Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We do have a new Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, Interim Commissioner. And I just would like to use this time until about quarter after four, just as an opportunity for the commissioner to give a general overview, also an opportunity for the commissioner to get to know us Yes. As committee members and us to get to know you. I don't want it to be a real formal proceeding. It would be nice to have questions and answers. Also, commissioner, this seating chart, this here seating of folks, but maybe the best thing we could do is we introduce ourselves where we're from. Just go around, introduce ourselves what town we're from. Right. And as I said, you know, I'd like this to be an open conversation. And I think also what will happen is we'll be talking on a broad, on a lot of issues and will then help us determine how we schedule more testimony in this particular issues. So I am chair of the committee, M. Emmons, and I represent Fairfield.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: James Gregoire. I represent Fairfield, Fletcher, Bakersfield.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And your vice chair.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Vice chair.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Hi, Commissioner Conor Casey, and welcome to my district.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Hello, Commissioner Gina Galfetti and I represent Fairytown and a little sliver of Williamstown. Welcome, Commissioner. I'm Mary A. Morrissey representing Burlington.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Brian Minier from South Burlington met you briefly at the women's facility, and we also overlapped through our kids who were actors in South Burlington. Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Awesome.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Mayor Joe Luneau, State Albans City.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Commissioner, hi. Troy Headrick from Burlington, mostly.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Kevin Winter, Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Mount Holly, Southeast. Commissioner, good to see

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: you again. Will Greer, Bennington, other side of Bennington, and our representatives of the villages of North Bennington, both Bennington as well.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: And Shawn Sweeney from Shelburne. Nice to meet you. Nice you. Meet Yes, sir.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So welcome. So now it's all yours. Thank you. If you could identify yourself for the record.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Absolutely. Thank you so much, madam chair. My name is John Murad. I am the interim commissioner for the Department of Corrections, and I'm really privileged and proud that you invited me on day one of the legislature to be with you today. Governor Scott appointed me as interim commissioner in August, so I am new to this. And many of you around this table have more experience than I with what's going on in corrections. And so I I will appeal to you for both your generosity with what you know and your gentleness with what I don't know for the time being. Obviously, you know, I I need to learn the things that I do need to learn, and I've been working hard at that. What I see as I've taken in, and I came from a a twenty plus year career in law enforcement. I most recently, for about several years, was the police chief in Burlington, Vermont. But I have come to this department and found an incredibly strong department, and one that I think is really amazing. I think that it is populated by incredible men and women with regard to staff, and I think that it is populated by an ethos that is one that I find different from the other correctional departments that I've met or seen or encountered around the country. During my career in law enforcement, I spent twelve years with the NYPD. I spent two years in the private sector working in a consulting capacity in places all around the country and and was able to see a lot of things, and then came home to Vermont, the state of my birth, and was able to be here. And I saw corrections at the front end only as as sort of part of the entity that feeds the the system, but I didn't understand the system. And what I've really learned from this one has impressed me greatly. As as all of you know, it's a unified system. We are are different from all but five other states in that we don't have sheriff's jails. So we have both detainees who are pre conviction and post sentencing incarcerated individuals. We are the only system in the entire country that is part of an agency of human services rather than the Department of Public Safety or its own entity underneath the state government. And that, I think, too, is really important. I think it's incredibly important to know that what secretary Janine Samuelson of AHS calls a community level of care is is woven into our very seeded seating in in the government, and that is an important piece. Obviously, custody is the sort of raison d'etre of a correctional system. We have custody of people that the courts have decided can't be out in public without either custody or supervision. We don't control that at the Department of Corrections. We don't have any real impact on the number of folks who are sent to us. It's our job to to keep custody of them. That's a secure and a a careful kind of custody, but it also has to be compassionate and caring. And that community level of care that secretary Samuelson speaks about, which I know is also incredibly important to governor Scott, is what I think this department really excels at. I know that there are several challenges in front of us as a department right now. Staffing is one. I spent this morning with our newest academy class in St. Johnsbury. I went up and checked out our corrections academy. It's day two of their session, day one of yours, but day two of theirs. These are all new faces to the profession and our department. And I got to see them their sort of newest, brightest eyed, bushiest tailed, and most excited. And I'm excited for them. How do we keep them is a big question for us because we're doing pretty well with hiring, but we're not doing as well as we want to with retention. And part of that has to do with the fact that we are working a lot of them a lot because we don't have enough of them. Another challenge that we have in front of us is our overall headcount inside. And now we get to the people for whom we do this work, which are the people who are given to us by the courts to be in our custody or under our supervision. We do it for our communities and for the people of Vermont, but it's those individuals given to us where our responsibility is most acute. How do we care for them? And we have more of those than we have had in about seven years. And so six to seven years. How do we, you know, address that? Another complicating factor of that is that the ratio inside that population has changed dramatically from one that was primarily sentenced and incarcerated people who have different dynamics and who can be given programming in different ways than the increasing proportion of people who are not yet sentenced, who are detainees only. They are more transient. They come and they go. They also are not eligible for certain kinds of programming, and they create different dynamics because of that transitory sort of status. You come and you kind of have to figure out your place and also maybe prove your place in a way that somebody who's there for many years and has already been there for many years doesn't, and that creates challenges for our dynamics. Our headcount internally is a challenge, so we have the headcount going in the wrong direction with regard to staffing, not going. Let me correct myself. It's improved greatly. My predecessor, Commissioner Demel, really oversaw a tremendous effort to go from a department that was depleted by about 35% to a department that's currently depleted by about 12%. That's a remarkable achievement. And he did amazing work, as did the whole team, and we wanna keep that going. So it's not going in the wrong direction, but it's not where we want it to be, staffing. And then a population that is going in a different direction, which is up, has been going up over the past several years. I don't know where it's going to go. I will say that as a police leader, my experience with Vermont was that Vermont was usually about a year to two years behind the national trends of crime. And the state saw real challenges with regard to violent crime, particularly in 2223. The rest of the country right now is on a downswing with crime. And I can only hope that that perhaps Vermont will be as well. And if that is the case, then perhaps the population that we see right now will not crest too far above where it is. We're currently just below sixteen fifty for our total incarcerated population. That includes 150 people who are out of state. We are overcapacity in a number of facilities, and therefore, or at least over what our optimal capacity for general population is. And I hope that you've seen the slides, and if not, we can go through those. How are we going to address that? Are we going to see more once the summer comes, the '26? Will that bring us more? Will we, I hope, see this same kind of trends that the rest of the country is seeing, both for the sake of our communities that have experienced a lot of crime and disorder, and also for our sake in corrections to not have the headcount rise too much. But I don't see us going down in the near term, and therefore we need to be prepared for how to address that. Those are open questions. The next challenge for us too is making certain that we continue to do as best as we can with that care component, the community level of care, which is a sort of a medical objective for us with regard to treatment, with regard to addressing from a behavioral standpoint, people's needs, as well as a medical standpoint. But then also the care part includes the programming that we offer and the ability to say, can we make certain that people leave us better than they came to us and are capable of The ultimate goal, as far as I'm concerned, the success as I see it, is that we do not see these individuals again. And I don't mean that in a callous way. I don't want to see a person again who has been in our custody return to our custody or who makes it through our supervision return to that supervision. I hope to see that person as a neighbor at schools or at grocery stores, but I don't want to see that person again in our custody or under our supervision. That's success. How do we do as a department everything that we can to ensure that success? The biggest pieces we have in front of us right now are educational in addition to the treatment. So setting aside the medical treatment and getting people on their feet. Fifty three percent of our incarcerated population right now is receiving medically assisted treatment for opioid disorder. And so that's a huge component, getting them well. But how do we also give them tools to stay well once they're back in the community? And in Vermont, with a very small range of exceptions for extraordinary crimes, our people will end up in the community again. We do not incarcerate for long periods of time in the state of Vermont, which is a good thing, but we need to prepare those individuals to make sure that when they go back out, they don't return to us in the corrections department. And so those are the three sort of goals as I see them. Our staffing and getting those numbers where we want them to be, although we may very well be in a new historical world for all staffing across lots of sectors. Our headcount of population and how we address that. We don't control how many we have, so how do we ensure that we are properly securing and caring for those who are given to us by the court system? And finally, that custody and care, what are we doing to ensure that custody and care, how are we being innovative? Whether it's working with the Community College of Vermont, I really privileged to go to a graduation at CRCF recently and watch a woman get her associate's degree right before she was to be released. That's a huge tool for for a new life and a new start. I've seen high school graduations at Northern State Correctional Facility for two young men who had long journeys towards that diploma. And with a lot of help from staff and from their own gumption, but they're not as simple as my transit of four years through Mount Mansfield Union High School. Those are very different experiences. And so how are we doing those kinds of things? Can we continue to do them as well as possible? A big piece of it is our facilities, and the biggest one in front of us right now, the sort of most pressing is our women's facility in Chittenden County, the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility or CRCF. Many of you, I met you there and saw you on visits, and I know you'd been there before I had been there and visited. Well, I hadn't that used to be a mail facility for weekend drop offs. So in my time as a police officer in Burlington, I had been there, but not the way you have. And we need to do something about that facility. We're authorized to build a new one. There are certain monies appropriated to start the the process because they're not enough to give us the whole thing quite yet, but we we want that. How do we do that? I I really hope that this committee is can be an ally on that because I truly believe all of you are. So I don't mean to take up more sort of hot air, and that's my intro.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, we did just spend quite a bit of time with the commissioner at BGS talking about the women's facility, the issue around Essex, how we move forward, they're going out with an RFP and the timeframe of that, and then how that coordinates with our legislative time. And it looks like the February through March, we'll have a better idea of where we're moving ahead. Yes,

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: we're working closely with Commissioner Manoli, I'm grateful for her partnership.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I'd like to open it up for questions. Troy?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I have two lines of questions. The first one is to you're hoping to do programmatically. Can you talk a little bit about the impact that you've seen the accountability courts are having on the programming space in CRC? Thanks. So the accountability courts, which I don't think

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: they like that term, but everybody uses it, for the so called 14 plan in Burlington and this effort to get through a large number of dockets that have been in abeyance for some time, people who have five or more dockets and have accumulated those over a long period of time, oftentimes relatively low level crimes, which is a component of why they've been accumulating for so long, and the courts had sort of were triaging for more serious offenses. That effort has as the last I saw, it had moved through about a third of the docket of those cases and was on its way to probably top out somewhere in the vicinity of just below half once it finishes, which is remarkable to have had this number of cases that have been languishing for long periods of time and to get through with just really dedicated focus. How has that affected us? It it hasn't affected us

[Brian Minier (Member)]: all that

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: space at CRCF to do that?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: We we are. We use space in the sense of there is space for people's appearances, although most of those are live appearances. The that court prefers people to be in person. And so we have seen we've probably seen a small uptick in people sent to us. We've seen a very small number, however.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: No. But the impact it's having on programming space

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I see.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: In CRCF. That's what I'm most concerned about. Yeah.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I'm I'm not I'm

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: not certain about that. I don't know I can't tell you how much space has been specifically affected by that. I think all of you know that we have ongoing construction at CRCF owing to ADA requirements to get us in compliance with that law, and that has required us moving people into our gymnasium. It's a really shocking kind of look. It looks like a small town that got hit by a tornado. You've got everybody in the school gymnasium sleeping. So we've had to we're moving them sort of wing by wing and having to put them in the gymnasium while we fix wing x, and then moving them back to wing x once it's fixed and moving wing y into the gymnasium, etcetera. That causes a lot of cascades of space. I don't know the degree to which specific activities related to the court have caused that as well, but I can find out for you.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Wasn't that the one room that they're doing the, like, hearings in? They're in that one that was that one room that we

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Sorry, Haley. No. It's okay. Don't wanna talk about myself for the record. Haley Summer, Director

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: of Communications for Quincy for the record. Yes, that is correct. The last time that we went to CRCF, we saw the Staff Training Room, which is a space where we do multiple types of staff training, and that space was identified for the substance use treatment aspect of the program. I'm not sure the extent to which that space is being used every day.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I don't know that we have yet had a real high volume of people from the accountability court who are availing themselves of the higher level of treatment that we are trying to get off the ground. That is something we're continuing to work on. The accountability court is scheduled to end in February. The biggest impact that DOC has seen from the accountability court, and it's been quite small, is pretrial supervision. And we've had a relative I think right now, total people referred to pretrial supervision from the accountability court. So we can find out how many people me

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: go to part B to the question. Sure. Just in general, what do you think is the most significant programmatic needs of and let's do CRCF first, the women, and then in general. I'm thinking especially as we anticipate a new facility for women, what can we do in the meantime still that makes their existence in that facility a little more, if at all possible, tolerable, and

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: then maybe branch out to programmatic needs that are most necessary that you see in the med facilities as well? That is a terrific question. We have a number of programs there that I think are all sort of equally important in the sense that I don't know that I would get, would, you know, focus on one more than the others, whether it's Kids Apart through Lund or whether it is the Vermont network and work with people who've experienced domestic violence, whether it's Community College of Vermont and that graduation I went to, she was one of several students. She's just the first one to have obtained a degree. Whether it's Department of Corrections programming through our high school program that also works there. Those are all examples, know, a pickleball. Right. And and it's a that's a wonderful thing that can't happen right now because the gymnasium's got people sleeping in it. And so a pickleball effort with members of the community coming and creating sort of an in house pickleball league, those are examples. What other programming I would like us I would like to see, a, us be able to do those more often and have better dedicated space that is available for them. You know, one of the challenges about space in a facility is that once we look at it from a a relatively cold sort of eye with regard to bean counting, we say, well, it's one bed per person, but it's really not. We need additional beds that are infirmary beds, which we hope we don't use, but we need them. We need additional beds that are segregation beds if people are behaving in certain ways. We need additional beds for reentry that are gonna be separate from the facility. We also need additional space so that there's a library space, but there's also classroom space, but there's also space where you can have nursing mothers meet with children, but there's also space where you can have casework done and counseling done and more robust mental health than we currently provide, but that we're working towards done. All of those things require space, and sometimes that space seems like it's unused on sort of a cold calculation when you're evaluating a diagram. In the same way that, you know, this building needs multiple each of you has two or three seats in this building from the well to your your committee rooms, etcetera. And there are times where everything seems to be quite empty, but there's times where, like, today, holy smokes, everything fills up awful fast. It gets more. CRCF is at that point right now. We are bursting at those seams. One sixty the high one sixties to the low one seventies is the norm for us over the past five months, and that's just extraordinary. How do what do we do with that space? I'm not certain, sir. I I I mean, in in all likelihood, if the summer brings us additional people for the whole system, not just women, but if we see a commensurate rise as to the one that we saw last summer, and that includes a commensurate rise with women, we're gonna have to explore moving some portion of those women to other facilities, if not the entirety. Those are terrible options for us insofar as all those programs that I mentioned. Because the network, Lund, those are both right next door. Our efforts at creating a work release program with you know, partners like Rhino Foods, those are right next door. If we were to have to move some portion of women, much less the totality of the population, to another facility, all of them are far away from CRCF, whether it's Swanton, which is the better part of an hour, or whether it's Rutland, which is the better part of two hours. And those are hard choices. I hope that we don't make them, but hope is not a strategy. So we are thinking about this, and we have some plans out late.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So you have if people don't mind, and I'll back off if anybody else has pressed some questions. But that leads right into my second line of questions. What are your triggers? And we talked about this very briefly when we were at CRCF. As I see those trends, I share your concerns about the numbers. And we have a very we're beyond capacity. And right now, the only release valve that I can articulate as being present is sending more people to Mississippi. I have a huge problem with that philosophically. We don't have to get into that today. I would like to know what your triggers are. So I've identified three potential outcomes for folks who are celebrating the fact that we stopped development of a new facility in Essex. There are groups who advocate, prison abolitionist groups who I've identified with myself before arriving to the pragmatic discussions that happen in this room. I identified three potential outcomes. And you've articulated to me very briefly in our conversation that some of these are probably not viable to what happens now to the women that are left at CRCF. One, they just stay there in a facility that I think has outlasted its capacity to be a humane place to live and work. Two, we start moving women out of state. And I think you gave me a quick response that that probably won't happen. Or three, we move more men out of state to accommodate women in some of our current facilities that house men. What are your triggers? What are the viability of those three options?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: And what are your triggers for moving more Vermonters to Mississippi? We don't have bright line triggers. Like, there's not a single number if we pass it, because I think it would have to be a sustained level above a certain number. With CRCF, that would probably be if we suddenly found ourselves in a three in week period above 180, we would have to begin doing the things that we're talking about. And we'd probably start working on them within second week. Right? Like, this isn't going away, And in fact, it's it's getting it seems to be getting worse in the sense that we're getting more people. What are we going to do? We have already done that. We've we've given bright lines, for example, to federal partners with regard to immigration detention, saying that when we are at one seventy or above, we will not take immigration detainees. That is a place where we can have a slight amount of control. We don't have the same control for nonimmigration federal detainees. We certainly have zero if if, you know, a court in in in if a court in Bennington sends us a a woman to be held without bail for some period of time that's gonna be a long trial was a particularly egregious crime, we can't say no to that. We can change our headcount in really slight ways at the margins by reevaluating release valves along the lines of furlough and things, although that is somewhat incompatible with where the courts are currently leading us. The and it's also, as I said, marginal. We have an additional 150 beds by contract that are available in Mississippi for men. We do not have the budget for that at the moment, and that is not factored into the budget that will be presented. We currently have a 150 there. I I understand the objection to the idea of of sending people out, and some of those people are what makes them good candidates to be sent to that facility are also the things that make them strong and stable members of the internal community of a facility. It's often people who have relatively long sentences in front of them who have behaved relatively well, who are perhaps participating in certain kinds of programming, and that is a terrible catch 22. The the next piece is women. It was mentioned in the senate institutions meeting just thirty minutes ago. What if you you know, Maine has been shown, and many of you have traveled to facility in Maine. It's a model for what we want to do with the new Chittenden facility. Could we send women there as opposed to, you know well, first of all, that's not a private entity. I don't know that that would work. I I'm willing to ask about that, but I also don't think even a facility as relatively forward thinking and progressive and one that we want to emulate as Maine is not gonna be tenable for sending women out of state, not when women are more likely to have family connections in state that make moving them more fraught. So I don't know the answer to that. And then the next piece is, you know, bright lines at all of the facilities, because really this is about what happens at the men's facilities too. And as you see in the slides that were presented to you, almost all of those facilities are above the general population, and they're way above the 80% recommendation of general pop. So are we overcapacity? Are we underbuilt? I think it is the latter, but I don't know. We've thought about these many ways of the small valves, the larger valves, the really drastic things. Like, do we actually move all the women into into one of the larger facilities and then move all the men there into a smattering of the other facilities and plus probably out of state? That's a super extreme possibility, and it's not one that we want to take. But it depends largely on is is one sixty eight our new normal, or are we looking down the barrel of one eighty four for the entirety of the 2026?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think it's bigger than the women. The men are being impacted as well. Yes. And I think it appears to be the driving force is more the detainee numbers, not the senate's number. So of that sixteen fifty, and I know it's probably broken down here in the slides here, and I don't know if Hailey would have access to this, but of the sixteen fifty, that includes 150 out of state. So never do math in public, but I'm doing it. So that's 1,500 in state. And of that, we have federal marshals

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: and

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: some ICE. So of the 1,500, how many are the federal marshals and the ICE? Always

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: dangerous when I do math too.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I can say that female federal population today, which is SMS, is 17.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Only four of those are immigration detainees. We have a very small number of immigration detainees at this point. Correct. And that is because we put the not arbitrary, but we said I mean, I guess arbitrary in the sense that we chose 170. But 170 is so far above what we really should have in that facility anyway. But we said 170? No more. And as a result, we have not had a tremendous number of female immigration detainees brought to us over the past past weeks since we implemented that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. So of the minus 17, the one seventy, you're in the fifties. By fifties. Of that, how many are sentenced and how many are detained?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Of the I'm sorry. Of the which number?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The women. How many are sentenced and how many are detained, excluding those 17?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I see.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: 75 are state detainees.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 75. So it's really yeah. She it's that's what's creeping up. Was that

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Affirmative. The Then how get that much.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Detainees. But how many are sentenced? Women. I can do that math.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah. Or or we can if you if you would allow us to, we could share those slides and take a look at those. Do that. Because that gives us good numbers. And again, as you all know, data changes day by day. So these are numbers that we have sort of nailed averages down for the year. They show the trend and the picture. I don't want anybody to think that today they're exactly this number, because there may be one or two in any direction.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I just mean 88 sentenced and or sentencedetent. So 85, so 85 sentenced.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I am right. And I am seeing that the 2025 average, or at least for this quarter of 2025 was 74 sentenced females and 75 detained females. In other words, detention has actually just gone over, I mean by one, but that it's half, a little more than half, and that is extraordinary. The increase of that, and that is where I do see the potential for hope. Again, that's not a plan. The detained That detained population was never going to entirely become incarcerated people. Some percentage of them will either be shown not to be guilty in the course of their trial, or they will be found guilty, but the sentence will be the time that they've already served while awaiting trial. They will be sent straight to supervision, and therefore that number will never be the absolute number of, now you are here for some longer period of time. And so if that number winnows and we also don't get additional detainees at the volume at which we got them over the last two years, but particularly over the last year, and that's where I get into these trends and where are we as a nation with regard to trends, then perhaps we will achieve a little bit of of stability and actually drop a bit. That is a that is a possibility and a hope. But

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what about the male population in terms of how many are sentenced and how many are detained?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: The rise in detention there is actually even, I think, larger percentage wise, but it is basically the same kind of picture. The sentenced population is actually, over the past five years, has not changed as much. It dipped a lot in the middle, but if you look at the five year ago versus today number, they're very, very similar, whereas the women have grown. And a component of that is both we have seen greater numbers of violent crime committed by women, but we've also focused more over the last year on lower levels of crime that have been particularly problematic for communities owing to the incorrigibility and just the sort of repeat nature of the offenses.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Uh-huh. And women comprise a not insignificant portion of folks who are in that bucket. So right now, have about eight seventy five sentenced males and around five twenty three detained males.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: That is correct. What percentage of the federal detainees are ICE detainees or not for men?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: For men, I don't know the exact percentage. It's

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: It's a very small proportion. Today, we had

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 17.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: 79 USMS detainees, and then

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I will hold the ice cream.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: That's gotta be low then for ICE. My ICE is much lower

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: than that.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: Immigration is 10 today.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: 10 today? That's the high watermark on that.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: On ICE detentions for males? Yeah. Golly, 20 something probably. And that, like, that was not a that was not sustained for any long period of time. That was sort of a high mark. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for the committee, we've had for a long, long time contract with the federal marshals for federal crimes that are committed here in Vermont. They go through federal court. So we've had a contract with the federal marshals for a long, long time. And it's only been recently that we've got into the border patrol and the immigration piece. That's only been really recent five years, six years that hasn't really come to the top very much. And now it's all part of the federal marshals' contract for that. And at some point, I think we as a committee may wanna take some testimony because it's a little different now because the contract got renewed, but it was through the federal marshals. And we might wanna have some testimony to bring us through that a little bit. Kevin and then Shawn.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Would you indicate why you see a national trend coming down in the last two years? What is that? Is it past COVID, or is it

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: It's just, it's national crime data. The national crime data suggests that there was a distinct spike in violent crime in the wake of the immediate wake of the pandemic, and that was it really took off in in 2020, but it also reached its sort of apex in 2122. Vermont saw that in '22 and '23. The nation has seen crime drop since those in in those in that since that period. And back in many categories back to pre pandemic levels now, which is a very good thing. I based on my past experience only, Vermont will be a year or two behind that, and we should see something like that with Vermont crime as well. But people certainly aren't feeling that now, and they haven't felt that over the past couple of years. And certainly people in communities like Burlington, which is why the accountability court was created, were not feeling that that was in front of them, and they cried out for something to be done. I'm mentioning this trend only in the sense of not to tell people not to believe their lying eyes, as it were. I think that there are challenges in our communities, but the data suggests, and history and my experience suggests, that we may see a decrease in the next year or so. And some of that is going to be the fact that we have addressed malefactors in ways that are successful, whether that is a period of incarceration or whether that's saying, all right, you can't continue to do these things, and we're going to offer you services to encourage you not to, whether that's housing or whether that's treatment or combinations thereof, whether it's more vigorous supervision on the part of DOC, or as I mentioned, a period of incapacitation through incarceration, those can change. And so if you have a large number of folks who creating challenges for their communities and you address those challenges, you can in fact cause the challenges to diminish. That's government in a nutshell. That's why we all do the things that we do, because we believe, or at least I think that we believe that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Shawn?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Shawn, what's the process? This is a little off what we were talking about, but with ICE, people coming in from Vermont who are being brought into whatever facility, what happens with those people?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: We intake them the same as we intake any person, whether the individual is brought to us by ICE as a person who they are saying is an undocumented immigrant or whether the person is brought to us as by the police from, you know, Bristol has driven them up to us or the Vermont State Police from Franklin County and the person is a citizen who's been in our systems before. All of those folks are intake in the same intake is not a word, but they are they go through intake in the same way. Book. Book. Thank you, ma'am. You gotta speak the language. So that was the language. And so they go through intake in the same way. They are given the same options with regard to treatment and their needs. They're assessed for those kinds of things, and then they are afforded access to representation if they need that. Our folks who are brought to us by ICE are treated in that manner. We have cards, for example, to ensure language access, and then there are language access tools. They would be stronger if we had better Wi Fi, for example, in our facilities. We definitely need some technology solutions for that kind of thing to make it a little bit more robust, but we do as best as we can. We afford them the same medical care that we can afford anybody else who's detained. Again, programming is not generally something that we offer to people who are detained with the exception of MAT programming. So if a person comes in, but many of these folks are not. They don't fit the same kinds of standards as other people who are brought in for, say, long histories of retail theft. Right. Mean, a person like that often has mental health issues and or substance abuse issues. The people brought to us by ICE don't. And many of them are not from Vermont anymore. They are coming from other places, And so all of that can sort of Are they getting shifted to other states?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The Vermont folks, you mean?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: The ICE detainees From Vermont. Where are Vermont folks?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Who are taken in Vermont,

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: are they getting shifted to other states? So far as we've seen for people who are arrested in Vermont, which is a very small percentage, I think that the advocate groups have been incredibly successful, and it's a good thing at keeping them in Vermont and getting them in front of Vermont federal judges who have been strong in saying, we're gonna hold, we're gonna do these things. We follow whatever court rules are given to us. We inform the federal partners of those rules and ensure that we are working to the best of our ability with both of those interests, which are generally in alignment. For people who are not from Vermont, if they're moved out, cannot speak to where they go after that, but they don't go back to mean, we only really keep immigration detainees in two facilities here, and that is North Northwest in Swanton and CRCF in Chittenden. Alright. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Brian, in that comment?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Two pretty different questions. I think I'm starting with a simpler of the two, which is you mentioned this idea that Vermont is a year or two behind national trends, and that's really weird and interesting to me. Do you have a story you can tell? It's not fashion. Right?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Although, I I don't know.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I mean, when I was a kid, chess king was the the chess king in the in the university mall was the height of fashion, and that was a good two years behind everybody else. Yeah. We're not You know? I my my high school was, like, Dazed and and Confused, and that was a movie that's placed in 'seventy six, and I was in high school in 'eighty seven. So that's sort of one thing that I mean. But in seriousness, when I look at crime trends in Vermont, the opioid epidemic hit us a little bit later and scooped up a little bit later than it had in other places. And part of that is just how we are farther away, and we're smaller, and therefore trends take a little bit longer to show themselves. Off the top of my head, I do not have a specific crime trend to which I could point where I could see that. But I did I could point you through even communications that I made to the department the Burlington Police Department while I was chief of police there that said, we saw this happen in 2021. You know, it's New Year's Eve twenty twenty two. We saw this happen in '21 everywhere else. I anticipate it happening for us here, and lo and behold, it it sort of did. So that's my experience, but I recognize that that is anecdotal and not specific for Not kind of

[Brian Minier (Member)]: what I was asking about. I mean, can make it make sense sort of if you say the basis of most of the crime that's happening is drug dealing and there's a new drug and you need a new network to set it up. I can see that taking a while. But the idea that numbers are going down and we take a while to follow that too seems

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: odd to me.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah. I mean, with regard to violence, it also may be that whatever dissociations that happened with violence took longer to appear here and then are basically on the same wave. They're just a little bit farther back. I recognize that I'm not being very specific. I will do my best to find some data that does demonstrate why I feel this way, But I I am really speaking from just personal experience. This is

[Brian Minier (Member)]: very interesting. The the second one is totally different, which is I don't know exactly what a new commissioner can do, and you've only been there four months, as you say. You've listed these kinda large, I don't know, problems, challenges, opportunities, whatever. Guess the one that I want to ask about is with the medical treatment, and specifically you mentioned MAT or MAOUD or whatever, however we're addressing it. To what degree can you affect that? What's the relationship there between, say, DOC and WellPath? And even if you could, to what degree do you want to? What's that like? And when will you be trying

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: to change that? Sure. I think Vermont was ahead of the curve. In Burlington, I was part of The Burlington Police Department, before I arrived, had done some really amazing work under my predecessor's police chief there, Brandon Del Pozzo and Mayor Marill Weinberger, at understanding the value of medically assisted treatment and drugs like buprenorphine. It's funny. There was a recent article, relatively recent long article in The New York Times in the last couple months, really, two months, I think, about this wonder drug, buprenorphine, and how everybody, how it could really change things for everybody. And I'm like, Vermont's been using that for like seven years now. And a lot of that came out of the so called, what was called the CompStat process in Burlington. So I believe strongly in it. That was something that was really integral. I believe that that affected what DOC did, and DOC embraced it wholeheartedly. There's zero desire to change the idea of availability of MAT in facilities. It is an integral part of getting people healthy, but it's not the only piece. And for people who, whether we can create this as something that is coerced in the sense of being encouraged strongly or whether it's entirely voluntary, we need additional levels of treatment inside that go beyond mere medical amelioration of symptoms, but rather more probably therapeutic interactions about why do you have the, you know, what is the cause of the substance abuse? Are there triggers? Are there things we can do to help you move beyond it that are not just medical amelioration like buprenorphine? That is something that I do think we are in a position to work with WellPath to engage in. It's a component of the enhanced treatment that is envisioned as a component of the 14 plan in Burlington. WellPath is working to hire clinicians that will be capable of doing that kind of work, and so that will be an add on for us. I think that there are real opportunities there to move, not just in the direction of MAT alone, which is incredibly effective and important, but also saying, how do we now maybe take next steps? And that would include a system, having now the Medicaid waiver, the eleven fifteen Medicaid waiver program, which allows us to get people to keep this, to have a much warmer handoff from when they leave a facility to when they go into, hopefully oftentimes under our supervision, because supervision can be helpful in saying, We got you Medicaid, so you have money. We now have ways to get you to a pharmacy, to get you continued treatment so that you still have the medicine that you got inside, but also can we then move some of the therapy that you got inside and find equivalents outside where you can continue to get that therapy? Turning Point, working with Turning Point, both inside the facilities and in probation and parole offices around the state is an incredibly important part of that. That's sort of more of a recovery model. You have to have gone through that recovery to get to the Turning point. Those are examples of where we can continue to really work on that. And many of these things were already in play. I'm claiming no, you're right, I've only been here for five months. The changes I've done are much smaller along policy lines to make it easier for our PMP officers to wear body armor if they so choose when they go out in the field, or efforts like that training exercise that I briefly mentioned, where we were really sort of something that hadn't been done in a while on that scale to say, Hey, are we doing it both as a skills honing, but also as a fulfillment? Because people that do this work like training, and they like to sort of do the training exercises. Those are the things that I've been able to accomplish directly from what I've done, but keeping the boat moving forward in the direction in which it's going, which is the right direction, I feel, pretty important. And that's what I want to be able to do.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, sure. You probably knew we'd ask a lot of vice questions, so I'm sure you're already Last year, think I was skeptical on it. But after watching the horror show that's gone on since, I'm off. I think we're complicit by doing this. And I understand where the ACLU and advocacy groups are coming from. Maybe they'll get a better shake in front of a federal judge. But if I follow that logic, we should build a new prison and expand the ICE contract and help as many people as we can. So I think as I look at it, I talk to frontline staff, they don't seem too keen with it. I certainly speak to people in my community and they're like, Oh, you're on corrections? What are you guys doing? Why didn't you enter that contract yet? And then we look at the one that was approved in September and it's got no expiration date on it. So I think it's just like a big question, Commissioner, and maybe unfair. But how is this serving Vermonters? Is the purpose to try to help people and get them in front of a federal judge? I don't think that's our job. But I have spoken to so many people touched by what Homeland Security has been doing. My stepfather, he's been out of the country for three years. He was getting hauled into Homeland Security there and interviewed there. So students from high school are being yanked out at CBU. I just don't think we should do this anymore. So I just I don't know if you could tell me the administration's thinking, or like with the recent contract with no expiration date. Because it just doesn't sit right with me. The contract First of

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: all, I'm so sorry that that's happened to your stepfather.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I'm sorry. I've been out of the country for years, so it was okay.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: The fact that students feel these pressures and these fears is just really unacceptable. And I understand all those concerns about how immigration enforcement is being carried out. That is certainly not something that the DOC takes part in, the enforcement part. I think that our understanding and from what I know of the governor's position on this, which he has articulated in the media, is that once these once individuals are in custody, if they're brought to us, there is something better in being in Vermont than in other places. And we've seen judges in Vermont, like judge Crawford, make rulings that have put limits on what the government's doing in certain high profile cases, but it happens in the cases that are not making the news as well. That is worthwhile. And so, yeah, the contract is more complicated in that it is one that, as Haley's data showed, the majority, the vast majority of our federal detainees are not immigration detainees. They are people who have committed crimes against Vermonters or in other parts of the country and need to be held while awaiting extradition. They've been arrested by US Marshals or by our our partners in the the ATF. In in Burlington, the the vast majority of the violence that we saw was best addressed by our ATF partners and and federal courts, and we worked incredibly hard with them. And and they'd be arrested. That's a Burlington young man who shot somebody, but he's arrested and brought in as a a as a federal detaining. And so those are really important. And a contract that maintains that relationship, and yes, it has no expiration date, but only because it can be mutually terminated or either terminated by either side actually at any time, so it's not in perpetuity. It just doesn't have a hard end by date, is an important piece to maintain those relationships, which I don't think Burlington is alone in saying that the federal partnerships and the law enforcement partnership with both federal enforcement agencies and with US attorneys is really important to the work that is done around the state for violence control and narcotics control. Now, the fact that there is a nice rider on that does create a complication. We have put limits on that rider in ways that we do not limit our federal partners, in fact, other federal partners, excuse me. In fact, the contract prevent we are obligated to take a certain number of federal detainees. And even if I were even if we had a hundred and and seventy five women at CRCF and the US marshals came to us after having done some strange operation that netted, you know, 15 female arrestees who were not immigration arrestees but are federal arrestees from a narcotics, you know, operation in in Windsor, and they bring us. I'm I'm obligated to take those based on that contract. That is true. I'm not if there are 15 immigration detainees, I actually one seventy five, I would say, no. We're not taking any of those. And and our immigration partners have acceded to that, and they don't push on that. So we have established some limits. I understand that they're not unilateral and total limits, and I understand that that creates a sense of dismay in parts of the community. I am sorry for that, but I also think that there are people who have been held or arrested by ICE in other places or immigration enforcement and brought to Vermont who have been thankful ultimately to have gotten to Vermont owing to both the care that they get and the fact that they have access to our courts.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: So when we do have ICE detainees, is DOC made abreast of why they've been detained by ICE? Or is

[Brian Minier (Member)]: there just no you just know that they're ICE

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: detainees? The latter.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I I I find that problematic.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: You'd like to see a warrant?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I well, how did I mean, you're you're fulfilling your contract, but how do you know that these people have been been granted due process? I I don't know if you can vent that if you don't know why they're being held aside from if they were brought to you.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Let me correct myself. There are there are records about that, and those records may include a certain amount of the you know, whether it's a crime or whether it's a there there's paperwork, and I'm not sufficiently familiar with the paperwork to be able to tell you exactly what it does or doesn't contain insofar as is this is this a a person who has been deported multiple times and accused of recent crimes and has been arrested, or is this a person who is discovered to be in the country past a an expired visa? I don't know the degree to which that distinction is made. And I can find that out for you and give you that information.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: And and whether or it's universal or if it's piecemeal?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I I believe it's universal in the sense that the the the documentation is gonna be relatively the same each time and contain the same basic information. So if we can or if you recall I mean, we've had many meetings about this internally. And so if you can recall better details, please weigh in, Haley. Otherwise, just please make a note so that I can provide that.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: It's the same document that we get for everyone. We don't get a lot of information. And in the past when we've asked to receive more information, we have not been granted that.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Doesn't sound very American, does it?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It'd be nice to get whatever information you have.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: What order don't have? There's also information. We

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: could probably show

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: We have a sample size, say the last whatever, pick a number.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah, we have a form that we could probably redact information from, identifying information, and then share that with the committee.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yeah, but can get some examples of it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Questions? John?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Just bigger picture, just what you're feeling is, you know, because I know you're you said you're interim. What does that mean to you?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: It means I'm gonna do the best I can while I'm in the seat, and it's the governor How does that work? Can he is it like a trial period? Or how's that? I'm Sometimes it become Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The commissioner.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Whatever. It's just the interim because they're trying to figure out where to go.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Gotcha. Also, think that August was not during a session, and I think it's, you know, ultimately has to be put forward to the legislature.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Is this something you wanna do long term?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I am very much enjoying this role, and I serve with

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the pleasure of the governor.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You too. So so I'm just curious. You have history in your professional world, your professional life, of being the feeder system to corrections.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Now you're on the other side. How has that changed you or how has that changed your perspective if it has? What has surprised you about it? What has confirmed maybe what you felt? Are you feeling different or is is corrections what you envisioned it to be? You're completely on the other side now. What changes? What happened to you? What

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: changed? Wow. Thanks for that question. I mean, I think, honestly, I, like probably many Vermonters, didn't give a lot of thought to corrections. I delivered people to it, certainly in the early days of my tenure at Burlington when I was still the operations chief, the deputy chief of operations, and and CRCF, for example, was still accepting mail in caps or or mail detainees for a weekend. I delivered people. I had interactions after when I was chief with detectives who were listening in on conversations or or or had intelligence that had to be done and and interviews that took place in corrections, but I had very little interaction with corrections beyond that. The same is true for my career as a police officer in New York City or in other places. I mean, I I went to Rikers Island, but I didn't have any real understanding of how Rikers Island worked, and went to the old Spofford facility where we took juveniles in The Bronx when I was a cop in The Bronx. But I didn't I didn't, you know, tour those places. I didn't go beyond the intake portion of those places, and I did not give much thought to what they did. And I think in that way, I am similar or was similar to the vast majority of Vermonters who really just sort of say, a person was arrested. A lot of times, that's as far as they get thinking about it. And they say, oh, assault is a is a five to ten year prison sentence. That person's gonna be gone for five to ten years, which is not the case. And there's there's a trial, and there is then a sentence. And then most of time, the sentence is nowhere near the extremes of what our our sentencing or or statutes say, which is good. And now I've I've had an opportunity to meet the people doing this work, and I have been incredibly impressed by them. I think I mean, look how smart Hailey is and how much she knows. And, like, you know, this team is is incredibly engaged in all this work, and they have really passionate positions on it. And folks at at central office who have been doing it for decades and are really smart and folks even the bright eyed and bushy tailed folks that I met today, starting out their careers. I mean, these are good men and women who take a job that is really important. And it's important because from a just bare perspective, again, the courts have decided after long processes that I believe are among the most robust in the world, I believe in our constitution and our system, after long processes, a very small number of people who start in the process of being intervened in their behavior by police or other kinds of things end up being in front of a court and being sentenced. And those people are sentenced in ways that say you're not you're not able to be among others for the time being. But how are we going to keep them safe and care for them and then also ensure that because they inevitably, in all likelihood, will get out, the majority of them, they're bettered while they're in that custody. And that the the the, you know, almost 1,100 people that the department's authorized for, and there's nine fifty or so right now, those nine fifty people dedicate themselves to that every single day. I've been really amazed and have really enjoyed getting to see that work done and the thoughtfulness of saying, how do we do this better every single day? And then I've read since I took this position, I've paid more attention to articles about correctional systems in other places, and I've met many of my fellow corrections department directors, almost all of whom have single facilities that exceed the entirety of our system. And their challenges are very different, but so is the way they do their not the men and women who are directors, but so is the way those systems work. And I think our system has it pretty good. I mean, we've learned things from Maine, so we're not the best, And there are other places that do things very well, but we're also not we see really horrible things in other places. And Oh, I you know, in in in Vermont, not. Although, I see it as my job while I sit in this seat to ensure to do as everything I can to ensure that we have clear expectations so that we don't see those kinds of things in this system. Expectations and training and familiarity with the law and a sense of mission that really does come back to the very reason that we sit under an agency of human services

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: and

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: not in something else.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what about your impression of those folks who are incarcerated? Because you, in law enforcement, you were dealing with that person and bringing them to a facility and saying, Oh, all right, that's done. But now they are under your custody. Folks who are incarcerated, whether they're detained or sentenced, they're under the state custody, your custody. Has your impression or your perception of them changed? No, I liked a lot of

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: those people when I was a police officer, too. I mean, there people who are headaches, but there are also people who are kind of they are who they are, and you find there's inherent worth and dignity in in just about everybody. And if there are exceptions, there's, like, you know, there that's a teeny, teeny fraction. And the fact that there are people who have inherent worth and dignity, some of them are really troubled, and some of them are headaches for their neighbors, they can make communities worse, particularly if they're on cycles, because a lot of those folks who do that do cycle through their behavior. But even then, as a police officer, deal with it, and yes, there's an element of, okay, now I'm done. I mean, but that's not so much an element. That's just a human element of I did my part, now I'm done, as opposed to I don't care about this person anymore, or I don't care what happens to them. In my visits to facilities, as I walk around and I go into them and I sit and talk with people and I work on the floors in the sense that I stand on the floor and talk to the guards that are there to see how they're doing, I have had many, many people come up to me and say, know, I know you. You're the chief in Burlington.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I know

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: our first place is

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: looking here.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Sometimes, or at least I, you know, we met each other in the park or I saw you on TV. And, you know, I I mean, I think that there is a if anything inside the dynamic is is a little different in the sense that it's not nearly as risky as being outside when you really don't know anything about what the person does or doesn't have on him or her, tools or weapons, etcetera, or what place they're in, it's a little bit more secure. That's not to say that being a CEO is a safe work. It's not. But the people who are inside are, as I said earlier, that's who we're serving. Our job is to take care of them, to secure them, but to take care of them. It's security and sucker. It is this sense of both custody and care, of making sure that we are doing our duty to the court that doesn't think that this person is capable of being out and about in a completely free way, but we're also making certain that the person's safe and cared for and treated, and to all the best of our ability, bettered while they are inside. And I think that's a really important job. Again, today's lesson was a very early introduction for the officers up at the academy, and that was the lesson. How do we ensure that these folks come out in a way that makes them and and included a a very, I thought, poignant lesson by the instructor on who here has rented an apartment recently? How difficult was that for you? And a lot of groans among the these folks. Imagine doing it now after coming out and either not having these kinds of of documents or or just just the fact that you've been don't you've got a five year gap in your rental history. So even if you don't go through a background check or tell the person something, there's something there. And imagine now going through it in that way. Imagine if you can't be with the same people that you used to be with, which are your friends and your supports, because they may have been bad for you. Imagine if your family has, in one way or another, know, cut ties or parts of your social circles have cut ties. Think about these things. That was expressed to these brand new correctional officers. And I think they carry it with them. That's an important piece. Because the people who are inside are the people we're there ultimately to take care of, even though we're serving the public by doing that.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, I really like what you're saying about staff. And I think coming from being a police officer yourself, you know better than anybody, sort of the toll a job can have on your life, you know? And in the years I've been here, it's been difficult because it doesn't feel like we've come up with a solution for the staffing crisis yet. And we can throw some bonuses and everything at people. But I think what it really comes down to is making it less a job and a career. And a career you feel like valued in. And there's steps to advancement. Do you mind just talking about your philosophy on that a bit? Like how do you make this a job for people? Where it's not just, oh my god, it's ruining my life. Get a paycheck, but I'm probably gonna be out of here in a year.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: That's an open question, and that's a big challenge for us. Again, there are a couple of things that we've done. We are working on, for example, implementing body cameras on supervisors. Supervisors have agreed to it. The rest of the union has not yet. But as a component of using that, we're probably gonna issue some new uniforms on which to wear the body cameras. Things like that matter. I go back to a lot of the lessons that I learned in policing, and some of them predate me, but they're lessons that I learned from mentors. One of my biggest mentors as a police leader was the commissioner of the NYPD in the '90s, and then again in the 2010s under, and I worked for him at that point, Bill Bratton, he, for example, was the he was the chief of the transit department when transit was a separate police department from the NYPD. It was a junior department. People kinda felt it was second run. All they did was train work, and it was much less interesting. It was less important. He gave them these commando sweaters, these British commando sweaters with the sort of satin shoulders and stuff, and that made a massive difference to the pride that was felt in that department. He also then gave them a tool that they needed at the time based on the violence in the city, which was semiautomatic weapons rather than the revolvers that were at the time carried by the NYPD. That made them feel really important. I don't we're not introducing firearms at our facilities anytime soon, but the notion of cutting edge equipment, of things that make people feel valued, that resonates, particularly with people in the facilities. And as I said, I changed the body armor rules for folks out in probation and parole offices. That makes a difference. The training operation that I talked about, I want to be able to do more of that kind of work because training is fun, and people who do this work do think about the worst case scenarios. It can be a component of why they take the job, that kind of the adventure. We hire both social workers and adventurers on some level, and if you can train to that work, it's important. It also will pay off if, God forbid, you have a moment where something like that happens, And that can keep people engaged and interested, the sense of training, the sense of opportunities. My predecessor created a new division around hospitalizations, which it's called COD or the Central Operations Division, to make certain that hospitalized prisoner work wasn't being done by the facilities. It really maximized on the ground work in the facilities. That is a new career avenue for people to say, okay, I did two and a half years in the facilities. Now I can maybe go to COD. Maybe I can go over to PNP, which is a similar progression to moving from being a beat cop to being a detective. And that is something that certain people strive for. Some, you know, some young woman begins as a cop and says, I just wanna be a beat cop for the rest of my days because I really enjoy this work. Others say, no. I wanna move up and be a detective and then maybe, you know, start in narcotics and then go to to to detective work and then maybe go to a homicide squad. Some people say, I wanna be a sergeant and then a lieutenant. And all of these are paths that are available in in an analog in the corrections department. So how we publicize that is a really important piece. One thing that's really interesting is that unlike policing, you can become a PMP officer without having been a CO. You can't in almost there may be one or two exceptions, but in no police department in the country of which I'm aware, can you become a detective without having been a cop first. And so there's an opportunity there to say, you get to do the kind of work that is a little bit more, it's investigatory, it's case driven, but it's also got a social service orientation, and you can come and do that without Heather having to work a floor if that's not what you wanna do, to work on a cell block. But for people, you wanna work on a cell block, you can. Right now, biggest challenge is overtime. We're in this Catch-twenty two world where we don't have enough people not to drive the overtime, but we also have so much overtime that it makes it difficult to retain people. Because with the exception of some young employee who gets himself in with a really expensive new car or truck, We have people that are working four, five, sixteen hour shifts in a row. That's exhausting. And it's very difficult to figure out how to pull away from that and then give that person some training to keep him or her interested and invigorated and feeling like it is a career. So how we move through that is an open question, but we're doing recruitment issues. We're trying to figure out how to empower superintendents to treat their employees to certain kinds of perks and things. Those are aspects of work on that.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Thanks. And Cheryl, did you want to do an update on IDs today or is that going to be

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The what ID?

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: The IDs?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah. Just how how are the IDs working with some of the legislation we passed?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In terms of

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: When inmates are returning to the community. Ah. We did some work on their non driver's license IDs as well as some driver's license IDs.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah. That's work that's ongoing as well, including efforts to make certain that people are sort of returned to status quo ante with regard to their IDs. So if you went in with, let's say, a motorcycle enhancement or a CDL that you come out and get that license back, absent there being something- Fines. Well, just fines, but if the reason you're in is because you were the malefactor in a crash that killed nine people, then maybe you shouldn't get your CDL back. But absent that, you were in for retail theft and burglaries, but your CDL is how you make a living. I'd rather you make that than be burglarizing people. And so we you know, returning people to status quo ante with regard to IDs is something that's being worked on. We certainly do a lot of work to make sure that people get that identification. That's a component of the warm handoff to be able to exit with all the tools necessary to take the next steps of reintegrating as best as possible.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you might wanna have some folks look at a bill that I think did come out today, It's to, and I've heard this from some PNP folks back in my community about having the IDs. Now it's for folks who are sentenced. And they have got to be there, I think it's six months before they could qualify to get their ID. And what PMP folks have been saying, it'd be great if we could also do that for detainees and keep that same minimum time. I believe it's six months. And then after a detainee has been there for six months, they could go through the process of getting an ID because you never know when a detainee is gonna leave.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They could they could be there forever, you know, two or three years.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Sure.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Or they could be there eight months. And if they could have an ID after six months when they get out, at least that might be better. So there is a piece of legislation that's been introduced on that, and it is Which one is this? Is it May?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I think it did come out today.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: I think

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: it did. Is it 549? I think it's 549.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. The state issued driver's license? Yeah. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. That's their ID. That would be their ID.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: That's the piece the state issued driver's license of being able to return to get the same one back that you had when you went in?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We worked through this pretty in-depth. Who was here? Mary? Over here. Gina? Is. It was when Commissioner Manoli was with DMV. She was not with BTS. And there are federal regulations that go along with this. But there was an avenue of folks who were incarcerated to get a non driver's ID.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Non driver's ID.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Upon release. Upon release. And we want to make sure that gets put in place. But there's also now an opportunity for them if they Long

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: term duties.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: If they had a long for sentence folks, if they had a driver's license when they came in, and they've been there for ten years Mhmm. That's now expired, and they had no violations or, you know, the crime wasn't connected to their driver's license. They could then receive a driver's license, but they would have to pay for it. Yes. Where a non driver's ID, the state picks up that cost. So the question the proposed legislation is if the person is a detainee and has served six months, I believe. I think it's six months because that's what it is for a person who's sentenced. They could get a non driver's ID or a driving license if there's no crime resulting from it. So you might wanna take a look at that. Surely. Yes, it's only for sentence folks. The bill would be to expand that to detainees.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: That sounds good. And then when the committee discusses that, we can bring in some subject matter experts who are in

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the You also need folks from DMV for that too.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I spoke with the commissioner of DMV today about the driver's license, sort of that status quo ante concept, but not this one that you're talking about. So we'd be eager to discuss that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: have a new department, State Department, and I think they're also under the same secretary to help managers of 115 waivers. Have you started work with them? So these are folks who are going to be caseworkers helping folks navigate their Medicaid upon release.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah, I do I don't

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: remember the name of the department.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I don't know that it's a department. I think it's a wing under A. H. S. Yes, and we have been working with that. That's Jill's

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: It's Vermont from a care initiative.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: think they have always existed, or not always, but now they're expanding.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Right. They have a new set of employees to do specifically eleven fifteen waivers. Have

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: you started that collaboration today? I'm not certain about the collaboration part. The waiver went into effect six days five days ago. Six days ago. And so we're very new on that, and I'm supposed to get sort of an update of where we are in a meeting on Thursday.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Is that is that sixty days out from release? Ninety. Ninety.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Three months. Three months out. The other thing that we might want an update on is the Wi Fi situation within your facilities, because we did some work with our IT committee as well as agency of digital services. We worked up an agreement there to really make sure you folks had some money to go forward. I'd like an update to see where we are on that Are for there other updates that folks would want for corrections? I'm concerned about the population growth. And I just don't know I don't quite know how to approach that. I mean, the driving force is detainees. We have some tools that we've put in place. We have home detention that doesn't seem to be used very much. And then I don't know if we should look into that program again and why it's not being used. Because the goal when we put in home detention, it must have been almost twenty years ago, if not more, was to take that pressure off of increasing detainee numbers. The other thing I really wanna get more in-depth testimonies on the pretrial supervision. There's a few of us that were here when we put that in law. There's also the other half of the committee has no they weren't here. So we we started this in Essex or means County.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: there was only one or two people. And then when the support accountability pilot project came about, that got moved to Chittenden County.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: It did. And there were there were a total of eight all in in the Northeast Kingdom version. I don't know how long that had been running, so I I don't know the sort of the the length of it, but I don't think it had been much more than a year. Yeah. As I said, I believe at the moment, they've only been five. I haven't seen my weekly update for Burlington, but the last weekly update that I did see, which was in 2025, said five. It had been five. And so we had anticipated a much larger number, particularly considering that the accountability court was in existence. But I also don't know that we have really publicized with the regular court system the availability of this, and that might also have increased the numbers, but not a ton. So it remains to be seen what happens with it. I do believe that it's we've demonstrated that it works and that it can be done, and I have every expectation that this model is going to be applied in other locations than Burlington. And so we'll see how many we get there. But even in those places, don't I don't believe this is gonna be something that is a remarkable strain, but it could very well. We we got we were authorized for additional personnel, and we used those additional personnel. And I believe we've either hired or are in the process of hiring them in Burlington. And I imagine that if we expanded it to elsewhere, each of those P and P offices would probably need to reevaluate staffing. There is, but it's also thus far, it's been manageable.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because we only put in 600,000 to get it started in one or two counties, but the the total program cost two years ago was like 1,200,000.0 for that. But what it is, is for folks who have been arraigned and they've been released on conditions and they've met bail. If there was a bail that was set, they've met bail, but they're being supervised out in the community by DOC, by PNP. So this is totally new over the last couple of years. And if there's any violations of their conditions, then that gets reported to the state's attorney that then makes the decision whether to bring it to the court. So it's a public safety tool because if other counties, they don't have this. So it's up to local law enforcement. If they see somebody violating, if they happen to know a person has some conditions for their release, local law enforcement may say, oh, wow, that's a violation there. Otherwise, nobody's supervising him. So now there's some form of supervision that's being planned under this program. But if there continues to be a violation of these conditions and they keep getting cited for and goes to court, that could increase our detaining population because eventually they could be hauled in. Yes. So there's and I want the committee to spend some time on this, on the pretrial supervision. I want you to understand what's current statute.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I know the council state governments has done some. Work with the state of Vermont with DOC in terms of evaluating the program, they started with the Essex Orleans County And towards the end of their evaluation, it got shifted to Chittenden County, which I have some information, but they have some recommendations in terms of possible changes to the program. So the committee needs to understand what the current law says, the current statute is before we make any changes. So we'll be working on that. If we want to expand the pretrial supervision to other counties in the state, we're gonna have to find some money to do that because that's gonna have an impact on your staff and the field offices. Mhmm. Because that was the concern for that. The other thing that's percolating committee holds yours. The other thing that's percolating in the House Judiciary Committee is more interest to redo the work crews. They really want to bring back work crews. That's on the agenda again this session.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Already been asked.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Nick was not a fan.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you might want to be prepared. I don't know where that's going to go. I don't know where we're going to be involved, but I think House Judiciary is going to work on legislation for that. Are you involved in that too, Brian?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Well, we had a little grooves that went over from our committee to their committee to talk about it. And my question for you was going to be, do you know if there's been any more uptake of this reported replacement?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Was Were you the same kind

[Brian Minier (Member)]: of Yeah. A couple

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: of There were three of you, right? Kevin, you

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: were the only

[Brian Minier (Member)]: And also, yeah.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Members from the other committee asked about it, and I mentioned it

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: to you.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Recently? In the fall.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, well, this is more recent. This is like two weeks ago.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: They're going

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to introduce it.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So we don't have to get our group back together then?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think you do. Okay. I think because we need to be part of that.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So I should

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: talk to Mark. Yeah, we really need to be part of that conversation one way or the other because there's some because states attorneys are really pushing this.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yep.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: And so they're not interested in what was supposed to be the replacement for the works that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, they wanna bring it back to what it was. Okay.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I'm always interested in view of recidivism. This is going

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: up, going

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: down. What do you think is driving it? Anytime you have that information relative to the programs you're talking about, I think that's the only way you can really measure whether you're making progress or not. Because this. I'll stop there.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Sure. We talked about this a little bit in Senate institutions and the need to get some data on reoffense. Recidivism has a very distinct definition in statute, which I don't think is all that useful for what is colloquially understood by recidivism, if if people use that term because it's hardly colloquial, or or by reoffense. I think it's really just the idea of did a person offend again? And and in a more specific way, did they offend in the same way again? But in in other ways, just generally. So if I if a person is released after having committed several burglaries and and been convicted of several burglaries, does that person burglarize again? Or for that matter, does that person then go out and assault somebody again? And, how do we feel about that, and are we measuring it? We're gonna look into seeing if we can get that kind of data. I do think that, you know, anybody who works in the facilities will tell you that you see some of the same faces again and again. They turn through for small level stuff. Certainly police officers will tell you that. But I also think that what the accountability court is doing is a means of interrupting it, because the fact is that addressing it for many people does in fact stop that behavior. In other words, if you come to realize that people are going to care when you do these things and then hold you accountable when you do these things, then some percentage of the people who do those things stop doing those things. There's others who don't for a variety of reasons, whether it's just they're truly incorrigible, they don't care, or whether it's because they're in the throes of things that render them less capable of making conscious decisions, like substance abuse. And so there are folks for whom it doesn't work. But the more that we sort of look at accountability, which isn't incarceration only, and in fact, that should be the very last piece of accountability, but instead is ideas of whether it's pretrial supervision. And yes, that could create more detainees, but it also interrupts behaviors that are really problematic for our communities. Or whether it's additional police response or whether it's more rapid prosecution, which is what accountability the court is all about, I think you'll see a change in that. And that too can be a component of what I hope happens in 2026, which is a diminishment of the need for detention. Because if we have returned to a posture where accountability is faster and more certain, then overall, I believe we will see a diminishment in the behaviors that ultimately lead to these things in

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the first place. That's the measurement of this. That's the bottom line. Yes. We would love to see nobody ever return. Yes. But if we're not getting there, then we need to figure out which programs are helping and which hurt. Yes. Without that measurement, I don't think we can tell. Yes. Gut field doesn't

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: You're right. Doesn't do it. Now, I'd prefer to have data on this as well. And we've talked about, Haley and I spoke in between sessions or in between committee meetings about how we could potentially start to get that data. We have it on an individual case by case basis. It's a component of, for example, a risk containment process. When we're gonna evaluate a person who is being proposed for probation, excuse me, not probation, proposed for parole, or that we are contemplating furlough for, we have a means of looking and saying, how many times has this person returned to us? How well have they behaved inside the system? How many repeat arrests have they had? I just need to determine whether or not there's a quick way of crunching it, And could we then turn it into anonymized data that says, here's the pattern.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But what also feeds in, you need three things for someone to be successful when they reenter. They need a job, They need treatment. And they need house. Yes. Yep. Three legged stool. If one of those isn't working, their percentage of success is diminished. So you get three things. It's needed for folks to have a chance of succeeding on reentry. And if you don't have that, it's not work. Anything else? We're kind of pushing up against the time. So we're gonna have more conversations with DOC. We will is have Hailey, are you the contact person for Tate to connect with for testimony? Yes. K. And we'll be doing some scheduling tomorrow for next week. I know the state employees wanna come in next week to talk about recruitment and retention. So I don't know if any DOC person wants to be in the room or not, but I know they wanna come in and talk for folks. I know we wanna get the PRIN folks in, So we can bring that in sometime possibly next week. I'd like to get David in from the council state governments for the pretrial supervision. But first off, we need that's gonna be a little while because I've gotta have lunch council

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: walk what

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the current law is for pre draft supervision so the committee understands it. Are there other things that folks wanna focus on? Concerned about the population.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Numbers. I just don't know what to do. Testimony for that. It's detainees that's driving it. So I'm just not sure how to approach it. Else before we finish?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: A quick question for Haley possibly. You mentioned the detained folks. Is there information on the dashboard also about I don't know if there's a mean or a median for detention.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: For the length of stay.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Exactly.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: It's about three years is the median. I think the average is tricky to calculate because we have junk folks who are in there for twenty four hours.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Three years in

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: the three days?

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah. Sorry. Days.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I was

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: trying to keep

[Brian Minier (Member)]: the eyebrows. For

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: like multiple years. So three years of median average is a little different, but not as accurate.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. I mean, days. Three days.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yes. Three

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: days. It is three days.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah. There are some people who are there who are We do have people who are detained for more than For years. People are

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: detained for a little bit than their minimum.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Yeah. What their minimum would have been, yes, that is possible too. That is a function of a court. One of the biggest ways to be able to address the detained is to improve the speed at which the courts move. There are a number of ways to do that, none of which have to do with the passion or the hard work of the people in the court system. I'm not impugning that in any way.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But it's

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: correct. It's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: those three pieces of the judicial system.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: People in space.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then sometimes they get far enough along in the case and the person who's incarcerated can say to their defense lawyer, I don't want you anymore. And then you start all over again. Or there may be new evidence that comes up that delays it. Or they may start talking about a plea agreement, and then that changes the course too.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: And then you back out of pleas at the last second too, and that could prolong things. There are lots of things that can prolong it, even to the point, as you point out, sir, that it's gone longer than the minimum at hand. That's relatively rare, thankfully, because most of the people who are held for that length of time are facing relatively serious charges.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But you get credit for time served. So when you're there as a detainee, you served three years, but say you have a minimum sentence of 10, you've already served three of the 10. So a detainee that's there for long term does get credit for that time. And some people have a problem with that and some people don't. That's part of our

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: law.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Anything else before we finish up? So we'll have you back. And I'm sure there's gonna be some initiatives maybe the administration's putting forward. Speak to that until after the governor's budget.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Thank you for acknowledging that. No.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm sure that there'll be some initiatives there, and then we'll have you in on that as well. Anything else before we finish up? Thank you.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Thanks so much.

[Haley Sommer (Director of Communications, Vermont DOC)]: Thank you.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Thank folks.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: It's great.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. So for the committee, we are done for today.