focuses on this while the accused is in his custody but largely ignores that one place in the custody of the mental health system. The mental health system does not appear to have restoration of competency as in full at all. Notwithstanding like in the case of someone like my sister's killer, the individual in his custody is only there because he's committed a crime. He was not as otherwise committed civilly. He was not as asqueer. All the efforts in both systems seem to be not pretending to be accused while ignoring the interest of the victims. The third thing I want to emphasize is that although there is a victim's right statute, it is a large decision of us. The same purpose of the law is to protect the victims of crime while balancing the crime victim's needs with the criminal defendant's life. There are no consequences associated with fairly supply of these provisions as written. Moreover, once the accused is transferred to the mental health system, any rights of victims may have by statute or extinguished. You might be surprised to learn that I was that the victims' rights law contained the provisions that referred to the victims' interest in seeing prosecution. Over our nine years in this process this was never mentioned or applied. The fourth thing that I want to emphasize is a matter of the mental health system in Vermont not appropriate to consider the safety of the public when the accused is in custody. It is appalling how the protections were inflated and victimized with your killer. Most of these we learn through the press, rather than through channels which would have provided us with information of if he couldn't rely. This is an example of that. We were not informed that he was transferred from the correctional facility to the certainly less secure facility to the certainly less secure mental health facility. We learned a huge amount of problems through the press including accounting and collecting and putting them in leaving an immediate room to be certainly needed to escape. Certainly he would have acted on these if he had been able to demonstrate both systems so it's not going to have to be transferred back into the criminal system instead of trying for his crime. I hope you read our account because in that account we describe the fact that Mr. Pedro was a transient. He was he had a lot of tools to live on his own and if he had wanted to say, I am fairly certain that he would have been able to escape from that because of that mental health facility. Of course, he escaped no reason to do so, but since he was never he never had the chance to travel and he was provided with all the needed within that facility. Ultimately, even at the end no one outside of the mental health system not even a law enforcement department was in form of these transported to the hospital. One of the first questions we asked would be found out that he had some sort of health issues and of course because of PHI we were not permitted to know what that was. What who is watching him and we asked that question of the systems who did not have that information they didn't even know we had been transported. The way we found out that there was no one guarding him was because we read it in an account in the Vermont digger. So, I have a few suggestions Oh, I think could be improved and the first one is guarding their own territory and look at the suggestions across the board that can improve the process at all. The second one is to give some serious considerations to the rights of victims and put a high-end behind the field of heaven and the like and provide information to victims that is not PHI or CJIS information and there are points to the path that was not that would not be protected by those laws. The additional efforts could be made to address the parties excuse me, the case of the parties involved are only performing their job. I don't need to disgrade anybody by that statement, but for us this is our whole life let's look at that as a curve this is our whole life so we wait every second for some information as to what is happening in the process of this. They need to consider that a lot that lives have been directly altered by crime numbers can get in and relatives of those who have been murdered are only focused to bringing issues to trial. So, we learned that there should not be a continuing failure to others who are similarly situated including that ultimately the system does not continue to fail the murder victims. There was no justice for my sister Kathleen, but what will take for others. I have nothing to gain from Chester Fushin to advocate for the legislative reform. My sister chances are gone to infer the brutally murders that should have brought her killer to justice. I would also add that my sister was very active in the community and very much in support of people right to have no voice and I find it to be the ultimate irony that she ultimately her wish openly was not heard and her killer was never brought to justice. That concludes my prepared remarks. Anyone have any questions? Very helpful. Senator Representative Thank you for your testimony and also for the written testimony as well that came from the family at the time. My cousin and I prepared that just to give you a little bit more of an idea of our family. I'm a lawyer my cousin in the community. I have a brother who is an officer with a correctional system in the state of Pennsylvania. So we had many many calls throughout the years relating to status of what was going on often times not finding much information at all but those three myself and my cousin Catherine and my brother were primarily the ones that participated although my nephew did not participate in the debate towards the legacy of her. Additionally he was not able to even what was going on. So he asked not to be included in those discussions. So we feel that we are pretty sophisticated and we feel felt that we were beating our hands up a brick wall. So I have some questions in terms of the timeline is through. So this occurred the action occurred in October of 2010. That's correct. So the the defendant I'll call where was he located? He stayed within a correctional facility upon his arrest. That's correct. And how long was he at the correctional facility before he went to court trial? He never went to trial. Okay. How long was he at the correctional facility before the court determined he was insane or could not well it wasn't an it wasn't an impanity. How long was the person how long was he in the correctional facility before? He went to the correctional facility until 2013. So he was and that was the result of he was a very So during that time he was quite big with the various counsel. I think he went through five or six different attorneys during the whole process. Okay. So he was incarcerated until the court said he needed to be at the state hospital. That's correct. So when that determination was made where did he go for the state hospital? Because Berlin was not up and running in 2000. No, I didn't want the confidentiality of the station was made but they did transfer him to I think it was in Berlin, New Berlin. When he was transferred was it from directly from the correctional facility or was it from the court? Oh no, from the correctional facility. So he would have transferred from a correctional facility either with correctional officers or with the sheriff. That's well and good that you were not informed that he was being transferred. So that's an issue. Right, so that's an issue. My corrected family wouldn't necessarily know why or when he was transferred. Well at that particular time and that's why I want you to know that timeline at that particular time in 2013 we had lost our psychiatric hospital beds due to a flood. So I'm well aware of that. So curious where was he put in the interim until the Berlin facility went online? He was kept in the correctional facility. Okay, so that really indicates the communication. The problem is they have no way to know. Informally, am I correct? We were calling constantly or emailing constantly and I would want to mention that would be remission not mention the role that the biggest advocate in trust was supporting us and trying to get us connected to the information. They were wonderful. Other questions for Joanne? Joanne, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today and I've had some correspondence with you and hopefully this case will allow us to make some significant changes in the way we deal with this problem. Can you let me know when the next step is going to be I believe that some of you will be asking for legislation. My guess is that the next step will be the introduction of legislation and then either committee in the Senate or the committee in the House taking up the legislation and having it brought up and I would assume that certainly we can try to get information when the bill is introduced as well as any other information about committee hearings and so forth. That would be great and I just want to let everybody know that I am retiring in January and I would be happy to appear before any of either the Senate or the House or the full body and I want to try and make a difference for my sister. It is one of the greatest lawsuits for me that seeing her killer was never brought to trial and I could use if her name could stand for something even if it's something small that would be a great gift. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Next, I don't see Chris Venno here. Maybe we messed up in that we do that but it's a while and I'm jealous. I was going to hear from Chris Venno about the very big victims role it was nice to hear that our victims advocates were helpful in this case. We have a second. I wanted to know that timeline of where he was because if he was under he's being a detainee in corrections so how much information can DOC share with the victims when the person is a detainee? I mean that's one way I was trying to get at because maybe the person would sign a release of information. That's where I was and then if he came from a correctional facility and I understand there isn't that communication for the victim of moving but corrections doesn't do any movement of folks without at least some form of law enforcement or their own correctional officers to move a person from a correctional facility to the courts the sheriffs did that move and I would assume if it's from the court to the state hospitals the sheriff that's doing that move if it's from DOC to the state hospital at times it could be correctional officers but it's that communication to the victim but there would have been some security in a transfer. So how did he get not physically get to be able to get from a correctional facility to a state hospital where the fed was or in the process was he just being warehouse in a correctional facility? Because we must be warehouse because inpatient psychiatric folks were in correctional facilities until we get the Berlin facility open We still have people who are seriously mentally ill and it starts with awaiting an evaluation The question is at what point that happens all the time right now so I'm assuming that when they're with the department of correction there's public notice and there's information once they get into the department of mental health that's where they're coming in Of course the notification goes away with some privacy issues involved but one of the things I'm trying to understand there's two different cases that we've talked about one is where there was the finding that the person was incompetent to stand guilty by reason of insanity or incompetence that's the Parazzo case that David Cahill was describing then you have this case here when Sarah George eventually dropped charges after what eight years so the guy was in custody somebody's custody for that amount of time which was a lot longer than the three years that David Cahill was not by the way and then he died so I don't know what would have happened that he not died or what would have happened if his friends were dropped so but he wasn't released he was still in the custody of mental health I guess we're all very confused very what? confused well I don't know it's confused we've got a system that doesn't if he were a juvenile which we protect we allow the victims information but they can be charged if they violate that you know they make that public information so I don't know why we couldn't use the same system so we currently have two or three children in the county that are within that 98 window I believe there's three cases that were dropped but they moved from the court system into the mental health system I'm assuming we don't know that but one has moved back into a correctional facility because there's federal charges so she's now a federal detainee that's being absent today perhaps we could have much counsel walk us through how the two systems work and they can answer some of these questions any question I just represent about them tonight is not far do we want to go in here or is it forming a legislation just letting this stand if I may in response to that to me there are two questions that are on the table one is notification of victims system why and how that is managed and the other question is whether or not there should be different management of people who are found to be incompetent to stay in trial or insane and not standing I don't know those are your words but those are two very distinct areas and I would hope that we would treat them separately I I need to get a lot more comfortable with the issue around competency and how long people are held and held without being found to be guilty of a crime or in David's suggestion that they be held for a very long period of time because they may become unstable in the future I just really deeply concerned I understand the argument the issue of being concerned thus wanting to separate notification which I think has its own interesting questions but there is a different legal issues I'm sure other states I don't know Skylar here looked at other states I think I think one way to attack that is that the further we can separate the mental health treatment and services from corrections it becomes easier because they can just handle that situation rather than us trying to put an arbitrary number of years on from our side of the state's attorneys and prosecutors and DOC saying oh, three years or five years just because they may do that there are people that know and don't have to put an arbitrary number of years that can do individual treatment things to best fit those situations rather than us trying to put together a cure all number of three years or five years or ten years and I know in Connecticut they really utilized Yale's School of Psychiatrists to the state phones their service center but Yale and part of the ones that are running that so they're able to better develop demands to individually deal with those cases so maybe grip it into the weeds maybe the community jurisdiction to figure this out so it sounds like there's more than one track or even three tracks that were pocketed somebody that's going to try out somebody that's not going to try out but is being held for conferencing and then the third group of people there just appeared and not going to trial because the experts had declared they were incompetent to understand their actions crimes so it sounds like there's three separate distinct groups of people that are also there's also one thing that was Massachusetts has that we don't have a civil commitment and so we try that well we looked at it but you know what you're there just going back to what you were saying Sarah about juvenile cases and what kind of information is allowed to be disseminated from those we could look at that I want to get back to where we had issue, women are not healthy although I think we could get some pushback so so again John I'm sorry well I read years ago and I don't know so not guilty of every reason of insanity is this old Anglo-Saxon it's not a fear to punish somebody who didn't get what they were doing it's real it's sort of like it's sort of in our world it's kind of in a one year old but I have read that there's such a thing as guilty but insane which and I don't know if you go there I don't know if it's constitutional all kinds of questions around that but that would get us over this the cases that Sarah George dismissed you know there was no question that those murders had happened the question was whether there was what we call legal responsibility and anyway because I heard the question about public safety and I think even the mental health commitment standard has a public safety element to it it's dangerous so for others so if you were impacted danger to other people then that means criteria so I don't know I'm just trying to think about a way that would be different in crime and in terms of the victim notification and looking at juvenile I think of lech council or somebody could tell us why this is or isn't different whether it's hip and some of the other laws what is allowable in terms of notification and what isn't and what's in other states today that's probably much more straightforward yeah so we could get some help on that we see that these are two separate strands of information I think we just look at the notification well I have to remember I think part of the not to continue on too far but I think one thing we really need to look at is before I was trying to talk to David about getting before that serious crime happened because a lot of this conversation is being framed of how do we deal with those people after they committed this terrible crime is that they put the word into the front end of okay we have families that know that their loved ones are going down this disturbing path but they're not quite to that point where we can order them to a hospital because they're not that high standard of imminent danger to everybody else and so finding a way to help get them treated to avoid having to come back on and say hey now that they've committed this crime how long are we going to hold them until they're safe you can avoid a lot of these problems about notifications to victims first place we're not going to solve this problem today we may never solve it but we should certainly make an attempt and I I used to run groups that were based upon guided group interaction or something called reality therapy and reality therapy is developed by William Glaster which basically says there's no such thing as insanity it's irresponsible it's excused for irresponsible behavior and of course there's an interesting concept but frankly you think of it it's not mental health but it's an open amount of professionals but that you know if you could look up Glaster noted psychiatrist believes strongly that basically I've read many of his books it's an interesting theory with that we'll talk about trust releases before you're found to be mentally incompetent before you're found to be guilty for eating it's all into the trust releases and I enjoy receiving my trust releases from the Vermont State Police through Vince and Lucy yes I do too but they're very helpful actually hearing about a crash there's an interesting case I'm going to be like there's an interesting case about this kingdom of the guy in the wheelchair who assaulted people with his wheelchair but that's maybe we'll have a movie to talk about we call David Silver who is an attorney who has been in Purdue his concern basically is not that they have trust releases the concern is a trust release about a person who may have done something and then that person is diverted in that criminal justice system but the whole world knows what they did what are humans doing and they never actually got a day in court so you can call David Silver and then we have several witnesses to speak to it including noted journalists higher noted journalists David Silver there please this is the Senate this is the Joint Justice Oversight Committee Hi David Silver Hi David Dick Sears and members of the Joint Justice Oversight Committee I think most members of the media and a number of other individuals including the state police, local police department some others so you've contacted Senator Campion and I about the trust releases and I thought it would be best for you to kind of kick off the discussion and your concern is a defense attorney for folks that have had trust releases without a doubt I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you all so this came to my attention I had a member of our community and it's a family man and it's really good news I had no final record nice career and he was going just back down out of the interstate I was actually in the highway apartment 7 400 miles an hour and he got pulled over to rest and there was a press release about it and people in this community in this business community all saw it eventually the case was dismissed that was basically it made those kinds of cases when people don't have a pattern of this type of behavior and not to minimize it going out of the apartment 7 is unsafe but when it's a character type of thing and not a pattern of conduct that's responsible on a person that's an otherwise exemplary background and character it's not common for that person to get diversion or be dismissed with other with them having to do something else or either pay a ticket or do something else or get diversion and some of them even like the lower ground of misdemeanors like a misdemeanor, a domestic assault or a simple assault or misdemeanor drug case there's also a lot to carry lifelong alternative means of getting these matters resolved using diversion using other means to permit people to go into their future without that conviction and it seems to me when you balance the public's need to know about these things versus have this public it seems to me the balance should be for at least these minor matters should be in favor of really undermining and confident challenge is one of the major vets so that people who may at one time state and you want to give them a chance to do their job and we live in small communities here it can be really damaging to some of those personal and professional concerns public officials in a certain sense and can reasonably expect to cause public concern of harm I don't think there's any dispute that something that can cause public concern of harm is important to get out there but something that the public has witnessed is kind of broad and it's kind of vague I don't think that my situation almost everything happens in public not in a community but something that happens in people's homes but a lot of things happen in public and I don't think it's a terminated fact and I don't see how minor misdemeanors and un minor misdemeanors or even domestic assault people get charged with domestic order of dismiss but if you get your name you can solve that the papers are really put back these are just accusations there's always a tension the advent of social media certainly hasn't evaporated that I know there was a case a few years back in the Senate Judiciary Committee actually spoke with a small police department somewhere in the Addison County it had published on a Facebook page there was a vandalism in a little leaf part by two kids but they were both juveniles and things appropriated for a juvenile to be on the Facebook page then the other day I was looking at a Facebook post about some woman that sparked and they had a picture of her car and her I couldn't identify her but there she was stealing flowers from that flower shop on Benmont Avenue you know the one that the flowers on maybe maybe she I don't know what excuse you have stealing flowers but you know there she was so now everybody knows about it and they know her car anyway David thank you are there questions Mr. Sloan David do you want to stay on the line to hear the testimony or do you need to get on with other business that huge deposition tomorrow I need to prevent it alright well thanks for taking the time with us and thanks for bringing this to our attention we'll let you know where we go okay thank you thank you David maybe it's a good time to have our colonel Matthew Birmingham Montstreet Police we've got a couple of other you want to bring them up this is alright okay colonel I appreciate you being here thank you for having me you heard the issue I did this is an issue that's first and foremost in our business every day it's an important issue so I appreciate the opportunity for allowing me to come here and speak about it just so you understand the state police's philosophy it's rooted in transparency and we try our best although not perfect to be as transparent and accountable to the public every day and we have a great relationship with our media partners and they are helpful in helping us push information out to the public what I will say is in response to Mr. Silver in that I strongly stand behind our press release policy which you all have a copy of I do not necessarily agree with his philosophy I think that what you have to do is you have to take an arrest separate from a court process so an arrest does not mean that someone is guilty or innocent they have a right to trial by jury but an arrest is an event that the police do an arrest of people for any crime should never be secret ever that is dangerous in a democracy and it's dangerous for police to be allowed to arrest people without notify the public of that arrest regardless of what crime it is so I would strongly suggest that that is an avenue that we not go down as the head of the state police I think it's incredibly dangerous and I understand his concerns about diversion I understand his concerns about people cases being dismissed but when a case goes to diversion and or is dismissed that doesn't mean they weren't arrested they were still arrested probable cause at that time was deemed by law enforcement officer and they took somebody into custody and deprived them of their right to freedom that cannot happen in secrecy and it should not happen in secrecy and so we have a very robust policy it is not a perfect policy by any stretch of the imagination but we have worked on it for many years and we have worked on it with representatives of media who are here and I think it strikes a balance it is a living breathing policy so we are constantly looking at it we are in consultation with our media partners we're in consultation with our command staff the governor's office has been involved in the development of this policy and again it's not perfect I know that the media would like more I know the public probably wants more but we do have to strike a balance as you'll see in here with some privacy issues relating to certain events that take place and we have a responsibility to protect investigations as they go forward to ensure the integrity of those investigations to protect the court process so we stand behind our policy I do not advocate in any way reducing the Vermont State Police puts out over 5,000 press releases a year for various incidents from things down to speeding and driver's license suspended all the way up to homicide you're welcome to join that media list if you'd like if you'd like an extra 5,000 emails in your inbox I'll just get subscribed to it and keeps us in line on that so I appreciate his support so we try to push out everything we can through there again we are not perfect but we try and be as transparent and accountable to the public as we can be and I think that we do a good job and like I said Mike keeps us in track online when we're not so I'd be happy to answer any questions that's where I stand I don't want to go much further unless you would like me to but one of the points that Mr. Silver makes is a legitimate one in my mind just when somebody's found not guilty for example or they get diverted or whatever those those factors are never particularly not guilty they might be on page 4 or the charges are dropped you know that it's always the charges were out there obviously if somebody's beating 100 miles an hour that's pretty hard to contest that happens so frequently and that person is tired with that arrest or whatever the problems unfortunately I better question to the media why is that announced so what I can say is this I can say that for us the arrest is the public event that's taking place and it's important for us to document that and make sure the public sees that arrest fortunately or unfortunately whatever side you're on the internet and the media and social media captures this and we lose control of it at that point so it becomes widespread in the worldwide web I understand that but that does not advocate us from our responsibility to ensure that the public understands that we have made an arrest regardless of the circumstances behind it somebody was physically taken into custody and we have responsibility to make sure that that is public information if it is dismissed I would suggest then that the state's attorneys or the defense lawyer put out their own to follow up because we do not do that we do not do follow up press releases from any event that results in conviction or dismissal it's just not the role of law enforcement once the criminal case has been transferred to the courts it really is in the hands of the state's attorneys and the courts to manage and it's not law enforcement's responsibility to come back and update the public on that process so that's all I can really say about that I'm not trying to punt by any means but I don't feel that's a role of law enforcement once it's reached I appreciate your position but I want to give you one other example that I feel like back from my days working with public use by definition many times they love getting their name in the paper actually that was their notoriety you know jeez I got arrested for breaking into the cell center look at that I made page one page four do we play to that too so the question is I don't want to mention the name but it's a medication that you may