SmartTranscript of House Corrections&Institutions 2025-01-18 1:35 PM

[Speaker 0 ]: Corrections and institutions. It is Thursday, January sixteenth. It's our one thirty meeting. We are going to continue our conversation with commissioner Dennel from the Department of Corrections in terms of what we call corrections [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: one zero one that will help us understand corrections. So commissioner Ivana, [Speaker 0 ]: and then we've got our three ring notebook from Great. Thereabouts. [Speaker 2 ]: Alrighty. Welcome back. Well, thank you all for coming back. It's never a guarantee that that's gonna happen. If you can turn your textbooks to thirteen of the slide deck. This is where we left off. But before we jump back in, wanted to make sure that we gave you all opportunity. If you had any questions about any of the testimony the other day, I wanted to dig into any of those topics quickly before we go in to the rest of the material. You know, the rest of this presentation largely focuses on some of the key issues, key areas of focus for the department. But if there were questions about detainees or statuses, any of that that you wanted to to rehash or go back through, I wanna make sure we're responsive to that. [Speaker 3 ]: You have questions? [Speaker 0 ]: Go ahead. [Speaker 4 ]: What we did so [Speaker 0 ]: You remember? [Steve Howard ]: Yeah. I [Speaker 4 ]: So we were after you left, we did wanna find out about the turning point. Yep. You're you're you're one thing. So you just start there. [Speaker 2 ]: So there's a section of this presentation that'll hit Turning Point. Great. Love you teeing that up. [Speaker 6 ]: And then it [Speaker 4 ]: was also talk of the work that, you know, you do with [Steve Howard ]: BTC or [Speaker 4 ]: Vermont Technical College or any of that [Speaker 2 ]: The CCB program. CCB. Yeah. [Speaker 4 ]: And the money what was it? Four point five million. Because that's federal money. Yep. So we were just interested in hearing more about that. [Speaker 2 ]: We have a slide out in that too. It's good. Alright. Give him the twenty bucks. He's gotta make sure we pay him. We don't wanna forget that. That was [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: good. Well [Speaker 0 ]: Part of the CCV was for vocational rehab training. [Speaker 2 ]: And that's maybe a good spot to talk about the vocational training piece, at least a preview because I think we could spend and probably should spend, some time on that topic as the year goes on. [Speaker 3 ]: Yeah. And we can circle back after you give your presentation if you don't cover something that somebody's interested in. Yeah. That sounds good. [Speaker 0 ]: Hang on here, Will. I think the other this is the notes that I took down of how the facilities are inflexible in terms of program needs and Wi Fi issue and Wellpad. [Speaker 2 ]: Never heard of them. [Speaker 0 ]: And what are the programs that you always support and help inmates? That was the other piece that also came up. [Speaker 2 ]: What was that one again, Cher? I'm sorry. [Speaker 0 ]: Programs that help and support in minutes. Okay. And, of course, MAT, which is MAT is gonna take on It's [Speaker 2 ]: gonna be another big area [Speaker 7 ]: of focus. [Speaker 0 ]: A lot of there's some legislation percolating both on the house and senate. Right. So, Will Yep. [Speaker 8 ]: Just going back through the slides before we pick up. Mhmm. The one thing just kinda I'm gonna find my notes just to double check. But the one one slide that I kinda didn't understand exactly was the quarterly sentence ended the June one. Can you explain why the total sentence had gone down, but the total I mean, it's gone up and kinda I know part of that was you said COVID. [Speaker 3 ]: Yep. I know you said [Speaker 8 ]: that didn't explain the whole thing, but I forgot what the rest of that picture [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. So if you look at that slide, it's slide eight for folks following along. You'll see kind of a major drop in the twenty sixteen time frame. I think that's right after justice reinvestment one. A little later than that. [Speaker 0 ]: Justice reinvestment one was around two thousand ten. [Speaker 2 ]: Okay. Well, so I can't explain that one. But if you fast forward, you'll see around the twenty nineteen, twenty twenty time frame, that's when that population starts to dip again. And the first chunk of that is a result of justice reinvestment two, which was a a program between the three branches of government in Vermont to change some of the sentencing law change the way the department does, revocations. So bringing people back into incarceration, a lot of work in that space. And we certainly maybe should do a presentation on that at one point, but also that that work started to take effect in twenty nineteen. And then it within seven or eight months, the pandemic started. And you see into twenty twenty, then you see a precipitous drop. And we've been able to actually maintain, the sentence numbers. I think that that's largely, you know, the the pandemic kind of flushed out, the justice reinvestment changes, and then they took effect and kinda held steady at that point. We may see that number tick up a little. I mean, it's worth noting that the courts also have a considerable backlog. And so they're kind of at a trickle right now. And so you so we're not seeing major population changes. However, you'll note the detainee number is going up. And I think some of that is maybe attributable to changes in laws over the last few years. But I think a lot of that is attributable to the speed at which cases are being disposed of they're being adjudicated. And I think maybe some of you all saw there's a Vermont digger piece recently about the impact of remote court proceedings on corrections and on the justice system as a whole. [Speaker 0 ]: Take test one of the one [Speaker 2 ]: of the promises of remote court was that it was going to speed up this process, and it has done the opposite. So the court process is slower, more complicated, more cumbersome, our staff are suffering as a result of those changes. And there's been no material change over the last few years, as we continue to try to work with the courts and others to fix some of that. That that's really not helping that court backlog problem. Aside from the kind of implications on justice, it it's really creating these operational challenges for us. [Speaker 0 ]: We should take some tests. Mhmm. Part of the issue is our facilities are limiting in terms of the privacy Yeah. Of that and our in our electronic Internet Wi Fi Mhmm. Ability. And there's a lot of issues with the defense and with the prosecution in terms of having access to the person and also paperwork that needs to get done that could immediately get done in the court. Yeah. And they can't because they're on a correction facility. [Speaker 2 ]: If you haven't read that piece, I would encourage you to it's a good primer on that problem. [Speaker 0 ]: So have in the back. Call sign your binders. [Speaker 2 ]: Great. Send your binders on. [Speaker 0 ]: It was way ahead [Speaker 2 ]: of you. It's a good primer to kinda start in introducing that topic and and the issues felt by staff, felt by the folks that are being held, etcetera. [Speaker 0 ]: And once you start that issue, and if you wanna go back to bring them fiscally into court, you're gonna open up the issue of transportation. Right. Cost of shares. K. So we've tried to address that over the years. [Speaker 2 ]: And availability. I mean, like any law enforcement agency and, like, corrections, they're also suffering from damages. [Speaker 0 ]: So bringing up the detainee, out of five fifty one, how many of those are the federal detainees? [Speaker 2 ]: Today? I think I've got that. [Speaker 0 ]: Eighty six. [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. Eighty six federal detainees today. [Speaker 0 ]: How many women? [Speaker 2 ]: Fifty. Usually Total detainees are fed? [Speaker 0 ]: For women. How many detainee for women? Feds? [Speaker 4 ]: I'd rather Ten. [Speaker 0 ]: Ten. Ten. Ten? [Speaker 6 ]: Yeah. Seven women fed detainments? Yeah. [Speaker 2 ]: And that number is usually pretty low, and it often fluctuates if they're, you know, depending on what they're being held for. [Speaker 0 ]: And then how many women detainees that are Fifty. [Speaker 4 ]: Fifty. Forty six. [Speaker 0 ]: Forty Forty six. [Speaker 4 ]: I don't know. Is that inclusive or not? Is that forty six? Inclusive of the ten. Forty six inclusive of the ten. So we got ten female fed, seventy six male fed, forty seven state, and four hundred sorry. Female state, forty seven. Male state detainees is four hundred and twenty two. [Speaker 0 ]: So I read, and I think it was some data somewhere that the detainee population, thirty some odd percent are Vermonters, and then was a forty plus percent come from out of state? [Speaker 4 ]: The last we have an appendix that was checked. [Speaker 0 ]: I mean, that could've struck [Speaker 2 ]: me. Thirty seven percent are Vermont residents. Twenty two percent are unknown. So, you you know, keep that in mind. And then thirty nine percent are out of state. How many are in state? Twenty thirty seven percent. [Speaker 0 ]: Thirty seven and thirty nine. So why aren't the ones who are coming from out of state, why won't they be extradited back to the state they were from? [Speaker 2 ]: Well, a small percentage are being held because they were caught here but have committed crimes elsewhere, but the vast majority have committed crimes in Vermont. So they're being held against Vermont charges. [Speaker 0 ]: Some of that related to drug trafficking? Or is it all [Speaker 2 ]: I think it's you know, I don't know how deep we wanna get into the definitions here, but I think the relationship to substances is high. Whether that's actually moving drugs or, you know, drugs were implicated in the further ends of a crime, etcetera. [Speaker 0 ]: And it would be interesting for those folks, not just the out of state, but also the in state. And this is a deeper dive that we would like to get into at some point. How many of them are being held with bail and the amount of bail? [Speaker 2 ]: And About fifty eight percent of our detainee populate total detainee population are held without bail today. I do. [Speaker 0 ]: Bail by the constitution is risk of what? [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: It's not public safety, though public safety is taken into account. But constitutionally, bail is set because there's a risk of flight. Person won't come back to court is basically what it is. So I'm just curious if those that are held with high bail or held without bail, if it's more of the out of state folks or if it's it just doesn't [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. I don't have it broken down that way, but we probably could. [Speaker 4 ]: It's I'm curious. Thirty two. Do you have some more information about the population. [Speaker 2 ]: We have a racial breakdown with resident seating. Yeah. But we don't have the I don't think we're breaking that by held without bail versus held on [Speaker 0 ]: bail. And that's a deeper dive that we can do Mhmm. This committee because I think we need to understand some of those nuances as well. [Speaker 2 ]: And I'll just remind this committee, you know well, chair, but bail is set by the courts. Right. It is outside the purview of the department of clerks. So for those detainees, we simply receive a mitt from the court that says do this, and that's what we do. And they can change those they can increase bail, decrease bail, get rid of bail, hold them without bail. That's all outside the purview [Speaker 0 ]: of the department. It's really up to the person that detained me to determine if they wanna make bail or not because some folks may not wanna make bail because for every day they're held as a detainee goes towards credit for time served. So that plays into the mix as well. Brian? [Speaker 9 ]: I think I know the answer to this, but this all feels adjacent to the kind of third rail question about is there any truth to this notion of catch and release? Are we gonna talk about that kind of stuff here? Are we gonna talk about the constitution, or we leave that to judiciary and [Speaker 4 ]: keep our noses out of it? [Speaker 0 ]: It's interrelated. In terms of talking about bail and changing any bail statute, that's judiciary [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: For sure. But we need to understand it because it has implications in DOC in many forms in many forms. And that's why I wanted to have judge Zonne in next week to talk about the connection of the courts in DOC. Yeah. [Speaker 9 ]: And do we do joint sorry. Sessions. Yeah. [Speaker 2 ]: So I can respond. I mean, for corrections, we we don't have any influence over who is either caught or released Right. With the exception of individuals on furlough, which is a topic we'll cover at some point, but we keep pushing on. Those furlough folks, though, are already convicted of a crime. They're serving a sentence. That's that's not part of the catch and release kind of question. But just to flag that DOC doesn't have any influence on either side of that equation. Yep. Again, just the receiver of the folks once the the court has decided what to do. [Connor ]: Yeah. Commissioner, like, like, the slide you showed earlier was interesting, I think, with the sort of psychiatric hospital population going down and corrections going up. There's always like that expression, you know, we never really deinstitutionalize people. Just change people. We just [Speaker 2 ]: put them into another institution. Right? With lesser. [Connor ]: Which would be which would be prisons and, oh, shelters. [Speaker 3 ]: Yeah. So I [Connor ]: we're not getting into a big debate about the hotel voucher program. I'm interested if there's any correlation now where you had people with a roof over their heads and then all of a sudden, hundreds of people were evicted. A lot of them substance abuse, mental health issues. The issue, if I'm not housed, maybe I'd rather have, like, be imprisoned and sleep in a tent out there and die, you know? So is there a way to keep track of that? It's I I think it does fit into the big scheme of what we're looking at here policy wise. [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. So I mean, just I can't agree with your early comment more. I mean, in the agency of human services, we basically say that people end up three places, they end up in a prison, they end up in a hospital, usually an emergency room, or they end up on the street. Those are kind of the catches at the end of the line. And often they're cycling between those three. And I think what that graph showed is we promised ourselves we were going to fund and create all these community supports and we talk you'll hear in the you've heard but for the new folks you'll hear a lot in this committee about the community based programs the community supports that are available to to help the folks that we moved out of institutions. [Speaker 7 ]: I [Speaker 2 ]: think how that has played out in reality is a much different story. Those institute those community based supports are really stretched to the max where they exist at all. They're understaffed. They're underfunded. They're they're really struggling to keep up and are not keeping up, which results in then people coming to prison, people going to the hospitals, people going to the streets. So that is something that that we watch very closely. I put this in here because I think it's really it helps to illustrate kinda how we got to where we are as a country and particularly as a state. As it relates to the motel voucher program, it was something we were sensitive to. We wanted to make sure as the those options ramped down, that for folks who were justice involved that we were helping them. So if somebody's under supervision or, was coming into incarceration that we were watching that, we didn't see a major change. So that was good, I guess. But but it's something that I think we could dig into a little further and talk more about. I think that's, you know, the department has a robust transitional housing program, actually one of the biggest in the country, one of the few corrections agencies in the country that actually provide transitional housing supports. And that though is available to folks who are leaving our system. It's a little bit different. And those are, you know, we're maxed out. And we would turn more of that option online for folks, but we simply can't find units. So we have the budget, we have the providers, but we don't have the units. There's just not, there's no I mean, I think you guys know well, housing in Vermont is a major challenge. It's especially difficult for justice involved folks. So, you know, that's something that that we work on that housing piece, but we didn't see a major change coming out of the motel. [Connor ]: Do we have, like, the data of people who are incarcerated net right now only for lack of housing? You do have [Speaker 3 ]: that data. [Connor ]: Yeah. I'd be interested in seeing some of those numbers too. Yeah. [Speaker 2 ]: And some of that, you know, it's important to decouple. Some of that is because they have specific conditions around their housing. You know, you don't want certain folks near school, for example. But some of it is simply, unfortunately, roof over their head and food every day is better than us releasing them to an environment where there's just no support in place. And, and we see that you'll hear us talk a lot about our geriatric, our older population, we see folks, we who we'd put in a nursing home today, if there was a spot available, or we would help them. But there's no housing available, but they're in a condition that we can't just go drop them off on the street. I mean, they will expire very quickly. And and that's just not a situation we wanna face. It becomes very difficult, though. We talk a little about the minimum and maximum sentences when folks hit their maximum sentence, because then we're forced to do that. And unfortunately, in the last almost four years that I've done here, I can tell you there's been multiple instances where we have somebody maxing out, they're in no condition to be on their own. And the only option we have is to drive them to the nearest emergency department and leave them there because we can't under law, we can't have them in our custody anymore. Talk about something that's tough for staff. [Speaker 0 ]: Right. I mean, [Speaker 2 ]: I I it's really been a difficult issue, and I've heard a lot from staff on how painful that process can be. [Speaker 0 ]: I think for the committee, I don't want you to think, well, people are just incarcerated because they don't have housing. Right. What and and we have folks that were they are incarcerated because there is lack of housing, but they have met their minimum. They have met their minimum sentence. It could have been in there five years. It could have been in there eight years, ten years as their minimum. They have a maximum, but they've met their minimum and they are eligible to be on furlough or parole. They are eligible. Doesn't mean they will. But if they don't have adequate housing and support out there, they would be a good candidate to be furloughed or paroled out, but they don't have a suitable place to live. So corrections is holding that person that we're paying seventy, ninety thousand a year to hold the person that we could free up a bed, put somebody else in it. So we wanna have so much pressure to move people out of state. So I just want people to remember, yes, there are folks being held due to lack of housing, but if they have met their minimum and would be eligible to be released out in the community under supervision to finish out their maximum setups. The most recent figure, I have this from November, and it was sixty four individual system wide. Well, it used to be a hundred and fifty, so we've really logged down. It's on the website too. [Speaker 6 ]: Great. Thanks. [Speaker 2 ]: Alright. [Speaker 0 ]: Okay. Should we [Speaker 2 ]: push on? Alright. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. [Speaker 2 ]: So one of the areas we haven't spoken much about is the staffing situation and corrections. And one of the things I'd like you to kind of begin to wrap your heads around is how massive of a problem this is here in Vermont, but across the country. I mean literally in every state and and for counties that have large county jails, this is a major problem. We threw a couple, these are from publications across the country speaking to the national staffing crisis, and this is something that has been our top priority and our top focus for my tenure here. Vermont, I think, is one of the few states who is really leading on this effort and have dug in. We were asked by the justice department, the US justice department, to join a small team of national experts to help work on this problem, with the goal that for years and years, justice and and other entities have spent a lot of time, energy, money, thought on helping stabilize the law enforcement space, for staffing, but have spent very little money, no time, no energy trying to help corrections. And yet, if you go state over state, the corrections agency is typically the largest organ in the justice system, and affects the most people on a daily basis in the justice system. And we have repeatedly under invested in this space, have not focused our energy or time on trying to solve these issues. And the solutions that do get proposed are simply not enough. And you'll hear us talk about that a lot because we have done some of those things. And then we have gone much farther trying to rethink the way corrections is done here in Vermont and help the rest of the country catch up to that, because it's not sustainable. We cannot sustain the system with the staffing structure that we have, with the number of people that we have, and with the requirements that we have, the job that the mission that we're required to do is simply not sustained. And so we want to give you a little context, and we'll talk about some of the things that Vermont's doing. But I think it's important to understand what it means to be a corrections officer, what it means to work in a corrections system. Pretty much across the board, corrections agencies are facing very high vacancy rates. That's true at the federal level. It's true in most of our sister states around the country. Some states have called in the National Guard to take over facilities or augment staffing. That's fortunately something we've not gotten close to here in Vermont and want to avoid, but our neighbor in New Hampshire did. And so it's not something that's just happening in the south. This is something that happened right next door. It's also important to know that the cost of doing it the way we're doing it is very high. So it's burning out our staff, it's creating huge problems for the human beings who work in our system, it's also creating huge problems structurally for the state and for the country. So the Justice Department discovered, you know, through its analysis that fifty percent of all overtime, in most states is attributable to the corrections agency. And that's true in Vermont. There's major workforce demographics that we're fighting against as we try to solve this problem. So the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there'll be a seven percent decline in correctional officers over the next ten years. I can tell you if we looked backwards, we've been on that decline for a long time and it's only continuing to get worse. Then you look at the job itself, what is the experience of a correctional officer? I think one thing that people fail to appreciate is how difficult, how dangerous and how violent this job is. The there's a study, that they just put up on the slide for or on the screen for you that shows a comparison among the most dangerous jobs in the country and the rates of violence experienced by employees in those jobs. Correctional officers are always on the top of that list. The rates of suicide ideation, the rates of PTSD are higher than military, service members, veterans who have served in combat roles. I mean, it's it's truly a difficult and dangerous job. So then you bring it back to Vermont and we have a state where our workforce is shrinking pretty dramatically. We're aging out, so the number of available employees in the state is shrinking. The people who want to do this work is shrinking, frankly, and you have a large number of jobs available in the state. So for every available potential employee, there were competing against a vast number of employers. I think, the statistic that I've been relying on for a while, I think it's still true, is that there's four jobs available for every person looking for a job in the state of Vermont. And so that makes it very difficult. And what we found is the folks who are truly good at corrections are folks that are mission driven and wanna do the work. They wanna have the impact that you can have as a correctional officer. And so some of the things that maybe appeal to people in other spaces don't appeal to the crowd we want and vice versa. So we wanna make sure we're getting the right folks too. It's not just whatever flood the facilities with people because that is not a good outcome when you have people in your care and custody every day. So looking at the Vermont workforce, I mean, we're really at this point, we're we're recruiting primarily Gen z and millennials. Yeah. And and the rest of the generations are kind of aging out of our area of recruitment. That that group is shrinking. They're right here. So you'll see, everybody on both sides of my shrinking. We have this little bit that that, we can draw from. You'll also see that the available workforce across the country is shrinking and and is projected to continue to contract. And so there's some really big forces pushing against us as we try to work through this. I think, Haley, if you can go to twenty one, we'll just skip to some of the things we've tried to do to impact this. So sorry. For those that are following on paper, it's like three slides on twenty one at the bottom. It's our belief that there one, there's there's no single thing we're gonna do that's actually gonna change this issue. What we really need is a fundamental shift in the way that we do the work, how facilities are run, and how we staff our our facilities. Because we can continue to recruit and hopefully we'll continue to retain at faster rates, but even still if you look at those demographics we're still not going to be able to catch up. And so there needs to be like a major fundamental change in the way we do the work. Some of the things we've tried to do, and some have worked and some haven't. But we heard loud and clear that correctional officers felt they should have more pay and and frankly, they should. And so over the last three, the last two fiscal years, I think we've spent an additional thirty million dollars on top of the contract that we had with the original, employee contract, [Speaker 0 ]: on top [Speaker 2 ]: of the budgeted amount, which all the fiscal folks really appreciated. So thirty million dollars on top. All that money went straight to correctional officers or folks working in our system. And that was that was needed. That was really important. Those were done largely the the first good chunk of that money was largely done through side letter agreements to our contract. But those are temporary for those who know how the negotiations work. The side letters are temporary. The contract is permanent for the the two years it's in place. But once you kinda set the money train there, that ultimately ends up being permanent in the long run. And so one of the important things to us was to get off of the side ladder track and build some of that money in permanently. And so we redesigned the pay scale for corrections. And so now there's a unique corrections specific pay scale in Vermont, both for the line officers and for supervisors. And that create we created that in a way that folks get promoted through the steps much quicker. Promoted is not the right word. They move through the steps much quicker, which means they can generate more annual income quicker. They also move through the grades a little easier, but also we increase the rates at which they they were paid per hour. And so that's a lot more money. I think the important thing there is that's a bill right in that's that contributes to their retirement calculations, etcetera. A few years ago, the state, it wasn't DOC, but the state itself, the legislature changed the retirement plan. I think that was a positive step forward for correctional officers. But money is the one tool we had always gone to. I think you just we need to throw some money at it and that'll help fix it. And those are at best band aid solutions. We do need to increase pay, but that isn't gonna solve the problem. That's really just compensating folks for the work they're already doing. What we believe needed to happen is we just really need to change the way we're running the system and change the way it works. And so we went around and we asked staff, why are you thinking about leaving? We asked staff why they left if they did. We asked staff who were working for us, what the major pain points were. And, you know, everybody wants to get paid more. We'd hear that sometimes. I'd like to get paid more. That's not what people are saying. People were saying, we don't have any work life balance. I never get to see my family. I never get to go to a kid's soccer game. I never get to have any time for rest or recuperation. I don't have friends because I don't have time for friends. And so we took that back and, and that's where a lot of our work has been focused. We are hearing from our staff, we're hearing from the people impacted. These are the things I want you to work on. And so we took that back, we redesigned the schedule, I think that that was a major step forward for our system. We also introduced specialty teams to try to eliminate some of the pain points, the pressures in our system, basically take workload off of facilities and and centralize it on on certain specialty teams. I think there's a lot of room to grow in those efforts. They've been hugely successful in helping us avoid overtime, cut down on standby, cut down on our need to use, our probation parole officers for core functions. We've we've kind of reoriented ourselves back to I call it the staff experience. It's really the human experience of what it's like to work in a correctional system. So we've increased and changed the way we do rewards and recognition. We've, really tried to focus resources on staff wellness. We have a peer support team that I think is one of the best in the country, and we've built that out. We've created permanent positions to run our peer support team. We have a clinical licensed psychologist on staff whose job it is is just to serve our staff when they're in need, whether that's in crisis or just need somebody to talk to. And we're continuing to explore other solutions in that space to try to help folks, improve the situation. We've put what we call staff experience supervisors in every facility, and their job is their their only job is to try to help make the situation better for staff on the ground in our prisons. And I think that's been pretty impressive. The boring stuff that we've done is build out a data team that's actually able to help explain what's happening and why it's happening so that we can start to tackle those issues. Because on its surface, you think like, oh, we could just pay more and then we'll get more people. They won't go work at this place down the street. That's not how it actually works. What we found when we dug into the data is actually, most people do wanna come work for us. It's not that hard to get folks to come sign up. The hard thing is to get them to stay. And then you start to ask yourself, well, why don't they wanna stay? Well, they're working in buildings that are fifty years old. They're using paper when every other facet of their life is wired up with technology. We don't even have Wi Fi in our facilities. I mean, this is madness. It's twenty twenty five, and we don't have Wi Fi in our facilities. The people they work with, I don't mean their fellow staff, the people that they're serving aren't always that nice to them. It's difficult to go to a place where people aren't nice to you every day. These are things that we I think we just kind of gloss over, But these are the things that really impact the daily experience of somebody working in a facility. So how do we fix that? Well, those are the things we're targeting. How do we make it a better place to work? How do we make the camaraderie better? How do we make supervision and leadership better across the department? How do we lift workload off of people so they have more time to go do things? I mean, this is something we heard, I went around and talked to a bunch of supervisors across the system. And I said, I would love to spend my time coaching and mentoring line staff, but you have me doing so much other stuff that I don't have time to go do that. Roger that. So how do we cut that stack down? Because your job is actually to supervise. It's not to fill up paperwork. And we don't want you doing that. I want you in the units talking to line staff, coaching them, mentoring, helping them through the day. So these are the approaches that we've taken. We've dropped our vacancy rate precipitously, but it is stubbornly high. Still, it's nowhere near we want it to be. We are still in crisis. I've been very clear about that from the beginning, and we're not letting up. But as I said to the joint justice committee over the summer, well, I guess it was December, you know, we feel like we're doing this alone. There's not a lot of other people leaning in to help us out. We haven't heard workable solutions. And, you know, we have some groups who have vested interest, our labor partners for one, who who have invested interest. Their membership works in our facilities, who who do care deeply. I don't discount that at all. But everybody else doesn't seem to pay paying attention. And we've got staff who really need them to. And I think this is one area where our communities are failing really important members of our community, our correctional staff. I think it's an area where there's underinvestment, but I don't really mean money. I mean, to an extent I feel that way sometimes. But I mean, like, underinvestment of focus and energy and compassion for the folks who are doing what I think most people think is pretty important work. I don't think most Vermonters are ready for us to just open the doors and let everybody out of our correctional facilities. And yet, we're also now willing to step in and say, that's important. We want you to do your job. Let's go take care of those things. So I hope you help us with that this year. We'll bring you ideas. We'll tell you what we're doing as time goes on. But it's definitely the most important issue facing our system. And and you'll wanna talk about I I know because I've been here for a minute now. You'll wanna talk about things like bail reform or and reentry planning and how to get people driver's license and all these things that we cannot do any of that unless we have a staff and not just a staff, but a staff who's engaged and wants to do it. And right now, they're tired and and sick and and they need some tending to. And so I hope as the committee of jurisdiction, you'll help us with that. [Speaker 0 ]: Talk about I think your words about people not understanding what goes on, the pressures that the staff is under, corrections is hidden. Yeah. Because everybody thinks we'll lock somebody up with taking care of the problem. Yeah. Taking care of the problem, locked up. I don't have to see them. They're out of my community. I don't have a facility in my community. I don't need to deal with it. It's done. It's taken care of. But it isn't because we got human beings in those facilities who are under the custody of the state. We are responsible for them. We. All of us. It's not just the executive branch, so legislative branch, and the judicial branch. [Speaker 6 ]: Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: We are responsible. This where's the state government? Connor and then James. [Connor ]: Sure. I think it's directed more towards Sean and Kevin because you're gonna be liaisons to the Appropriations Committee on this. And some of this goes outside the realm of our committee, house government operations for one, looking at the salary benefits. If there's incentives being offered, they would look at that. But you might need more money too. Now at the at the decision commissioner, but, you know, the administration comes out with budget instructions and every department is responsible for leading, you know, a certain decrease or limited increase there. I think that's where we have to get creative as the policy committee and say, okay, maybe they do need more. So it might be where we vary from the administration but we need to work with the other committees too. But Some of the union organizer. But [Speaker 3 ]: so what I was gonna say is, like, kind [Speaker 0 ]: of a couple [Speaker 3 ]: of what Connor said actually, but well, a little different. This is a job. If you talk to people in the community, which you guys all do, everybody knows it. There's plenty of jobs out there that if you offer more money, people go, I didn't really wanna do it, but now I kinda do. This isn't really one of those jobs. I mean, you they still need more money. I mean, like, I talked to plenty of people a couple years ago where the payroll pay scale that that the correction used to be like, oh, it's good. And now they're like, I can get the same amount of money at Mhmm. Whatever. So it's it's a job that does need more money perhaps well above the the median. Right. But that alone isn't going to attract people. This shouldn't be part of the equation, but it's not. And you say the quality of lifestyle. But you ask people, they're like, nah, I don't wanna touch up. Whereas where other people will. And it's gotta be the right people as you so, you know, it can't just be anybody. Right. But it's a it's a big issue. I don't wanna be labor of the but it's it's it needs to be addressed a lot better than probably it has been. Yeah. Look forward to hearing more about solutions. And and the one thing that you you mentioned I hear all the time in my community from people that that I know would work there or who have friends that work there, etcetera, is that quality of life. Yeah. You know, when your overtime is great to a degree. Right. But at a certain point, it's no longer great. Right. You know, you have no life to spend the money and enjoy on it. So That's [Speaker 2 ]: exactly right. [Speaker 3 ]: And when you're to being told, I don't know if this happens. I just hear that it does. But, like, you come in and you don't have a job. You know, I've heard that a few years ago. I don't know what happens, but I hear it. I've heard it. So that's not like it's not like it's like, well, would you? No problem. [Speaker 2 ]: But, you [Speaker 3 ]: know, and and you can't somebody's gotta be there. Right? It's also not like I mean, if I one of my cooler people I own a store. One of my cooler people doesn't commit. Sorters will get stuck somehow. Yeah. You can't just leave the prisoners there. That's right. It makes yeah. That's right. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: Mary? So, commissioner, you have discussions with the administration during the budget period this past fall. Did you put a recommend into the administration for what you thought you might need in this category? [Speaker 2 ]: I look forward to discussing that with you. But as soon as the budget is revealed, lest, if you would like me to continue to come to this committee Yeah. You might wanna let me take a pass on that. I I in jesting aside [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: I was trying to put you on [Speaker 0 ]: this No. No. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: I thought, you know, you can ask. But if you're not advocating for it, I'm sure you would. What was the big deal? So we have an idea if something was put in place. Give me that if you can't hear. [Speaker 4 ]: So Sam. [Speaker 2 ]: We certainly did advocate, and and it doesn't take a lot of advocating governor because he understands this, problem as well as anybody and is really cares deeply about it. And, you know, it is for the folks who have spent time around the budget and particularly around our budget, you'll know that we far exceed our budgeted amount every year. And and the administration has been good about making sure that money is there. And the legislature too, that's not to discount the work that the appropriations and this committee do. And and I think there's a strong desire to not have to do that. I mean, you wanna get to the to the previous gentleman's point. You wanna get to the point where you're offering over time, it's not mandated. So that the person with three little kids can go home at the end of the day because they gotta help out at home and do the other stuff. And the person who's either kids are grown and gone or don't have kids yet and they wanna just work and buy the brand new truck, that opportunity's available to them too. That's the balance we wanna get to. So we don't wanna have to be advocating year over year for money far in excess of the budget. But that process, as you know, will unfold here shortly. And I think, you know, you won't be surprised by where that goes. [Speaker 0 ]: I think one thing that's really important, we need to engage other colleagues in this conversation. We need to really engage government operations committee because that's where they deal with state employees, when they deal with the structure of payment and retirement and classification and all of that. And I've reached out to the chair of gov ops in house. There's willingness to do this. I think we really need to engage more of our colleagues. [Speaker 2 ]: Maybe even senate institutions. I don't know. [Speaker 0 ]: Yeah. Right. Kevin and then Troy? [Speaker 7 ]: A a humorous comment. I know I recognize you, and so I can get your your signature because you're a TV star. [Speaker 0 ]: Yes. Where I record. [Speaker 4 ]: Yes. Yeah. Thank you. [Speaker 0 ]: I go out in the kitchen when he comes up. I don't [Speaker 2 ]: wanna tell you the secret sauce here as much as it there is any. Those are those are in in part recruitment and retention tool. But ultimately, the the real thesis behind those TV spots, so if you've watched any, is nobody ever tells the story of corrections. Nobody's out there talking positively about what the work is actually like. It's tough. I mean, the environment is is very difficult. And yet the work is extraordinarily rewarding, and I think most of our staff would tell you, like, I love this job. I don't necessarily love the overtime. I don't love the environment we work in, but I love the work. And it's good, impactful public service. Nobody ever talks about that. And so this is part of our effort to get some messaging out there because, no offense to our media colleagues, they don't typically take up our positive press release. [Speaker 0 ]: I know that. Yeah. [Speaker 2 ]: But so we can force the issue, by begging for it. But, it's to get a positive story out about corrections because there is so much amazing stuff happening in this department by the people who work in our facilities, who work in our field offices, in the central office. Nobody ever hears about. We gotta rise raise the tide. [Speaker 7 ]: This is a heavy subject that was meant just to lighten it a little bit. But my question is is I think I heard you say that because of the lack of staff, there are things you cannot do. It's implied that you are required to do, but you literally are not able to do it at this point because of the lack of staff. [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. I understand you. I know you are absolutely specific examples of that? [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. So we are required to do reentry planning for individuals. Primarily, that requirement exists for sentenced individuals. So people who are coming near the end of their sentence, and then they're gonna be released community. We gotta help them through that process, and it's a complicated, cumbersome process. We also used to largely help detainees with that process. That's much more complicated because we don't have the you know, you have them for short periods of time. It's hard to get them all set up, but we would try the best we can. Since the judiciary has shifted courts into our prisons, much of the we call them caseworkers. Much of their time is sucked up doing court. They're either facilitating court paperwork. They're moving people around because that's not a normal function, that we were moving people to these little court kiosks before. That's that's workload that another branch of government is shifting to us without any additional resources, training, support that our staff can't do that. The hospital coverage is another great example. I mean, we talked to you on was was that a month ago? When was I here? Tuesday? Two years ago. About, how how much more hospital coverage we're doing these days. Well, if two officers have to leave the facility with an individual and then ultimately we shift some things around to get coverage there, but there's two officers out of the building. That means other things can't happen. And when there's multiple people leaving for the hospital, etcetera, that's an area where there's there's no slack in our system. So we're basically taking the finite very small finite resources we have and stretching them as far as we can. [Connor ]: Right. [Speaker 7 ]: So the last two things are actually added requirements. The one thing that you're not able to do that you should be doing is the reentry planning is what I heard. [Speaker 2 ]: We do it, but but it's not being done to the level. Understand. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. Understand. So we've we've we've laid more on you through that. And maybe this is an obvious answer, but why is it so dangerous for your correction officers? [Speaker 2 ]: Well, there's a lot of hazards that exist in a correctional facility. You know, there's individuals who are in various states of dysregulation, who are can be violent. They will throw things on you, etcetera. So there's kind of that bucket of stuff. Interacting with the people who are incarcerated can be dangerous. It's a physically demanding job and work space. So I don't know if you've ever been in a prison, but it's pretty much entirely concrete. So walking on concrete, standing on concrete all day every day for twenty five years, that's that's really hard on the body. It's emotionally and psychologically damaging, the trauma, both, like, actual trauma. So, something that happens to you directly, but also the vicarious trauma, watching somebody who's just tried to commit suicide, for example. Knowing that, one of your coworkers died unexpectedly. These types of events are commonplace in corrections. I don't think we have it in this deck, but the life expectancy of corrections officers is something like fifteen years shorter than the national average. The rates of suicide and suicide ideation are substantially higher. The rates of divorce, substance abuse, alcoholism, much higher than the national average. You can't say that that's simply because the people who decide to become corrections officers. It's absolutely the environment and the work that they are doing. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you. Yep. They're dealing with a [Speaker 2 ]: lot of people with a lot of issues. A lot of complex issues. And they're maybe it just feels this way, but the data seems to support. They're getting more and more complex. [Speaker 0 ]: Yeah. [Speaker 2 ]: The population we have today is substantially different than it was twenty years ago. [Speaker 0 ]: You had drugs in there. Mhmm. Yeah. Not coming in. [Speaker 2 ]: That's right. [Speaker 0 ]: You got people with severe mental health issues. [Speaker 2 ]: Mhmm. You got people substance usage. [Speaker 0 ]: Severe addiction, trauma. They've had trauma their whole life. Yep. Health issues. And this is it's it's tough. Yeah. Sorry? [Speaker 4 ]: I I wanna do this quickly, but I I wanna try at least baseline this. Okay. And this gets at something the the chair was asking us to do, engaging our colleagues. Connor brought us into the conversation as well. And I wanna do it carefully, but I might wanna hear BSEA's thoughts on this too quickly briefly. How much access do you feel you've had to gov ops, especially, to talk about some of these things that they're gonna have an impact on? Mhmm. I'm also very curious to hear how much access do you think you've had to, as I hear about the impact that the courts have shifted on to your staff, right? So judiciary, I can imagine, is saying, we're hiring more judges, we're hiring more staff, but they're not saying, and we also have DOC doing some of our work for us. So is there I'm just starting to to process kind of what how can we carve out some of that access for you? Mhmm. Same question to VSEA. Do you have access to those rooms? And by access, I mean, are these conversations they're even wanting to have or indicating that they might wanna have both GovOps and judiciary? [Speaker 2 ]: So I think so this is my fourth session, and I think I've testified in GovOps twice in four years. Well, three years because I won't count this. And I don't remember the conversation really. So, like, I don't Was [Speaker 4 ]: it about staffing? [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. It was something about staffing. But, I mean, I just don't think the resonance is there in a way that I would expect. [Speaker 4 ]: Any extra we're asking a lot of do DOC from judiciary. [Speaker 2 ]: I mean, I think so judge Zoney, I think, is definitely sympathetic to this issue. And when he and I and we have teams on both branches that are working together on this. I think the the Confederate nature of the courts, meaning, like, each one is its own little kingdom, and they're all kind of equals and don't tell each other what to do is a huge factor here. And so he doesn't, in fact, have the authority to tell them what to do. And the Supreme Court to date has not stepped in to kind of write rules or or encourage. And I think there's a I think you bring up an important point. You know, this is the policy committee for DOC. The court and court process sits in judiciary. And while we have more access to the house and senate judiciary committees, I haven't seen a lot of focus on this issue, and I just don't think people understand the magnitude. There are fourteen courts in Vermont. There's actually three versions of court in each fort of the fourteen, and we're doing all of that in six prisons across the state. [Speaker 4 ]: Steve, do you mind talking a little bit about maybe historically over the past couple of years how much access you've had to those people who we might have to engage? [Speaker 0 ]: Could you identify yourself, Steve? [Steve Howard ]: Go over to the chair. I'm happy to do that. I'm Steve Howard, and I I represent the frontline workers in the correctional system at BSEA. I would say our challenge is that a lot of the issues that we're talking about that will solve these problems are bargainable issues. So it's wages, benefits. Those have to be directed to the governor. So in terms of access, our our struggle is to always get our members and their families in front [Speaker 3 ]: of the governor. When that [Steve Howard ]: has happened historically, that has resulted in a solution that has made progress on this issue. So that's really what we do focus on. GovOps could take on the issue of the pension. BSCA's position is or member's position is correctional officers should not be treated differently in retirement than state police. They should have the same retirement benefit that state police have. Mhmm. So that's really you know, that's not a cheap [Speaker 2 ]: Right. [Speaker 0 ]: Cheap. [Steve Howard ]: Solution, but it it's I think what the commissioner said is right. This is part of the public safety infrastructure, and we're treating it like this forgotten snapshot. Yeah. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: Can you tell us what the difference is between the two? [Steve Howard ]: Sure. So group g is the new retirement system that we we successfully convinced the legislature and the governor to enact [Speaker 3 ]: two years ago, I think it was. [Steve Howard ]: Yes. Three years ago. And Ruchi basically allows for a correctional officer with twenty years of experience twenty years of service to retire with full retirement benefits at age fifty five. Because of the trauma and the physical demand on the correctional officer, it seemed, like a smart public policy choice. They pay close to a twelve percent contribution rate. That's the employee share. Group c, which is law enforcement, any sworn law enforcement officer, they pay closer to a nine percent contribution rate. They can retire after twenty years of service at age fifty. So we would like to have the we don't need the systems to merge. We just need for g to look like you're seeing. [Speaker 4 ]: Is there a policy move around that at all? I'm sorry? Is there any policy movement on that? [Steve Howard ]: We we certainly advocated for it. We've talked to the joint justice oversight committee about it. I think it may be in the letter they said, you know, to look at that issue. It's been, you know, a decades long campaign that the SCA has has, part has taken part. [Speaker 4 ]: Thank you. [Speaker 0 ]: So one thing I have encouraged SCA is to go to government operations because we're just talking here how DOC doesn't get any help from the public or other partners, and corrections is kind of out there on their own. Well, this is not the committee of jurisdiction for some of the items that are needed. And they keep saying go to the committees of jurisdiction. And it's not always the committees that also have an ear of the governor. And you gotta work within the system and working within the system and the legislative branches to go to those respective committees that have that jurisdiction. And I have emphasized that a number of times. I think what the commissioner said being before gov ops once or twice talking about this in the past three or four years, we had not last session, but the session before joint meetings two joint meetings with DevOps. At my insistence, trying to get a handle on this and trying to get our colleagues in this building to pay attention to it because our committee can only do so much. That's right. We need our colleagues to come up to the table here and deal with this. [Speaker 2 ]: And I counted that as one instance, but you're right. It was two meetings. So there's one other year that I think we did one. Sorry. [Speaker 0 ]: There. We have people there. And just people don't wanna deal with it. Right. They don't wanna deal with it. They wanna wash their hands with it. [Speaker 2 ]: That's the sense I get as well. [Speaker 0 ]: They don't wanna deal with it. But one thing that may be an option, that may be something and I'm gonna put this on the table, maybe a little premature, and it may be totally off base. But one thing I want the legislature to think about, DOC to think about, and VSEA to think about, this suggestion was given to me by some employees of corrections saying for all the overtime Mhmm. That an officer is working, a correctional officer is working for all that overtime or a portion of that overtime, whatever, can that get calculated towards their retirement? Because it is not now. Can they earn that towards their retirement? It's gonna take some changes, but that's one step that maybe can be taken. And if we can kinda think out of the box and try to figure out what we can do is because we can say, well, they need more pay. They need more pay. Well, that's appropriations. Let me tell you, it's gonna be tough at times for that. [Speaker 4 ]: Have you asked that question anywhere else? The the overtime towards pension? [Speaker 0 ]: I've brought that out to justice oversight. Okay. I've mentioned it. It needs I think it's worth vetting. I don't know if it can be done. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: What is from the sense of justice oversight? [Speaker 0 ]: We we took testimony on a lot of this, and and I think the the feeling is it is an issue. They just don't know how to resolve it. It. And we did send we're sending a letter to the respective committees, one convene gov ops, to really take a look at some of these issues. But that that's one thought of, you know, if their overtime could get calculated towards their retirement, you know, it doesn't take away the overtime, but at least there's a purpose there. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: At least I'm back the that committee now. So if we have representatives that have other representatives that sit on it, they can maybe talk to them from this community. [Speaker 0 ]: Were there justice oversights? That's gonna change because it all gets No. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: I know. On it. [Speaker 0 ]: Right now in the house is myself, representative Teresa Wood, Representative Trevor Swarrel, Representative Martin Malone, and Representative Topper McFarlane. That's on the House side. On the Senate side, Yes. Senator Renner was not here anymore. Senator Norris. Senator Hashim. Senator [Speaker 2 ]: Baruth. [Speaker 0 ]: Senator Lyons. Senator Lyons. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: Because it just appears that each group is kicking it to the ground. Nobody wants to deal with it or wants to deal with it. [Speaker 0 ]: It's just us. [Speaker 7 ]: And I [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: know we can't do it all in one shot, but if we could incrementally be going in a direction to get us there, be better than just everyone going, it's not my problem. [Speaker 0 ]: So that's why I put that little thought on the table. Maybe we could retire. Maybe we could get it I don't know. It came as a suggestion to me from some folks who work in corrections. [Speaker 8 ]: Question. Are you still kind of, like No. Are we still talking with you a little bit about the three g? I just I had one question. Gotcha. So we're waiting. So when you've mentioned that it was a twelve percent contribution rate versus the nine percent, are the benefits better at least for CEOs when they retire at fifty five? Like, because they paid in more, do they get like, what it how do their actual benefits differ from the state police once they actually retire? [Steve Howard ]: So that's the increased contribution rate. What advised them is the ability to have a full retirement at fifty five. So it it allows them to retire earlier. [Speaker 0 ]: What was it before? Sixty? Fifty? [Speaker 3 ]: Sixty two, I think. [Steve Howard ]: Sixty two or sixty sixty five. Maybe it's maybe sixty five, then there's sixties. Stop. They do get credit. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: Sixty two. [Steve Howard ]: I think what the chair is talking about is in the benefit, your overtime is calculated as part of the benefit with a cap. It's a there's a hundred and twenty percent anti spiking cap. What I think that the chair is referring to is using the overtime that a CEO works as calculated towards their service credit Mhmm. Which means they could retire even earlier. Earlier. Okay. [Speaker 6 ]: Yeah. Yeah. So if you're using a two thousand hour year and they work, well, in this case, twenty four hundred hours, you get a twenty [Speaker 0 ]: hours. Oh. [Speaker 6 ]: Well, four hundred hours surplus, you'd have a twenty percent acceleration potentially on on when you get retired. [Speaker 0 ]: So there's an they get they get a reward for putting in all those hours. Right now, they're not getting anything except stress stuff. Okay. [Speaker 7 ]: This augments the problem because you're losing people sooner. Right. I'm not against it. I'm just saying you're you're we're working against it. So what we need to do is figure out how to get people to want to do. Wow. [Speaker 0 ]: And we take them. [Speaker 6 ]: Gonna be [Speaker 4 ]: a positive effect. Chicken and egg here too. Right? If anyone could retire at fifty [Speaker 0 ]: You're gonna get more people. [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. I'm not gonna [Speaker 7 ]: sign on. I'm sure. I'm just just point out. [Speaker 6 ]: Yeah. And then they are receiving compensation at a higher rate. Right? What under so it sounds like receiving nothing. It's a debt that appears not to be [Speaker 2 ]: That's not impacting their retirement in it. Beyond that. [Speaker 4 ]: I end up. I mean, it doesn't overcome conditions. [Speaker 6 ]: I understand. Yeah. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: So when your letter, was there a time frame that any of these committees should respond back to anyone? No. It's just a letter out. [Speaker 0 ]: Just recommendations or topics you need to look at. We gotta get those letters out. I gotta talk to Ben [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: to Ben. Yeah. Okay. [Speaker 0 ]: Because we had a letter coming out around time. [Speaker 2 ]: Should we push on? [Speaker 0 ]: Let's push. [Speaker 2 ]: Okay. So the next set of slides, I think, maybe warrants a hearing on heat. I mean, obviously, that's up to you. But I think you'll see as we go through, these are big topics I think you'll be interested in. I will try to burn through these quickly knowing that we're gonna cover them in more depth at a later date. So, probably the biggest change to the American justice system in the last number of years, well, at least as it relates to to correctional systems is going to be the eleven fifteen waiver issue. So under the Medicare and Medicaid act, I think we talked about this, the other day a little bit. There's an exclusion for people who are incarcerated. So you basically lose access to insurance when you're incarcerated. In the last couple of years, the centers for medicare medicaid created a waiver process or expanded the state's waiver process to allow states to apply for, a ninety day period where folks would start to qualify. So ninety days prior to their release, they would start to qualify for insurance again. So the corrections agency could get them enrolled, get them connected with providers, etcetera. I think there's only six or seven states in the country who have received approval for a waiver. Vermont was one of the first to get its waiver approved. And so that's a collaboration between DIVA, the state Medicaid agency, and DOC. We're building all that process right now, and the launch date will be January of twenty six. We will start people will start becoming eligible. That is a monumental shift in policy, and I know, like, I don't wanna explain to you furlough because it's super complicated, and I'm gonna try to explain how Medicaid works. But, this is a major this is a really big deal that very few people are paying attention. Big deal. It'll also save the state a lot of money. [Speaker 8 ]: That was gonna be my question. Just how much do you estimate the savings to be once that kicks off? [Speaker 2 ]: I don't have that number right in front of me, but, basically, there's a a suite of services that we can build a Medicaid ninety day period. So all health care, a lot of reentry services, some work of probation parole officers, prescription drugs. So, like, a good chunk of work. There's a catch, but it's a good catch. All that money must be reinvested into reentry work for, incarcerated individuals or folks under community supervision. But the state's paying for that anyway. So this will there will be a savings for the state. It'll allow us to augment a lot of that. [Speaker 4 ]: So let me move that. [Speaker 0 ]: Yeah. We're gonna take more testimony on this, and we're also hooking in we hope with Diva because Diva has to upgrade their IT system, and that's what's taking the time. [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. Right. That's the major delay is is history. Like, basically, to rebuild their billing system. Okay. If we can go to the next one, the CCV partnership, somebody raised that as a question today. This is one of the flagship program that the department has launched over the last few years. In part, it's beautiful in its design because this provides free community college education for incarcerated folks in Vermont and folks who work in the correctional system. So it's not just one of the things you'll hear from correctional staff is the incarcerated population gets everything and nothing's given to us. And frankly, there's some reality, some truth to that. This program specifically was designed to mitigate that so that folks who live there and work there both get access to the benefit. It was originally funded, it still is funded by a federal earmark, that Senator Bernie Sanders got for the state to the tune of four and a half million dollars. Also at this time, the federal government changed what's called the second chance Pell Act. They reauthorized that program. So incarcerated folks and folks leaving incarceration can get tuition paid for by the federal government under a Pell grant. So we're creating pathways where while this money will eventually go down, there are other ways to pay for the program, and we'll look at ways to cover it for staff. So originally, that was a design. Staff, incarcerated individuals both gain access to the program. They experience it differently, but they both have access. Then we started playing with the program a little bit, and the first major step we took was to mimic the nine eleven GI bill and say, well, what if a staff member doesn't wanna go to college, but their spouse or partner or their children wanna go? Can we create a way that they can pass on their benefit to those folks? And CCV and Senator Sanders' office worked with us on that, and we were able to do that. So now a correctional officer can take advantage or they can hand it to their spouse or their dependents. So just a great benefit that the state didn't pay for but is really helping those folks. Then we started thinking about, well, so what if you're in CCV classes and you're incarcerated, but you get released? Under the original design of the program, it was like, well, your classes are over and then go back to community. Now we've created a program where if you were in the program in the facilities and you're released, you can continue to go to courses for a year after your release date so that we have that bridge for folks. They don't just lose this support mechanism. This has been just an amazing program, the staff who are participating. I mean, the testimonials are great. The incarcerated population who are participating, have just can't get enough of it. We wish we could expand it further, but we don't have Wi Fi in our facilities. You may hear me say that a couple of times this year. There's no Wi Fi. Yeah. He's picking up on it, I think. Because there's different ways to do this. So you can have in person classes, but you could also have incarcerated folks taking classes remotely with a season class in Williston or in Newport or wherever. You could also set it up asynchronous so they can learn on their own time. You know, we got a lot of downtime in our facilities, so they could do it as they go. So a lot of opportunity here. Very excited for that to continue. [Speaker 4 ]: Do you know how long it would take to get institutions, the facilities, helping [Speaker 8 ]: to wipe [Speaker 2 ]: off? No. We you already you already funded the heat mapping. We have the whole plan. We had done all that work. It's three and a half million dollars. We could do the entire system. [Speaker 0 ]: We remember we wrote the letter to the [Speaker 2 ]: broadband authority? And they have [Speaker 0 ]: It didn't take it. [Speaker 2 ]: I would like you to have a hearing just on Wi Fi. Yeah, because we have pushed and we [Speaker 6 ]: push. [Speaker 2 ]: The state of Vermont received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to expand broadband in rural areas across the state. And one of the populations that is named in the federal law is incarcerated individuals. [Speaker 4 ]: Yes. [Speaker 2 ]: And they will not accept our application for three and a half million dollars [Speaker 0 ]: We will not accept [Speaker 2 ]: that. Like community broadband. [Speaker 7 ]: I think And [Speaker 0 ]: we wrote them a letter. [Speaker 2 ]: And this committee Did they respond? [Speaker 4 ]: Did they not respond, or did they respond? [Speaker 0 ]: They responded by not allowing the [Speaker 6 ]: Who says who constitutes the community broadband for? [Speaker 2 ]: We have a let we can get [Speaker 4 ]: you a list. [Speaker 2 ]: Yes. It's maddening. [Speaker 0 ]: It's [Speaker 2 ]: The the amount of change that that could bring to the professional system is unbelievable. Not just in this space, but education across the board, programming, vocational training. [Speaker 0 ]: See that that again shows how people directions. Walk them up, throw the key away. They're done. I don't have to see them in the community. I don't have [Speaker 2 ]: to deal with it. Officer tablets so that we can get off of paper and have better data on all the work that we're doing, saving workload. Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: Can't do it. We don't have Wi Fi. [Speaker 4 ]: Just about this is about the work [Speaker 0 ]: The staff. For [Speaker 4 ]: example service. And it's ridiculous that we're doing paper [Speaker 0 ]: logs Right. [Speaker 4 ]: In twenty twenty five. [Speaker 2 ]: And I was I mean, I don't wanna toot your horn too much, but, like, very proud that this committee took the time out and wrote a letter and other legislators too wrote a letter in support trying to encourage this because you see the value. [Speaker 0 ]: I won't do it. Oh, well? [Speaker 8 ]: Oh, okay. Just for a but you reattempt to go before the board? [Speaker 2 ]: Yeah. We we go every time that they don't [Speaker 8 ]: have availability. Thanks. I'm [Speaker 2 ]: just There's actually two So there's two different federal funding streams that the delegation brought to the state of Vermont. Money is just [Speaker 0 ]: Interesting. Not to just Well, [Speaker 3 ]: that makes me think. So you said the delegation [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: I think we should do [Speaker 0 ]: Yeah. Yeah. [Speaker 3 ]: The delegation, you know, got secured money. There's no delegation. Have they been involved or you've just been in touch with them saying, hey. Can you put pressure on me? [Speaker 2 ]: That's you know, we've gone through various iterations trying to put pressure to get this going. Yeah. Senator Welch's office in particular, very interested in in this. Great. [Speaker 0 ]: This specific written Let's not forget this folks. [Speaker 2 ]: And representative squirrel, who I hear a couple of you are gonna get to know really well, also very interested in this topic. And he knows the DOC system well knows the budget very well. And so he'd be another one to bring into the conversation. [Speaker 8 ]: He's also I think so. So that's pretty coincidence. Right? [Speaker 0 ]: The two he is. [Speaker 2 ]: Okay. Let's push on. I know we're running out of time. [Speaker 0 ]: That's because we're [Speaker 2 ]: running out of time. [Speaker 0 ]: About five of the folks to get on the floor. [Speaker 2 ]: The other topic that I heard this morning that we also wanted to cover is our community recovery partnerships. So this is the turning point partnership. To give you just a beat a brief bit of background, very alliterative today, apparently. We we provide MAT, medically assisted treatment, so medication for opioid use disorder. We provide therapy, and we provide kind of the full suite of offerings if people wanna take advantage of it. Most people want just the medication and they move on. Part of that is, you know, there's this theory in the justice system about credible messengers. Who is somebody that can actually connect and and help somebody with a situation? And what we found is, not surprisingly, incarcerated folks don't always, you know, believe what we tell them, don't always support, or don't want to interact with the correctional officer about these things. But people who have been in recovery and people who have been incarcerated are credible messengers when it comes to this. And and so much of recovery and the recovery journey is dependent on support and the support number that comes in. So there was this program, out of the Rutland turning point, where they were sending people into the correctional facility. They were doing peer coaching. They were doing group work. They were doing one on one work for individuals seeking recovery by individuals who are in recovery. And, it was unbelievable, the the results they were getting. And so we took that and we've worked to blow it up across the state, because there are Turning Point Centers in all of the areas where there are prisons across the state. And so with the Recovery Partners of Vermont, the turning point centers, we got federal funding. We got state funding. The governor supported funding. And so we're currently in the process of scaling that across the system. That's correct. That was the goal was to get turning points into all the facilities. But it's also just kind of organically spurred all this other work. And so now the turning point centers are going into our probation parole offices. They're going with law enforcement. They're meeting folks in the emergency room when they get arrested, and they're connecting them with recovery services in the moment. And and I think that partnership has just blossomed in amazing ways. So very excited about this work. Can't speak highly enough about the Turning Point partners. We'd love to bring them in and and talk to you all jointly about it and and some of the direction we wanna go. And with that effort Right. [Speaker 0 ]: And the thing is it's so important in this is when the person does reenter the community, they already have a connection with a recovery coach. [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: And that is so vital for the person to continue on the recovery path. And even if they don't reenter in the community that they're working with a recovery coach, there is a connection with that recovery coach to other turning points. [Speaker 2 ]: That's right. [Commissioner Ivana Dennel ]: That is so see Rick McGuire, who is a former member here. A lot of what he did in the Rotland area with the Turning Point. So let's do, Rick. [Speaker 2 ]: The next slide is about the replacement of the women's facility. I think I'll maybe not dig into this today because I I think it'll [Speaker 0 ]: The, governor's budget because there's so many layers [Speaker 4 ]: to this. [Speaker 2 ]: And that'll be standalone, probably multiple hearings over over the course of the session. The last thing I would highlight, we get accused often we've been getting accused a lot lately of not providing supports beyond the facilities. And I just wanna dispel some of those myths. We hear it when we talk about the women's facility, you know, instead of building the facility, why don't you just spend that money on something else? We are spending that money on something else right now. By the time the facility will be built, we'll have paid for the facility at least one time, probably one and a half times with the amount of money we invest in community based supports. So every year, DOC grants out about eleven million dollars in community funding for various things. Just this last week, there was an article in the Newport paper about how we've taken apart our transitional housing program and don't offer transitional housing anymore. Well, that's fine. Couldn't be more wrong. We've actually expanded the program over the last several years. We've moved to models that are more successful and we're putting more money into transitional housing than we ever have before. So I mean, this is the type of pressure we're under. But I wanted to flag, we actually spend a lot of money in our communities, because we know that those are resources that help people stay in community don't come back to us, And happy to walk through any of these types of funding streams as the year goes on. [Speaker 0 ]: And this is one of the issues that Justice Reinvestment through the work that we did that really highlighted DOCs within the agency of human services. And they have a lot of partners there with the Department of Mental Health, Department of Aging and Independent Living, Department of Health. And all of this that you see on the board there, it's all coming out of DOC's budget. And what council of what council state governments in the work with Justice Reinvestment said, it shouldn't all be on DOC's nickel because these other departments within the agency of human services are working with these same folks, either the folks directly that are transitioning from incarceration, their children, their family members, they're in the system already. So why should all of this be on DOCs lap and in their budget? Because that's not what their experts say. Right. But the other partners aren't coming to the table. Our community players aren't coming to the table. A lot of our mental health designated agencies don't want any, clients that came out of corrections. Some of the housing, supportive housing in some places may not want to house anyone reentering from a commute a correctional facility. But if you can engage all these community partners, your community is gonna be safer. It's public safety. If you have wraparound services, but you can't depend on DOC to fund all of them. I just don't have the capacity to do that. That's right. [Speaker 9 ]: I mean, it's just a quick observation, but I feel like what I'm just hearing here is the same thing that I heard in education last year, which is the systematic underfunding and [Speaker 2 ]: social services forces the ed fund and and education is being pushed up [Speaker 9 ]: to do things that they [Speaker 0 ]: don't want to be. Local property taxes. [Speaker 9 ]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: So we'll do deeper dive in this, but I think this is really good overview. Yeah. We've been helpful for the committee. [Connor ]: Pretty good too. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you [Speaker 7 ]: all for your [Speaker 2 ]: time. We appreciate it. Thank you [Speaker 8 ]: very much. [Speaker 6 ]: Thank you. [Speaker 0 ]: Can I have you in? We'll have a lot of the partners and advocates, and we're gonna really hard. So we're done. Right now, we go on the floor, and we're back here after the floor to talk with the state treasurer.

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