Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: We were in the other building all morning. So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: let's go live. We're live. Welcome, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions. It is Wednesday, February 11. This is our 01:00 meeting. We're running a little late. We're going to have a general discussion right now in terms of our pretrial supervision program and really trying to find out what is working with it and what is not working with it. And then when we have our legal counsel available to us, she'll walk us through the new draft. It's a pretty complicated set of amendments to it.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: So, Kim, welcome. Thank Introduce yourself for the record. Yes. My name is Kim McManus. I'm with the Department of States Attorneys and Sheriffs. That's their legislative attorney. So I have a few possible ways we can start, Chair. I did watch testimony on Friday of the walk through and the conversation that took place. And it felt like there was some confusion in a few spots. And so my initial presentation today was to take a step back and run through

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The program?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Well, to run through really how we wind up getting here. I know there was a number of questions about where the Department of Corrections' referral would come in and at what stage. And could it come earlier? Could it come later? So I can do that, or we can just jump right into where and I did have a lot of comments about the proposed language.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're not there for language. So we need memory here. So if you could make this larger.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yes. We some trouble this morning. Hopefully, we're selling

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: the

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: struggle back there. Okay. There we go. You're doing them. Delete it. Yes. Sorry. One sec. Any things?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: what I'm going to do, because one thing I was really thinking a lot about Friday when I was listening to testimony, is the amount of information you all have to absorb and the breadth of information on different topics, it's fairly overwhelming. I am not an auditory learner. I have to see things to understand them. So I did make this very rudimentary flowchart just so folks can have it in hand. We're not going to go bit by bit through it. But as we're talking, I think it'll be helpful just to take a look at it. If you just pass Thank you. Yes. And I apologize. It's like someone did it. Oh, it's

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: good. That'll work.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yeah. It should be neat.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: That's a stanza.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It did not make good

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: questions. Two tries. You're welcome.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The chair off This by hand.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Yeah, that's why. That's it.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Embarrassingly showing my age.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Could we get a star off the wall?

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: She deserves it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You. I even know it's a level that we function. No,

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: this is complicated. And for the most part, your committee deals with folks once they're detained. And you don't always get into the messy middle part, especially around arraignment, of all the options that are there. And one of the things that I was hearing on Friday was and I think this is the big question of who's eligible for this program and who should be eligible? Who does this program best serve. And I won't get into details of the proposed language, but there's proposal to change the eligibility requirements. And I think one of the big questions is, are we looking for this program to serve high risk defendants who would otherwise be detained but for pretrial supervision

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: and

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: or lower risk, so to speak? They're not eligible for detention, but they are having they're really struggling with getting to court, committing more offenses, need that wraparound programming that we've seen in our accountability docket and that we've seen great success there with. And so those are two very different populations as far as what's coming out of arraignment and where and when you would have Department of Corrections involved. The way the proposed wording, there's a conflict there of who's eligible. And I can wait until after your legislative counsel goes through it to just weigh in on thoughts on that. But the other big issue for us and again, we'll wait till allege counsel is the who's filing when a violation occurs. And we have very strong feelings about that, but I will wait to have your walk through. As far as who's participating or not, what we actually, this was just mentioned, I believe, this morning at the accountability docket joint hearing, there theoretically seemed like a very nice overlap there with the five or more dockets being the eligibility requirement for the accountability docket and for the pretrial supervision program. What they found at the accountability docket is that the cases are moving so quickly that and DOC is involved, but it's more so DOC being involved with explaining what's going to happen with a disposition of a case and where things would go, less being the liaison of the providers and services that I believe the pretrial supervision was seeking the cases that take longer, the cases that are taking three, six months, nine months, that you need those continuous check ins to be supervising someone, making sure they come to court, making sure they check-in with any providers that have been suggested. That's happening so rapidly in the accountability docket that they're not needing pretrial supervision for those cases, where I believe it worked for one person. The piece. Big picture, the special prosecutor, Zach Waite, said, whatever changes happen here, definitely you do not need to wait till five dockets to be eligible for pretrial supervision. And I know that's one of the proposed changes to take out that language. So we were supportive of that. But right now, I think the big issue is really figuring out who we want this program to serve, who would it best serve. And right now, it's trying to serve too many but not having the resources to properly serve them. If you're going to be serving the high risk defendants who would otherwise be detained, it needs to be a much more intensive supervision. And as CSG said, that's simply not what DOC has available. You can't do phone check ins with someone who would otherwise be detained. And vice versa on the other side, if it's the lower risk but needing more social, mental, emotional, just executive functioning support, then that coordination piece needs to just be better sewn up. So I think that's why we're not seeing folks in it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Very much It's not meeting the needs of either version, either the high risk or the lower risk folks. And then the five dockets indicate maybe they're high risk or maybe they just keep circling, cycling through. It's taken care of. If the pretrial supervision, well, I found interesting, what you just stated about the pilot project up in Chittenden County, the reason not many people, only one person was sent to pretrial supervision is that there's already, the coordination was really focused on our community providers with the courts and going through the criminal justice system. So if our community providers were there at the table while the person was going through an arraignment, or kind of what's the next step, but then you've got the circle of support from your community providers, then you really don't need that pretrial supervision.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Well, as far as the coordination piece, and that was one of CSG's recommendations that you need to better coordinate all those folks. If they're not in the room, then DOC being that hub to connect all those folks makes a lot of sense. But to your point, Chair, if they are in the room, then that's happening. We're doing direct Automatically. End ops more easily. Now again, if we're looking at cases that are not the accountability docket, but cases that take longer from start to finish, where we could see the benefit is that DOC is providing that check-in of, are you seeing the provider that you're connected with? Did you follow-up? Are you having trouble getting there? Do you need a ride? Do we need to organize that very social worker Just giving that executive functioning piece, being that outside person to do that. And again, the capacity issue of whether DOC can do that is a question.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Why don't you go through this? This would help the folks. Right, so

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: when I was writing this and listening, what I wanted to really get to is, again, as you all are thinking, who should pretrial supervision be for? Is it folks who would be in the community but need that extra wraparound or detained people who could otherwise be detained pretrial? But pretrial supervision is a least restrictive option to that. I wanted to just walk through how we would get to either being in the community pretrial or detained pretrial. So starting at the top at the incident, criminal incident behavior, something occurs, you can either be cited into court, given a piece of paper in four weeks, 9AM to court, or you can be arrested. And all sorts of rules on what can happen when. We won't get down there. At the time of arrest, you can either be released with conditions to then go to your court date, so essentially cited to court, or you can be detained at that point.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that's all decided by your law enforcement?

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Excuse me? That's all decided by the arresting officer. So the arresting officer makes the decision to arrest or to cite. If they are arrested, then if they wish to detain them, they have to have a judicial order to detain. You're

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: calling a judge or getting a judge's order involved. The first decision as to when you get into the criminal justice system is when that law enforcement officer, either your local law enforcement officer or your state police, arrests the person or cite the person. That's the first decision.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yes. So you're either coming to arraignment with your citation in hand, or you've been detained and you're being walked in to arraignment. At arraignment, the judge runs through what you're being charged with. The prosecutor is going to suggest what they think is appropriate as far as conditions of release or bail or whether to be held without bail. Always important to remember that in Vermont, can only be set if you are at risk of flight. That is when bail can be set. Otherwise, conditions of release are to ensure or try to ensure safety while pending trial. So you can't set bail because it's a public safety issue.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that's English. Bless you.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: God bless you. I'm just going to jump ahead in a sec.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So to this point, does that make sense to folks?

[Dylan Johnson (Recovery Coach, Turning Point Center of Bennington County)]: Yeah. The

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: graph was super helpful.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: So

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: if someone in this room, first offense, say there's no victim involved, it's possible that you're released with personal recognizance, which just means we trust you to come back. We don't need to issue a court order of any kind. We'll see you in twenty days. If the prosecutor cannot convince the judge that the person is a flight risk, no bail will be set. But the prosecutor may say, we need a few conditions to ensure public safety, things like not contacting the victim, staying so many feet away. We might ask for a curfew if we think that's appropriate. We might ask for what's called a responsible adult, that somebody comes forward and essentially says, I'm going to watch out and make sure that Representative Sweeney follows the conditions and they sign a piece of paper, a variety of conditions that can be set. The court always has to set the least restrictive of the conditions. So they have to take all the information at hand. They can't just set whatever they want. They're always having to of winnow down what is needed to keep the public safe. If there is a risk of flight, then the court can determine bail and set bail to mitigate that risk of flight, so that bail amount. Often with bail, I'm sure there's times where it doesn't happen, but almost always if you have bail set, you're also going to have some conditions of release as well as far as what behavior you can or cannot do while waiting. In some cases, we can argue for a hold without bail. I know you've heard that term many times, I believe. So a hold without bail, there's two statutes that cover this, 13 VSA seven thousand five hundred fifty three and thirteen VSA 7,553 A. The first one is when charges that carry a maximum life sentence, we can request a hold without bail. The reasoning is that somebody who has a charge against them with a maximum life sentence, that there is inherently a risk of flight built into that, that the person's exposure for such a high consequence may make them more likely than not to want to flee and not come to court. 7553, you need to have a felony that involves an act of violence against another person. And the state has to argue two things. First, it needs to show evidence of guilt is great that there was an act of violence against a person. And then it has to show that there's a substantial threat and physical violence to any person. So you have to show a future threat in order to ask for a hold. So either case, if the court orders hold without bail, that person will be detained pretrial. If bail has been set but the person cannot make bail, they will be detained pretrial. If they post bail, they're in the community with their conditions of release and they have their posted bail. When someone's been detained because of a hold without, I didn't get into this part because I didn't want to make it too messy. There are appeals involved. There are often motions to reconsider, to argue that bail can be set. So sometimes someone could be held initially and then bail could be set. If they make bail, then they could be out in the community. So these are not set in stone once you've gone into a certain bucket at the end.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this is really helpful. And then the next step, would you just explain quickly, look at you, then it's pretrial supervision. And then what I wanna do, because we're on a time crunch. But I think if you finish after this, then we're gonna switch for a legal counsel, because she can only be here until 02:00. Okay, perfect. So I think you laid, if you finish this in terms of who gets the pretrial supervision piece, I think you laid it out really well in terms of who are we trying to address. The high risk offender has a lot of needs, high risk to re offend, severity of the crime was kind of maybe moderate or high, we don't know. Or the person who's a low risk that just is kind of starting to cycle through the system or maybe first coming into the system. Those are policy decisions we'll have to make. But anything else, your next step in the community pretrial? So in the community pretrial, currently,

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: to get into pretrial supervision, you would either need to violate a condition of release. So remembering that when the court orders the condition of release, this is a court order that you follow these conditions. Violating that is a separate crime. It's criminal contempt. And the prosecutor, upon hearing that someone has violated a condition of release and has evidence of that, can charge that as a separate offense. So that's one way currently that you would be eligible for pretrial supervision, that you've shown that you're struggling essentially on your conditions. The other eligibility possibility is that you have five pending dockets. And the important piece here is that currently as written, so you have either the violation of a conditional release or five pending dockets. And you pose a risk of nonappearance for future court hearings or your flight risk, or you're endangering the public. So the court has to come to that analysis before putting somebody in. And again, the court still has to have this be a least restrictive option. And I believe there was an example given last Friday that somebody was offered a twenty four the recommendation was going to be a twenty four hour curfew. And the least restrictive option would be, or you could do pretrial supervision. That would make sense as an option. But again, from here, I really left this blank because that is the next question of which arrow do you want going into pretrial supervision, which box. And it could be both, but then that's really, again, realizing these are two different populations that need two different types of supervision pretrial, and whether DOC is given the proper resources

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to do that. So currently, when a person's going through this, they're arraigned, they're sent out either personal recognizant, conditions of release, bail is set and they've posted bail. Or if they haven't posted bail, they're detained and then they post bail. And then they're released to the community. But right now, everywhere throughout the state, except for that accountability court in Chittenden County, there's no supervision of those folks in the community by DOC

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: or any The only supervision, so to speak, is that if the person is seen violating a condition, like somebody calls that in, then law enforcement responds. But there's no proactive supervision right now.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's important to keep in mind. Okay? And the reason that this program was established, it came from Senator Sears as a way to provide some public safety to have a little bit of supervision for those folks cycling through the criminal justice, cycling through the courts. Any questions on this before we transition to Hillary to walk us through the draft? This was very helpful. Really appreciate you doing that. Wonderful.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: And I would hopefully beg for about ten minutes or so after just a few comments.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're more limited, so I want to at least walk through the confusing draft. But this sets a good you know, groundwork for people to understand. Matt, are you got a tight schedule too?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Yeah. Hang on. Sorry. I just I get tons of other things to deal with. So I should probably come back another time, honestly. It's can't be done.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because we need to hear from defense counsel.

[Hillary (Legislative Counsel to the Committee)]: Because this is only a small change from what we walked through last week, I don't think that it will take as long as a walk through otherwise would.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But I just want to flip you to

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Do whatever you gotta do. See what happens. Just

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: because we need to hear from the defense. We wanted to get all the players in the room together because this is really important for us to understand all the moving pieces. I would rather have Matt up because I think it's gonna be more confusing just knowing the committee. It's going to be a little more confusing to

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: You just review changes, though. Because I looked at the bill, I had all kinds of questions. Do Do

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you have questions about the changes?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Questions about I'm The bills. What I saw I mean, I don't know what it's going to say. So if you're changing something.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, I'm at the point right now where members of the committee need to understand what the process is now and why there aren't many people in the pretrial supervision program now. Because that's the question that keeps coming up in the committee, right?

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We need to understand the moving pieces, and the defense counsel is part of that as is the prosecution. So is there is there can you weigh in on that, Matt, in terms of what you're One issue. Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Sure. Let's say something.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So why don't you come out?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I didn't mean to

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, no. It's fine. It's we're just trying to juggle everyone's schedule.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: It's I I will tell you, it seems that in the last two days, the courts have been saving up dozens of cases that need reassignment. So I've got people sitting in jail for months that haven't had lawyers.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But now we need the lawyers.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: And I'm well, and I'm the one who does the, when the courts can't figure it out, I'm the one who does. So, you know, I I don't like having people sit there with no lawyers.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. So, Matt, could you just identify yourself for the record?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Yeah. Not the defendant, Joe.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And talk about the defense role in the whole pretrial supervision program.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: There's not much.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There's not much, but you're part of the court process when it's determined. All

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: that really happens is we describe to the the client what is available. And then, you know, decisions are made about, you know, what is in the best interest of that client. And the client ultimately decides whether or not they're gonna participate in pretrial supervision or not. The thing about pretrial supervision, and I said this to Senator Sears at the time, is that none of this changes the constitutional requirements surrounding bail and conditions of release. And so this is an option that is available to people if people feel that it's in their best interests to do. And the thing is, you can't really order. You can't mandatorily say before somebody's convicted that they have to do pretrial supervision or pretrial treatment, because they haven't been convicted of anything yet. If there are conditions, constitutionally, there are conditions of release that are sufficient to protect the public and to, and first of all, really, to assure your attendance in court, that's the main constitutional requirement of bail and conditions, and secondarily, to protect the public in particular instances. And then the court has to put the least restrictive conditions that are available to assure those two goals, which are both constitutional, then pretrial supervision doesn't necessarily fit into the picture. So there are some people where that is number one in their interest, and number two, constitutional. And that actually boils down to a small number of people. The other thing is, when this pilot was first put in, it was in Caledonia County?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Essex, Essex Orleans.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Yeah, Essex Orleans?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Two counties from that. Yeah, Essex Orleans, yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Right. And there just weren't many people who I mean, was told relatively recently there were like four people. Is it more than 10 yet? It's just a minuscule number of people who really kind of fit the profile of the people who would

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: either

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: agree to be in it or would constitutionally be required to be in it. So, you know, if the question is, Why are there so few people in it? I think that's why. And I also think, you know, the county that it was started in was started with very modest expectations to begin with. And it just didn't I know that the idea was that there would be something akin to the federal program of pretrial supervision. But our constitution's different. So it doesn't match up. And what is going on in Chittenden, like when you compare apples to oranges, have almost nothing to do with each other as a practical matter. Because those, the folks who were brought into that court, have, like, longstanding history of multiple charges, and their cases have been delayed for really long periods of time. They weren't getting any services at all. Part of the issue was, you know, they wanted to voluntarily connect with services to try to get themselves out of the cycle that they were in. And there were some number of people who were in that docket that opted for the due process side of things, because maybe the arrest was bad, that there were constitutional violations, they didn't do it. You know, amazing that that might happen on occasion. But, you know, the bottom line is there are some number of people who opted out and went who said, Yeah, I'm not doing the, you know, accountability court services route. Wanna try. And they did that, too. The thing is that the backline was so great for so many people with so many dockets in Chittenden County that, you know, we got rid of hundreds of dockets during that three month period that it was operating just by sheer force. You know, the fact that there were so many that were delayed for so long that the court wasn't getting to. And it was very simple as to why it was, you got an extra judge, you got an extra prosecutor. We dedicated particular resources for it. I put $50,000 into social work to assist the clients to connecting from what the court order was to what AHS and DOC wanted to do. And so when you throw a bunch of resources at a particular docket, you're gonna get a positive result. And it was a positive result. Nobody should say anything different when it comes to that, but that's why it happened. So very different than this, than the thing that I am going to say, which I don't know what the changes are going to be, but and I warned Senator Sears about this, and I think I did it with you folks too. You can't legislate around the constitutional requirements. You can't change the constitution by putting other factors that are not constitutional as part of what you'd like to see people do. Because they can still stand on those rights, and they have to make decisions about what's best for them in their particular case. And the lawyers can give all the advice they want and say, Hey, you know, this pretrial supervision situation would be very good for you. It might be good for your case down the road. And if the client says, No, then it isn't going to happen. So, you know, I think there was a confluence of those events. And it really wasn't particularly, you know I didn't know if the resources were really available up there to Well, make it that's one of the keys, you know? It's just that you can't add criteria that are not constitutional to force people to do things that would be unconstitutional. And so that's why there aren't very many people. You know, I think there would have to be I don't know what's gonna happen next. I do think, honestly, that what we did in Chittenden County with the multi docket cases and those that have been delayed for a long time, and people with mental health problems, drug problems, co occurring disorders, and the like, the people who are ready, willing, and able to do that, notwithstanding anything that has to do with their their criminal case, that can be exported around the state. And you're gonna get a lot of bang for your buck, as long as the people are resourced to do what needs to be done. Retrieving resources, prosecution resources, the extra judge time, and then I have to deal with the social work connective, you know? If I were gonna run it in Chittenden County all year round, it'd cost me, you know, about $200,000 in Chittenden County. I put $50,000 in, and because I knew it was a short amount of time that I could do it, I don't, you know, I don't have that budgeted to do that. And this came up on short notice, and we did it. And I was talking this morning with the House judiciary and Senate judiciary. They had a joint meeting. And they were like, Well, can you build that program? And I was Yeah, I can build. I can give you budget numbers of what it might cost. But I can't You know, Lemoyle County doesn't have the Howard Center. You know, other counties don't have, like, the treatment resources that Chittenden County has. They also don't have the number of you know, Lemoyle County has two public defenders in it. Chittenden County has 12 in the staff office alone. So when I say, oh, one of you is gonna be just doing this court to deal with this connect connecting these clients if they wanna do it, I can do that. If I wanna do it in Madison County, there's only one public defender there. So I don't the arms and the legs are just doing the You can't split off. So it entails There's a diseconomies of scale that goes on with some of these counties because they're so small, you can't deal with it. And then you have others where it's more feasible. Bennington, Windham, Rutland sort of thing. And then, you know, then you have the issue of the contractors. They're independent contractors. I can't order them around the same way I order around staff attorneys who, you know, are direct They look at me directly and serve at the will of the defendant general, as they say. I have some influence on the other ones, but we have contracts in place that define the type of work they do. You know, they're impediments structurally. The bottom line is what went on in Chittenden County did work. This has struggled, in my view. They're trying to get at the same problem, I think. You know? It's folks who have not received the kind of services. And it's not just mental health, substance abuse. It can be I see it more broadly, it can be housing, it can be employment, it can be childcare. It can be all of the things that are an impediment to you. Number one, showing up in court. Number, transportation being another one. You know, one of the things in Chittenden County that went on is they this is the business that I contracted with to handle this. You know, they were doing after hours stuff. There's a drop so they could drop in. If, you know, if they were homeless or transient housing or whatever, they had a warm place to be. They could the clients, they could go in and get soup. They could get coffee. They could get snacks. They had a place to go to talk to somebody if they were, you know, doing badly. That was totally outside of anything else. So it was like this safe place, sort of to be. But they were doing this on weekends, they were doing this after hours and the like, for the money that we spent. So I think money very well spent. But it's that kind of thing that connects so that in the interim, while people are trying to find a place to, you know, not be freezing and not hanging out doorways and causing trouble on Church Street, that kind of thing, they have a place to be. So it's not just about compliance with a condition, you know? It's about putting you in a position where you can comply with a condition. It's not some of these folks, literally, if a court had ordered them, and I I said this at the beginning, and why I brought this $50,000 of services to bear was you can have a client who wants to connect with AHS services, and the court orders it. And then they leave the courthouse, and they literally can't figure out a way to get from Cherry Street to Williston to do whatever the screening or wherever it is they have to go. They don't. And these other these folks with the company is Therapeutic Works, would literally pick them up and drive them there. But, you know, it's it's more but it's more than just what they call this warm handoff of of people who need stuff. It is, you know, they did a lot more than that. But it can be as fundamental as that. I can't they can't get there. You know? So, you know, I think the idea of pretrial services has to be looked at differently. It's not about what you order people to do because you just set some people up to fail. It's how we can connect those people with the services. It's and it's not that the court order's wrong. It's not that some of the services aren't there depending on where you are. It's how do you get that person from here to there.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So So if we're looking at the pretrial supervision program Mhmm. Which is what we are looking at, Would you I don't want put words in your mouth, Matt. It worth us? Is it worth our time and resources on the state level to continue with pretrial supervision and or to expand it to other parts of the state if we don't beef up our community partners?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I would go about it differently. Some counties don't have the treatment resources and the like available to them to do the things that might be ordered in pretrial supervision. DOC might not have the resources to do what it needs to do for pretrial supervision. I know they have trouble doing what their fundamental core obligations are, when it comes right down to literally just hiring people. To me, it's the connection of the judicial system with the treatment system, even if the treatment system exists. On some counties, we need more as far as the treatment side. But I think in almost every county, you need to have that connector between what the judge orders and what is available for treatment. And in some places, like with the co occurring disorder issues, we don't have any place in the state that does that. There is no facility here. So, we've done work to get people out of state to New Hampshire that has a couple of different places that handle clients with both the mental health and substance abuse co occurring disorders and other issues. And they have been some of the more hardcore kind of problems. But they've had really good success because of that. Small small numbers. But we don't have anybody, any place that deals with that on a residential basis in the bottom. So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what is in the governor's proposed budgets in the general fund? There's 200,000 to expand this program.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Which program?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Pretrial supervision.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Okay.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And the proposal is to have seven permanent positions, new positions. I believe it's not sure. And we have to weigh in as a committee. Is this something that is that we support? Is it something that we should be investing 200,000 in or not? We're going to

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: have Sounds like a really small amount of money.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, my question is, if we put in 600 and I haven't gotten an answer to this. If we put in 600,000 in FY twenty five to start the program of pretrial supervision.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: 600?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 600,000. Senator Sears got that in the conference. Okay. Appropriations. 600,000. Now, I haven't gotten a definite answer. Was that in the base? Or was that a one time? So if it was in the base

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: That was in corrections budget?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. Okay. It was in corrections. Yes. Yes. Okay, so if it was in the base, it would you'd have another 600,000 in FY twenty Well, if it was in the base, would still it would be there again in FY twenty six. So that's 1,200,000.0. Because you got two years in the base.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Oh, okay.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And then additional 200,000 brings you to

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: It has a business.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I mean, I I have to have

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: a bunch

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: of questions from a budget standpoint. But I But

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: if if it's a one time for 600,000, there's already been some money expended from that, and then they're adding 200,000, what are you adding it to? The 600 or the 1,200,000.0? I can't get an answer for that yet.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, you know, the the number of cases that went through this, this is

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Minimal.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Yeah, I mean, I don't want to ask them questions that I don't know the answer to. That's a lawyer thing.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're trying to figure We

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: didn't spend $600,000 on, like, five people, did we?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. I mean, they've I don't spent

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: some think so.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They've expended some Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I would imagine.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Even And

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I'm not even sure for what.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right. But even if there was half 1,000,000 left in that Mhmm. And then you add another 200,000 to expand it statewide or other parts of the state to hire seven permanent PMP officers.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, how many what kind of numbers are you gonna get?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, that's our question. We don't know. We don't know.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: It's just

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: it's this is like a layer on top of layers of things that already exist, some of which work okay.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we're trying to figure out where do we spend that kind of money. Do we continue spending it on pretrial supervision, tweak the program, or do we just say repeal this program and do something totally different?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I mean, I know that we did hundreds I'm I understood. Somebody told me my action the attorney who I assigned up there Now dockets is not the same as people. But that they dealt with over 600 dockets in basically November, December, January, were moved off of that list in Chittenden County. And clearly, not everybody was connected with services. But a bunch of the cases were dismissed. Others were resolved. Some people were a bunch of people got into treatment. Everybody really agrees that that was successful. And I spent $47,500. I don't know what administration put in to for the court to have the retired judge come and provide more judge time. I don't know what, how much money, if any, was appropriated to deal, or redirected to deal with Zach Waite, who was the prosecutor. Now, was already a prosecutor in Washington County, so don't know if they just kind of took that and reassigned him. And it didn't cost any more money. But we got a lot of bang for the buck up there doing that. There were reasons why we did, I think. You know, Chittenden County was a good place to start and try that. You know, if we'd done it somewhere else, it might not have been as effective, but it was quite effective. So I'm just wondering, you know, cost effectiveness. But I don't know what the plan is.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's we're trying

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: to do. That's the thing. You know, if the governor's recommended budget has this money and there's a plan that I'm not aware of, then I just I you know, I I'm not commenting on what I don't know about.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what I'm aware of, what's in the general fund budget, is 200,000 for seven permanent PMP officers. And what we heard from Jay Johnson was to expand the pretrial supervision program throughout the state. So my question is, do we

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: But it's not too but it's 200 on top of something else.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm trying to

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: figure what something else is.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But is it better off to expend that money and do replicating the court accountability? Because if you looked at that, you only have one person on pretrial supervision. Is it worth it to invest this kind of money in a pretrial supervision program? Where if you invested it in beefing up your community providers to help that wraparound service and make a connection with the judiciary, Is that a better place to spend the money? What's gonna be more than 200,000?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: If I understood the plan about pretrial supervision better, like, what it you know, maybe this like I said, this is something that, on its face, it looks like it'd be much better to do something like we did in Chittenden County, and DOC was at the table during that stuff, and they did a good job. AHS was available. We had people connecting people. It seemed to work. What the pilot project did didn't do very much. I don't know what you learned from it, aside from what I kind of thought might have happened, is that constitutionally, we weed out a whole bunch of people pretrial so that the program almost inherently wouldn't have very many people in it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's what I'm still in the warehouse. Kevin?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Is the accountability course still working now at this point, or did that stop because we ran out of funds?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I don't know if it was funds.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Three months.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: It was, yeah, it was three months. And so the idea was to get at

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: these And

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: as it existed, it doesn't exist anymore. What they are, I believe, trying to do is designate one day, it's like one day a month to deal with kind of what's left. And I don't know what's gonna happen with that. The TWI, who I have under contract, I had their contract extended a month after the court stopped to kind of see the people through what was ordered in the prior month. But they're gonna be off contract with me also at the February. So their contract runs through the February.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So once again, I can't put words in your mouth. But what I'm hearing you say is if we could extend that accountability court for a period of time, it's been successful. It might continue to be successful.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I think that in in some count many probably many counties, it would be beneficial. I know that it did something useful in Chittenden County. I can only see what I can see. Like, were hundreds of dockets resolved. That seemed to do something, seemed to work, and connect people with services. And it actually resolved the cases. It wasn't just pretrial. So it's not, while we are lingering until our case resolves, it is, it helped resolve cases. Because the whole point of it was, you know, to get these Once the people got into the services, good things started to happen, and the criminal justice system became much less important than the kind of treatment side of things.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: So,

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I saw the benefits of that. I've heard the same things about pretrial services that, know, there wasn't much to say because there wasn't much going on.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's what we're trying to figure out. Do we continue this free trial supervision program? We redesign it, or do we say the money should go into providing more beefing up of services in the community? Brian?

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: I was just flipping back your notes. It was about a month ago that we were talking about this before. At the time, I think it was the case that there were four dozen people who had gone through the Chittenden accountability docket, whatever we're calling it. And that represented about 400 cases. And I think testimony at the time was that was about a third of those who were eligible to go through this kind

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: of thing.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: The question is how many remain.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Then we had another month since then, and then it shut down. So, And like, that makes sense when they were telling me it's over 600 Yeah. Dockets were resolved. Then there are gonna be more that are not dealt with in that way. But that makes sense.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: But to Kevin's point, I mean, you know, where do you put the resources? I don't know how many more people, if you keep putting resources into Chittenden, say, are gonna be good for this kind of a program.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Yeah. The only thing I can say is, and I said this, thank God things have changed a little bit since the first quarter. '6 for us, Chittenden County saw a massive increase in caseload. Like, unbelievable. And I was like, If this continues, gonna have to double the number of lawyers we have, they don't exist. So whole other issue. The second quarter, however, in public defense, it dropped precipitously. And we are, when you compare the first half of last year to the first half of this year, were about flat. So that massive spike that occurred the '6 did not continue in the second, thank God.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: But the people who were in that first quarter never are not in the backlog yet. Haven't dragged out, you know, they haven't done the six months, one year kind of thing that gives rise to all these violations. So down the road, I think you're gonna have plenty of opportunity to deal with these people

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: in

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: the next six to eighteen months. We just haven't got there yet because it's too new. And I think you know this, because I've talked about this many times here, but I'm kind of a math guy in some ways. Long ago, I developed this algorithm to do predictions on caseloads. Like, the first quarter of this year, like, every But it just blew the algorithm out of the water. It was like nothing was matching anything. The only thing I can say is that the second quarter, now it all seems to work again. So I was like, Boy, I hope this is a blip. And it seemed to be, but that doesn't mean that that spike is not gonna carry itself through the system, and then you're gonna have some of those issues down the road. I know that my lawyers were feeling the problem seriously during that timeframe. You know? So bottom line is, is it worth continuing in Chittenden County? It probably is. Accountability for it. Accountability for Not the Yeah. That I know about. You know? I think there's With the data that I'm aware of regarding pretrial services, I wouldn't spend another dime on it. However, it might not be fair to evaluate it based on such a small sample size. And I just don't know what the overall plan is. I think that the constitutionality thing kind of whittles your potential population that would be good for pretrial services, and how you have to deal with people before they're ever convicted of anything.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's the issue.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's the issue. I

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: mean, I chased off

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: your Well, she had to go it too, so it didn't matter.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: This is very helpful.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: No. I walked back in at the right time. I had a phone call. Sorry. But that my question was going to be is whether or not you felt personally it was worth continuing this program or what the likelihood of update is because everybody I've talked to doesn't seem like it's got a lot of potential for many of the reasons you listed before I left the program.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: So I I you know, the only thing I can say that I I will say, if it's working to open keeping an open mind on it is, I don't know if the sample size is big enough to for me to comment. Number one, from what I've seen, there was not much to see. And so there are plans out there that I've not been consulted about. So if there is a plan, you know, I'd be interested.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, you know, it's an additional 200,000 to something and seven permanent PMP folks. And the

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: administration And I'm sure they should use that anyway.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And what the administration said was this trial supervision.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I mean, one of the things I saw on the bill was that they wanted to have a caseload of 20 per person, right?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: For pretrial.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: For pretrial.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: would be what did they How many were supposed to be? Seven? Seven. I don't know if you'd get 140 people statewide on the page. You know, you might get 40. I don't know. I don't know the answer.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think we know the answer either, and that's what we're trying

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: to do. But I do like, I know where this came from. You know, I Senator know Sears was looking at.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Repeat it. People just circle

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, but the idea was that the federal system he saw there was a thing that they did in Illinois. That was one thing. Of course, I told them at the time their constitution's totally different, which it is on ours is different on bail, at least, for some historical reasons that I'm not gonna go into. And then they looked at what the federal system has done. And then there are other models where probation and parole is not part of the Department of Corrections. It's actually, like in Massachusetts, it's the court. Is enforcing its own orders with probation and for the Department of Probation. That's where I started many years ago, four years ago. And so they're like different models. So we're kind of mixing concepts with the idea that if we could kinda help people get through these things, it'd be better that It just doesn't seem to fit our constitutional structure. So, anyway

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, we don't know what we're gonna be doing at

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: this time. Well, let me know when you do.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. You'll know. Don't want you, girl. I'll have you back. Don't worry. Have you back.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: And if, you know, if anybody does if there is some plan out there, I'd I would be happy to look at it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We'd have to be happy to look at it too.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah. Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Except for 200,000.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Very helpful. Without Very, very helpful. I have any

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: structure of my paperwork. Anything else for Matt.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: And it's a tough issue.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I appreciate the fact that people are making an effort at it. Come to a different time, I think, in the criminal justice system than we've been in the past, dealing with different issues, with different kinds of people, different problems. So we're all struggling a little bit at how to get at it. Chittenden kind of thing did seem to seem to work.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It wasn't. Matt, you and I have been around for quite a while. This was no different than council of state governments, justice reinvestment law. Right. It was no different.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: We don't even

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: put the resources in the courtroom to help the person get hooked up with those services.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Yeah. Right. I mean, we were taken as somebody who has cancer, you focus your treatment on the place where it is, and you're gonna make some progress, probably. Not with everybody, but probably. That's happened. That was there's nothing I have nothing bad to say about that. Some of my contractors might feel otherwise just because they get they got pulled.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They got pulled because you didn't have enough staff.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, in in the contract, staff people are a different issue. The staff attorneys, I can tell them what to do. The contractors, they, by definition, have to be independent contractors because there's a conflict with the staff system. They also have multiple contracts, so they handle different counties. So they can't be available at the whim of the court saying, hey, your client got picked up. Show up. And, you know, your office is in Mhmm. Saint Johnsbury, which one of my conflict contractors in Chittenden County is, can't do it. Similar with the other ones, but they happen to have their offices in Chittenden County, but they also handle contracts in Addison and Orleans and Moyle and other places. So they're a little bit different, but we had enough cases in the staff system alone so that we could focus resources and make it work. You know, I don't wanna make it sound like, oh, everything's perfect with that. Well, it wasn't perfect, but we made a lot of progress. And, you know, if ultimately we get you know, if we reduce the recidivism rate of the people who went through by connecting them with services, where half of them succeed. Massive, that's massive success where half succeed. And then maybe we do better the next time for the other 50. I don't know. Alright. Well, thank you for the time.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Thank you,

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Matt. Thank you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We really appreciate it. We'll call on you again to know where we're headed to take off. I think I'm gonna ask DOC to come to the table. I don't know who from DOC will be coming up. We've kind of Gary, you've kind of heard the gist of this. And as she gets settled, I'm gonna ask Hailey a question.

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: Do you know anything about your money that

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: because it goes to DOC's budget. Yeah. Do you know anything about that 600,000? Was it there just for FY twenty five? Or was there also 600,000 in FY twenty six? I don't know if it was.

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: So, are two options here. I have been looking at this for the last couple of minutes. I can take my best guess or

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But don't hold you to it.

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: Yeah. Or we could address it again tomorrow morning during budget testimony. So I'm gonna let you make that decision. I

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But you give us your best guess, and then that lays the foundation tomorrow. But it won't be We wanna hold you to it. But it won't be the same information possibly. Well, Haley may not have all info all access to all the information. So the question is, folks, is so you can follow it through. FY '25, it was 600,000 put in for pretrial supervision to begin the program, to roll it out slowly and see what the results were before there was money put in. The question is, did that 600,000, was that there just for FY '25 budget? Or was it put in DOC's base budget, which then would be another 600,000 in FY '26, knowing there was a little bit expended of the original 600,000 in FY '25?

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: To the best of my understanding. So in FY '25, Senate appropriations added the 660,000 as in line with the legislation that was passed to establish pretrial, starting with the pilot. I believe that that was added as one time funding. And then in FY26, the governor included $650,000 in his recommended budget as base funding so that those positions can continue to be funded every year.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And did that pass through? Yes. So there would be a potential of 1,250,000.00 of which some of that has been expended. Yes. Which then for the FY twenty seven budget with the appropriation, what the governor's proposing is 200,000 on top of what's left of that 1,260,000.00.

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: To carry it through statewide, which of that 1,200,000.0, whatever may be left, would be also higher running the program, but also hiring seven permanent positions within P and P. That's your understanding at this point. Tomorrow that could be different.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: We're gonna hold you to that for this time?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, we're not gonna hold our team.

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: But ideally, yeah, there would be one free trial supervision officer in each of our 12 district offices.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Folks clear

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: on this?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Clear as mud, Brian?

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: No. And I know we don't have all the answers, but We got

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the OC sitting there that might help to.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: And I know they're not official and firm and all that stuff. So I think you said FY twenty five six six zero one time?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: And you said FY twenty six six five zero base?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: And now we're adding 200, and we don't know if it's base for one time?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, no. That's six I'm just So it's more confusing now because they initially put in 660,000 to start the pilot.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: In 'twenty 5.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In 'twenty five. In 'twenty six, so that $6.60 is eventually gonna go away because But it was only there it's eventually gonna go away. In FY 'twenty six, there was an additional six, right? $606.50 put in. So you're at 1.3. Right? 1,300,000.0. Some of that's been expended.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: The second go around the FY '26, the $6.05 0 is based, right? So it's gonna be again and again and again?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In '26, yes. Yeah. So there'll be a one time bump of 200 what's being proposed is 200,000 in FY twenty eight. Yeah. It will be added to that 660 and the $6.50. But we know some of the $6,660 has gone down because we've been doing.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Yep.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for one year, we'll have a bump of 200,000 on top of about 1,300,000. In f y twenty nine, that first 660,000 may be totally gone.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Yep.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So then you're at 800,000.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Great.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: The 200 is gonna be ongoing.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think that's in the base. It's got to be if you're going to hire seven permanent employees. Better be

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: in the base.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: That's great question too.

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: I believe that that is accurate.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So then you're going to end up with about an 800,900 thousand dollars probe.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Yes.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I don't understand how you can have seven FTEs, $200,000

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: That was my next one.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's $2,300,000 Right.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: And that's what it really is.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: So this 200 is not for adding

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: seven people. But the logic is

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that's what is explained in the budget. That's how it's explained in the budget. We had Jay Johnson in it.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: I remember, but then they gotta be fractional or something.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: How much will we pay them?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, let's go to DOC. Let's go to DOC. They may help us. Gary, help us. Help us.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Help us.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Both of you, help us.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Hi, Gary Marble, deputy director of field service division of the Department of Corrections.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: I'm Maria Godlessby. I'm the assistant district manager at Burlington Probation Parole and was attached along with PO Nate Hudak to the accountability court.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I provide a little clarity. It's gonna be somewhat limited because I'm not the budget guy, but I ain't sure.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Original- It's more limited than what we've already heard.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Our original understanding was that the rollout was gonna go statewide and that we need the funding to be able to hire those positions. And that's what we're gonna do. And then we kind of got derailed by a few things. One is that we had severely low turnout. We had about 15 referrals in Newport. We ended up putting eight people on pretrial in Newport. Then we decided to roll it out as part of the accountability court. The defendant general's point, I think one of the things that happened was that a lot of the things, the wraparound case management that would happen as a result of pretrial was sort of subverted in a good way by the accountability court because they're sort of competing support resources in a way. In other words, we were doing the same thing that we would be doing on pretrial through the accountability court. So I think it kind of worked what the potential utility of it is. And then the last piece I brought up last time I was here was that I don't think we've necessarily figured out how to incentivize it. I'm sure that all parties are interested. I've looked at the most recent draft. I see, you know, we've There's some proposals to change the referral process so that we're able to do referrals. We're in support of that. We are in support of a lower caseload. Obviously, if you're looking at a caseload cap 20, that completely changes the supervision model. It would have to, because there's no justification for having such a I mean, we are really taking into account that it might be a lot of people initially because it was all the I think when we looked at the original numbers, it was in the hundreds and hundreds that would potentially meet the criteria around the state. I think it's up to a thousand maybe that could have met the criteria at the one condition violation or five dockets pending. So we were kind of anticipating an onslaught if we were to do a full rollout around the state like we originally planned. So I think the model would have to change dramatically if we were to execute it differently. If we were do it in different parts of the state, if we were to do it in the fashion that we'd have only 20 cases per caseload, I think you'd be looking at more sort of like the fact model that was brought up by CSG That would probably make more sense, which we're also doing in Burlington. That's a wraparound case management service where we're providing a lot of support, meeting people regularly. That just would make more sense. I'm trying to think like right now, it looks like if you got rid of the that was one of the proposed that you got rid of the violation of condition release requirement and the five docket requirement. And that's the proposed draft. At that point, it looks like the criteria would essentially be who we recommend. Right now, our recommendations based on four factors in Maria filming and surveillance. You need a Vermont residents because you need to be able to be supervised. You need to be able to participate in the telephone program because again, we're relying on potential for telephone reporting. You need to have no holds, nothing that would make you incarcerated without how you participate in pretrial if you're in the facility. And then the last one is you can't already be on police supervision because that'd be redundant. Like if you're already on probation, there's no reason to be on control as well. So that's it. I mean, like other than that, we can look at anybody that is in the system that is potentially into that the court or anyone else is interested in having us look at as a potential for being on pretrial. I think the violation process, being able to file directly with the court, it would certainly speed up things in terms of the response time. We only had one person on Burlington, so I've had to kind of rely on reports telling me that that was kind of a clunky process. And there was also some issues with, you had dual paths when someone would be violated on their conditions of release by law enforcement. And at the same time, we would be filing a violation with the state's attorney's office because there was nothing telling law enforcement they were on pretrial. So they had to figure that out. So that was one of the things that we'd want, is to make sure that those conditions would be, that pretrial would be one of their conditions of supervision or conditions of release so that the law enforcement would be able to see that that's part of their experience. That's all I got. Mean, there any other things?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, what raised concern with me was the 20 caseload, 20 folks in caseload. Since statute, we already have some caseload ratio requirements. So that would have to be looked at as well, because that would throw that totally out of whack, depending on the risks of these folks, because your caseload ratio right now for your officers, if it's a high risk person, your caseload is going be less. Right. Low risk person, your caseload is going to be higher.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: So it's 45 for risk management, which are people that are just not on telephone. If they're not on telephone supervision, they're not low risk. They're going risk management. And the risk varies between in that population pretty dramatically. If it's somebody who had a youthful offender, caseloads 25 is the cap. And again, I think the thinking of CSG kind of going off their presentation is that these are people that are inherently in a more unstable situation. They're not adjudicated yet. They don't know what their legal status is gonna be. So the thought is that they're gonna have high needs. Again, that's also the idea is that you'd be identifying people with high needs and are inherently unstable that need that wraparound support.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Let me ask this question while I see my brain. Would DOC be the appropriate place to have as a hub to hook the folks up with the community partners to make sure they're attending their programming or can get to where they need to go? Is DOC really the adequate place for that hub to occur?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I think to answer that, if the question is, could we do that for all people pending something and have a document at the court? No, I don't think we'd have the capacity. I think that would be way too many people no matter how you funded us. If you were to make that criteria a little bit more stringent, depending on how stringent, we could have a role because that's essentially what pretrial is. That's what pretrial subdivisions tend to be, is that we're connecting those folks. The model that we use and the level of service that we provide is gonna be dictated by the resources. The amount of resources we get is going to determine the number of positions we have. And then we put those based on the need, based on where we're going to most bang for our buck, I imagine.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: I think what worries me is adding positions in a staffing crisis and corrections. So I was wondering if you could talk about how's recruitment going generally in probation parole? And are those roles usually filled by people who would be in the facilities because we could be shifting one problem to another?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah, it's complicated landscape. It's certainly, just to be very clear, it's not the same issue we have with the facilities. That's a much more challenging hiring situation. And it's always been that way. It's just gotten worse. And nationwide, it's gotten worse. I don't think we really have too much of a hiring problem on the field side. It's certainly not as robust as it was when I started. And we get like 60 applicants for one decomposition. But I Maria would know better than I do because she does hiring in Burlington, but they're still getting applicants. I've never heard of anybody not getting any. So I don't think we have an inability to hire.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: But are they coming from facilities? Because I don't wanna be creating more vacancies in the facilities. Of

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: them do. Typically the CCO position is the most common that comes directly from the facilities. Sometimes you get something coming from facilities as a caseworker to be a PO. It's fairly rare that you go from being a CO to a PO, although it does happen. At least nowadays, it seems like we generally want someone with more case management experience before you make that leap. So I don't think it would be quite the flow directly from the facility as you might hear.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Thanks.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Questions, folks?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I don't know what direction to go. I really don't. So, the governor's proposal, 200,000 additional to the program, with the intent to hire seven permanent PNP. How would that be spread out across the state to because the goal is to expand the pretrial supervision with those employees with what you already have. So how would that play out?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: We have to figure that out. We don't know yet. We have not to determine when the next site would be because a lot of it depends on whether or the statute changes, the criteria changes, how much funding we get. But I would tell you that it would make sense to me that we would look at what the package is and then we'd figure out from there where gonna be most effective. So I would imagine, you know, wanna also say that I think in some ways we haven't even really started pretrial yet because you have, you know, one area to the federal general's point where there's just not that many people general. Then you have one place where you had a completely different system running parallel to it that, like I said, it was kind of doing the same thing. It would look very different in Rutland or St. Helens or United, and the needs would be different and the population would be different. And I imagine the court's discretion on who should be on it would be different. You might just get a very different landscape depending on where you go.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's not up to the court to say you're going, According to the Defender General, it's up to the defendant. It's a voluntary purpose. It's voluntary. Because they haven't been found guilty. That's what we have to remember. They have not been found guilty. So we're asking folks to be supervised in the community, and they have not been found guilty. They're still innocent.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: I will say in our office, the pretrial person was basically assigned to accountability court and they were assessing the people for pretrial to determine whether they were going to be appropriate. And even though we only had one, there were six assessments that happened and lots of other conversations with the defense attorney, with the treatment provider to say, Hey, this is what this would look like. So we used the position for pretrial purposes, even though they weren't having a full pretrial caseload, And they were the liaison for the housing and the treatment and all of that and appeared at the weekly puddles. And the other day, the PO heard of a referral related to getting housing. He went right down and met with the person in Chittenden in the booking cell to say, is this something you're willing to do? Should we move this forward for you? So it was still being used at our office, even though we didn't have a caseload full of pretrial individuals. Is that an appropriate use of corrections staff?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I mean, I would say it was the intent of the pretrial program. It was just being done by a different method. It seems to me like that worked well for that particular period while accountability goes operation. I think we wouldn't want to put somebody isn't the pretrial officer in charge of that because it's essentially an analogous position doing the same thing.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: I'm going to kick

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: over to Matt

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: because I think it was absolutely essential. I think it was absolutely not appropriate. I don't know. It was absolutely essential for what happened in Chittenden County to work, that DOC'd be there doing that. That was the beginning part. The next part was the connecting with our social worker to get them to where the house was. If DOC was not at the table doing that, that would not have worked.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And why is that? Because that person's not under DOC. And how would DOC have that information that that defendant? So part of accountability court, we had

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: a weekly Burlington care team meeting, and the defense was there, Department of Corrections, AHS staff, Howard Center providers, and we'd meet, and there was a universal release. And if the defendant chose to sign the release, then we could speak freely about that individual, not just public record criminal acts, about all of the things, mental health, medical, substance use disorder, and we could make a plan that seemed the right fit for that person, not over supervising. Some of these people, though they've racked up charges, are low risk. The one person we have on pretrial actually scores low risk on our risk assessment. Yeah, accountability court, I think, was it is continuing in Chittenden County so people could know. Even though Zach Waits' last day was last Friday, we're sort of in this break because there's some trials going on in the courtrooms. But we continued, as of right now, Friday is one day a week with Judge Catums. So there will be a continuation of accountability for it. And while they were able to get rid of quite a bit of backlog, antiquated dockets, and sort things out with people with competency issues or who should be discharged because they're never going to be able to or charges be dismissed. There's still more to be done. There are still people with old dockets. Even looking at the court calendar today, there were people with dockets from 'twenty two, 'twenty three, 'twenty four, a lot more '25s than there were before on the regular docket. But certainly, there is still backlog of things that are not murder or sex offenses or something that would require a lot more intensive labor on behalf of the two attorneys. So we're working in total.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm just gonna round this around 5 1,400,000.0. Because if you add on the 200,000, would it be better to redirect that 1,400,000.0 from it's all in DOC's budget. But would it be better to redirect that money to really expand the accountability court model versus putting it into a pretrial supervision?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I think there's a lot of different ways to skin the cat. I think you could

[Tracy Houck (Director, Turning Point Center of Rutland)]: be careful with that term. Pro animal, son. Not literally.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: But I think there's lots of different ways you could go about it. But it's really what we're talking about is comprehensive case management of the forensic population. And our staff are nimble around that. I would say we're the best in the state because that's what we do. We have to be nimble based on how long somebody's gonna be on supervision. It's driven by the conditions of supervision and the time frame. So like if somebody's on for a twenty six week DVAP, we have to get that done before the probation order runs out. If we have an accountability court that wants us resolved in two months, we'll get it resolved in two months. And if we have to coordinate services into that timeline, we will. So the question is like, will we have the staff to do it? And that really just comes down to.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So one

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: of the provisions in here is preshow supervisor and supervision officer shall notify the prosecutor that use reasonable efforts, blah, blah, blah, conditions of violations of conduct court imposed program conditions, right? So to notify the prosecutor. And we had a conversation the other day where some people advocated for it to be or the court. So as you guys have to deal with this, know, currently, I guess for however many people you have in the program, one, two, whatever, have to notify the prosecutor, Would it be confusing to have, how would you get all of your staff to report to the same entity? So if some aren't reporting to the prosecutor, if this bill went through the way it is, some reporting to the court, some reporting to the prosecutor and hoping for the best that they thought.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: If you did hit by policy.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: You would make We'd

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: have to have a policy right now. If try to get the criteria, the statutory language change, we'd to change it. So we would just dictate it by policy and match that with all policy.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: The reason I like, I mean, I'm personal. It's going to be both. It should be and. So it's not like, but if you guys are going to take, you can commit to taking care of it in policy because it just doesn't make any sense for me to have people reporting, half of your people reporting to the prosecutor and half reporting to the court would be a

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This is a policy decision because there's two versions out there. Council of state governments has recommended the DOC, right now, you report to the prosecutor violation conditions up to the prosecutor to bring

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: it to the court.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So right now you could get a different prosecutor in different counties recommending different things. Council of state governments wants DOC to be able to go right to the court. There's not an or, they go right to the court. The administration has proposed that DOC could have that flexibility of going either to the prosecution or to the court. But we haven't decided, we're working on pretrial supervision. We haven't decided which one.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And I get that. I just wanna know how they would handle it if it was left to be gray.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I mean, it it almost be more work to not notify both parties.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: I would just say copy one.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah, because we would just do it anonymously.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I mean, you answered the way

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: I wanted you to answer, is that you take care of it in some kind of way that you wouldn't let this gray stand.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: Regular violations and conditions release of a person on probation, we are notified in the state's attorney's office, and then they are choosing to prosecute because it's a new charge. Just like a police officer saying, here's a charge. They're deciding whether it meets the threshold, whether the affidavit needs to be bolstered. So certainly, the prosecutor needs to be involved. But we want prompt response. If this program is so short or intensive, we would want prompt response. And so including the court would make sense to me. Yeah.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Or more directly to the court to begin with.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Right. That seems to me like the most sensible way to go about it because that's typically how we operate.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Mean, it's just my question. I said, I just wanna make sure that somewhere along the line, it could be completely different language, but then I'm against you. I just wanted to hear you guys say that if it was an either or situation that you'd handle it so that your people were all doing the same thing regardless of what that is.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah, no, all that would absolutely has been historically and would be continued to be dictated by policy. We'd have a directive that's the process would be laid out there.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Kevin and then mayor.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: You know what? Mine was an editorial comment. So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: how would we ensure that? Not that you're going anywhere, but when you leave, the next folks follow your process.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Well, the directive there'd be no incentive to change the directive that I can think of unless the statute changed. I can also tell you, we're in no hurry to change more directives than we need to. We have quite a few that we've been trying to get caught up on.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So you'd like to settle in?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Yeah. It's a lot of work to rewrite a directive. Takes a lot of back and forth. So we don't do it arbitrarily. It's really only when it emerges.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I have the big question before the committee.

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: And we're going to

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just don't know how to approach this, because we have recommended language changes to program pretrial supervision. We've got recommended language from the council state governments. We have some from the administration. Some of that's the same and some is quite a bit different. Now we have a layer of discussion that we need to figure out. Do we continue even with this program?

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: I

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: do have a question now.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: My understanding is the accountability court was basically a governor

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It came about

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: executive

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, it came about because there was real concern about public safety in Burlington. Right. I had a conversation with the governor and the administration, and the administration put this together back in October. I think it was October.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: With the mayor.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: With the mayor of Burlington to really help public safety issues. So this was just kind of a little

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Right, pump in the arm.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Pump in the arm that just kind of happened for three months. And what is happening is it seems, which is no surprise, because you have the partners working together and you have the community providers coming to the table. So now it's gone away because it was only for three months because state's attorneys had to pull a state attorney from a county. The defense counsel had to juggle within their world to find a defense defend a defense attorney available. The court brought in a retired judge specifically to work through those dockets.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: It's reduced, but not going away. It's going from five days a week to one day. Day.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But there's resources being put in there.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So, you went from an adrenaline rush for three months. Now, you're only doing it one day a week. I remember the adrenaline comment last time you were in, you can only work on adrenaline so long. My question is, is since the governor had this sounds like a good idea, initiated it with funding. We see some success but he now putting, he's recommending we put money in the pre trial supervision instead. I'm wondering why he didn't continue the accountability course other than the pretrial He

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: sees pretrial supervision program as part of the accountability court. Because that got moved from Essex Orleans when the accountability court started, they moved the pretrial supervision from Essex Orleans County to Chittenden County for the accountability court.

[Hailey (DOC budget/finance staff)]: I would also add that pretrial is a program that the legislature created mandated for DOC to expand statewide.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Right. But because the governor took the initiative of setting up the accountability court, he thought it was a good idea. It sounds like it was a good idea. Why he didn't say, Well, let's continue the good idea, even though the legislature hasn't come on board That's the question I would ask the governor, why are you riding two horses when you have a successful one here?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I think long term, they attack slightly different situations because the accountability court was meant to be like a temporary attack to get get through those cases that have built up. My my structurally, it seems to me that pretrial would help to prevent that buildup because the idea if you're looking at the purpose as it's currently stated, it's to get people to court and reduce the number of violations. Not getting to court and having violations is part of the problem, right? That created the need for the accountability court. So it seems to me like you could have that as sort of a long term intervention there that would help to keep that from getting built up again.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Good for spending.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: No, no, no.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. Brian?

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Well, are few things, but I guess I'll stick to one, which is I think early on in your testimony, Barry, you talked about perhaps there's a need to incentivize the use of the program. And I was wondering what that might look like.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I really don't feel comfortable speaking to what would incentivize the state's attorney or the court of the defense. But it clearly is not currently desirable.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: You know?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: So you'd get more referrals. You'd get there'd be more people being referred and more people being put on. So I think there's, you know, things I could do to make it more favorable for the the defendant. I think the defender general would probably be the entity that could speed to that best. I don't know. But yeah, I was mentioning last time that we've had that kind of issue with a lot of these pre adjudicated statuses in that, it's a small population sometimes because of the criteria. Yes. And B, there really isn't a particular it's getting scratched. It's sort of like it's it's an idea. And the idea is to help ameliorate a particular problem that we have, but it might not be the problem of the people who would need to be on board. Yeah. That makes sense. It does. Yeah. Good.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm more confused when we are. I just don't know how to go forward. I think it might be worth a conversation with all of you folks who were before the House Judiciary Committee talking about the accountability court. And I think there is broad support. Think people support. The concept of the accountability court all agree that it was successful. The question is, what are the next steps, if any? I think it's a conversation I need to have with the house judiciary committee to see what their focus is. I just don't know where to go. I don't know where to go. I don't know whether to tweak pretrials, keep the pretrial supervision program and tweak it, or keep the pretrial supervision program and redesign it completely, or scrap that whole program and put the money elsewhere towards an accountability court that would be the DOC portion of it. But there's a lot of other costs in there that the 1.2 may not cover.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I mean, I I can certainly tell you that with the proposed changes, if they were put into effect, we would refer a lot of people because we have a lot of people to refer.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Break up that log jam.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: We would certainly provide, level of case management, provide with the access we have, and we would do our best to get them to court and help them to not violate. So we would do what was intended. How effective that's going be and how favorable it's going to be on their entities in the system, I don't know.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: How long would you know how effective that would be? A couple of years having it rolled?

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: When they resolve, really. I mean, if they resolve their I mean, like, so if you're looking at the assessment tool that we're using, the ORAS pretrial, I think a high risk individual, it sort of assesses two things, which is their likelihood of making it to court, like convicting the charge. And in the high risk, it's like 58%, the breakdown, roughly, which is pretty sizable. So if those things don't happen by the time they're adjudicated, that to me would be a true trial success. They don't pick up a new charge and they get the charge they had adjudicated, resolved, or done.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you'd have some outcome and some measures to get there, the outcome. Well, we're gonna have more work on this. Matt?

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Why don't I

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: add something? Sure. The question came up, why do people choose it? Why are defendants choosing that accountability court model versus pretrial supervision? Pretrial supervision is signing up to be supervised for something to be violated for, the the other resolves your case. Right. Mhmm. And that's the difference. They wanna resolve People signing up to be violated.

[Kim McManus (Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs)]: Yeah.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Even even if they go in with the best intentions. When they do the things in accountability court, the case might be dismissed. Might end up, whatever they were looking at before, their sentence might be a lot less. They're gonna get the services they need and most importantly, case is done. Nothing is done with pretrial supervision. So the closure of it is like an important incentive to do one versus the other. And so there might be things you could do to incentivize pretrial supervision, but I do see that as being the ones for the very high risk, high need cutting people as opposed to what was originally designed for the so called accountability court. And I think that was one of the biggest differences. Like my case is now over.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that goes back to the testimony from the state's attorney's office. We have to determine who is the pretrial supervision for, the high risk folks or the lower risk folks, because that will determine. And what Matt you were just saying is those folks that have a really high risk.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, I'm using this at work. General. Okay. I'll sort of start as opposed to high risk under the risk assessment tool.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: They could have high needs as

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: well. Right.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: Right. Which cause would not be able to make it to court.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Right. Maybe You know, they're not huge dangers to the public, but they can't find any way the court out

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: there.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: But that would be the accountability court that could take care of that.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, it's both. The thing about the accountability court, like

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I said, it's the closure.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: The only other thing I wanted to add was this new reports, you reported the state's attorney report to the court, or you the court doesn't do anything because the court can't do anything on

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the state's attorney.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: It has to go to the state's attorney. If if I just reported something to court, court has no prosecutorial authority at all. They can't do anything. It's just like, oh, that's good to know.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So they'd reach out to the prosecution.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Well, it's a weird way to do it when the probation was not under the court. See, that's where other jurisdictions and maybe council state government was coming from, is where they had it attached. That's a whole different ballgame than the way we do

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: it. That's learned a lot just in that sentence.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Brian? This

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: just goes back to the resource issue. But I think part of the reason the accountability court wasn't extended further is because it did cost money. It was just hidden. I remember you talking about quit money last time from people who exited your office and you had something around $50 to pay for the services that were provided. There's a courtroom that we're taking up that you cannot have in other counties because it doesn't exist. They don't have a 3B. I don't think so.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: I think another difference is the accountability court in my mind is everything's working in parallel as opposed to the normal system. Everything's in series. In the industry, we used to, when we got into a problem, we were getting way behind schedule. We had real problems. You get a tighter team together. You get all the responsible individuals in one room. You figure it out. You got it done. Instead of everybody making telephone calls, setting up meetings, you just got together and fixed it. And you do that forever, but to get backlog down, to get through the real problem, accountability court did that.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: And

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: we can guess that pretty well with the assessment we have, with the probability. We could tell you moderate to high risk of not showing up to court if they have to get charged luckily, that's who was the bill.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Yes, sir. So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: we'll figure out what we're doing as a committee. While you're here, I'm gonna throw a question. It's not on anyone's radar, but it's percolating out. Right now for folks around probation, this midpoint review. Governor's recommend is to do away with it. The reason that that was put in was there were folks who were on probation for twenty or thirty years, and nobody knew it. But there was no end point sometimes for when people were on probation. So this was put in a long time ago, seven years ago. It was Justice Reinvestment II. That when a person's on probation, there would be a midpoint review. So say the person was on probation for six years. At three years, there would be a midpoint review that would review how the person was doing on probation. If they were complying with all the requirements and all the conditions, that probation could be terminated, could be changed. If they weren't complying, the probation would continue or something else higher up would occur. That's how it plays out, correct? In a simple terms

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: A little yeah.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: So I was a probation officer 2003 to 02/2010. Everybody was until further order of court, until S. 156, where they said, We have this belief that probation is keeping everybody on supervision unnecessarily. And we had to respond to whether the person was in violation, non warrant status, or had things to do, and that terms of probation were imposed before the midpoint. And then they were supposed to be still just like with until further order of court. Did you complete your conditions? I submit for your discharge. Are you in violation? I read a warrant. Then the midpoint was imposed, which really, in some way, tied our hands to submitting these, whether we agreed or disagreed with the person being done with supervision. If statutorily they met these oddly worded conditions, we're trying to assess like they met it. For example, up until six months ago, I supervised the sex offender team. And so we're submitting discharges saying they've met this. We're not saying we recommend they be discharged. We're only saying they met the statutory requirements. So term of probation, when it was originally imposed, my understanding was it was to keep corrections from keeping people on. But then they added another layer of the midpoint so that we have to, halfway through, assess and submit a report. But POs could use discretion, in my opinion, to say the person has completed their to do list and has been crime free and reporting as directed for a period of time. Here's discharge.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And that would to make that decision.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: But we would submit saying it's on x y z like we used to do. I mean, reference to JRI point the first version, right? That it is. There's things that we could just go back to. That's my personal. Sorry.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I think we can only submit midpoint if they have a term.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: Yes. Yes.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Until further over the courts, there's still a problem if they're out there. But I don't think there's very many left. No. It's pretty much just sexual assaults. Part of the reason for that, by the way, is we can't recommend them for discharge because of that, yeah, Act one, yeah, from 2009. So that's the only individuals we can't recommend for discharge.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The other thing, make a recommendation to the court, but it's the court that will then determine how that probation term is carried out. Yep.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: And it's very inconsistent, at least what we've seen as to the judge's response. So it's more inconsistent on the court side than it is on POC's side. I think we're we're doing what we're statutorily required to do.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: You're gonna get you're gonna get variation from court to court. I think part of the problem is that, you know, the and this is I'm kinda following some feedback we've gotten is that, you know, victims assume that people are gonna be on term, a certain term. The state's attorney probably sentenced them with an idea that they'd be on for a certain term or that was part of what they did. And then that kind of also arbitrarily gets disrupted. So like one of the problems that we've had with midpoint is you have somebody who say, they're not making a lot of progress in treatment, but we still have to submit them for midpoint if they don't have certain limit to that tree. So like DVAP, it doesn't matter because you have to keep the twenty six weeks. If you're on for a sex offense and you're two years in, you might not be ready, but we might have to still say they meet the statutory criteria. So we're kind of arbitrarily recommending a discharge when they really have. So does

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the statute need to be tweeted instead of totally repealed?

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Our midpoint?

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: The courts are using it as a term of probation. Like, you will be on for this amount of time, instead of here's the term that you'll be on for no longer than, and DOC will submit a discharge some earlier point. The courts are seeing it as this is how long we told everybody, and this is a binding contract that you'll be on for this long. It's on the plea agreement. It's on the probation.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I'd also worry about term inflation. So if I'm a state's attorney, I want somebody on for fifteen years. We have the same problem with other things that I've meant to reduce. They can just ask for a longer term.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: You get a guy in a thirty

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: year term

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: of probation, Chronic burglars.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Oh, but we've had state attorneys tell us that, that they they can do math.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So supposed get folks on probation if they're well.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Right. Correct.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Not to be supervised. Right.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: But it sounds like, to his point, that that was kind of like the midpoint was kind of a solution to something that's already been sort of fixed because the until further the courts have mostly been resolved.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. It's so different.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: You just have definitive terms.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. I figured it out. Okay. Well, that kind of came out of left field for you folks, but it's out there. That one was easier than the

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: other one. Yeah.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you for bringing you all back. We'll schedule more time on preterm supervision, figure out. And we haven't had a chance to go through the new draft. I think we need time as a committee to kind of figure everything out. So thank you.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: You.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Now go back to work.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: She said she loved it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Come back. You'll come back.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: A great day. Thank you so much for your time.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we're going to shift gears. We have folks here are working in the recovery world. Have folks who are recovery coaches who work with Turning Point. And we have Tracy from Rutland. I'm coming up.

[Dylan Johnson (Recovery Coach, Turning Point Center of Bennington County)]: I'm submit that it says I'm from Springfield Turning Point, but I am from the Bennington Turning Point,

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Dylan Johnson.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, John is from Springfield Turning Point. You want to come on up?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yes.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you can turn the So we have half an hour because we have to be on the floor. Today's been a full day. So I will let you folks know what you do, because they're all recovery coaches that go into correctional facilities to help our folks enter into recovery.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. So if you could introduce yourselves for the record.

[Tracy Houck (Director, Turning Point Center of Rutland)]: My name is Tracy Houck, and I'm the director of the Turning Point Center of Rutland. I'm also a person in long term recovery. Today is Recovery Day in Vermont, and I'm here to talk about the importance of our recovery coaching programming within the Department of Corrections. I also want to mention two important requests for the fiscal year twenty seven budget to help support local recovery organizations. First, we are asking the legislature to please renew the 800,000 we received in prevention funds in fiscal year twenty six in order to level fund recovery centers and preserve current services in a time when recovery centers are facing increased demand. Also, please support the Vermont Department of Health's recommendation to appropriate $1,250,000 in fiscal year 'twenty seven opioid abatement funds to continue the successful peer recovery coaching program within our correctional facilities in your budget memo to appropriations. I want to start by saying how much it matters to people like me that you take the time to listen to voices from the community. Your recovery work is deeply human, and I appreciate the chance to share what this funding truly means. I would like to ground this in real experience because Pure Recovery is ultimately about people, not programs. This is a story about one individual who received our services, Coachie Z, 38 year old male. He has been receiving coaching at Turning Point of Rutland for a number of years, dating at least from 2016, with a serious problem with drug use. He was incarcerated for short periods and while having a considerable amount of difficulty with his addiction, stayed in touch with us and reached out for help from us on many occasions. Although he had periods of staying in recovery and having productive employment, he had frequent relapses, but always came back to us at the end of each period. His perseverance with us and hours with him meant that he knew what he needed to do and retained a recovery focus, even when he was in a very bad place. Can turn into a career for him, has a business plan for starting his own property management company for which he already has clients, and is close to achieving one of his main sobriety goals, which is regaining his driving privileges to open up further opportunities for himself. Where he once was so thin as to be in great danger of dying, I lost my place, hold on. From a number of causes, he is now a positive and healthy man with a good future in front of him. He is living proof that persistence and recovery really pays off and that no matter how bumpy the road may be, one should never give up hope. And he didn't and neither did we. What I just shared is not an exception. It is what peer recovery looks like every day across Vermont. Peers are people with lived experience who meet others without judgment and without an agenda. We build trust in moments when trust in systems is often broken, especially for people involved with the justice system. When someone is leaving incarceration or reporting to probation or parole, they are often scared, overwhelmed and at high risk. A peer can be the difference between someone shutting down and someone leaning in. Peer recovery coaching works because we show up consistently. We walk alongside people as they navigate treatment, housing, employment, family reunification, and the emotional weight of starting over. We don't replace clinical care. We strengthen it by helping people stay engaged long enough for it to work. Peer recovery coaching began in 2016 at the Turning Point Center of Rutland serving Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility. In July 2023, I was approached by the Department of Corrections to begin discussions on how to expand this program statewide. In July 2024, grant funding was in place and recovery centers are beginning their programs and correctional facilities in their area. And by February 2025, funding was provided to work with all probation and parole offices. The funding request before you supports peer recovery coaching at 18 sites statewide, including six correctional facilities and 12 probation and parole locations through a partnership between Recovery Partners of Vermont and Department of Corrections. And another thing that I didn't add was that we are now part of the curriculum of the Vermont Corrections Academy. So every academy, we are there. This work creates continuity of care across systems instead of people being released with a phone number and a good luck. Peers help ensure that someone has support before release and continues to have support once they are back in the community. That continuity saves lives, especially in the weeks immediately following release when overdose risk is tight. This is also about public safety. When people are supported in recovery, they are more likely to stabilize, less likely to return to incarceration and more likely to become contributing members of their communities. The 1,250,000.00 request is a responsible, carefully structured investment. Over 1,000,000 goes directly to peer coaching staff. The people doing the work day in and day out. Operating costs are minimal, averaging about 1,000 per site and administration per year, and administrative costs are capped at 10%. This means the vast majority of funding goes straight to services, not overhead. From a fiscal perspective, peer recovery programs reduce costly emergency department visits, prevent relapse and overdose, and decrease recidivism. From a human perspective, they keep people alive long enough to heal and to rebuild. I am here today because someone believed I was worth investing in before I believed it myself. That is what Pure Recovery does. It holds hope until someone can carry it on their own. Vermont has long been a leader in recovery oriented systems of care. Supporting this 1,250,000.00 increase allows us to continue that leadership and ensures that recovery support is available regardless of where someone lives or whether they are involved with the justice system. Federal dollars have funded this program in the past, but that funding ended. So the opioid abatement funds are needed to keep this program going to serve within correctional facilities and local probation and parole offices. And as of June 30, the grant that funds the peer support going into the correctional facilities will be ending. So if there's no more money, there could be no peers going into correction. Probation and parole will end 01/31/2027. So this is how critical this is. Please support the Vermont Department of Health's recommendation to appropriate 1,250,000.00 in fiscal year twenty seven opioid abatement funds to continue the successful peer recovery coaching program within our correctional facilities. This is a joint request from Recovery Partners of Vermont and the Vermont Department of Corrections. It reflects Vermont values, compassion, dignity, accountability, and belief in people's capacity to change. Thank you for your time, your attention, and your commitment to the people of Vermont. I'm happy to answer any questions. And I also wanted to remind you there is a PowerPoint that was submitted and it's under that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Teresa, I got one question. When you started, you also talked about wanting to continue 800,000. And what is that for specifically?

[Tracy Houck (Director, Turning Point Center of Rutland)]: That was money that was earmarked last year for recovery centers. It doesn't go to all the recovery centers. Some centers got less funding, believe. That? No, that was something else. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I got my mind mixed up.

[Maria Godlessby (Assistant District Manager, Burlington Probation & Parole, DOC)]: That's all right. The recovery centers were awarded $800,000 one time funding last year, our prevention funds. And we're asking for that to be continued to level fund the centers to do the work they're currently doing.

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: Okay.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So who had their hand up? Conor?

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, thanks so much, Tracy. It's great to hear from you and thank you for the work you do. It's good to hear from people who are on the ground in corrections, because you know, like last week we heard testimony from a woman who was incarcerated down in Mississippi. She said she got high every day down in Mississippi. There was no problem getting drugs. I'm wondering, like, what do you see as far as our Vermont facilities? Is it conducive to recovery or like a sign for the MOU program? Is someone more likely to recover in corrections? Or maybe, you know, if it's easy to get sort of illicit substances there. No, I think there

[Tracy Houck (Director, Turning Point Center of Rutland)]: is the ability to get illicit substances in there. I'm not so much in the facilities anymore as I used to be,

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: but I think- I

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: say that? Yes. Thank you. My name

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: is John Hoyt, I'm the program lead for Recovery Coaching and Justice in Southern State Prison. And you had a very good question that no one has asked me to date. And My answer to you is, if you make a decision in the recovery community and the prison to stay sober, then that's what you'll do. If the drugs are available, doesn't matter where you are, right? It's no different on the street than anywhere else.

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: If you're smart, you can figure something out, right? People, it's just, addiction is unbelievable. Addiction makes people do things that most people wouldn't do, right? So, they'll compromise their morals and their values in order to get the drug of choice. And that's no different on the street. My answer to you, the most honest answer I could say as someone who's been sober since 2002, is there's many opportunities in this life to make a bad choice. You have to decide whether you want to How much your recovery means to you. So what we do, Tracy and I both, and all the turning points across the state, I'm not alone in this, is we build recovery capital. And that means your recovery is worth more than any bad decision would be. We have many examples. Tracy gave a few really good examples. I have some data from our last quarter that shows how many connections we made at our turning point in Southern State with the men that work in our facility and work with our group. So I run a review basically Monday through Friday recovery group. I have a book called Houses of Healing. And it's it's a loosely based peer recovery program. And the book is written by a son in prison and published in Massachusetts. It's a story of recovery, behavior change, understanding that peer recovery is super important and how to stay clean and sober. Am I making that clear? I really appreciate that framing of it. That's very helpful. Thank you. Thanks so much, sir. You're welcome, sir. Along the line, that question, is our system helping those who are incarcerated make the right decision? Is it making it harder because there's so much availability within the system? So I would say, if you don't mind. No, go ahead. That's a two part question. I think all turning points that are allowed to come into prisons across the state will increase the ability of the men and women who are in prison across the state to stay sober. I think all the support that we could possibly get from this grant I mean, I really the grant money that you have provided so far the I'm not good with names. I'm sorry. The Where is it? The FY '27 opioid abatement fund. That money, in particular, is gonna go a long way. It's $1,250,000 Am I correct in that number? It's going to go a long way in doing exactly what you're talking about. It's going to allow us to pay for the materials, the people, the community support that we need in order to maintain recovery for these men and women. Because we have a women's facility. I work in the men's, but there are people who live across the state that work in the women's facility as well. That money is specific. It's desperately needed. And I've got to say thank you to start with for what you've done already. When I got sober, none of these programs existed, and it would have made a vast difference in my life. You change hearts and minds every day when you allow us to go into prison and break the thought change. Because You're talking about men and women across the state who are isolated from society and dwell on the fact that they've committed a crime until one of us coaches across the state can go in there and help them understand that they are not their crime. That was a day in their life that they can either choose to change now or let it run their life for the rest of their lives. And they are labeled as such because that's the way the system works. I'm not saying that's good or bad. That's just the way the system works. So when you're in recovery and you're dwelling on that and you're isolated from the community and you allow coaches like Tracy, myself, you, and anyone else in this room go in the facility and do this through this opioid fund money, we're changing hearts and minds. I mean, I can't tell you, that's just one quarter of data that I could give you numbers off the top of my head, but I can tell you in our facility, in our catchment area, and Tracy probably has very similar numbers, I'm sure you guys do, We're in numbers people. We have over fifty percent of the men that get out of prison and are introduced to recovery, whether it's at the police station or probation parole or at the prison, fifty percent of those people do not go back to prison. Fifty percent. So that number goes up and down. It could go way down next month. It could go up higher next month. But that just gives you an idea of the potential for what this could be across the state. This isn't like we're not siloed. This is just what we do in our turning point. We work with all turning points because the prison moves men across the state. So whatever programs we have, just by word-of-mouth, go across the state. So your opioid settlement money that you're hopefully able to give us makes a difference across the state. Each turning point collects its own data, but we all work together because the community moves. They're like gypsies in a way. I wasn't questioning the effectiveness turning point. I was asking about the prison system itself, making it too easy to get the drugs if they make the wrong decision? That's what I'm asking. Yeah, was avoiding your question. Because I personally think we need to change our perspective, and I'm wondering from the ground, other words, we're reading from the wrong perspective. So, will speak only for me. I will not speak for facilities. I will not speak for any of that, because the program that we work with in Springfield Prison is amazing. They have made me part of a team there. We work actively with all aspects of the prison to have a very tight shift for and for with people, you know what I mean, to make it safe. Now I'm not I don't dictate law. I'm not about to comment on how the DOC does their policies. I love the fact that they do what they do now. I'm 100% in support of it. Every program boosts. Every it's a it's a staff issue more than anything else. Like, you guys painfully know that we are running short on just staff in every prison across the state. If you want to work on that, that's great. But I'm not going put myself in hot water and answer the questions that I'm not qualified to answer. I just, you know what I mean? I just can't do that. It's not a good thing to do. I understand. And I

[Tracy Houck (Director, Turning Point Center of Rutland)]: don't think that we have the ability to know what DOC does to prevent that. Correct. Do I know that there is illicit drug use in there? Yes, there is. But I can't speak to what DOC's parameters are around that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think it's wrong. Said illicit drug use.

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: I just have a question on the data about Southern State. It says 441 people were reached over this last quarter. Mhmm. But there's not 441 people there. It's down in the 300.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Right? It's unique individuals of 59

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: that come in search That's for why I saw unique individuals at 59, but I didn't know if that four forty one was also unique individuals, but also just the genetics. Is that most of the people that were in Southern State over the So that data is from Southern State. That data is specifically. Now, those people definitely go to Rutland. They definitely go to the other persons across the state. But that data is drawn from our catchment in Southern State. And we have a lot

[Tracy Houck (Director, Turning Point Center of Rutland)]: of people at Marble Valley that end up, once they get sentenced, probably go down to something. So Okay. Absolutely.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Other questions? Thank you for what you're doing.

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: Thank you guys for allowing me.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Very helpful. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I thought

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: you were

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: going to testify. If not, I do have a question. I'll

[Dylan Johnson (Recovery Coach, Turning Point Center of Bennington County)]: say my piece very fast. I'll preface it by saying that I think I am here more as kind of a lived experience voice being in recovery. I was here a year ago. I remember meeting some of you. I will say I do believe part of what I wrote is, ill placed. I've made a few changes. I don't know if you guys have a copy of what I put on the, the file holder, but, I will go. My name is Dylan Johnson. I'm a recovery coach at Turning Point Center of Bennington County. I also am the intake coordinator for the Paradise Certified Recovery House that is brand new for men in Bennington. I'm here today to connect my own personal story of recovery with the importance of recovery coaching in probation and parole and not in probation and parole and everything else that the wonderful Turning Point Centers in Vermont do. I'm from Baltimore. I'm not from here. So to answer your question briefly, from my experience and talking to people here and having been incarcerated in Baltimore, the jails here are much better than Baltimore. Now is that such a great comparison? I don't know, but I just wanted to put that out there. I had a great childhood and in spite of that, I still ended up, using cocaine for the first time in my late teens and heroin at age 21. Within a year, I lost everything. My job, family, friends, house. I was living in California. I moved back to Baltimore to my father's house to try and get sober. Even with him supporting me, I quickly relapsed again and wound up homeless in West Baltimore. This was probably likely due to my father being in over his head. He's not a specialist. He tried his best, but it was not at the level of a treatment facility or anything like that. While on the street, I ended up getting into legal trouble. This led me to be being put on probation in Baltimore in the 2019, and I once again moved back in with my father. I was fortunate to have him, but I will say I was not very fortunate with the structure of the probation program that I was a part of in Baltimore. My PO there, and this is not to denigrate her, she was overworked, but she forgot my name every week when I came in there. And again, not to denigrate denigrate her, but not long after that, my father passed away. My mom who lived up here, she came down to Baltimore and begged them to transfer my probation. It was transferred through ICOTS up to here in 2020, like not even a year into my probation. Soon after getting here, I realized really quick there were better ways of doing things. My probation officer was Michael Tahini, who's retired now, but in Bennington, and he was wonderful. He implored me, basically made me get in contact with the recovery community in Bennington, which started with the Turning Point Center. I ended up completing probation without incident. It was a five year probation. He wanted to end it early. I heard you talking earlier with the previous group about ending it early, but because it was through ICOTS, Maryland didn't have an incentive and it just never ended. So I did the five years. I went to CCV, I got a degree in behavioral science and I had a work experience class that required me to get a job in the field. I went to Turning Point and I applied. They already knew me and they hired me on the spot. Today, I'm a recovery coach in the center, the ED, and probation and parole. I am in charge of our data collection and I do intakes for the Paradise Certified Recovery Residence. I had some stuff on that, but I really want to talk about my work in probation and parole since that is more aligned with the subject here. We run a group, a biweekly group in probation and parole for men and women. Me and a coworker of mine run the men's probation and parole group. That is the highlight of my week. It is my favorite thing I do. I really wish we could get into jails, but it's already covered by other great centers. And there's not a jail in Bennington really for us to go into unless it's the drunk tank. But the work in probation and parole has been incredible to see. I don't have some numbers on me, but I've, you know, we've been doing it for a year and we have graduated the majority of individuals who did not get reincarcerated. And just seeing the change from when they first get told they have to go to the group and they're really unhappy about it to by the time they graduate and get a $60 Walmart gift card and a little certificate, they are in great spirits. They, in fact, a lot of them just keep coming back. And so just that little bit there has been really eye opening. And I just want to end by saying that many people here today are asking to support the 1,250,000.00 for the recovery coaching program in Corrections. And I cannot stress enough how much I support that as well, having been on the other end of this and seeing already the great work that you guys do here, you know, can always get better.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Thank you. Thank you. You. Thanks a lot.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Conor? Can I just say, I remember your story from last year? I really appreciate I imagine a lot of people and systems have failed you. You take ownership when you talk, and I imagine that really resonates with the people you work with. Just want to say, I appreciate this so much.

[Dylan Johnson (Recovery Coach, Turning Point Center of Bennington County)]: Thank you. We talk about that a lot. There's a fiftyfifty thing here where people always tell me, so and so person or system screwed me over. They were wrong. And a lot of times they're telling the truth. But part of this recovery is just saying, you know what, I made the initial decisions that led to this right or wrong. And I'm going to accept them and get myself out of the hole and then I don't need to complain about it.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Thanks very much. It

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: says volumes that they continue to come back. So thank you.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Thank you. You're welcome.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes, that's great. It's always good. Oops, Brian.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: Well, just to tell you, there is time now. I think I understand what was meant by recovery capital, but I was wondering if any of the three of you could talk more about I believe that was the phrase that you used.

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: Yeah.

[Dylan Johnson (Recovery Coach, Turning Point Center of Bennington County)]: I mean, from my experience, it could be any kind of skills that you learned, getting connected with counselors, building a support network. It's all the different things that we use to kind of stay on the right path in recovery. That'd be my personal, not dictionary definition.

[Tracy Houck (Director, Turning Point Center of Rutland)]: It's them regaining things back in their life, like employment, reunification with their family. If it's parenting with their kids, you know, and recovery capital is it, know, the whole process of recovery is regaining pieces of that as you go along. So it takes sometimes years. I mean, I have some of the stories that I submitted. These are people that have received coaching since 2016, 2017, and they're still getting coaching. So these are all things that develop over time. And giving them that positive feedback back when you're doing a recovery plan, they don't always see those as big successes. So it's like saying, yeah, but look at you did this, right? And that is important, or you didn't choose this behavior to react to this situation. They're not aware of the capital they're gaining. It's our role to give them that positive feedback so they feel invested in that way.

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: Yeah, it's amazing. A gentleman that's been working with us for about a year now went tubing with his daughter as a result of being able to rebuild our relationship through recovery. And he was all smart. She was going to try to go again this weekend, but he's like, 50 and tubing is not always a great idea. But just to see exactly what both of you are talking about, recovery capital is a lot. It's not always a tangible, like, bank account. It's a bank account metaphorically. There are things in my life that I have today that I never would have had without becoming sober. My mom passed away six months ago. Or no,

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: My father, my mother passed away I six years

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: never would have gotten sober. I got to read my dad poetry as he passed away. Robert Frost was something he read to me when I was a child. Got to do it with him. My mother worked for HCRS on the crisis team in the seventies. Also worked in Wichita Jail. They used to call her the cookie lady. Unfortunately, I've run into some men in the prison that are still in the system that recognize me as Carol's son. So I got some street creds that were.

[Tracy Houck (Director, Turning Point Center of Rutland)]: Well, I think one of the most important thing ever since we've been doing this corrections program is I don't want the individual that is working on their recovery with the recovery coach. If they have a relapse, I don't want them to feel like they can't come back and say they had a relapse. The biggest thing, if they'll sit there and say, Oh, I can't look at you. You know, I let you down, it's not about me. It's like, what's the important thing is, what are you gonna do with it now? And you're sitting here right now talking to me. So you walk back in the door, that's huge. And they don't realize that, they think of it all as a failure. So, you need to rephrase it in a way that it took you strength to walk through the door to make

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: And you better also, I might, don't how much time you got, but I just wanted to say, probation and parole in Springfield has been amazing, along with Vince Carvin in Springfield. That's been incredible. So a lot of the guys we work with are on parole or probation. And they might have slipped. They might go back to use because they're learning. They're just learning how to navigate life. And they'll come to us, your turning point, our turning point, you especially. The relationships that we build allow them to trust us and not be shame based. And through that relationship, probation patrol is not always interested in putting that person in jail. It depends on what happened and their attitude. A lot of times, we can focus on a treatment oriented program for them to keep them in society. And that's huge, that we can work together with all these agencies because of the money. That 1,250,000.00 opioid money is incredible. You guys are even thinking about having this conversation. And I just wanna say thank you for everything you've done over the years. It is amazing to have you guys as allies through this very difficult time in all of our lives, really. Thank you very, very much.

[Dylan Johnson (Recovery Coach, Turning Point Center of Bennington County)]: Second that. I said I second that coming from different situations. Also, out our probation and parole Gina Gondo, who's been incredible in incorporating recovery programming into it and not just immediately sending somebody back to jail.

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: Aside from this, I work in a treatment court as well. That's another subject for another day. Thank you all very, very, very much for what you do today. I know you have a busy schedule and just, it means a lot to me personally that you take the time out of your day to do this. Thank you very much.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: Really

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: appreciate Thank you, Kevin. That's more

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: good of me.

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: She gets me out of the house. My

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: My wife is a director. Yeah. We got the board, so I get that.

[John Hoyt (Program Lead, Recovery Coaching & Justice – Southern State Correctional Facility)]: I wasn't working before. I am now.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I want to thank all three of you for coming up. I think it's really important for legislators to hear from folks who are really working hard on the community, working hard on the ground, really taking care of other folks in our state. I really wanna thank all three

[Matthew Valerio (Vermont Defender General)]: of you for doing what

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: you're doing. Thank Thank you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Folks. Thank you. Another day in the books. That's a long one. It's Wednesday. So YouTube, we're back on the here tomorrow, so the thirtieth. And we're gonna be starting the DOC's budget for two hours. So

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Do you want me to print out other questions again?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes, please do. So we'll be back tomorrow morning at 08:30 on YouTube. So we are I don't know how much is on the floor. I don't think there's that much.

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: That's in just an hour, but it didn't look like much.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: If we get out by four, it'd be great to come back in here and just kind of have a committee discussion to kind of figure out where we're going on.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: A couple of

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What the of the weather conditions. Oh, is it supposed to start snowing again? It hasn't been snowing all afternoon.

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: It's been snowing all day. It just stopped. Well, no.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm just saying for those traveling.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Worth.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Trying to think. What else do we have today? Had so much today that it was

[Gary Marble (Deputy Director, Field Services Division, Vermont DOC)]: I know Mary wants to talk about the problem.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. The parole board and the If we got time,

[Rep. Brian Minier (Member)]: I mean,

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: after the floor, just kind of come back and see if we can spend fifteen minutes maybe talking.