Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Always good to have jobs with us.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I mean

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: You never know.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Alright. Welcome to the house judiciary committee this Thursday morning, February twelfth, and we're gonna continue giving information about the budget requests, and we're gonna talk about the crime victim services and about Jennifer Boland, if you can join us. Talk to us about what's going on in the corporations.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Good morning. Morning. We also have the Director of Finance and Administration for the Center, Carol Grossi, here as I call her the brains of the organization. I don't know, Deflecting some of the questions to her. So I don't know if she wants to sit here or if

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: we're thinking. Yeah, that'd be great. You. Gonna file yourself for the record and proceed.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Good morning. Jennifer Pullman, the director for the Vermont Center for Planned Victim Services.

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Good morning. Carol Roche, the director of finance and administration.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank you for being here.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Well, thank you for hearing from us. As you know, we were in appropriations last week. I've been following the testimony, I bring good news. We have the smallest ask of anyone. Not asking for new positions. Have a pretty simple request. That being said, we have a very complicated budget, as you may recall. So if it's okay with the committee, I do want to provide just again, some of you are probably done with this presentation, but brief framework for what do we do, how do we do it, what do we need. So just to quickly review, we are one of five random quasi state agencies that has state mandates, but no state employees. That presents significant challenges for our budget and significant challenges for Carol. And we'll get into that. We have two state mandated programs that we administer and oversee: Victims Compensation Program and the Vermont Restitution Unit. Compensation Program, as many of you know, exists to support victims if there's a finding of probable cause. No conviction is needed, probable cause with some of their eligible expenses, crime related eligible expenses. So we have that program, which some of those expenses that you may recall, expenses, crime scene cleanup, medical, mental health, loss wages, again, those expenses that are directly related to the crime. The other state mandated program that we support, the Vermont Restitution Unit, That's been in existence for over two decades now. We are unique in the country in the way that we handle restitution. Again, it was a policy shift by our state. We recognize that putting people back in jail for failure to pay restitution made no sense. We were increasing our incarcerated population, and we were not doing anything for victims and survivors. So what the state decided to do was to create a unit that would be capitalized with a 15% surcharge on traffic fines and criminal conviction fees. So we administer that, which enables us to actually, for individual victims, pay out $5,000 immediately upon verifying those losses. So it's post conviction, court order, and then we can, in most cases, get the victim out of the equation at that point. And then we continue to pursue collection on the offender. We have many tools that are available to us, tax offsets, liens, wage garnishment. And our collection rates are far more successful than the collection rates that the Department of Corrections was seeing. And they'd also be using a private collections agency, which was then putting a surcharge on top of what offenders were paying. In addition to that, the other major responsibility, you see in statute as well, 13 BSA five thousand three and sixty one, is we are the pass through for federal funding. We also are the pass through for state special funds and general funds. So we have 60 individual sub grantees, but many of our sub grantees have additional It's 60 individuals because on top of that, since we administer so many grants and the special funds and general funds, sub grantee can have maybe five grants with us. So it's doing site visits, technical assistance, support and training. It's reviewing all of those budgets four times a year, which Carol gets to do on her own as well. So it's a significant responsibility in terms of what we do to oversee the administration of funds across the board. We also provide advocacy. I'm the advocacy team, and we provide training as well. So how do we do this? Again, I think many of you are familiar with the wonky pattern of funding that we try and leverage to support the work of not just the center, support victims and survivors through our direct service programs and to support those 60 individual subgrantees. If you look at this note, I don't know if just have it in writing. But if you look at the overview that's on your committee page, I put a number of different documents. Mine is a leap use because of my disgusting printer, but yours is So a nice bright if you go to page two, we do have a chart. But without needing to reference it, I can tell you that we receive very little in general fund dollars. We received just over basically $1,700,000 in general funds. Most of those are straight pass through. By that, I mean that goes out to programming in the state. It goes out to the network programs, child advocacy centers, it goes to prosecutor positions, supervised visitation programs, other So it's a straight pass through, which means we don't take any administrative support to administer all of those grants.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I just want make sure I'm looking at the right thing. Is it the JFO document?

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: No. It's a good overview. But, again, yours is prettier than mine, but the budget overview. My apologies, because my printer wasn't working. I didn't think you all needed It was a narrative. Idiots.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I don't know if we have that. We do. We do? Okay. Where am I missing that?

[Rep. Ian Goodnow (Member)]: It's on today. Yep.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Third document done. Thank you.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Thank you, Goodnow. So on page two, you'll see a small pie chart that shows the different funding streams. And again, primarily we're looking at federal and special funds to support all of that work. As you know, but it appears repeating, the special funds are in decline, have been despite so many efforts to mitigate that process or that outcome. We've studied each step. It's not going to change. And a lot of that is for good reasons. Certainly, enforcement has changed their practice around pulling people over for traffic violations. I wasn't so lucky last week, but But I only had a warning so I didn't have to contribute to our funds. But that has changed. But also a lot of the changes that have been made in this building. We're decriminalizing pieces. We're utilizing diversion more, recharge processes. And that all impacts our funds, which are not bad policies. We've supported so many of those. But they all have that ripple effect in terms of what we can expect to see with our special funds. And Carol is constantly trying to predict and project, but all efforts to mitigate this shift have not resulted in change. Know philosophically, there's been a lot of conversation in this building, which we don't disagree with, in that should what we consider core services that should be provided to our communities, our victims and our survivors, should we be basically asking people who've committed a crime to primarily bear the funding for those resources. There's a lot of conversation about, again, giving people second chances, helping people to either transition effectively. But I'm going to return to this at the end because I think that philosophically, it fears revisiting at some point. I know this is not the year with all of the different pressures that are upon you, but I just want to continue to flag that we're relying on funding streams that are consistently in decline. The pressures on the people doing this work are more significant. Victims and survivors are presenting with more complex needs. And so we're continuing to kind of get to this precipice that I just don't know how much further we can go.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: do want to underscore when I'm referencing funding that piece about us not being state employees. I've heard the testimony in appropriations, and in room as well, about agencies struggling with increased costs, whether it be health care, IT systems, and the like. Because we are not state employees, we essentially have to go it alone. So our efficiency, we're not able to take advantage of the larger efficiencies by joining a larger pool. So those hit us in a very, very different way than how it hits a larger organization, for example, like corrections. There's larger pool, and Carol is way more educated than I am. But we cannot take advantage of that. So again, we are struggling with this unpredictable budget. How do we build in that huge increase in Blue Cross Blue Shield from a couple of years ago? I mean, percentage increase presents an additional challenge. As far as federal funds, I mean, they're ever fluctuating. We've done okay, but all the COVID era grants that we have are gone. And I'm not going to go through what those grants are. They're in this bunch of different documents, the one you may already have open, the overview, just details the different sources of federal funding we have and what that looks like. The main challenge being that, again, for Carol, unlike other state agencies, everything is based on prediction, projection. We don't have COLAs, we don't have steps, and we don't necessarily know what the next month is going to look like for the next fiscal year. So what do we need? Essentially, what we asked from the administration for was simply an increase at this time in our general fund base in the amount of $145,357.49502 dollars represents our 3%. We stuck with the 3% rule that we were asked to do. I understand from Representative Squirrel that some agencies went from four to eight. We stuck with that 3%, and that is in the Governor's Recommend. What's missing from the Governor's Recommend is the additional $95,854 that we are asking for, which represents 5% of the $1,700,000 that we administer in grants throughout the state. We brought this to you before. We are working for free, and we have very small staff. And it's laborsome. There's a lot of work that goes into being good stewards of funds. And what is missing from the conversation sometimes is when the special funds decline, federal funds decline, that hits our administration because we rely on those funds for our administration. So it is really imperative that people like Director Broshu are not doing a lot of work and not being paid at a time where the center's getting incredibly, incredibly squashed in terms of what we can do. We're not asking for additional positions. We're just asking for support for salaries that are being tracked with the declines in funds. We do have two other pieces that we wanted to bring up. And I want to defer to Carol for that piece in particular, if there's no questions at this time. Thank

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: you for your presentation. Do you know if you I know you may not be able to become a state agency just by the nature of the structure, but if the state were willing to treat you financially like a state agency, have you ever run what that scenario would look like? I hope.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: We are of two different minds. Despite the fact that I feel that we'd be differently treated financially, it's important to me when I advocate in this building to be able to advocate in the way that victims and survivors and providers inform my work. Yes, financially, would it be better for us? Absolutely.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: And I don't know if you know, I can look into because I feel like we've talked about this. There are other entities that are of quirky in terms of, are they state, are they not state? You're not the only anomaly.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: We think there are only four others. Yeah, we think we're one of five. Okay.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: So I might just wanna find out more about what those five are and just try to look at Because you get dinged for space in a ding way, right? When you do have certain things that you are treated like a state agency. We go

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: through BGS for all of our arrangements.

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: For all practical matters, again, I do all the budgets, everything that a state employee would be doing at the other state agency.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: It's

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: diabetes, vision, we use We the don't get the on the insurance. Health insurance, liability insurance, all IT support, all of these retirement.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: My other question is, you're asking for 5%, which I'm so glad you're asking for something to administer grants. Everybody charges for it. I'm wondering how you arrived at 5%, because usually it's like 15%, 20%.

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: For most of our federal grants, we do receive 5%. So that's kind of across the board, 5% administrative funds based on all of our federal grants. So that's where we went with the 5% to say that, again, we're doing two particular grants, the anti violence grant and the domestic and sexual violence grant. Within those two grants, as Jen mentioned, dollars 1,700,000.0, but that also winds up being about 35 individual grants. And again, the administrative burden for financial reporting applications, granting, monitoring are all work that we do with other grants, but we get no compensation to be able to support our time doing that work.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: And I don't know if you know the answer to this, but when you apply for a state grant or contract, usually there are instructions in there about what the cap is that you can put towards So I don't know if you know, if the feds are using 5%, the state, I think, I'm pretty sure the state uses a different percentage, or

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: at least they used to, so just wondering. So I think historically what has happened, at least in my experience being at the center, is that we often have this situation where we have programs that have been level funded for decades. That seems

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: 2001.

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: And also the center, philosophy wise, was always trying to make sure that victims and survivors were getting the money. So when our special funds were doing well, that was one thing. And so we would always, again, if there was an increase, we would give it out to programs. So continually, we would always be trying to give it back out to programs, as stated. Unfortunately, as you see, when our revenues have declined between 3347% in those special funds, we just don't have the revenue sources to even support, again, our salaries, our operating, all of the things to keep our doors open. And what Jen also mentioned is at one point, our largest federal grant was 6,700,000.0, while 5% of that helped obviously with administration. But when you get down to 1,900,000.0 at 5%, it also impacts again, all of our salaries and benefits and the ability to support those along with federal audits. So we're audited all the time. You need a single audit, which

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: is more expensive because of your threshold. And right now, yeah, so I mean,

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: in the last year and a half, I've had two federal audits and a state single audit. And we continually get audited because of the amount of federal grants that we have. So we do tend, that's another administrative burden that we talk about, and it's just, we don't often think about audits, but on a federal level, they can take between two and three years to complete.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: We did want to bring to your attention, again, all of our three special funds are all down. Comp is projected at $509,000 in deficit for this fiscal year. The restitution fund, 423,000, and the DBS fee fund, dollars 343,000. I do want to mention an issue that Carol has been working very hard on with respect to funds being swept from the Restitution Unit Fund by the Department of Labor, and I want to defer it to her to speak to that.

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Quite a while ago, I noticed that $30,000 was being swept from the Department of Finance, from the restitution fund directly into the Department of Health.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And back

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: in about twenty fifteen- Yeah, can

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: you explain what that means?

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: I'm not familiar with the

[Unidentified Committee Member]: term swept. Can- So basically,

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: they're just doing a transfer. They're just saying, We're gonna take from the restitution fund, and we're gonna put it into the department of So administration is just doing this. So what I researched years ago was that there was a program that was set up so that folks that were victims of domestic and sexual violence that had to leave employment for safety issues and so forth, they set up a system so that they could be paid because they were voluntarily doing their job. So that started back, I think in 2008. And so we have gathered information where it was supposed to be somewhat of a pilot program, like this was supposed to happen, and somebody was gonna do a study to see how much money was truly spent and how this was used. Well, from what I've researched, I've never found such a study or anything that happened. It just seemed like it was put in and then it just continued to happen with this $30,000 I've never received any MOUs, any supporting documentation to support this coming out of our funds.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And no, even an initial notice. Not, hey, this is going

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: to happen. No, I just happened when I first started to look at cash balances and our funds, I'm like, why is this happening? So I actually did work with the Department of Finance and our budget analysts. And that was back in like 2015, because at that time they actually took out 40,000. And we worked on it together. And she essentially said, Yep, we're not gonna do that anymore. We're gonna stop taking it out. And so that did happen. So from 2016 to 2022, essentially no funds were taken out of the restitution fund. So that $30,000 was And then all of a sudden in 2022, I'm like, it's happening again. And so I once again reached out to the Department of Finance and asked this question, and again, haven't had any real resolution to it. It's continued 'twenty two. The only year they didn't do it was 'twenty three. It is in the 'twenty seven budget for the Department of Labor. They took it out in 'twenty six. Statement bill? 30,000. So right across the board. So total to date up to this year has been $310,000 has come out of the restitution fund. And so this is a fund, again, that's projected to have a deficit already based on revenues, as we've talked about those declining revenues. So it has had a significant impact on the fund. I know it doesn't sound like maybe a lot of $30,000 a year, but as you can tell, it does add up. And it is certainly money that shouldn't, I think should be going and staying in the restitution fund because there is no supporting documentation whatsoever. That was what I asked for. Like, if this was a program that was truly helping victims of domestic and sexual violence, then we should have some documentation. We should have some supporting documentation to show that. But that's never

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: And we do have a concern also in terms of we have a victim's compensation program. So we have no idea what expenses are being charged off to that $30,000 And so is there a potential that there are overlaps? We don't know. So right now we're sitting at a loss of $310,000 We don't know what's happened to it. And again, we try to be the best stewards we can of state and federal funds. And this is the first time we've ever had this happen where there's no accounting whatsoever. Is there

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: a person in labor who supposedly oversees whatever that body supposedly should be used for?

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: We don't know. Rep. Squirrel is really on this.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: He's trying

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: to answer the answers. But again, it's projected for FY '27, and we're looking at the $423,000 deficit projected for this fund. So that would go a long way. It's pennies to the overall budget, but it's not pennies to us.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We're going be fighting over thousands this year.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: I'm wondering if your auditor picked this up when they did your single audit, that you didn't have the documentation from Department of Labor. And I'm also wondering if the state auditor's office can be helpful because the DOL audit might have information in it about them taking money out of debt.

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: It may, but again, I think it's just because of manner in which this is transferred from one budget fund to another. So only can see it if I go into that special fund. So we never get anything. If it wasn't-

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: You've not. It's never been brought up in

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: a single audit. Generally, the single audits are focusing a lot on our federal funding as well.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Sometimes they'll pick like four or five places to send the paperwork where they have to write. And I don't know. It's never happened for restitution fund.

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: It's not in my experience.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: And you've had no conversations with the auditors, the state auditor? No.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: I know we're up against time, but I have a reasonable proposal, think, in addition to our very small ask. And I brought this to some of you before. When we reviewed the JFO report back a few years ago, one of the things that stood out was that while our funds have been declining, well, our three, not all have experienced a decline. And in fact, the Special Investigation Unit Fund doubled. So we asked the court at that time, how do you collect fees and fines? And I was made to understand that it goes to a collection agency. So there's really no idea how those are collected, in what order of priority. Hawaii has a statute that does put in place an order of priority for how those fees are collected and dispersed. And I do want to say that, speaking with our restitution unit staff, people are offenders are really confused because they are talking to our people and they're like, I think I already paid that. Didn't I already pay that? I know DOC has been working in house practice and institutions to eliminate their supervision fee. But there's a fee that goes to the Defender General, one that goes to DOC, one that goes to the Court Technology Grant, some that go to us. And it feels important to me, and maybe this is for the Miscellaneous Judiciary Bill, to and I'm happy to come forward with a proposal during that time, but to put forward again, yes, the dreaded study committees. But to put something forward that would encourage those who receive fees from folks who are convicted of crimes to get together and see if there's a way that we can bring some clarity and some purpose to how this happens. And maybe that larger conversation is, is it appropriate for somebody who's been convicted of a crime to be paying for poor services? So I think that's a conversation that really needs to happen because right now it's pretty haphazard. And I think it would be beneficial for all involved, the agencies involved, victims and survivors, and those who, again, are tasked with paying these fees and fines, they don't even know what they're paying for. It doesn't seem like a responsible way to hold people accountable when they just I think the main focus on that end is to hold people accountable in a manner that helps them to transition and be a part of communities. And I just think that we need to really take a step back and take a look at that. Thank you for bringing that up.

[Carol Roche, Director of Finance & Administration, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: It reminds me of the work group that we put together for justice reinvestment funds. I think you were a part of that So as I could see that being think part of what worked in that example is that folks were willing to come to the table to do that. So I don't know if you've done any of that outreach or work to connect with others to be like, hey, would you be open to this? So I feel like that's gonna help to you know, if those other parties are also on board with it, I think it makes total sense to bring people together and, like, let's talk about what makes the most sense.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: I've only had casual conversations, again, mostly with the court in that at the time, yeah, don't know. This doesn't make any sense. So I'm happy to It sounds like there may be legislation wherein DOC would not be charging those as of fiscal year twenty seven, but I'm happy to connect with the other individuals or entities that do receive the many different ones that are laid out in the JFO report and be ready if the committee's willing when the judiciary comes out.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So sooner rather than later, we need to see some sort of language. And if it's too complicated, it may not be able to fit in there, but it's worth taking a look, so we should take a look at that.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Even if we don't come to an agreement as far as the priority, I think the clarity that would be achieved would be worth the conversation.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, definitely. Okay. Yeah, if we could maybe even next week, because we only have three weeks left, and we will be starting in on the miscellaneous bill in a couple weeks.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Okay. I'll get on it later.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Great. All right, thank you.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Thank you very much.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So we're gonna move to actually more of a background and discussion on supervision. I do have it listed as a bill H529, but we may not even get to that bill this morning. We're going to hear from CSG, from Ellen, as far as kind of the background of what the pre trial supervision program is. There are some recommendations from CSG. Then we're going to hear from Kim McManus, who's going to go over how it's actually working right now or not, and we'll hear from Judd Zonay as well. And the reason it's kind of up in the air what we want to do with this, and in part this is kind of the continuation of the conversations we had yesterday in Norman from three d docket pilot that I think we've learned some things about how free trial supervision isn't working and also how involvement of DOC early in the process with these five docket individuals, five plus docket individuals, may be a different path that we wanna look at. It seems like there was a lot of success when DOC was involved early, even when somebody wasn't actually referred to the pretrial supervision program. But anyway, is a discussion that we'll also be having in conjunction with corrections. But we're gonna try to ground ourselves on what the program is, some recommendations from CSG, and then how it is actually working. And we'll have further discussion, I think Matt Valerio will be talking about tomorrow morning. So with that long introduction, Ellen, if you could introduce yourself for the record and proceed.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Sure. Hi, everybody. My name is Ellen Whelan Waste. I work for the Council of State Governments Justice Center, or just CSG is fine. And yes, actually, Representative LaLonde, can you give me a time, how much time you want me to take up here? Because that will guide me as I work through slides. I'll go through some faster than others.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, like a half an hour. Is that about twenty minutes to half an hour?

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Yep, that's perfect. I will walk through some slides that my colleague and I had created actually for the House Corrections Committee a couple of weeks ago. Like Representative LaLonde said, this is sort

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: of

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: our presentation on findings and recommendations related to pretrial supervision in Vermont. Please interrupt and ask questions throughout. There's you know, because I'm on Zoom, I might not see you, but just jump in or if anyone wants to interrupt me, that's no problem at all. And, yeah, thank you thank you for having me today. I'm I'm happy to be able to walk through this. I will if it's possible, I could share my slides. Do I have the

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Hey. Can you I think Ellen, come on. All right, we're working on that. And thank you for being

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: here this morning, Ellen. I appreciate it.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: No problem. And while we're waiting to pull them up, I'll just explain. I work for the CSG Justice Center, which is a national nonpartisan nonprofit. It's the three nones. But we essentially work with state legislators and state agency leadership and local leaders across the country on criminal justice and behavioral health challenges, right? And so our effort is to come in and provide analysis, assessments, anything that might be helpful in understanding different public safety issues that states and counties are dealing with and what solutions, might be better and might achieve lower recidivism, better public safety, better health wherever possible. So that's kind of a quick overview of the Justice Center. And then let me see. I will share my slides here. Just give me a minute. And then tell me if this looks right to folks on the screen.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It does, thank you.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Great. So like I said, I work at the CSG Justice Center, and our goals are to break the cycle of incarceration, to advance health, opportunity, and equity, to use data to improve safety and justice. Fortunately, the Justice Center has had a long and fruitful partnership with Vermont going back to 2007, when we were first working with, legislators and, executive leadership and judicial leadership across the state on justice reinvestment, which was an effort in 2007 to focus on Vermont's rising prison population and really looking at supervision and reentry outcomes to try to reduce correction spending. Back in 2019, I was part of a group of folks who got to work on justice reinvestment two, which was the second effort along these lines in Vermont. And that project in particular focused on high rates of revocation among people who were immediately leaving prison and trying to strengthen access to behavioral health and improve data and tracking and monitoring. And that was justice reinvestment as of almost seven years ago. And then following up on that in 2020, we worked with Vermont on a violent crime focused justice reinvestment project, which was really tailored and specifically focused around understanding domestic violence in Vermont. The pretrial supervision program, forgive me if I'm repeating what all of you already know in great detail, I'll go through this quickly, But it was this is a new initiative, a new program in Vermont that was created initially in s one ninety five and then enacted in act one thirty eight. And the kind of context for Vermont around the development of this program is, you know, several years of increases in property and violent crime coming out of the pandemic, as well as a real interest among leaders like yourselves to understand how in Vermont, there might be a way of holding folks accountable while they're awaiting trial, while also trying to reduce recidivism and to increase court appearances among that population of people. And at the same time, Vermont's pretrial population that's being held in the state prisons has been growing steadily for years. And actually back in 2019, when we were first looking at, data very extensively for justice reinvestment, that pretrial incarcerated population in Vermont was the one that was most steadily growing over several years. As of July 2025, there were 560 people detained on pretrial, which already was up a 100 people from one year earlier. So this has been sort of a persistent issue in Vermont even before the pandemic, but certainly has been accelerated, since COVID and since crime increases that have come out of that. Act one thirty eight was enacted in 2024 with the goals of connecting people awaiting trial to services and support that they need in the community to reduce crime and recidivism, and again, to try to increase court appearances among people who have a a persistent failure to appear. And then in the 2024, the Vermont Department of Corrections proposed initially implementing this new program as pilots in two counties, in Orleans and Essex Counties, before scaling it statewide, which we thought was very smart. Right? When something's brand new, you kinda wanna see how it works before you try to make it fit every And then last January, the Department of Corrections reached out to CSG, to myself and others, and asked if we would be available to assess how those pilot programs were operating, the statutory framework for pretrial supervision, and to make recommendations about how to successfully scale this program across the whole state. So that was what we were initially coming in to do. And what we first learned is that there are three entities or groups that really guide the essential factors of how a person ends up on pretrial supervision, and then how they are supervised under that supervision program. Eligibility for PSP is set in statute, So defendants are eligible for pretrial supervision if they've been charged with violating a condition of release, or if they have at least five pending dockets and they pose a risk of non appearance or harm to themselves or others. So that's how the statutory language defines eligibility. From there, defense the courts really take over in how people are referred into PSP. So that can come from defense counsel, that can come from state's attorneys, that can come from the court, but they may request a review for whether a person is eligible, at which point DOC has ten business days to issue a report about that person's eligibility and also to identify what their potential supervision level might look like based on that person, and the recommendation of conditions for their release, sort of what would they need to comply with if they were to be supervised under pretrial supervision. And then once a person is referred into pretrial supervision or ordered to participate in that program and they agree, supervision is, determined by risk assessments. And I'll speak more on this, but DOC uses their risk assessment tools to identify a person's, level of risk of recidivism and their particular needs, and they assign them for different levels of intensity in their supervision based on those findings. Let me just see. Oh, sorry. Was there a question?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Nope, we're good.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Okay. I'm gonna pause here to talk about risk and needs and responsivity, and I'll try not to get too academic, which will be easy because I'm not an expert, though I do know a fair bit about this just working in criminal justice policy. But the reason that I stop is because, when I'm talking about risk in this context, in almost any other, fact of life, risk really speaks to someone's risk of harm. Right? Either, being a victim of harm or harming others. But risk in these in this, specific setting really speaks to a person's likelihood of reoffending. And determining that person's risk comes from understanding some static or fixed and some dynamic factors in their Those static factors are things like their criminal history, the number of prior arrests or convictions they've had, types of offenses in their criminal history. But then there are dynamic factors that can change, over the course of a person's life, and that can be substance use disorder or substance use abuse, that can be different stressors in their family or their marital relationships, that can be antisocial personality patterns. So there's a lot of other factors that go into understanding, where a person falls and their level of risk of, again, reoffending. Then within these assessment tools, there's also a focus on needs. And what that really speaks to is a person's criminogenic factors, which in their behavior and their life, which may be independent of their risk level. And that basically means that there could be a person who based on their risk assessment is very high risk, but their needs are low. And certainly the inverse is true too. A person might be low risk of reoffending, but have a high number or complexity of needs that need to be addressed through community supervision, through programming, and treatments and supports. And then responsivity really just means tailoring how you work with folks, the nature of the interventions that you provide. That could be supervision, that could be conditions of release, to try to reduce the barriers to entry. An obvious one here is transportation. If a person is required to participate in a very specific program or treatment in the community, but they live in a place where there's, very little access to public transit, where they don't themselves have an opportunity to transport themselves, so they don't have a car or a driver's license or both, then there has to be some way of working with that individual and understanding that need for responsive, you know, access so that they aren't set up for failure, essentially. All of these together make up what's known as the RNR model, risk need responsivity, And that has guided supervision, that has guided reentry programming, that has guided any number of policies and legislative initiatives across the country for the last fifteen or twenty years because evidence shows that when you implement these components with fidelity, when, you know, when it's done well, it really has a big impact on reducing a person's likelihood of recidivism and improving their success when they are in the community. DOC uses this model beautifully. Vermont, we are very lucky in Vermont to have a Department of Corrections that has, embraced and, adhered to evidence based practices, including risk and needs and responsivity for a long time. And so at this point, it is baked into the agency's culture in a way that's really impressive and of huge strength for any number of things that they are responsible for. And that directly applies to how they work with clients on the pretrial supervision program. Folks are assessed for their risks and needs, and then they are assigned different levels of intensity of that supervision based on where they fall. So at the low risk end of things, people are receiving less intervention. They are required to do less to remain in contact with the probation and parole officer they're assigned to, but at the high risk, they have more requirements around their contact officer. So this, the blue boxes here on the left describe the low to high risk requirements for folks, which ranges from truly just monitoring through a telephone reporting system, down to using that reporting system, getting a phone call every week, and then coming for an in person meeting once a month. Everything here, I'll say, this is sort of skipping ahead a little bit, but it's great to be assigning different levels of supervision based on risk, and, in conversations with the Department of Corrections, everyone kind of acknowledges this isn't enough. Right? It's good to have differentiation, but the level of contact, particularly for individuals who, have five pending dockets, which you would assume means folks who probably have some pretty complex needs and a lot going on, probably is not enough contact or support or attention, for this, population of people. And a lot of that comes down to resources, if not all of it. How much time and how much, how many resources does the Department of Corrections have for probation and parole officers who have caseloads that involve people on probation and parole too? So that's really a resource question. The other requirement for DOC here is that they have to report to the courts every ninety days on a client's progress. Things are going well, the judge can remove, that individual from pretrial supervision or change, their supervision level to lower it. But if clients violate, DOC staff has to first notify the defendant and then notify the state's attorney. And then the state's attorney determines whether or not to file something called the violation of conditions of release or VCR, which is then submitted to the court. And I'm sure Kim will speak to this in much greater detail on behalf of the state's

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: attorneys. Yes.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No, go ahead. I thought I had a question, but we don't. Go ahead.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Okay, so these were our findings. We started working, like I said, back in January and spent the spring interacting with, speaking with folks up in, particularly in Newport for the Orleans County pilot program. And we met with individuals. We reviewed the statute. We reviewed the the policies and procedures for how people were being supervised. And we identified some really core strengths in what's going on in Vermont and what Vermont has foundationally to stand on, but also some key challenges that would make it hard to scale this successfully statewide, almost no matter what, which I'll speak to in much more detail. But just to start with strengths that Vermont has, which I think is really essential, especially when I'm mostly gonna talk about problems, There is a really strong commitment to pretrial supervision among judicial leaders and really good coordination between DOC and court staff, which I think in Vermont, we might I I also live in Vermont. I should have said that. When I say we, I'm sort of using that too. I think that we can take for granted that that exists here, but looking at other states or parts of the country where pretrial programs might be of interest or might be functioning, it's definitely not a given. That the level of coordination and conversation and buy in that you need already exists. And so seeing that in action was really heartening. The other thing is that DOC continues to hire and train and I think crucially retain really strong supervision staff who follow evidence based practices in how they work with clients. Again, that might sound simple, but is absolutely the essential ingredient to anything working the way you want it to. Just like in any industry or any agency, the people you have really make it successful or not. And we are very fortunate to have a corrections department that has really good staff who are well trained and supported and who have, been with the department for a long time and know what they're doing. And so that makes, that takes care of a lot when you're implementing a new supervision program like this. And then in the Pilot County in Orleans County where we visited, key stakeholders were informed and engaged in the success of this program. That included the state's attorney, defense attorneys, you know, community based providers. Again, that commitment and that engagement in this being successful was really important and felt like something that is a key strength that Vermont would bring into scaling this in other parts of the state. But there are some core challenges that for us made it very hard to say, oh, know, with tweaks, you could do this anywhere. It felt like there are some flaws in the design of the program that need to get addressed in order for it to succeed across the state. One of these is that the referral and reporting processes are not necessarily conducive to effective supervision practices. I would add to this that I think, and I'll get here too in greater detail, but the referral process is probably preventing people from getting into pretrial supervision who would benefit from it, and that's also kind of an important procedural, backlog that's worth figuring out. Another challenge is that current DOC staffing doesn't allow for the level of supervision intensity and the kind of wraparound services that you would want for this population. And then the third is that, and this is kind of a persistent challenge in Vermont and many other places, but something we've certainly seen in the years that we've worked here is that coordination across state agencies, particularly corrections and behavioral health agencies and providers, remains quite siloed. And so you've got a population of people, many of whom sit at the nexus of behavioral health and criminal justice, who really need access to more in the community than they are able to get. And that lack of coordination across the agencies directly plays out in how people on supervision are able to get into, what they need in order to succeed. This essentially says all of the things that I just said, so I'll skip ahead of this if that's all right. These were the, These slides are much more about kind of the best practices that we brought in the framework of thinking that inform our recommendations for where we think the state could immediately make some changes that would make pretrial supervision more successful, more accessible, and potentially have a much bigger impact on, crime, recidivism, failure to appear, and also that growing pretrial population incarcerated in state prisons. Sort of a key pillar of our thinking here is this slide, which speaks to the effective behavioral health treatment that people who are involved in the criminal justice system really need. Not everybody, but like I said, there's sort of a a large population of people who sit at the nexus of behavioral health issues like substance use disorder or mental health challenges, and who also carry with them criminal behavior and thinking. All of that, where it exists in any individual, has to be addressed. If you focus on just one and not the other two or the other one that that person might be dealing with, then you're missing, key components in how to address a person's health needs, but also how to reduce their criminal behavior and recidivism. This slide speaks to a conversation that I believe is happening, I know it's sort of taking place in many different counties and states across the country, where again, there's sort of the, particularly in substance use disorder, but behavioral health in general, a feeling that should we be, to some degree, thinking of incarceration as a key opportunity for people to receive the treatment that they need? Right, I think that's kind of a big question that I've certainly heard a lot of people asking, again, in very different parts of the country over the last year or so. And some key research that we always come to on this is around the impact on recidivism for people who receive treatment and supports in incarcerated settings versus in the community. And one study found that drug treatment delivered in prison had an effect of reducing recidivism among people by about ten percent, which is great, but there was a larger impact, not huge, but a larger impact in that reduction for people who are able to access drug treatment in the community instead. When you compare that over to the cost of incarceration, and this is not Vermont's average cost, this is just sort of a national average, the cost of incarcerating someone in prison versus the cost of community supervision, it feels even more cost effective and then also, health effective for the focus to go towards drug treatment and other types of community supports and treatments in the community setting versus in prison. Which is not to say that people who are incarcerated should not have access to the treatments and the supports that they need to be healthy, and that they shouldn't be thinking about how folks are receiving that with an eye towards reentry and recidivism reduction once they are back in the community. But when the question is where is the most effective place to invest in these things, it's always gonna be in the community as far as where it has the greatest impact on a person's journey and trajectory, and then also where there's certainly a lower cost of doing so.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Do you have the Vermont number tool? I don't know. Do we have the Vermont numbers for for those things, Ellen, anywhere?

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: I don't have that off the top of my head, and I feel like what I might have immediately available would be 70 six and a half years old. But I'm sure I'm sure that would be that would be I mean, I'm happy to send some emails to folks at DOC and ask and see if they have it. Because that that's usually a pretty the sort of that that very broad average number is usually something that's pretty accessible.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay, great, thanks.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Slide really just speaks to the importance of community supervision, a probation, parole, pretrial supervision, what have you. But just that the person, and and we have here it says the lead case planner, but in many in many places, and Vermont's one of them, that ends up being the probation parole officer. That person is really essential in coordinating, in some cases, just a tremendous amount of different types of services and supports that any individual person needs. And the reason that we have this slide to emphasize that is partly because it speaks to all of the different agencies or programs or entities that an individual with behavioral health needs, who is involved in the criminal justice system, inherently has to interact with at some point or another. It can be the courts, it can be a substance use treatment provider, it can be peer support groups, but either way, there's a lot going on for those individuals. Having someone at the center who really knows how to develop a strong case plan for that person to make sure that they are able to access what they need and that they are accessing what they need, that they are attending those treatment programs, that they are able to get there, etcetera. That's all really essential in in how community supervision can function the way you want it to, which is, both to hold people accountable and also to essentially avoid the likelihood of someone continuing to engage with the criminal justice system. This slide speaks to coercive treatment for substance use, which again sort of gets to the idea of potentially incarcerating people so that they may receive treatment and programming that might help them address behavioral health needs. And again, I think the underlying intention here is always that, well, if people are struggling both by, you know, sort of obstacles beyond their control, transportation, programming even existing in the area where they live, or because they are not themselves able to, or taking accountability for taking advantage of those programs and treatments where they are able to get to them. There is sort of a natural progression in that thinking of, would it be better for that person to spend time in an incarcerated setting where they could access those things because they would exist and they would have to access those things because that's where they would be. So this slide really speaks to research that shows that, that type of treatment for substance use, at least, has really mixed results, and certainly can carry some long term risks. There's you know, the immediate engagement, might be stronger for individuals in those kinds of situations, but the long term outcomes are not better. And so it it sort of, again, begs the question of if the motivation is for people to become more healthy and and ultimately to be less involved in criminal behavior, we will pretty much always argue that the better investment is going to be in the community. And that means community supervision as much as it means community programming. And let me just say, there are other reasons why people might need to be incarcerated. But again, if the underlying motivation is to access programming, that's where we would draw a distinction on focusing instead on the community. This slide just speaks to three different key elements of effective pretrial supervision. Having support be really integrated into a supervision model, evaluating and monitoring what's going on as much as possible, and then thinking of pretrial services almost in a hub and spoke model, where there's someone who's sort of immediately responsible for that person's entry into pretrial services or pretrial supervision, but then also is able to connect that person to many other resources that they're gonna need in the community in order for them to comply with the conditions of their release, to make sure that they appear for their court hearings and all the other things that people want from that. So these last few slides get more detailed into our final recommendations that we made and delivered to Vermont at the end of last year, at the 2025. The first is that we think that the state needs to fund dedicated pretrial supervision officers who maintain caseloads of no more than 20 clients. I'll speak to this a little bit more in detail, actually, in a couple slides where I'll I'll just show you that there is sort of a working model for this in Vermont right now in Chittenden County. But essentially, this this number of clients comes from research that shows that having that low number of individuals you're working with as a supervision officer allows for a level of attention and truly just kind of engagement that makes a big difference in how that person is both, again, held accountable to what they should be doing, but also can connect to the things that they And just that the ability for an officer to work with someone at that level, to have the time and the ability to attend to them like that, really makes a big difference. We also think that DOC needs to receive some sort of authorization that would make direct referrals to the courts in response to condition violations a lot more streamlined and faster. So we have recommended, but it may not be legally feasible for DOC to directly file those violations of conditions of release to the courts. This is just following the probation and parole model of what happens right now. But whatever the the answer is, it feels you know, state's attorneys are incredibly busy. Those offices have a lot going on. And so there's a high potential that when a supervision officer, you know, notifies a state's attorney that there's been a condition, that it might sit for for a while. And a while doesn't have to mean months. It could mean days or a week or two weeks. But going back to kind of evidence and research, it's really essential that when a person is, out, and and meant to be complying with certain conditions and they're building a relationship with their supervision officer, and that officer says, you didn't do this thing that you really had to do, that there is sort of an immediate consequence. And the consequence doesn't need to be, and in many cases, probably should not be incarceration or anything of great severity, but there should be something that's more directly attached to the violation to say, listen, this happened. I've notified you that it happened, and now you have to go talk to the judge, or now we're gonna add a condition to your supervision, or there has to be something that happens much more time related to what the behavior. If there's a substantial delay, which again could even be a week or two, then you lose a lot of what research shows, benefits people in sort of understanding, okay, if there's a consequence here, I I do need to start to change my behavior, or I need to start to do things a little differently. So that's why our recommendation here is just to try to streamline that process where possible. And third, we think that people need to be referred to pretrial supervision based on more relevant factors than the number of dockets, open dockets that they have a violation of conditions of release necessarily. There should be more of a focus on risk and needs in informing how people are deemed eligible and appropriate for this program. So what we're essentially recommending here is that instead of, starting with a more narrow definition of five dockets, which again could be somewhat arbitrary, you know, if if the courts were able to start to move at a faster pace, you might end up in a situation in Vermont where there are fewer people with five open dockets, but that doesn't mean that there aren't individuals who would benefit from this program. Right? So it should probably be more of a broad definition to start that then gets narrowed. And what we're recommending is that anyone who's under consideration for incarceration while they're awaiting their trial should be referred to DOC, by the courts, as as happens now, for DOC to do what they do, which is to conduct a risk and needs assessment and to identify and make their recommendations where they think that this is a person who would benefit and who we feel we could safely and effectively, supervise on pretrial supervision. And so you sort of potentially create a larger pool of people for consideration. DOC still issues its report back to the courts making their recommendations on who they think should be eligible based again on on the risk and needs factors. And then that also determines the supervision that they receive. We understand that there has been a really slow and at times almost no referral process, that it has just become something that not enough people are actually being referred in as were originally projected as being potentially under supervision. And so while we don't necessarily think that this needs to become a huge program where hundreds and hundreds of people are under pretrial supervision, there's probably a way of referring people in that could happen again in a more streamlined way so that the program could have more of an impact. And then this last recommendation speaks to that siloing of the agencies that I was talking about earlier. And really just essentially, we aren't at the point and we don't have the knowledge that agency leaders and staff would, but about how this would work. So we didn't get into specifics necessarily on how this happens. But just to sort of say that a goal really should be that people on pretrial supervision who are identified as having behavioral health needs should somehow be more able to access programming in the community where it exists. Right? That there needs to be some prioritization or process by which those people are able to to get into programs and access treatment. Because if they're waiting and waiting and waiting, or just on wait lists for the duration of their pretrial supervision period, a huge component of what this program is meant to do will get missed, which is just to try to use some of the contact and interaction with a supervision officer to connect people to the services that they need and to take seriously that that might actually help them get healthier and to do what they're supposed to do while they're waiting for their trial dates.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay, we have a question here as well, Al.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Yeah. Hi, Alan. I'm wondering if CSG considered whether or not the pretrial services should be delivered by Department of Corrections versus outside community partners. And I'm looking at the Vera study results that talked about

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: basically

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: programs operated by corrections or probation been less effective because they're more Well, you probably are familiar with that study. So I'm just wondering, was that ever looked at? Because it sounds like seven states don't have Department of Corrections do it. They do use riders in the community.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Yeah, there are a lot of ways that pretrial can be administered that look different than than relying on your corrections agency. And actually, I think the most common one that I'm familiar with is the court system actually does it. Right? That that pretrial supervision is administered. Right? That folks who are supervising individuals in that program are court employees, which doesn't feel feasible in Vermont mostly because the unified system here, you already have supervision, again, being really well, and effectively done by the Department of Corrections. We didn't specifically look into whether community providers would provide the supervision of pretrial. Again, we might have just sort of gone to a place of because we have a lot of confidence in DOC, and then that was rebuilt over just, again, meeting with with parole and probation officers on the ground, feeling like there's a very strong supervision system here, where people are, again, really well trained in in a a way of interacting with folks who they supervise that is supportive as much as it is, you know, accountability focused. That's not true everywhere. So for us, it was mostly sort of drafting off of the system that exists and the foundational strengths there, but really acknowledging that there need to be strong collaborations with community based providers who work on substance use disorder and mental health and cognitive behavioral therapy and, you know, domestic violence intervention, whatever that might be. You know, supervision officers can't be the providers of those services. They can be kind of the conduit to those services, and that makes sense. But the collaboration and the coordination with people on the ground and the programs on the ground is really essential to be able to make sure that folks can access that.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: I'm just wondering though, because like my experience working with clients, and I come from a social work background, is that clients are wary of sharing candidly some of the struggles that they're having, because it's giving that information to a government worker and, in particular, corrections. So I'm just thinking about what you said about mandated services and ways to have people feel fully engaged and making a little bit of separation where people feel like it's more of a truly clinical lens, knowing that there are, if you don't do this, we have to, like disclosing that ahead of time, we have to contact your DOC

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: worker.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Yeah. It's a great question. I can't speak to that specifically. I would I don't know if I assume Gary Marvel from DOC is not in the room, but I'm not sure if he is. I would encourage, you know, more discussion with with Gary or with anyone from DOC about how their officers work on that too because they're far more expert than I am, both in in the Vermont context, but also just from more of that clinical background work of working directly with clients.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah. Tom has a question. Good morning. I

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: like what I'm seeing here, I'm just trying to cover, I guess, a transitional point because your models here seems very modular to me, and I'm thinking more on, like, a continuum level that can be adjusted if if somebody's level of supervision changes. I know it's better to do this all out on the street and it's more effective and then more cost cost effective. But sometimes people, as we know, have bumps in their road and have to be incarcerated. And, yeah, I I know it works better out on the street, and it seems like this whole model is geared towards being on the street. But I would there's I run into a lot of people that have never been offered any services where they're in the corrections network as far as being in jail or out on the street. And and if we implement something like this, I think it should be able to shift gears and and find itself in in the incarcerated setting as well as on the street, or or we're just gonna lose touch with that person? Or is this or is the plan to have this inside the facility as well?

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: So I would say we definitely do not wanna convey the message that there should not be treatment or programming available to people in incarcerated settings. There absolutely should be, there is in Vermont in most places. Jails are harder, and Vermont's different, right, because we don't have jails. But lots you know, most jails in the country have a really hard time providing anything if not the level of what might be available in prisons, and that's for a whole bunch of reasons. But people absolutely, while they're incarcerated, should have access to any number of programs and treatments that they need. And that that's for a lot of different reasons, including for people to be healthy and to be safe, and also for people to be ready, and and preparing to leave prison. Right? So that when they come out, they they have, started a healing process and and engaging with other things that they will need to to continue when they're released from prison. The distinction I'm drawing, or trying to, is more that the motivation for incarcerating people should not be to receive treatment and programming, if that makes sense. So someone, being held pretrial with the intention or the thinking that this is being so that you get some treatment inside, because we know that you'll get some treatment inside, that does not have better effects long term than that person being supervised in the community, but also essentially, like really critically, that they are able to get treatment and programming in the community too. Does that make sense? So that's kind of the only distinction.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: That makes total sense to me. I'm just I I just think I I was a little worried. It'd be a little reminiscent. We didn't offer services to somebody that wanted it when they were in that position.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And Yes.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: And I you know, I think it would be a great place to maybe start the process with somebody prior to them being on the street, maybe transition and start working with whoever might be supervising them. If you can foresee that's where it's going. That's all.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: I'll say the the the one this is one slide I really wanna show everyone because, again, this is a working example. It's in Chittenden County, which is obviously unique in Vermont and just sort of the the potential access. Right? There's a lot more services and transportation and all kinds of things in Chittenden than there are in other other parts of the state for sure. But there is a program called the Forensic Assertive Community Treatment Program, which hits on a few different things that I mentioned that we think is worth, you know, really paying attention to. One, it's a coordinated collaborative partnership with DOC, DMH, and a community provider of Pathways. So you've got kind of that that desiloing happening where DMH provides funding through a a federal SAMHSA grant, and they administer those funds. And DOC supervision officers work with Pathways, which is the community provider on the ground for individuals who are supervised with the the officers who work with them have very low case loads, so again, they're able to work really directly with those people to make sure that they are you know, they have a ride to the the program. And if they miss the program, they're you know, what happened last week, and that they're able to really work with them on an individual basis, which might not speak to some of the earlier concerns you raised about that that feeling of how open and honest am I gonna be with someone who's in a position of authority over me, and that's that's a real issue. But this is a program that has seen some really positive results among the participants that we think is, again, a good example of where lower caseloads, strong collaboration both at the agency level, but at the community level too, can have a lot of impact on the people who participate. And these are just key takeaways. So essentially what I've already said many times, but I do want to emphasize, I think Vermont is taking a really important step in this program to addressing, again, a pervasive issue and one that a lot of different jurisdictions are trying to figure out. What do we do? And the program that has been created is a huge step in direction of, I think, having big impacts on addressing those issues and those problems. But also, there are fundamental improvements that would get more people into the program, ensure that their supervision is more robust and effective, you know, communicate more directly with with individuals about what they're doing and what they need. And then also, hopefully, the long term goal, right, of just making sure that when someone needs what they need in the community that they're able to access it. And all of that is gonna take some building over time. But some of the design of the statute and the program itself could probably get fixed relatively quickly to at least start to increase those referrals and some of the supervision so that, you know, it would have a chance to work more effectively. The last thing I'll say is I do realize, and it's not in these slides, that Chittenden County also has sort of implemented its own version of this program with the new specialty court that's been created that I understand is really doing an effective job of moving through court backlogs. From what we've heard, there's still a referral logjam of sorts in getting people onto pretrial supervision in Chittenden County to some degree. But once they're there, again, it's sort of at a low caseload number enough that the supervision officers are able to work with those folks, and hopefully there will be some really positive impacts that come from that, but I think it's too early. There wasn't any information that we had from DOC that sort of spoke to long term impacts of people in that program yet.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay, so what's your last question?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well, you set my question up perfectly, Alan. Thank you, because I was going ask if you had had a chance to talk with anyone or look at any information coming out of this accountability court I prefer to call it the 3B docket, but the projects that you referred to in Chittenden County. We had a chance to hear about it yesterday, and it was very interesting to me that towards the end of the presentation yesterday, we heard from folks from the Agency of Human Services and PNP, and it sounded like the way that that program was functioning almost made pretrial services unnecessary, as we currently conceive of pretrial services. And that the fact that there were So it makes me wonder if there would be a need to increase DOC staff if we actually just changed how we're conceiving of the best way to support folks and having service providers in the courtroom, having folks from AHS right

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: there

[Unidentified Committee Member]: in the courtroom as things are happening. You did mention the importance of time and not letting there be these long spans of time between contact and points of contact. And so, yeah, just that the information we heard yesterday really made me wonder if the way we have currently set up or conceived of pretrial services might actually already be obsolete in a way.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Not Maybe not. I mean, I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: be overly enthusiastic about what I heard yesterday, but it was encouraging. And it seemed sounded like a more efficient and direct impact approach.

[Ellen Whelan-Wuest, Council of State Governments Justice Center]: Yeah. We had spoken with folks in the P and P office in Burlington in Chittenden, just before that accountability court got up and running. And they were sort of planning for it, right, knowing that it was coming. And, what I what really hit for me was just being able to see in real time how those officers could already you know, you could just see they were like, I know the 10 people who would be great for this program. Right? They they just even in Burlington, in, you know, the largest population in in our state, they knew immediately who they thought would be the most in need and would benefit by far the most from having some of what they could provide. And I would never try to speak for for DOC on, like, the resourcing of all of it. For us, it comes more down to and maybe this is already happening in Chittenden, and so it can be emulated. It's really about the caseload size. Because what we know is that as long as you don't have officers who are carrying caseloads at such a high level that, you know, it makes sense, they just get spread out. If they really can focus, and then the other critical factor, right, is access, that there actually be something that people can get to as far as programming and treatment. If you have both of those in place, it's not everything. It's not to say that those are the silver bullets, but they will take you very far in getting to to what you wanna see as far as people, again, sort of receiving accountability, but also support, and seeing where that support gets you. That's why that program, the FACT program that we, learned about from DOC over the course of our work the last year felt like an important example. And if and if more of that is already living and breathing in the accountability court in Chittenden County, then all the better. Because I think knowing it will look different in Rutland or Brattleboro or Barrie or any number of other places, there are key principles that could probably be put in place and then modified based on the location and the jurisdiction to see what success looks like there.

[Jennifer Pullman, Director, Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services]: Thank you.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Any other questions at this point? No, I don't see any other questions. Thank you so much, that was very helpful. It gets us grounded in the work that we have on figuring out how to make the pretrial supervision program as useful as possible. So we'll take a fifteen minute break since we've been at it for an hour and a half, and then we'll start with Tim McManus and Judge Tommy. So we'll off live.