Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Anyone in this We

[Speaker 1]: are live. I'm just

[Speaker 2]: We are live. Yeah. Welcome, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee. It is Thursday, February 12, the committee's a little feisty.

[Speaker 3]: It's it's today.

[Speaker 2]: Okay. Your

[Speaker 4]: birthday's coming up.

[Speaker 2]: No. So is his. So we're going to spend about half hour, so just having some committee discussion on two topics. We need to kind of see where the committee is and give us some direction on how we go forward. One is on the Bennington Monument to really try to figure out. They're coming back in next week. So I thought it would be good for the committee to have a discussion. And then the parole board, we've heard a lot of testimony and we just need to figure out where in the committee, what we're thinking, what steps we might want to take going forward, because we've got to really start resolving that issue. Shawn wants to share some things, his thoughts on the Bennington Monument and some of the work he's done of sorts.

[Speaker 3]: Well, it's it's not proper.

[Speaker 4]: Right. And it's not just me,

[Speaker 1]: and it's not, you know, it's actually, you know, Mary and Kevin and I had a nice chat about it. And I just, you know and Mary should chime in too. But I'm a little concerned. You know, it's it's one of those things where Vermonters are looking to us to to make sound financial decisions for them. Oops. And we have a we have this, you know, really wonderful building down there in the southern part of Vermont. And and and supposedly, someone's supposed to be figuring out a way to fix it. And, you know, we we had testimony last year, and, you know, and you know that I I I kinda just wanted to push back a little bit on that ask because I kinda felt in these times, and they haven't gotten any better since last year, that asking for that kind of money is is, to me, kind of a little tone deaf. And and and I and I was hoping and and the only reason I came up with the the my idea I came up with just it was to really push the conversation to a maybe a more creative spot. And I kinda feel like we took a huge step back in that presentation, and they they hit us with the same data that they had before, which was very little.

[Speaker 2]: There was no data.

[Speaker 1]: And which was even worse that they came to us, and they were like, we can't get the data that we've paid millions of dollars for, actually, over the last three or four years. It's been like 500 to $1,000,000 a year to get the data that we can't have. So I felt like, I don't know, I felt really bad about that. And so what I was hoping for, if they are to come back here to speak to us, and Mary, I really think that you should also chat here because I know it's really dear to you because it's from your area of Vermont, but I really feel that they should do everything in their power to get that data to us, to show us over the last three or four or five years that they've been collecting it since actually, they had said 2022 was the first time they started collecting the data. So it's twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twenty five. We're now in '26, so it's four or five years with the data. And I was and they told us that that they had sent us that data, and I went back and looked last year, and we didn't get It any of it didn't actually come. There were a couple things about it, but So I just wanted to ask the committee, do you care as I care a lot about it only because of the amount of money they're asking for, I just I want them to work a little harder, and I still don't I mean, I think that Jamie said something about coming up with, like, he's gonna go out to outside sources. I don't know if that's realistic, and and I just I would like them to give us, one way or another before they come back here, they need to give us that to show us the moisture content in the rock, all the work that they've been doing, all the money that's been spent. They owe us that rapport and not just pictures, but and not a plan moving ahead, but where we're at right now. And I'd like to get that from them.

[Speaker 0]: And I would like to reiterate what I said last year as we went through the testimony, and I was probably one of the harder people asking them the questions, because I did ask, where did you come up with a 40,000,000 figure when we don't even know what's being decided on to fix it? So how do you come up with this $40,000,000 number? And they kind of looked at me dumbfounded, what? You know, you've got to have a plan with the numbers next to it as we're going through our budgetary process to know what it is. That got everyone all upset. Yes, Shawn's right. On some of these issues, we've got to think out of the box, but we've got to look at it honestly, realistically, and do the right thing. I feel right now that we're pouring a ton of money into the analysis, and we're getting absolutely no data. Even if it was four times a year, quarterly, we had been, for the last couple years, getting some kind of report. Is there less water? You know, moisture in the building? Is there not? We should have had that. They said they wrote a contract. Well, who the heck wrote this contract? Because we've gotten nothing for what we've paid big money for, to not even accomplish anything to this point. So yes, you hear me being passionate. It is in my community, but it is a state emblem there, and I understand there is the balance. I'm not saying, you know, obviously, my folks back home and in the area, and I hear all over the state, of people wanting this to be restored. We even put the language in, what bill was it, to have it where folks could on some of these projects try to raise money when we actually know what the cost is actually going to be. So, you know, I'm not just sitting back here saying, give us $40,000,000 when that's not even a price tag, and I just, we've got to demand right now this documentation from this group that we've paid or are in the process of paying or whatever, I can't believe we've gone through all of this without someone being made accountable to get that information.

[Speaker 2]: Go ahead then, Kevin.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah, sure. I think there's a good chance to have. I'll be honest, I'm such a layperson on this stuff. When I see reports like that, it's like hyperglyphic to me, right? So it might be worth spending a little time. What information specifically do we need to make an intelligent decision going forward on this, right? Because it might not necessarily be the data that they're giving us and those hard numbers, but it's something that we could flesh out and ask for a report regularly with this information, this information, that. But I think we need to have a conversation about what that is, because Yeah, I'm gonna be clueless if I look at the pages here.

[Speaker 3]: Maybe I can help with that a little bit. I think we understand that the beautiful Bennington Monument is literally falling apart because previous legislators said it was too expensive to maintain the proper heat, ventilation, and moisture in it. It was too expensive back then. Well, before we start fixing something and not knowing what it's gonna cost to do proper maintenance in the future, I think that's the first question we've gotta ask. And it is not difficult engineering to do that because you can call a carrier corporation and say, I've got this building, What kind of system do I need to maintain the proper temperature and humidity in it? And they'll give you a proposal. If they can do it for the Empire State Building, I can guarantee they can do it for Bennington Monument. But without that, we're pouring money into something, and then we're gonna decide possibly that we don't wanna spend the money to maintain it, and it's gonna fall in disrepair again. So, it's a money pit if we don't know what it's gonna take to maintain it after we fix it.

[Speaker 6]: Which I would say needs to include the elevator piece. There's a decision, which is elevators, you can't live with them, can't live with them. Them. They're a problem in regular buildings. But that's a particular challenge in that building. But as part of the remediation of the building, what does the elevator need to be right? And then what's it going to need on an ongoing basis? Cause you're not going to maintain that elevator with a $10,000 a year contract. This has not happened. I'm just picking a number out of the air. Right. But that's a valid question, Kevin.

[Speaker 1]: I agree and I agree with Kevin. And I and I've leaned into more what a one of the things that kinda came into play was that up until '78 when they had the oil embargo, they used to heat the inside of it.

[Speaker 2]: So why don't you go and mention what you think of?

[Speaker 1]: Well and I feel I feel what we need to do is enclose it and treat it like a normal building and heat and use heat pumps to to dry it out, to heat it. And then I think if we had a door downstairs and glass on the windows upstairs and you treated it like a building, I don't think there's a big mystery to it. I would even I don't think we can get the the kickbacks now on solar, but I would love to have seen a solar array powering this six months out of the year, and it could kinda break even for itself. But I really feel we treat it like a bit like the capital building we're in now, which is all stone. And and we just have kind of part of what I presented, I did the copper on the outside. I think that doesn't need to happen. I think a simple heat system inside of it now to try like, I would rather see us try that, and see how it goes for the next two years, and get data on it running. And I think then you could put a new elevator system in, and it would be fine because you would have treated air inside, and it wouldn't be moist. The moisture's killing the elevator and the stairs. Anyway, that's where I'm at. The Washington Monument has such things. I know it does. And I actually have a call into Ballon's office.

[Speaker 4]: Okay.

[Speaker 1]: Because I wanna talk to the guy who runs the Washington Monument. I

[Speaker 5]: wonder if it's it's a big issue. Right? And it is taking up a lot of committee time. And I believe the things we say on the record can pour into the press sometimes in negative ways too, I'm wondering, does it justify having maybe a three or four person subcommittee? I hate to do this. But people seem to have expertise. You have Mary, who has the historical background. She's got her son on the pulse of Bennington. We got Shawn. We got Kevin. You know, like

[Speaker 2]: I wanna do it. It's fine with me and sit down with Laura and

[Speaker 1]: I would be happy to do that. How about you, Kev? You're good, right?

[Speaker 2]: Absolutely. Why don't we do this?

[Speaker 7]: Mary? Yeah.

[Speaker 2]: When are they scheduled? We're looking to schedule them next week.

[Speaker 3]: Right?

[Speaker 4]: Yeah. But we still have the time yet.

[Speaker 2]: So if you folks could meet, particularly with Laura, I think it's really meeting more with Laura than Jamie at this point.

[Speaker 8]: Though Jamie would be included, but I think

[Speaker 2]: it's really to get some direction. If you could do that on Tuesday or Wednesday, try to schedule Bennington maybe well, Thursday's full because we're not gonna be able to meet at all Thursday morning.

[Speaker 4]: We have an hour in the afternoon.

[Speaker 2]: We have an hour in the afternoon. Let's see if we can do that. Thursday morning, we don't we're on the floor.

[Speaker 3]: Elections.

[Speaker 2]: Elections. Yeah. The whole morning. The whole morning, we're tied up.

[Speaker 3]: Got it. Alright. Thank We're all bored.

[Speaker 0]: I just don't know where to go.

[Speaker 2]: It's two things. There's training. Training. There's legal representation. And then there's the money piece. So Joe and then James.

[Speaker 6]: Well, at first, I thought that we had heard testimony and saying that they wanted their own their own line item, okay, to present the administration. And then at the end of yesterday's testimony, we heard they don't want that,

[Speaker 3]: which

[Speaker 6]: I thought was the easiest piece to do. It's the least complicated piece, but now they don't want it, and DOC doesn't want for them to have it, and the administration doesn't want them to

[Speaker 2]: So part of that is that they have, and this is where I go, a separate line item, they're not connected with DOC. They're out there on their own. Which then means they'll need more money to provide their administrative support. Mary Jane may need another staff member to carry out some items that DOC carries out. And then they'll have to pay fee for space, because right now DOC pays fee for space for their office space. So there's gonna be additional costs to the 600,000 that they get right now.

[Speaker 6]: So then maybe that that that shouldn't be the case. But regarding

[Speaker 2]: But it is the case because they're not gonna be within DOC's budget.

[Speaker 6]: No. No. Like, maybe it shouldn't be the case of their own of their own line item then. But then regarding the training and the council, we hear these needs that I think on a macro level, everybody agrees with, but the needs are not defined. Neither what they are or how much they cost, which makes it hard to talk about. The training and the counsel are both very real things.

[Speaker 2]: They're real and then they're separate. I mean, they need legal counsel for helping them in the training. And they also need legal counsel to represent them during hearings. Now, is that the same? And that's what we're trying to get at. Is that the same or is it different or we do one and not the other?

[Speaker 4]: Yeah. Well, that's my that's where my point is, is that it's not defined and it shouldn't be hard to define. It's like I sent you guys the email yesterday. This is a screenshot. What maybe nobody looked at it. Nobody's seen

[Speaker 2]: No, didn't look at it because I didn't dare open it.

[Speaker 4]: Okay, well, it's fine. It's just a screenshot of the list of national organizations that deal with specifically programs. Now, I'm not saying any of those are the ones that they would deal with, but I haven't heard one name of an organization that you could get training from. I want in training, the base training, especially it doesn't have to be a lawyer. These organizations are good at what they do. They exist for a reason, but I haven't heard any details about that. And yes, and I think the legal is a completely different thing, and it's, as Alice pointed out multiple times, you're not getting it for $25, the legal side. So we have to figure that part out, but they are very separate. But just sticking to the training, I'm not getting, and I hate saying this because I don't have animosity against anybody. I just don't feel like I'm being given. It's such a general comment when the issue comes up, there's no concrete, no there there about what the training is, who's offering a training, where do we get it? It's very vague, and I

[Speaker 7]: don't like that.

[Speaker 6]: I don't think that's for us to develop. When the dry hydrants guy comes in, I know it's not the same thing. They don't look at the committee to tell us where to install the dry hydrants.

[Speaker 4]: No, but they tell us that they have training. They're asking for training or saying we need to hire people for training. We're asking, well, what do you get for training?

[Speaker 7]: Well, statute is in the way now to some degree on the training. Statute

[Speaker 3]: is

[Speaker 7]: in the way that our body created. It's not prohibitive to the same degree that it is, you shall not receive counsel during parole hearing. But anti training that currently happens has to be run by and approved by the defenders general so that it feels not conflicting. But

[Speaker 4]: if we

[Speaker 7]: create a statute that says, you've got a lawyer now, and you've got x dollars to either pay that lawyer for training or for a well known organization for training. But right now, there is statute in the way for them to do their job as an independent lawyer.

[Speaker 3]: What rationale for that statute? So you can't have training from the attorney general. Because there's a conflict there because they're also representing the Department of Corrections. But if the training's the process and not interpretation of law, I don't understand that there's a conflict. And that's

[Speaker 4]: what I'm talking about. So like SelectWorks, for example, right? Not that everybody reads the book, but everybody gets a book and there's trainings available. If you're a lister in town, everybody's got a book. All those kind of options, there's training available. That's just what your job is, what you are able to do, and what the constraints are, you know, those kind of things. I'm talking about that level. Right.

[Speaker 3]: That's what I was hearing they were asking for.

[Speaker 4]: Right. But I want to know what it is and how much it costs and why aren't you fit? Yeah.

[Speaker 6]: But I don't

[Speaker 3]: see how that's conflict. It's the process and they need tutoring to understand and work with the process, not say, is this Right.

[Speaker 4]: Completely separate from the assumptions.

[Speaker 2]: Let me read the law. It always helps to read the law. If any attorney employed by DOC or assistant AG or the direct supervisor of an assistant AG who represents the Department of Corrections in parole revocation hearings, provides training to the parole board members on the subject of parole revocation hearings. The defendant general shall be notified prior to the training and given the opportunity to participate. So the defendant general is there on behalf of the offender. The others are there on behalf of the state. And that was put in there as a balance. But what is actually happening, what Mary Jane testified is when they're in a situation like this, the training for parole revocation hearings, the defendant general does the training, basically. That's how they're being trained, and that's a problem. Mhmm. But that's not the intent of the law. That's how it's being carried out.

[Speaker 0]: But I wish also that Mary Jane had might have taken it a step further to get the cost of different trainings She outside of said she hadn't yet done that. But I wish that had been a piece of the discussion, because then you'd know what you were going to look to be spending.

[Speaker 2]: But this is only dealing for revocation here, there's a lot of training that needs to happen just in terms of the role of the parole board, the statute around parole and risk assessments, because they do do risk assessments, and how to process, how to work as a board when you're making a decision about someone's life, which is a little different than revocation hearings. So there's two separate trainings here.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah. The structure piece was disturbing to me. I like the structure of how it's working now. I agree with Mary. I think we need to ask quite a bit of Mary Jane in the next week or so as far as costing out exactly what sort of programming they need so we can assign like a price to it and go from there. But the testimony yesterday, like about no input into their own budget, that's really bad. And the justification was, well, if we move them to A. H. S, we have this. Was it the consensus budgeting? There's a power dynamic there and that you all have a boss. Your boss is the secretary or the governor. So you're going to you're going to march in line at some point, right? So you need that independence. But then what Joe was saying is right. It's Mary Jane was a little ambivalent. It's like, Okay, well, then we got to work the fee for space ourselves. We got to do this ourselves. And I don't think you can have it both ways. I think you got to be separate or you're in there, you know? So we got to pick a path to go. Mary Jane's got to help us with that.

[Speaker 3]: Just for conversation. She has never claimed she didn't have enough funding to do what they needed to do.

[Speaker 7]: I think she has.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah, I think she has.

[Speaker 9]: She definitely has.

[Speaker 3]: What is she not getting? Because of money, Well,

[Speaker 5]: the 25,000 wasn't able to get to the third party lawyer, so that wasn't nearly enough, right?

[Speaker 4]: And she even mentioned training, which some was done by myself. Then everybody issue was the

[Speaker 3]: legislation. No.

[Speaker 4]: No. That's a different type of training. I'll listen. I'm just gonna make up a name because I'm not gonna go back in my email to find out the name. Pretend it's a national institute on parole boards. If you hire them, it's not a conflict according to that law. It's You know? And so I wanna know what that costs. If they're providing this to everybody else, and yes, there might be pieces that don't aren't relevant. We have a little different things, but generally speaking, there's probably something there. You know? Yeah. I I just want to know what you're actually doing. Do I want to know what everybody's doing at all times? No, but this is an issue that's in front of us, and it's become a problem. So yes, I do want to know specifics.

[Speaker 0]: Well, we should make it right if we're fixing it. We should do it right. So it was a plan in place going forward to have strong law boards that know what they do.

[Speaker 2]: So the other piece that's percolating out there with the parole board is during the revocation hearings, it appeared as if the parole board has no legal representation. That's a problem. Or there's a conflict. It's neither. Yep. One or the other. The other piece is, and I'm going back to what Kevin was saying that she hasn't mentioned anything about their budgeting or anything. They have a hard time recruiting people to be on the board because of the per diems. They're so low. So they're not getting the quality of folks that really need to be there, which then means if you're not getting enough folks with enough background or the quality, then you gotta really focus in on training. Now, one thing that we did talk about was that when there is, I don't know where we are in the language anymore with this bill, but we did talk about when there is an opening that the executive director or the chair would communicate, I think it was with the governor's office in terms of what skill sets they're looking for. And we were gonna put in some language to that effect to help there. But that if you don't pay a per diem, it's gonna attract people.

[Speaker 6]: But that that particular issue is not unique to the parole board, but it exists all over in state government. But all

[Speaker 2]: over in state government is a little different when you're dealing with people's liberty.

[Speaker 3]: Or But public

[Speaker 6]: you you got people working for free, dealing with people's property rights. You've got people drafting bills, probably working for a fraction of what they would make in the private sector in many cases. It's a The firing judges? Yeah, it may be more pronounced there, but it's not unique to that board. True.

[Speaker 3]: They're not short board members. Maybe they don't have best work matters.

[Speaker 2]: Having a lot of retirement. So, I'm retiring. The chair is retiring. Come on in. And the chair is retiring. Yeah. So, they've got it's three positions that are gonna be opening. I mean, they lost it just And

[Speaker 0]: the one who's the chair who's been a consistent person for the last number of years, that's gonna be a huge loss.

[Speaker 2]: And there's a member who's been on there for twenty five years,

[Speaker 3]: Yes. I

[Speaker 6]: Two of them are getting done.

[Speaker 4]: And I would say there are a lot of state boards, obviously, and some of them do deal with decent topics, let's put it, but not most. Most state boards aren't meeting three days a week. They're not dealing with life or death. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's some issues that are pretty serious, but most state boards aren't anywhere near as serious. So I would treat it differently in that context, both the time constraints and the seriousness. So I do agree that we should at least look at whether or not we do anything with it or not, I'm not saying, but it should be looked at and with the end acknowledgement that this board is a little bit different than a lot of the others. I've been on a couple where you get a nice little state plate with three digits, but the requirements were nowhere near what this board has. I just keep that in the back of my head.

[Speaker 2]: So what are we going to look for? How are we going to

[Speaker 0]: move forward? I think we need to give some directives to some of the folks as to information that needs to come back next week, such as what do trainings cost, are there several different folks that can provide the training and, you know, where and what, you know, basic information like that. Who can provide it? What kind

[Speaker 4]: of, who have you taken it from, why haven't you taken it from another place, have you considered that?

[Speaker 2]: She did say she had

[Speaker 8]: talked to one training firm, and that it would be like, I think she said 5,000 for a three or four day training. That's a long three or four day training. Which can

[Speaker 4]: be very true, that's sweet.

[Speaker 2]: The other thing too that I put out there when the agency folks were talking, in terms of how they did the process this year, they did reach out to Mary Jane. So Mary Jane could at least say to them what the needs were of the board. And then they brought that up through the chain up to the secretary's office. So one thing I suggested, and I'm glad John walked in the work, he didn't do this bill, but I was thinking of a session law that you could put in May for the next one or two budget cycles. I don't know how we wanna do it, But this is the process that would occur when the probe submits their budget. And then they need to come back and talk to the legislature how it will be section one. So at least they said they're really, because I'm concerned, what I'm concerned about, we've got the people there now who are aware of this, wanna do this. But all it takes is a change in administration or a change in secretary or a change in Mary Jane or whomever, well, if it goes out the window. And I don't think we wanna do it in statute, but I think we can do it session law. Yep. It at least gives some cover for a couple of years.

[Speaker 3]: Yep.

[Speaker 2]: That may be one. I put that on the table yesterday. That may be an approach. And the one to the piece before we decide whether or not to have a separate line.

[Speaker 0]: I don't really know what needs to all the. I mean, they should have the basics, but do they not need do they have kind of a template to know what they need? Well,

[Speaker 2]: that would be in discussions with Mary Jane and what's what's needed for budget in in there. Because she said she's never been. Right. But that's what I'm saying.

[Speaker 0]: You don't wanna be missing one or two There should be, like, a template for all of our departments that kind of follow a a basic plan.

[Speaker 2]: So we need to schedule a parole board and all the players again next next week. I really wanna clarify this legal representation because it's really conflicting.

[Speaker 10]: So to clarify, in what sense?

[Speaker 2]: So you hear that there's conflict if the attorney general is representing in a revocation hearing, they could well, they said now they're not representing with the law board. Right? So the or they could be representing PNP. It's a revocation. You've got the probation parole officer there. So they have some legal representation. You've got the offender that has legal representation. And the parole board has no legal representation. And then you hear, well, there is. Assistant Attorney Generals are available for this. So it goes back and forth.

[Speaker 10]: Well, this is the question. I mean, nobody seemed to think it was ideal, but as far as I could understand from testimony, the problem so far was with the appearance of impropriety.

[Speaker 4]: That's a problem.

[Speaker 10]: It's different yeah.

[Speaker 0]: And I don't mean to sound stupid, but can the parole board get sued for a decision I'm that they

[Speaker 7]: not convinced that that liability is zero.

[Speaker 0]: Right, that's what I've this whole process, and if they have no legal folks behind them.

[Speaker 7]: And that's an expensive potential liability.

[Speaker 5]: That's exactly.

[Speaker 0]: Well, that's what's been keeping me awake on this discussion is they need to have some kind of

[Speaker 2]: legal background. The legal background, the legal support. The support is what it means.

[Speaker 5]: My guess is a general counsel could provide all the trainings too. I think that's what you're looking at. It's very common in most organizations that the lawyer on staff provides the trainings for those involved. So I think that's really the cost you're probably looking at. And I think it is a full time general counsel position, which is expensive. Yeah,

[Speaker 7]: that's thing, 150. For salary, there's Yeah.

[Speaker 3]: At least. Yeah.

[Speaker 7]: But to my point, that's nothing compared to a million dollar loan.

[Speaker 2]: Right.

[Speaker 5]: But unless we can get them that money, there's no true independence, right? And we might as well just keep doing what we're doing.

[Speaker 2]: That's not very encouraging. We're three sixty, 91, anyway, three sixty. Back to doing nothing.

[Speaker 5]: I mean, the tweets we originally made, I think we can keep.

[Speaker 2]: What tweets did we originally made?

[Speaker 5]: Changing it to secretary We on marked up the bill with all that

[Speaker 2]: We didn't have it go to the secretary. We kept it at DOC. But

[Speaker 5]: we did mark up the rest of it there and left those two outstanding issues to discuss like we're doing now.

[Speaker 2]: It's legal representation and the training. And I think we've kind of decided not to do that, their budget's separate, either within the agency, but at least have a mechanism that the parole board can submit what their needs are. There isn't even that mechanism until we And they admit, Brandon from HHS admitted that it's our conversation here that spurred them on to look at this.

[Speaker 10]: So is Mary Jane the closest to the right person in terms of what training was happening? How often? How is that going to change with good people? What's it cost? All that space, for that matter. She's the person, right? I think what sort of training,

[Speaker 7]: I think Tom Giffen's input would be good as well.

[Speaker 3]: Who's he? Member of the board? Chair of the board.

[Speaker 7]: Oh, that's right.

[Speaker 6]: Dean George is the chair. Dean

[Speaker 2]: George is the chair. Tom is on

[Speaker 0]: the board for a long time.

[Speaker 1]: He was the other guy that was up

[Speaker 3]: there on the

[Speaker 2]: on the And he's a student of DOC.

[Speaker 0]: Right. He was a state employee. He does lots of good stuff.

[Speaker 2]: Okay. So we need to schedule a good hour and a half for the board discussion next week.

[Speaker 7]: I'm just looking at it. We did do some markup. We got rid of the alternates.

[Speaker 2]: We didn't talk about the function of this right now in terms of how the budget's put together, the training and the legal representation.

[Speaker 7]: Yeah, I

[Speaker 6]: mean, nice thing is the constitution of the board. So it's expanded to seven regular members,

[Speaker 7]: Chairman of it.

[Speaker 6]: But three still constitute a quorum, which effectively reduces the workload for individual members. Aside from the chair and the vice chair, one of whom has to preside over any hearings. But for regular members, don't have to meet his office.

[Speaker 2]: And that's happening now.

[Speaker 6]: Which is good. Right. Okay.

[Speaker 2]: So, Troy Tate, you got the gist of this one. Right? He's calling you Troy's.

[Speaker 4]: Yes. Do.

[Speaker 3]: Troy We

[Speaker 5]: we need a list of what Mary Dane needs to bring when she comes in, though. Right?

[Speaker 2]: I But we need at least an hour and a

[Speaker 4]: half. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]: We keep running late. So I will have a conversation with Martin about the pretrial supervision. I think we're pretty much on board with scrapping it. But the issue will be one issue we wanna talk about is is there any way to put any DOC folks in that court when that accountability docket is brought up that one day a week? And I don't, when if they expand that program, the accountability docket, Everybody kind of thinks maybe Rutland, probably continuing Chittenden. I don't know where else it might be spread out. Would there be possibilities of a DOC person in the court when those dockets went through. Troy?

[Speaker 3]: Can I

[Speaker 7]: just get clarification? I wasn't in the room and I apologize. Is that because people coming out of that court are going to be supervised by BNP?

[Speaker 2]: No. What Judge Sonay said, what they saw with the accountability docket was everybody was at the table.

[Speaker 7]: So tell me why DOC should be at the table.

[Speaker 2]: Because DOC was at the table and they could be more of a conduit. They could be the hub maybe to connect the person up to providers in the community because they kind of know all that stuff. I don't want to speak too soon here, but I think it's certainly possible, especially in areas where the court is only happening one day a week. I imagine given pretrial expanse day wide, we can probably have the pretrial supervision officer sit on that court. But if it's five days a week, that might be a week. No, would be a day a week in few courts. So do you have any pretrial supervisors right now that defined? We do. I think there are two positions that are filled. They're in Chittenden? There's one or two based out of Newport, probation and parole, and then there's one based out of probation and parole. So the one out of Newport was for the Essex Orleans. Those two folks aren't really They shouldn't be there. They should be maybe more down towards Rutland or Washington County or other counties. It depends where it gets expanded.

[Speaker 3]: Yeah.

[Speaker 2]: But it's possible we can certainly discuss that further. We have a lot of DOC staff who participate in best situation tables around states. So Springfield included, so I imagine it could be something similar to that. So we're gonna need to get that possibly. I I'm gonna have a conversation with Martin. And you said that you're scrapping the bill potentially? What the committee is kind of going towards. Because we can put the resources towards an accountability docket that works better. So that's providing you wraparound services. And if you have DOC right there in the courtroom, then that really has that connection.

[Speaker 4]: It actually worked.

[Speaker 1]: And affected a lot more lives.

[Speaker 2]: It was more cost effective.

[Speaker 3]: I don't think we heard any dissenting opinion on us. Every testimony came in and said it works. You just can't do it on adrenaline. You gotta fund it. Okay.

[Speaker 2]: Well, we got some things done. Okay, we're gonna shift gears to H2984, which is our commissary and telecommunications. And Troy, you've been working, and we have a couple of folks. Are they

[Speaker 7]: Sarah was bumped last time. She was here Right.

[Speaker 2]: Is she on

[Speaker 4]: the fourth? Not yet. Is April on? Let's see.

[Speaker 7]: I think it said 02:15.

[Speaker 2]: It says two.

[Speaker 7]: I know it does now, but at one point, I think it's Either

[Speaker 2]: one of them right here. What are folks thinking about the DOC budget? We've got some time, right? Or are they here?

[Speaker 4]: If they are coming at 02:15, that would be two minutes. So yes.

[Speaker 2]: Two minutes.

[Speaker 5]: We're gonna

[Speaker 10]: sort this in two.

[Speaker 4]: You do so much into the business. Thank you.

[Speaker 10]: And Chair, are we actually talking about DOC right now?

[Speaker 2]: Budget I'll just go quickly. Everybody comes online.

[Speaker 10]: You talk about the variety of programs that we have. And it's true that this memo that we're trying to work from encourages us to vet how those things are going. I don't see any correlation between that and the sorts of information that were presented on the Excel files that are the stuff that we got today. I don't think that's necessarily their fault, but the things that we're trying to ask about can't be got to with that information.

[Speaker 2]: I mean, we did a lot of work. And I want to respect that work.

[Speaker 10]: I dogged a bit.

[Speaker 2]: No, there's good questions. Thank

[Speaker 0]: you, Carl.

[Speaker 2]: So did folks want to set up time next week with DOC to go through that document you folks worked up?

[Speaker 4]: I would. But I would like to reinforce to the commissioner that we'd like those answers that we gave him, those questions answered specifically. It's not something

[Speaker 2]: Today, you

[Speaker 4]: may know it be. Yes.

[Speaker 2]: Well, he got that sheet.

[Speaker 4]: Right. So it's not something, again, not that it's irrelevant at all, but so that it's completely relevant to this versus more generic. And

[Speaker 2]: that's gonna take probably about an hour and a half.

[Speaker 3]: An hour?

[Speaker 2]: Let's see if we can get DOC in next week. See, I told you to take schedule and go up fast.

[Speaker 3]: Getting there.

[Speaker 2]: I have two more weeks before town meeting break, folks. And we gotta start markup on the capital. Okay. Anything else? Is April coming in too?

[Speaker 10]: Yeah. She's

[Speaker 2]: here. Oh, okay. April's here. Sarah, I saw Sarah first, and then I focused somewhere else, and then, oh, okey dokey. Troy has helped with some of the setting up the testimony for today. This is looking at the telecommunications piece of technology within correctional systems as a whole that we might be able to glean from. Sarah, thank you for your patience. You were here last week when we were talking and time ran out. So thank you for being willing to reschedule. And I'm going to start with you this time. Sure. Thank you so welcome, and thank you for identifying yourself for the record.

[Speaker 9]: Sure. My name is Sarah Stout. I am the policy and advocacy director at Prison Policy Initiative. Let me see. I will share my screen here unless the PowerPoint is shared some other way. Here, let me.

[Speaker 2]: Guys. We had it last time.

[Speaker 9]: Oh, had Do you need me to share my screen or not?

[Speaker 4]: It would. It's helpful.

[Speaker 2]: It's helpful.

[Speaker 9]: Great. Like I said, I'm Sarah Stout, I'm the Policy and Advocacy Director at Prison Policy Initiative. A little bit about us, Prison Policy Initiative is a national organization. We're based out of East Hampton, Massachusetts, but we work all over the country. And we're a research organization that works to expose the harms of mass incarceration. In particular, the telecom work, we've been working for over fifteen years on telecom issues in prisons and jails, both at the local state and national level. So I'm really glad that we have an opportunity to talk to you today about this issue and also about commissary. So Vermont really has an opportunity right now to join a trend in making phone calls free. Since just 2021, so just post pandemic, six states as well as a number of municipality jails have made phone calls free for incarcerated people and their families. So California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York. This is incredibly important because I just want to ground us in the idea that incarcerated people and their families are a captive market, right? You know, from an economic perspective, they don't have the ability to pick a different service if the service that's being provided doesn't work for them, or if the fees are too high, you know, they are completely at the mercy of whatever the system is set up that's set up in their state is. And because of that, we know that in those kinds of situations, regulation from the state is so important to making sure that people can have access to reasonable prices and be able to really benefit from the benefits of phone communication. One thing that I will tell you that you should expect, and this is something that I know DOC also said last week, when prison phone calls are made free, more people make phone calls. This might be the most obvious point in the world, but I really want to drive it home. When Connecticut and Massachusetts and Minnesota made phone calls free, they saw large rises in the use of their prison phones. When San Francisco Jail made phone calls free, there was an overnight 41% increase in the number of phone calls per person, and people spent 81% more time in communication with their families and support networks. What that means is that people cannot afford phone calls, and when they can, they make more of them. And this is a good thing. Phone calls are probably the most critical lifeline between incarcerated people and their families. We can think of a number of different ways that incarcerated people communicate with their communities. They do so via mail, they do so via visitation, but 80% or more of incarcerated people do use the phone to contact their families. And that makes sense because phone calls have fewer logistical hurdles personal than mail. They allow you to have a conversation with your kid the day they get their report card, instead of waiting for a letter in the mail to talk to them about it. They let you talk to somebody to find out about a health condition or a medical appointment, all of the things that we care about in terms of being able to communicate with our families in real time. What I'm going go over now is some of the really robust research about phone calls and why they're so important, for for for, connection and for a number of other, public safety measures that that are that are worth thinking about. There's decades of research on this. The first studies on phone calls and recidivism were done in the 70s. So we've been talking about this for fifty years. Studies showed that phone calls strengthen family ties. What this means is that making phone calls free doesn't just benefit people in Vermont's prisons, it benefits Vermont's children. Parent child relationships improve with weekly phone calls. And they're the most likely form of communication to be consistent, the parent child communication to be consistent. So 76% of children who communicated with their mothers in prison by phone did so weekly. And that allows that kind of ongoing parenting relationship rather than just having a situation where an incarcerated parent feels that they are a visitor in their child's lives. Having weekly phone calls, even daily phone calls allows them to parent. And for a child, there's nothing like having your parent in your life, whether or not they're incarcerated. Phone calls also make prison safer. Incarcerated people who make telephone calls have reduced rates of verbal and physical assaults on staff, as well as fewer rule violations in general. That's a huge deal. It means that providing phone calls and providing more phone calls is likely to improve the quality of life, not only of incarcerated people, but also of staff. The big one is that phone calls we know reduce recidivism in the long run. In a 2014 study, women who had any phone contact with family members during incarceration were less likely to be reincarcerated within five years. Phone calls have a larger impact on recidivism than visitation or mail, likely because of their frequency. And just in general, having close family relationships and family support are associated with better employment outcomes and less substance use after release. And those things obviously are in turn associated with lower recidivism rates. The other thing we know, and this came up a little bit during DOC's testimony, and I know there were questions about it, is that phone call payments usually come from families. They usually do not come from incarcerated people, even incarcerated people who have wages. In a 2015 study of incarcerated people and their families, a huge percentage of survey participants reported that family were primarily responsible for telephone fees. And of those family members, 87% were women. What that means is that phone calls that cost money remove capital from from communities. It's something that you're spending money on in order to maintain connections with your family members. That means you're not spending it on other things. And families with incarcerated people in their families tend to be lower income. There's not room in budgets for this kind of expenditure, and it means that other things are going to not be bought. One in three survey participants reported going into debt to cover phone and visitation costs. These are things like I said, it's a captive market. These are things that people are not gonna give up just because they cost money. Instead, they're going to find that their lives are negatively impacted in other ways that we should be trying to avoid. It's critical, and I believe the bill does this to also make e messaging and video calling free at the same time that phone calls are made free. We know that Vermont currently charges 25¢ per message for e messaging and 16¢ minute for video calling. Obviously these prices far exceed what we pay on the outside, right, for to send a single text message. But as texting and video become more central to the way we communicate, they become more important to incarcerated people and their families as well. And unfortunately, it's become an opportunity for corporate interests to continue to exploit that captive market. So we've seen there was an article out of Minnesota that once phone calls were made free, there was still a huge profit that was coming to companies that came from these e messaging and video services, as well as various other services provided to incarcerated people on their tablets. So it's incredibly important that family connection and communication are public goods. They're a good thing to promote. And there's something that we should whenever possible be making as cheap or free as possible to incarcerated people and their families. That's what I've got on phone calls. I wanna pause in case there are any questions. And if not, I will move on to commissary because I know we're all busy.

[Speaker 2]: So I have a question. Is there data prior to the phone calls being free, is there any data on how many were, what the percentage of folks were using the phones, what the cost was that they had to pay. There any data on that?

[Speaker 9]: Are you asking in Vermont or generally? Or

[Speaker 2]: Well, I'd like to know in Vermont. I mean, I kind of know Vermont, but for the states that went free, free calls, there was a jump in terms of the usage. I'd like to know what the usage was prior to the calls being free.

[Speaker 9]: I can look into that and get back to you. There were studies done of particularly Massachusetts switchover. And so my guess is that those numbers do exist, but I don't have them off

[Speaker 2]: the top of my head. Then if we could get those numbers, I'd like to compare that in terms of what we're seeing here in Vermont for current usage. Right. To see if it tracks with other states, so that if we do go to the telephone calls of the that are free for the press rated person, what that bump here in Vermont might be. Mhmm.

[Speaker 9]: Right. That makes sense. Yeah. I will I will be in contact should I just be in contact with Tate with any information I find on that?

[Speaker 2]: Okay, great, thank you. I

[Speaker 4]: could look up the study and I probably will later, but on one of the slides it said women who had any phone con communication had a lower rate of recidivism, basically. Do you know what the rates were? Like, you know, so somebody makes one phone call, they may not make a difference, but maybe it's three. The the is there any data on what, like, amount is the the sweet spot, so to speak?

[Speaker 9]: My memory of that study is that it was a binary. It was, did you receive phone calls within, really within a certain period of time, or did you not? And there wasn't a question of how often. What we do know is that in general, and from other studies, more frequent contact is more effective. And that's where the researchers who've done studies on phones, visits, and mail, that's the hypothesis of why phone calls are more effective than mail and visitation. It's probably not because of the quality of the conversation that's happening, it's because of the frequency of the conversation, right? And in those studies, they're usually talking about whether or not you're talking to someone weekly.

[Speaker 4]: Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 2]: Brian?

[Speaker 10]: I only saw the slide briefly, but there's indication of how much usage went up on the heels a policy change. I'm wondering if you know where that flattens out. I assume after time, is there an increase of 20% in usage?

[Speaker 9]: Yeah.

[Speaker 3]: That's a

[Speaker 9]: San Francisco jail stat and there's a study on that that I can send that should give that information. I know that the short spike was 41%, and then there was a long term sort of increased amount of time spent on the phone with families, but I can picture in my head the graph that you're talking about and I'm pretty sure it's in the study, so I'll send it on.

[Speaker 10]: Excellent. Yeah, just some idea of where it kind of levels out eventually or triggers out.

[Speaker 2]: So Sarah, for those phone calls in the states where the state picked up the cost, I'm assuming that the corrections department or agency, however it's termed in those state, would develop policies around the use of that phone, those phone calls. And I would assume there may be a time limit that would be put on that it's not a free for all, that there's gotta be some structure to it.

[Speaker 9]: So it's interesting. The landscape of what prison phone calls actually look like is changing really dramatically, which makes the answer to that question kind of complicated. Five, ten years ago, certainly ten years ago, probably five years ago, you went to take a phone call in a common phone area where there were usually both official time limits and sort of socially imposed time limits, right? On how long someone spent on the phone. Increasingly now that people have tablets in their cells, phone calls can happen through tablets, which removes that practical need for, you don't have a lot of different people sharing one phone. And so I think the calculus of how long people are limited on phones, I don't actually know whether places that use tablets, in cell tablets as their main form of communication, I don't know whether they limit them, but I don't believe they do.

[Speaker 2]: So I'm

[Speaker 3]: going to

[Speaker 11]: ask I can

[Speaker 2]: provide more

[Speaker 11]: info on this in Yeah, a

[Speaker 9]: that's true.

[Speaker 2]: It kinda threw me for a loop here because my voice came out of nowhere. Let me go back to Sarah here. So a person makes a phone call through a tablet. I'm gonna ask a real stupid question. Is it a regular phone call or is it something like FaceTime where they can see the person or is it just a phone call as if you were on

[Speaker 9]: a- Usually both are available. Pardon? You usually both are available or rather if there's video available, there's usually also audio available. Not everywhere has video, obviously.

[Speaker 2]: So for those states that did the free phone calls, did that just include a phone call that was not with a video, or did that also just include like, when we call home, you know, we're up here all week long. Folks are calling home every day. You just do it on a phone or are you going to do it through FaceTime? And if they're doing it through a video, is the state picking up that cost as well?

[Speaker 9]: So I know that in Minnesota, which is because there was an article about this, that that there have been some states that have made phone calls and video calls free at the same time, and there are other states that have not done that. And jails as well, that have dealt with this. In general, our recommendation is to do so because of how central video is becoming to our lives and because of that captive market problem. There's simply no way to ensure that video calls are reasonably priced and they are subject to those same captive market problems as phone calls are. And ultimately people will end up being overcharged to stay in touch with their loved ones.

[Speaker 2]: Kevin?

[Speaker 3]: Intuitively, it makes perfect sense that those who are incarcerated that can stay in touch with loved ones for free are better off than those who can't. Can you provide some actual historical data that shows that recidivism is actually reduced when the free phone calls are provided?

[Speaker 9]: There wouldn't be data on free phone calls because it's a relatively new process. I am hoping those studies are happening right now though. Before about five or six years ago, free phone calls were essentially unheard of.

[Speaker 3]: So I think what you're saying is you don't really have any studies. You have input that suggests that the cynicism will be reduced if we give free telephone calls to incarcerated people.

[Speaker 2]: That's how you define recidivism.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah, it's true.

[Speaker 2]: It depends how you define recidivism because there's different definitions in different states. And it could be a new crime over a period of a couple years,

[Speaker 3]: or

[Speaker 2]: it could be a violation of some conditions of release, which then they come back into the criminal justice system on those violations. Recidivism is defined differently in all the states.

[Speaker 9]: It can be defined differently in these studies as well, but usually they're looking at a five year re arrest rate. That is like the most common measure.

[Speaker 2]: So it's a re arrest, it's not a new prime.

[Speaker 9]: Right, then it's because re arrest is the easiest for researchers to access.

[Speaker 3]: Irregardless of what the definition is, if you have any data, I would like to see that. I mean, truly agree that it would be nice if we can provide that connection to family. And logically speaking, that makes sense. But when we say that the reciprocism is reduced, I'd like to see some evidence That's of why I'm asking the question.

[Speaker 9]: Yeah. And I think the best that we can do is to say that we know that frequency will increase if we make phone calls free. That evidence is very clear from everywhere that's made phone calls free. And we know that frequent contact matters and the frequency of contact matters for those recidivism numbers. So I think that's just a logical chain, but no, of course there isn't because of the newness of the policy change, there simply isn't recidivism data. I mean, there hasn't even been five years to measure yet, but hopefully those studies are being done right now.

[Speaker 10]: It's not to discount the question of recidivism, but I would argue there are other outcomes you could look at too, including like childhood outcomes, you know.

[Speaker 6]: Yeah.

[Speaker 2]: Sarah, have you encountered any for those states that are not providing the free service the correctional departments are contracting out. Have you encountered any states that those companies are being regulated by a public utilities commission at all? By a public

[Speaker 9]: utilities commission, I'm not sure, that's not something that comes to mind immediately. There's federal regulation of phone call rates, of course, through something called the relatively recent piece of legislation called the Martha Wright Reed Act, which is in the middle of regulatory complications right now, but ultimately is a phone call cap for most state prisons. So that's where most of the regulation I'm aware of comes from, but I have to get back to you.

[Speaker 2]: I'm just curious because it is a utility of sorts and every state has some form of a utilities commission oversees regulation and rate setting. And I'm just wondering how that plays out for these companies that are under contract. Yeah. Yeah, I'd have to get back to you. Other questions? Conor?

[Speaker 5]: Might be more for April. I'm just wondering, technically, is it more like a WhatsApp sort of system on these tablets where because you're hooked up to WiFi or something, it wouldn't You wouldn't pay more for like a long distance charge, right, than you would any other call. I'm curious if there's a difference there like?

[Speaker 9]: Rates for I'm sure April can give more. Many states have different rates for state and out of state calls. Certainly in terms of e messaging and things like that, that no, it same cost. Would be I will say it's not very much like WhatsApp. It's a lot more like email because the the quantity the content of the messages is, of course, monitored. So there's significant delay in getting back and forth to somebody in e messaging.

[Speaker 4]: Thanks.

[Speaker 2]: So that brings up another stupid question on my part. Because it's at least here in Vermont, DOC, and I'm assuming in other states. I mean, there is a limit in terms of who the incarcerated person can contact. They do have an approved list and an unapproved list. And are, is there any folks monitoring what's occurring in those phone calls so that if something is really going off the rails, there's an interruption that they can make?

[Speaker 9]: Generally, calls are not being monitored live unless there's a specific security reason to do so. Even now with people using you know, paying for phone calls, that would be obviously staff prohibitive. Generally, phone calls are recorded, and recordings can be pulled if necessary by law enforcement.

[Speaker 2]: So then if something is starting to go off the rail or all of a sudden there could be threats made, then the DOC staff would eventually be aware of that.

[Speaker 9]: There'd be a record of it, yes. And of course, many phone calls in it depends on your tablet situation, but many phone calls are still being made in public places, right, where there's actually staff there, at least for one side of the conversation.

[Speaker 2]: Questions? So let's go to the next piece there, Sarah, commissary.

[Speaker 9]: Sure. So the main point I wanna drive home is that commissary, as we talk about commissary and think about commissary pricing, commissary is obviously not something that will ever be free, but it should be thought of as a requirement and not a luxury for people in prisons. What we know about prison food is that it's often served in small portions, it's sometimes inedible. New England on average, so this includes Vermont and the other New England states spends an average of $1.23 per meal on prison food. And that's less than the national average that we spend on school breakfast. And of course, when we're feeding prisoners, we're feeding full grown adults as opposed to children. So that really gives you an idea of the kinds of cost cutting, both in terms of portion size and in terms of quality of food that have to be made in order for the cost to be that low. There's not a huge amount of research out there about commissary, which is one of the reasons why we actually studied commissary pricing and usage on our own back in 2018. We studied Massachusetts as well as two other states and looked at their commissary prices. In Massachusetts in 2018, incarcerated people spent an average of $940 yearly on food alone, $1,207 total. And much of what's being bought, we were actually able to break down what was being bought by category of food. And most much of what's being bought is not snack food. People are not these are not necessarily chips, but meals. Almost half of commissary spending was on ready to eat meals or ingredients, which really drives home that people are using commissary to feed themselves, not simply to supplement what is provided by the prison. Vermont has particularly high commissary costs nationally. The most recent commissary study that I'm aware of was done by the appeal in 2024. It found that Vermont had the highest costs for reading glasses in the country at $15 which is about five times what the price would be at Walgreens. And it also had among the highest prices in the country for a representative food item that they used, which was ramen noodles at a dollar 83 I'm sorry, 83¢. In neighboring states, the price is about half that. So I just wanted I I just wanna bring that up because this bill would make efforts to audit and pay attention to the way Vermont prices commissary, there are other states where the prices are lower.

[Speaker 2]: So Sarah, to go back to that one, is that the economy of scale that there'd be a lot more offenders in those states that are buying the items versus us? Because our facilities are so small.

[Speaker 9]: It's certainly possible, although some of this, you know, a state like Rhode Island would probably be comparable or New Hampshire in terms of having relatively small correctional populations. Major variable seems to be company, what company is being, which company is contracted to provide the services. So I believe that it's Keefe in Vermont. There are of course other commissary companies that are in other states. So I Yeah, have go ahead.

[Speaker 2]: I'm just thinking because our system Like when you mentioned the Hampshire, did you just look at the state system and not You didn't look at the county system at all?

[Speaker 9]: No, no. Yes. These are state prisons. Yeah. These are state prison numbers.

[Speaker 6]: I don't question those two items. We were presented with a list of Conor Casey items and several 100 items long. There were some Like the Koran cast much more than the Bible, which I'm guessing are both low volume items. But using informal comp at the vending machine at the coat room here in the State House, in the Champlain Farms out on the main drag, like a lot of things like potato chips or a 20 ounce soft drink were actually very comparable in our Department of Corrections commissary to what they are in the two places I just illustrated. And I know it wasn't a formally commissioned price comparison, but it's very easy to find a couple outliers out of the hundreds of items that are listed in the published commentary prices.

[Speaker 9]: Yeah, and what I would do too is there's actually a I can direct you directly and I can send the link directly to the appeal survey. They do a huge amount of looking at prices across different states and actually pulling commissary pricing from local facilities. Because in some states, commissary pricing is quite different across facilities as well as within the state. I think that the value of a bill like this is that it finds the answer to the question that you're asking in a systematic way. There may, you know, may be outlier, it may be that these are outliers. If they are outliers, they're fairly important ones. Would note, you know, breathing glasses are something that people should have access to, not at five times the cost of what they would cost on the outside. And a study like this will just give you the information that you need to make those kinds of policy decisions rationally. That's really all you're looking for.

[Speaker 2]: We have a lot of questions here. James, Troy, Brian, and Gina.

[Speaker 4]: Mine's just a comment since the populations came up. New Hampshire has 4,200. We have 1,500. Rhode Island has 2,500. So I don't think that's relevant to the pricing. But since somebody mentioned it

[Speaker 2]: Higher scale.

[Speaker 4]: But Yeah. Regardless, those are the numbers.

[Speaker 3]: Troy? Sarah,

[Speaker 7]: one of the things that our contract with Keith does is provides money to a rec fund. We're also finding out that a good portion of that rec fund goes to pay the staff who facilitate that, the rec program. How common is that? How common is it for states to be getting these kickbacks from their commissary contracts?

[Speaker 9]: Extremely common. Pretty much universal, I would say. It's part of the reason why commissary is priced the way it is. But I'd note that fundamentally commissary, I didn't go into this because I didn't wanna be repetitive, but obviously commissary spending like phone spending mostly comes from families. And so the people who are paying are not the incarcerated folks, and instead it's extracting money from communities that need it.

[Speaker 4]: Thank you.

[Speaker 2]: Brian and then Gina.

[Speaker 10]: Hi. On the previous slide, there was mention of ingredients and like MREs, or I can't remember how exactly it was phrased. I had been thinking of commissary as sort of honey buns or whatever was our favorite example from before. But

[Speaker 4]: can you or maybe this is going

[Speaker 10]: be on the list that you're going to send anyway and I can just look at that. Are we talking about carrots here? Are we talking

[Speaker 4]: about spaghetti? What is that? Yeah.

[Speaker 9]: As a general rule, we're not talking about fresh food. Very rare. Find fresh food on on commissary, which is a separate problem. The sodium, for example, levels in commissary food are unbelievably high because mostly it is it is more on the SpaghettiOs side. A lot of tuna fish, a lot of ready made meals of various kinds, lot of ramen noodles. Commissary is not necessarily a healthy alternative to what's being offered in prisons, but currently it's often the only alternative. And so it's the alternative that people take.

[Speaker 10]: Okay, yep, thanks.

[Speaker 2]: I'm glad you flipped back

[Speaker 8]: to this slide. Thank you. I see you've got the average for nine forty, but do you have like a median number? Because you could have somebody that only spends $40 on commissary and somebody that spend $5 on commissary. Do you have a median? To

[Speaker 9]: be honest, I can't remember whether this number is a meaner or a median. It's published on our website and I'll send a link.

[Speaker 8]: Okay. It just said average, so I wasn't sure. And then

[Speaker 2]: what was my other question? Know you

[Speaker 1]: got there somewhere.

[Speaker 2]: Somewhere, somewhere, come back.

[Speaker 8]: Oh, is there a difference that you're noticing between privately run prisons and publicly run prisons as far as commissary prices?

[Speaker 9]: I'm not sure about that. The appeal may touch on that, but I can look into that and get back

[Speaker 2]: to you. Okay, thank you. Questions? Do you wanna read at all, James, what you brought up in terms of what's in the food?

[Speaker 4]: Well, it's just basic stuff. It's just that, you know, obviously it's minimizing nutritional quality. I looked it up in Google, you know, extreme bulk purchasing, there's nothing wrong with that part, but relying on private outsource contractors using inmate labor. Meals often exclude fresh produce, dairy, meat in favor of processed, fortified or soy based products that meet only minimum caloric requirements. Specifically typed in how could prison spend only $1.23 per instead AI gave that answer and I think that's fairly accurate probably. I don't think anybody's getting a T bone. But also I mean you type of commissary. First of all, I don't like ramen, I have a bias, but there's no nutritional value in ramen. But like, it's gonna be some better options. Puna fish cool, but tuna fish without mayo. It's like, you know.

[Speaker 9]: I will also note and I can send this around too. I'll send a big long email of studies if that's helpful to people. There's a study out at the University of Vermont on food quality in New England prisons specifically that's very detailed. I looked to pull Vermont specific information and there is some, a lot of it is generalized to all of New England, but it's a very, very interesting study that I can send around.

[Speaker 4]: I have one right here too for Vermont law and graduate school.

[Speaker 2]: Is Vermont kind of an outlier from the others in the study at all? Or does it track the same?

[Speaker 9]: The one way that Vermont is an outlier in the study that I noticed when I was most recently reading it, is actually in the regulations around food. A lot of other states in New England have more written regulations about things like food quality and food safety that Vermont doesn't have written down. That of course doesn't necessarily mean that those things aren't happening in Vermont prisons, but that was something that was notable in a way that Vermont stood out from other states. But there was nothing there in terms of the quality of the meals, quality of the food? Nothing that comes to mind, but I can forward you the study.

[Speaker 2]: Other questions? Anything else for Sarah before we transition to April.

[Speaker 9]: Thank you all so much for having me.

[Speaker 3]: Thank you.

[Speaker 4]: Thank Thank

[Speaker 2]: you for being willing to reschedule.

[Speaker 1]: I have

[Speaker 6]: a thought, but it's not really germane to Sarah.

[Speaker 2]: April?

[Speaker 11]: Shall I share my screen then? Sure. Cool. So oh, sharing has not turned out. Oh, I'm cohost. Thank you. I'll share my screen. I also have a quick presentation. There we go. Okay. Thank you so much for having me here. My name is April. I am the CEO of Emilio. I will cover really quickly, you know, why Emilio does the work that we do, what do we actually do. But a lot of these already covered by Sarah and so, I am going to spend the vast majority of my time here talking about a specific program that we currently have in Iowa. It is providing free communication for the incarcerated individuals in Iowa state prisons and so I'll spend more time talking about that and then less time kind of covering things that Sarah already covered. But to start with, Emilio was founded in 2019 kind of in the midst of COVID. Because of the problem that Sarah already highlighted and the committee already heard about the high cost of telecommunication for incarcerated individuals inside state prisons, county jails, even some juvenile detention centers all good? Okay. The kind of cost barrier that they have communicating with their loved ones. And so we have been kind of developing technology and then deploying technology to prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities for about five years at this point. Who we are? So we are a nonprofit. We're the only nonprofit. We were the only nonprofit at that point when we first started, and we still are the only nonprofit doing this work. We really function kind of like a a tech company, but we're nonprofit by choice specifically because we're trying to fight really the exploitative for profit providers that have really been permeating the space and creating a lot of the problems that Sarah has covered. We build communication and education technologies for incarcerated individuals and their families, and we specifically provide these technologies at no cost at all to the incarcerated people or their families. Instead, we work directly with the government agency. So either it's the Department of Corrections or a sheriff's office in various states to cover the cost for those technologies and solutions. I'll share a little bit more on how this actually works in a bit. But in general, our mission and our theory of change, right, is exactly what Sarah covered, when people are connected with the best part of their lives and the resources that already exist in their communities and their loved ones, they will reenter society better. And that is something that we believe save budget and save money for all the government agencies providing services, any service, not just for incarcerated people, but just health and human services down the line. As of this month, we are already providing services in 15 states, about 63 correctional facilities, and that include adult prisons. It also includes county jails and houses of corrections, as well as juvenile facilities both on the district court level as well as the state juvenile detention center. We serve about 182,000 family and incarcerated users in our system. Couple of places that we are. So we're in. So we are replacing legacy system in state prisons, serving about 23 state prisons across across four different states, Colorado, Iowa, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. The usual service scope for these specific facilities include, you know, video family calls, legal counsel privilege calls. So these are, you know, not recorded, not monitored, privileged telehealth calls, and then also learning management system and tablets. So devices that will be used to power these calls. County jails as well. We serve about 23 county jails across four different states. The vast majority of the county jails that we have services in are in Massachusetts, and I'm Boston based. So it's very convenient for me to travel to different county jails. County jails are very different, as you guys know, from state prisons, but Vermont has the unified system, you all really have to have all the population in one place and think about their different needs. But the usual service scope in the county jails include, again, devices, tablets, learning management system, and virtual classrooms so that individuals who are incarcerated in a county facility can be connected with their educators and then not hopefully missing the education opportunities that they had when they were outside. In that sense, they can have a continuum of learning which helps them come out with better knowledge and better skills. We also work in a lot of different juvenile facilities. I'm actually not exactly sure how Vermont organizes the juvenile facilities, but in different states, what we understand

[Speaker 3]: is We're working it. We're

[Speaker 2]: working Working

[Speaker 11]: on it. Okay. In in different states that we are, there are juvenile facilities that are on the district court level. So, basically, these are kids who might be pretrial, are just there to process intake, and then there are also states that essentially have the sentenced juvenile into a centralized facility like Arizona. So we are in 17 of those across the country in different states. For the juvenile facility, we generally provide voice and video calls. Again, that's the most important part of our services is the communication between incarcerated people and their loved ones. A lot of provider communication, so legal, medical, educational calls between kids and providers on the outside, and then also digital resource library, the normal things, devices. So that's kind of where we are working services wise across different states. The part that I really want to highlight a little bit is our work with Iowa Department of Corrections. I think that this hopefully will answer some of the questions that you guys had previously regarding research and all of that. I should also say Iowa DOC is our first ever partner. We learned a lot serving Iowa DOC and then the different needs of incarcerated individuals there. But I'll go through this kind of case study very quickly, and then hopefully we'll have a lot of time for questions. So the Iowa model started in 2021. It was actually requested by the DOC. It it was not associated with a similar effort like here in Vermont, no cost call legislation. It was born out of a pretty simple need. It's just that Iowa had shut down in person visits because of COVID, and they wanted to make sure that there is a way to do some kind of video visits between their residents, so incarcerated folks, and the families. At that point, the Iowa DOC has been using Google Meet to be that limited solution, and they were constantly looking for something that is a little bit more corrections grade, right, than Google Meet. And so they were evaluating Emilio based on several factors. One, the cost because it was a department decision to purchase a solution. So they're looking really, really closely at the cost of the technology, timing to launch, like how fast it is that we can get the solution off the ground. And then also, the last thing is security. So it is a state prison system, so everybody is sentenced. And then they do have a lot of different security classifications, maximum, medium, right, like minimum. And so they wanted to make sure that it is a solution built for corrections. Interestingly, at 2021, we only were we're, like, one year old as a company. And so I still remember, you know, our cofounders and kind of engineers pack up their bags and just stayed in an Airbnb in Iowa for three months and launched first in their women's facility and very quickly rolled into the other eight state prisons in Iowa. Specifically, I wanna highlight the significant budget savings for Iowa at that point because we are the only nonprofit in this space. We charge by cost. So I'm happy to answer, by the way, any cost related questions later. It is like, you know, when you guys talk about the long distance call versus local calls versus international calls, what is the actual cost difference to provide those services? But at that point, Iowa DOC determined that our cost is about one fifteenth of the actual cost that for profit providers will be charging the state. And so they went with Emilio. We rolled out a couple of different prior to launch assessment together with the DOC. These are, in retrospect, very, very important as we deploy more and more in different facilities, understanding the network strength. I think Sarah talked a little bit about, you know, you can have the best software. Like, we have kind of the best Zoom, you know, going on in our computers. But if your Internet or my Internet doesn't work as well, this wouldn't work as well. So similar things, right, for correctional facilities. So we worked closely with the DOC to do a network assessment for all of their facilities, identifying areas where there is good Wi Fi, there is good internet, and then areas that probably needs a boost of of bandwidth. We also provide a comprehensive training to staff and users including and especially incarcerated individuals. For some of them, they have been inside for twenty something years and so, you know, I remember when we first deployed, there are women who were kind of punching numbers into the Chromebook as if it's a it's a payphone. And so it really was important for us to make sure people are digitally literate as they go through these more modern technologies and tablets and stuff. We created training guides so that there is sustainability going forward as people come in and use the technology. Staff can train incarcerated folks and their colleagues. And then we also developed a system for feedback and resolution. So we are very, very specific about transparency when it comes to the quality of calls, Partially because we know there are providers especially for this population because you know they don't really have an alternative. The providers who don't really care about how the call qualities are. Right? So they don't they're not really interested in hearing, oh, yeah. Your call dropped five times in a one minute call. Not my problem. We are very obsessed with quality. And so from the get go, we actually ask for people's feedback after every single call, and then the rating of the call becomes available on the admin dashboard, and it's live for all the staff members at Iowa DOC.

[Speaker 0]: May I ask a question? In the beginning of your presentation, you said there was no cost at all. Now, costs, so can you walk me through

[Speaker 2]: that?

[Speaker 11]: Yes. So that's a great that's a great question. So for Emilio, it's no cost to the end user. So it's no cost to the incarcerated people or their families on the outside. The cost that I'm quoting here is essentially 1¢ per minute for video calls is the cost that we quoted to the Iowa Department of Corrections. So essentially, it is the DOC that is paying for the service. Does it make sense? So it's not like a b to c, like we're not business to customer. The end users don't pay, but the government agency or rather partner that we work with will show their the cost.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I do understand, but it might be beneficial not to say at no cost because there's nothing free in life, unfortunately.

[Speaker 2]: That's very true.

[Speaker 0]: And so that kind of gives two sides of thinking at no cost that's not possible. And I know it's show pushed to the department of corrections, but we all are paying it as taxpayers, which we're happy to do. But I would just maybe define that.

[Speaker 11]: Absolutely. Yeah. I'll change some of the wording on the slide. We yeah. We it's it's part of the reason why we are, you know, nonprofit by choice, really. Like, because we know we are charging essentially the taxpayers, right, for this service. We wanted to make sure that there is no margin, essentially.

[Speaker 2]: But yeah. Absolutely.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you.

[Speaker 11]: Okay. Go ahead. Go Okay. I am at the last part of this. So since our launch, the project has been a result of well, have well, have have had a rigorous longitudinal research attached to it. So from the beginning of Iowa deployment, we've been working with the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, UC Berkeley, and Arnold Ventures, which is one of the philanthropies that supported Emilio's beginning, the product development piece to do a research on our implementation, and it is a causal research. And I would just say the research itself just get published as a draft and has not been peer reviewed. So I'm gonna share a couple of graphs and kind of research results. I just wouldn't share it too widely, basically, is what I'll say. So in terms of the implementation timeline, you guys can see this pretty clearly, but between June 2021 and May 2022, we roll out in each of the Iowa DOC state prisons kind of one by one, like almost, you know, one month at a time. And then that's the rollout. The rollout itself lasted a year. The actual implementation slash kind of what was provided are video calls. So this is just, you know, essentially think about it as a video calls became free. Right? And then in person visit, we actually provided a scheduling platform for Iowa DOC where people can schedule in events in video visits as opposed to their current their, well, their previous status quo which was it's a first come, first serve. So, you have a lot of folks coming from either out of state or pretty far away and have to wait in the waiting room for hours before they can actually get in. Lentline calls is actually something that we did not change in the Iowa DOC model. So, landline calls were provided by CoreLink which is a private company during the Amelio intervention. The part that actually got implemented was not landline calls. It was the video visits. So CoreLink still provides phone calls, landline in Iowa DOC, and it's still being charged at 11¢ a minute. Okay. So the outcomes, I know we talked about the volume of video calls is significantly increased. In our case, it increased quite a bit. Don't know if you guys see the the actual grab. It's like 300 to 500% actually, which is a lot of calls. But that also corresponds with the fact that I think, you know, prior to Emilio, IOI really didn't have any video calls that were available and free. And so that's what we were saying. And then also, keep in mind that this is during COVID. So I would say the the the 500, 600% increase is like or 300, sorry, percent increase is likely a little higher than what you guys will see when you make calls free. But we do see a significant increase of video call volume. We also saw a significant increase in in person visits, which is something that we really take to heart because the worst case for us would be everybody uses video calls and then the in person connection get lost. And so it's really good for us to hear and see that the in person visit also went up. Sarah talked about free calls make all the facilities, staff, and incarcerated people health or healthier and safer inside, and that's exactly what we were saying seeing in this research as well. So since the free call rollout, there had been a well, I would say, on average, 30% reduction in imprisonment misconduct, and then 55 to 62 kind of in that range declined violent misconduct. So this is the first stage results of the research where the researchers focus on imprisonment misconduct, violent misconduct, and then all of those are very significant when it comes to indicating how well somebody will reenter. Essentially, you behave better inside, likely, you will reenter society better. So we look at that first. That's the available data, what what the the available data can show us. The last bit I'll I'll emphasize is as we talk to DOCs and other, you know, sheriff's associations, there had always been a worry that when calls become free, people will just connect with others more, so will drug offenses and misuse of communication. So think about it as like, you know, failing to follow regulations when using mail or phone, sending coded message, that kind of thing. What we are seeing, at least in Iowa, is that there is no significant increase in drug offenses. There is actually a pretty significant decrease in misuse of communication. And so that is something that we were quite happy about, to be honest, a little surprising for us, but that's what the data is showing. And so we're happy that essentially making calls free, increasing that volume of calls does not necessarily lead to violation of regulations or policies. It, in fact, leads to Sabre facilities. That's kind of it. And so I will go back to one of the charts and then answer any questions. So

[Speaker 2]: what your company does, you contract with the state and the state pays for free video calls through your system. And you're saying through your system, you're charging less per minute than if they contracted out with other telecommunication companies.

[Speaker 11]: That's right. So maybe to put it in numbers a little bit, I'll share. So I'm based in Boston, Massachusetts. Well, the Commonwealth passed no cost calls. The budget that was allocated to Securus, which is the current provider in Massachusetts, was almost $30,000,000. Now Massachusetts has 6,000 incarcerated individuals plus the county population, so it is a much bigger state than Vermont. But that that's a lot of money that, you know, previously was on the incarcerated individuals and their families, and now the state has the shoulder. The estimate for Emilio to serve Massachusetts would be less than 5,000,000 Because, you know, for us, one, there is no there are a couple of different reasons why we are much cheaper. The most important one being we're nonprofit. And so there is really no no margin to any of those cost. And two, our technology was not built in the nineteen eighties as opposed to secure a bypass. We are built on pretty modern tech stack, and what that means is the support cost related is just much much lower because most of the the bugs and the, you know, technical difficulties are troubleshot by automatic mechanisms. And then the third thing that makes our cost much, much lower is actually that we are we're quite transparent when it comes to what, like, what a technology can work on. And then let me let me be specific about this. So in Massachusetts, Securis provides software, hardware, and network, and it was always sold as a bundle essentially to the state DOC. And so, you know, the the per minute video call will include the network, and then it will also include the tablets. But maybe the state doesn't need all of those tablets. Right? Like, there are devices by the state IT or even community groups that can function inside that, you know, that does not need to be purchased. And so for Emilio, we're much more like a a la carte situation. So, if the county jail or state prison only needs software, we don't really provide anything else. I just say, well, yeah, like, if you, you know, making sure communication can happen and you don't need anything else, perfect. Let's just actually implement software. And so without the bundling, the cost become much more traceable, and it's much, much, much lower.

[Speaker 2]: So we have some questions here, April. Shawn and then Kevin.

[Speaker 1]: April, so what would be your estimate to do, like, our six, seven, you know, facilities here in Vermont.

[Speaker 2]: Yeah. So You need WiFi. Right?

[Speaker 1]: We do need WiFi. Do you you you provide the WiFi. Right?

[Speaker 11]: We have partners who can provide a Wi Fi. Yes. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]: Is that an extra cost? Or

[Speaker 11]: It would it depends on how good the current network as, like, situation is in It's

[Speaker 1]: not it doesn't really exist. We don't have Wi Fi in

[Speaker 3]: our in our anywhere.

[Speaker 2]: We have it in some spots, but not across all the way. We have it in some spots in each facility, but not every facility is Wi Fi totally available.

[Speaker 11]: I see. Okay. So the Wi Fi and the Internet piece would be would cost, like, some some money. Right? Because you have to set it up and all of that. But for Emilio's portion, I would say, I'll I'll give a ballpark. Okay. So for us, we have served county jails at about 1,000 average daily population, which I think is similar to Vermont, like 1,500 at about $250,000 per year.

[Speaker 2]: But we have six separate facilities. Yeah. Are you saying those thousand that you've done before were spread out through county jails?

[Speaker 11]: There so the thousand person county jail is spread out into three different facilities, but they're on the same campus.

[Speaker 2]: Okay. Well, yeah, that's a difference.

[Speaker 4]: It does.

[Speaker 2]: Yeah. The six facilities spread out through the state.

[Speaker 11]: Yeah. So I would I would say, like, probably higher than $2.50 k, but it shouldn't it shouldn't be much higher because the way that we actually calculate our cost is based on the number of people using it, not necessarily by site, if that makes sense.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah. It does make sense.

[Speaker 1]: And then I guess my last question is like, could we get some kind of a cost estimate from you? It has to go out together. Okay, sorry.

[Speaker 2]: You're go out to bid.

[Speaker 3]: Alright, you.

[Speaker 11]: No problem. Yeah, generally

[Speaker 2]: Yeah. I Kevin.

[Speaker 3]: I've been out of college way too long. Don't understand your chart.

[Speaker 2]: Okay.

[Speaker 3]: Help me understand what it's saying because if it's numbers of instant infractions and you go negative, I I don't understand how that help help me understand your chart, please.

[Speaker 11]: Yeah. Absolutely. So but by the way, I'm very happy to share the whole paper with the committee so you guys can read through kind of, like, the explanation of it. But it's a long story short, it's a chart that is normalized. So we will assume that the baseline is zero. So when you actually go up and then it's it's positive, right, it means, like, prior to the intervention, which is here, this line in the middle Right. The normalized number of incidents is higher than zero. So, basically, like, it basically focus on the trend as opposed to the actual number. The negative ones just means how much of it is below the the the the mean. Think about it as the mean. So let's say, right, like, if on average, Iowa DOC has 200 misconduct per month. I'm just making this up. Let's say that they have 200. Right? Like, that zero line would actually be the average, so 200. And then you will see, you know, anything that is positive over here means it was above 200. Right? And then the negative here is, like, how much below 200.

[Speaker 3]: I gotcha.

[Speaker 2]: Yep. Thank you.

[Speaker 11]: No problem. This is like a pretty intense economic paper. And that's why we were like, probably shouldn't just put the charts here. But hey, we have

[Speaker 2]: Take a break. Charts are great. Yeah.

[Speaker 7]: Is that right? I

[Speaker 2]: am now.

[Speaker 7]: What's your you said that this study has not been peer reviewed. Is that something you're about to try to do?

[Speaker 11]: Yes. So, the study actually has actually, this is a great question because I can address the the research on recidivism question earlier as well. The study has three phases. The first phase is focusing on imprisoned behaviors, which is what we're seeing right now. The second phase focuses on immediate reentry outcomes. So the researchers will be looking at outcomes like how long did it take somebody reentering to find a job? How long did it take somebody reentering to enroll in education classes? That's the second phase. And then the third phase is three year recidivism rate. So it's really hard to get the recidivism rate data, not because it's not publicly available, but rather it just takes a while. So, like, for Iowa, the average length of stay for somebody in the state prison is about two twenty point two months. So, like, think about two years. Right? To understand that person's recidivism rate as defined by, again, Iowa, it will be it will be it will has it will have to wait till three years after this person is out. So Emilio started our research and our project in 2021, adding the average length of stay plus three years. It means the earliest result we can start collecting on recidivism rate will be the end of this year. And then that will be the earliest cohort that we can see results on. And so, generally, a causal study on recidivism rate will take at least eight years. And that's where I think, to Sarah's point, no cause call has only been in place for about five. So we gotta wait a little bit. Or we have to focus on the results that are highly indicative of recidivism rate, which, you know, focus on outcomes. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: April, but how will you find out that information? Will you be knowing where these people are to see if they have done something after being released from?

[Speaker 11]: Yeah. So generally, the Iowa DOC and generally DOC keep this information. Right? Like, if somebody who was booked returned to the facility within three years, right, they will show up as the same person. And so then we know they came back to the facility.

[Speaker 2]: Evan?

[Speaker 3]: Back to math here. This particular chart, what is the baseline zero? How many infractions does that represent?

[Speaker 11]: Let me start stop sharing my screen and actually look at the paper because I don't wanna quote I don't wanna quote a number that because I can't see the actual paper. Alright. So

[Speaker 3]: And my next question is gonna be and that's out of how many people incarcerated?

[Speaker 11]: Yeah. Okay. So the second question is easier to answer. That's out of 9,000 people incarcerated.

[Speaker 3]: 9,000. Okay.

[Speaker 11]: Yeah. The the first one, I will need to I really would need to take a look here and see if there is a recording in the paper. Why don't I oh, actually, trying to find the charts and tables. Okay. Alright. The total number of instance of misconduct well, so this is let us say, this is prior to Emilio coming in. Right. Is a the total number comes to 261,000, and then violent misconduct constitute about 42,000 of those.

[Speaker 7]: 251,000

[Speaker 3]: for 9,000 feet.

[Speaker 2]: That's right. Yeah.

[Speaker 3]: In a one month no. No. Two months period.

[Speaker 11]: Oh, no. No. No. Sorry. Woah. That that's a lot. That's that would be too too much.

[Speaker 3]: I think so.

[Speaker 11]: So yeah. That's a little too much. No. No. No. So the 2,000 so two I'll send the paper afterwards. But the $2.61

[Speaker 2]: Don't don't do math in public.

[Speaker 11]: The two sixty one thousand number of misconduct is the cumulative number. So how many misconducts happened in between year February and between 2015 and 2022. So think about it as, like, seven years immediately before. Yeah.

[Speaker 3]: Okay. Good. So

[Speaker 11]: I guess if you wanna, like, quantify it a little bit, I'll say per year.

[Speaker 2]: No. No. No. That's okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

[Speaker 11]: Since I have, like, five more minutes, there are two things. So one on the public utility regulating the service. The only one that we've seen, so Amelio service actually being regulated by the PUC, is in Colorado. That's one.

[Speaker 9]: And then

[Speaker 2]: How long ago did that just come into place, or has that been

[Speaker 11]: We've been having, yeah, we've been having to submit the regulatory report for about two years now.

[Speaker 3]: Yep.

[Speaker 2]: And do they work on setting your rate that you charge?

[Speaker 11]: The state actually so Colorado passed no cost calls, and so the state does regulate the rate. Yes.

[Speaker 2]: Because the state is at the tab, so that's the nexus to having the Public Utilities Commission regulate.

[Speaker 11]: Yeah. And making sure the providers are not charging the incarcerated people. Yeah.

[Speaker 7]: How has that impacted your your costs in Colorado compared to, say, Massachusetts?

[Speaker 10]: Too Yeah. Much,

[Speaker 11]: Not too much. I mean, we don't charge incarcerated people anyways. Right. So yeah. The part that we sometimes spend a little bit of time just making sure the data is accurate is the PUC does ask for customer complaints. And so we'll make sure

[Speaker 2]: that what?

[Speaker 11]: Customer complaints. Complaints.

[Speaker 2]: Yeah. Has there been many complaints?

[Speaker 11]: For us, no. And that's why generally we check is it one or two. But I mean, we will have to check. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]: Conor and then Kevin.

[Speaker 5]: Thanks very much, Jenny. You might have covered this. What do your contracts look like? Like, how long are they? What's the severability in them?

[Speaker 2]: Generally,

[Speaker 11]: it's kind of depends on the state, but I will say on average, two or three years with options to renew. So like with option to renew one year at a time.

[Speaker 4]: Thank you. Yeah. Suppose separability.

[Speaker 3]: And are you did you already or are you willing to share the the the contract with Iowa? Absolutely.

[Speaker 6]: What what what

[Speaker 11]: is your total contract cost with Iowa? Oh, with Iowa, actually, we only are charging the state for the storage cost of the video calls. So the video calls are monitored and recorded. Right? And so we store the recording for two months according to regulations from Iowa, and that two months might change. Different states have different regulations. But we charge the state for the recording, and it's about 14 it's 14,500 per year.

[Speaker 2]: For the recording?

[Speaker 3]: The recordings.

[Speaker 11]: Yeah. But that's the only thing we charge Iowa because Iowa is the first aid and our first customer, so we love them. And they give us

[Speaker 6]: a shot.

[Speaker 3]: So then I need to no. That's okay. I'll thank you.

[Speaker 11]: But I think what I can do actually is I mean, all of our contracts are public information, and so I'm happy to share a couple of different ones that includes, right, like, both Iowa and then also some of the states that we're in later down the road. You can see, you know, what does a mature yeah. Look like.

[Speaker 3]: Very innovative. Thank you.

[Speaker 2]: So we're due on the floor here in a few minutes. So are there any other questions here? I want to thank both you, April and Sarah. This has been very informative and has given us food for thought. We do have some legislation in front of us that deals with both telecommunications as well as the commissary. So this just really helps us in giving information in terms of what direction we might go in. So I really appreciate your testimony. I want to thank you both today.

[Speaker 7]: Thanks, April.

[Speaker 11]: You so much. Thank

[Speaker 2]: Anything else before we finish? What is Thursday? Tomorrow is Friday. Well, I think we're done for the day. I think we've got some time on the floor. I don't know if we end up on the floor pretty quickly. I don't know if they will or not. It might be good to come back and continue a committee conversation because we all have dangling pieces. But we might be on the floor for a while, so I just don't know.

[Speaker 5]: We need Wi Fi.

[Speaker 3]: On

[Speaker 6]: this particular bill, we know that of the commissary commissions, it varies by facility, but it's somewhere around $0.15 or $0.16 in the dollar. Actually, those were things that aren't bad, right?

[Speaker 2]: Things that aren't left.

[Speaker 6]: So I'm just curious if there's a way to take some of that money, that commission money, and move it over towards subsidizing telephone use. It seems like those might be there might be some opportunity there, possibly. It's a thought, and I don't expect to start a two hour conversation about it. But what does that rec director position really look like? I don't know the answer to that.

[Speaker 2]: Is there just there's one rec director per facility? Is there

[Speaker 6]: One at the but they don't have any resources. Right? They don't have any materials. So does it have to be a full time position? Could it be less than that? I mean, could the could the difference then be used for some of this telecommunication stuff? I I I don't know. It sounds

[Speaker 3]: like maybe. Could they come in and testify?

[Speaker 2]: You have to work through a DOC to see if they could testify.

[Speaker 6]: Maybe people would think that's crazy.

[Speaker 4]: Interesting idea.

[Speaker 6]: Yes. It would create better value for the people paying the commissions by the set. It seems that way. Maybe it's not done with. It certainly might be better.

[Speaker 3]: Does anybody remember what the

[Speaker 5]: last WiFi cost estimate was knowing that it's probably going up I from think

[Speaker 2]: they went up for $3,000,000 We're working with ADS to get an updated cost estimate. And when will you have that? I'm not entirely sure. We have recurring meetings with them. The first one should be maybe we'll have a better idea by then.

[Speaker 5]: Is there any money in the bank for that? No. No, right?

[Speaker 3]: Money in the bank?

[Speaker 6]: I can say. The Funchamont Film Showcase people have nice looking chocolate chip cookies in the Cedar Creek Room right now.

[Speaker 9]: We need food.

[Speaker 10]: You too.

[Speaker 4]: After I ate.

[Speaker 2]: Same cookies.

[Speaker 3]: Probably. They look pretty good.

[Speaker 2]: So we're done for today, but keep your ear to the ground, your eyes round, just see what time we get out. It's gonna be long on the floor. Tomorrow morning, of course, is Friday. So we don't meet until after the floor tomorrow. And we do have somewhat of a full day. We've got the HCB coming in. And then we're also gonna be talking about drive driver's licenses tomorrow. That's gonna take up a full full afternoon. I think it will be a good long afternoon in some ways. So we are done for today. Nice to meet everyone.