Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Alright. Welcome back to the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday morning, February twenty sixth. Now in our journey of data, criminal justice data, we're gonna go h four ten just by way of introduction. We've been talking a lot about data needs this morning and what the provision of racial justice statistics has been doing to get to the point where we are getting good criminal justice data. But there's actually data available right now that can inform the work that we do. That will be part of this bill that we're going to be walking through. But also, this starts out this is

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the bill that deals with recidivism, and it does provide a simplified definition of recidivism. I will turn this over for the walk through to Michelle. Good morning. For the record, Michelle Chaus, Office of Legislative Counsel. And everyone should have a copy of a draft 1.2 Strike Law Amendment to H410.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And it is four pages long. The first section is creating a new chapter for criminology measures where you can call it whatever you want. But the chair had asked the idea being that in Title 13, in your criminal title,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: there's a

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: chapter where we can start to place all of these requirements around data so that it's easy to find for folks. So you see the first thing in that new chapter is a definition section, which I am handing over time will get bigger. But right now, it only has one definition in it, and that's the definition of recidivism. So recidivism means a relapse into a habit of criminal activity as evidenced by an individual who's convicted of a criminal offense after receiving a criminal conviction for a previous crime. And then you calculate it from the date of the prior conviction to the date of arraignment and finding a probable cause on the subsequent charge. So it's conviction to when you're arraigned on a new charge, and that's how you track it.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I have a question. You

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: can try me. I don't know that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I have no poker face either, apparently. So oh, where'd it go? Into a habit of criminal activity. So if I committed a crime and and did it again within the the parameters of the definition, does that count as recidivism just doing that again? Because doing something twice isn't necessarily

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: You can play around with this language. This was language that looking at a variety of different various definitions for recidivism is if you don't like that language, we could try to come with You something mean just if you do something a second time, it's not a habit. Is that your point?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It could just be with a relapse into criminal activity. You don't have to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: say a habit of. So that's the way my mind went to a habit is something that's repeated Right, in right, okay.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I think it could just be relapsing.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Sure, so I will strike a habit of, so it means a relapse into criminal activity. Okay,

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

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: How about that? Again, so remember you're calculating. And for purposes of this, and I'm sure you've heard from all the folks who are collecting data and analyzing the data, you've got CRT in the room as the experts, and they use different measures for different things. But in terms of like a statutory measure here, you're really simplifying it down from what you have is the current definition in Title 28, which we'll look at in just a minute. Or maybe I should just go ahead and skip to there. So I'll show you what you're trading for. You're trading up. Okay. And that's it. And so if you look at page three, section two, you'll see some language is just being repealed. See if I remember. I had in my notes somewhere, and I think I told them for this morning because I had walked House Corrections through it a few weeks ago. But there's this existing definition currently in title 28 in your corrections title, in the general chapter right up front of this really kind of complex definition of recidivism. And so if you look kind of read through the struck language, said department and when it says the department is talking about DOC shall calculate the rate of recidivism based upon offenders who are sentenced to more than one year of incarceration, who, after release from incarceration, return to prison within three years for conviction for a new offense or a violation of supervision resulting in the new incarceration sentence or time served on the violation is at least ninety days. So there's a lot going on in there.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I like the new definition for the sole reason is we're working on data all over the place, and we're gonna have, you know, closer to the correct data to determine, you know, how many you know, what what our recidivism rates and and and with the correct data, we'll be able to, you know, to apply programs, to me more accurately and that type of thing.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. The new one is much simpler. It's more kind of your common understanding of recidivism, right? Somebody does something, they're convicted of something, and then they wind up back in the criminal justice system again, and it's not complex. It goes from data conviction to the time of the next arraignment.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Finally, if it just came to my mind, potentially, somebody who is creating crimes under the new standard, it's all the more chance that that they'll get in front of the people they need to get in front of even quicker.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And so my recollection for where this existing definition of recidivism came was quite some time ago, I think before justice reinvestment won, so maybe a couple decades ago. And it was just when the general semi corrections costs were skyrocketing. Everybody was looking at how do we begin getting really good data to figure out what programs are working, what programs are not working. And I think Senator Sears had gone to a CSG conference. They were doing a lot of work even back then on this issue. And I think it was a measure that some other states were using. And it was a way to kind of people were kind of following one another and modeling. But my understanding is that I don't think that this definition is used terribly.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Is the new definition going back to closer to what it was before? There was not one.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Oh, there wasn't one? No, there wasn't one. A starting point. Yep. Or at least not one in statute. And so again, I think the data folks can talk to you about is that it doesn't mean that folks haven't been tracking recidivism prior to that definition coming in. But they would come up like, what's our query in this? And they might define recidivism in a different way, depending on what data they're looking at and what kind of study they're doing. But this is just so we're getting rid of the one in Section two, the Title twenty eight one, and then we have your new definition in the new chapter for criminal justice data, which is in Title 13. So I'm going to go back to Page one and looking at line 15, the new section 8,122, and these would be annual reports by the Vermont Statistical Analysis Center. So you see subsection one. So annually on or before, and that's just a date for y'all to let me know what you want in there. The Vermont Statistical Analysis Center shall submit the following reports to the committees on judiciary, committee on corrections, and committee on institutions. Can you follow on to page two? Before you jump, part

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: of the reason that the date is open is I wanted to understand from CRG, from NCC, when it would be available for the previous year. So that's something we'll hear from them. So

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: on page two, you'll see the types of annual reports that they are to issue. So the first one is on bail rates. So it's an annualized report on bail rates, including hold without bail, monetary amounts and bail posting information. The reports to include data on pretrial detainees held in Vermont correctional facilities, including the prime type and the jurisdiction for which they are held.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Second

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: one is on recidivism. So it would be an annual report on the recidivism rate that measures individuals who are convicted of a criminal offense after receiving a criminal conviction for a previous crime. The recidivism rate shall be calculated annually using a three year period. And so I had question about this. I'm sorry I meant to ask before. So this is supposed to intentionally supposed to be different than the definition of recidivism work you calculate from conviction to arraignment, or is it not supposed to be the same?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You're asking me?

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I don't know.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It's supposed

[Dr. Weaver, Executive Director, Crime Research Group]: to I have an answer.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, go ahead and identify

[Dr. Weaver, Executive Director, Crime Research Group]: It wasn't gonna be something I brought up to you.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Identify yourself for the record.

[Dr. Weaver, Executive Director, Crime Research Group]: Yes, I'm sorry. I'm Doctor. Weaver. I'm the executive director of the Crime Research Group. I was going to bring up in my testimony that the definition of the topic was needed to be clarified, because it does need to be conviction to conviction.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Oh, it's conviction to conviction.

[Dr. Weaver, Executive Director, Crime Research Group]: When you're using the arraignment date to understand the chronology of when, if a crime was before or after.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We'll wait.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, okay. I'm going to wait and you guys can just tell me how you would like to change it. Number three on line nine, arrests and clearance rates. It's an annualized report on arrests and clearance rates, and the arrests are to be organized by crime according to data from NIBRS. And then subdivision four,

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: and

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I wasn't quite sure on the phrasing on this, but I put most adjudicated crimes. I'm not thrilled with that. But then I'm also not thrilled with saying the top 10 crimes because it sounds like, I don't know, you're on Family Feud or something, and you're rather than Yeah. But there's two reports here. One is a report detailing aggregated information on the number, type and length of sentences, including fines, for the top 10 crimes adjudicated in the Criminal Division. So basically, it's like the most commonly charged or convicted or something. I think I just want to flag that as something I don't love the language here in terms of identifying those crimes. I get what CRG is saying in terms of we're going to take the ones that is it most charged, most convicted, or whatever they are. But I think maybe in terms of most adjudicated or top 10 crimes, we should just think about and hear from witnesses about something that might be better language. And then the second one is a report detailing the total combined years of probation incarceration sentenced by the court in the prior year. The report shall include an analysis of which crimes and counties, contributed most significantly to the sentence imposed. Subsection b on data sharing. This is just saying that basically any state and local agencies that have data that SAC needs in order to be able to complete these reports, that they're to be cooperative in working with SAC to get that information to them.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And that's similar language to what was in '40.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Exactly. Yep. I just borrowed that from Act 40. And then we just talked about Section two. So Section three are the appropriations. And so this is for FY 'twenty seven monies. And I think it's a question mark still about where the money I didn't know if it was coming from general fund or where it's coming from. And then it just identifies the amount of money for each of those studies. So $10,000 for the annual bail rate report, dollars 10,000 for the recidivism report, dollars 1,000 for the annual arrest and clearance rate report, and $4,000 for the annual sentencing reports. Those were actually two reports that were in Subdivision 4. Then oh, and you don't need five anymore. We did have a work group study, and the chair asked me to take that out. That's why I forgot to take the appropriation out. So you take out the Subdivision 5.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's a nicely detailed appropriation. Usually, it's just a lump sum. CRG is very good. Yes!

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: They told us exactly what they need.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yep, no doubt.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So we'll get some more input on the language and we'll have some discussion either today or tomorrow morning about what to do with this. So that should be good for now. But this afternoon at 01:00 we'll have further testimony. So unless there are any questions for Michelle on the end? Yeah. I think, who do we have this time? Who do we have? Have Ken McManus. We have somebody from the Department of Corrections. That's mainly to weigh in on the definition of recidivism. And then we have Monica and Robin.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I do have a question. Yes. In fact, Michelle, so this definition of recidivism, you also ran it by Corrections already? I've talked to fractions.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: The whole thing needs to be applied after we've met our employee.

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: They had me in for a discussion of the April 28 language. Okay. That just came up during that.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I've suggested to Alice, I've told her that the suggestion of this bill is to just repeal that. Okay. She didn't seem to have a problem. That's what I'm saying. But it'll still have to be brought by the commission. So we'll

[Michele Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: right. So 01:00 you said?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yes, we're adjourned until 01:00.