Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Haley Summer (DOC Communications/Policy)]: Thank you, Jim. You're welcome, boss. Thank you. It's saying if it takes a minute, it's not showing up there. There you go.

[Unidentified participant]: Yeah. I hope that was alive.

[Haley Summer (DOC Communications/Policy)]: Can someone go to the website for those? Yeah. Can do that. Can you do that? Yeah. Let's see if it's alive. Yeah. It takes a minute. Yeah. Did you put an eticket in? You should put an eticket in?

[Unidentified participant]: Yeah. I think that

[Haley Summer (DOC Communications/Policy)]: Looks like it was gone, but I don't if it looks like it's live. It's live. So I don't think you but if I put an eticket in telling them you're live, you can hide it. But It doesn't show on this. Okay. So we will we believe we are live.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So we will initiate this meeting. It's the first meeting of the second half of the biennium of the Senate Finian institutions. Today is 01/06/2026. And we have with us today, John Murad, Interim Commissioner of the Department of Corrections. And then we'll also be hearing from the Department of BGS. And thank you very much, Commissioner Mirad. So if you want to take witness chair and then we'll introduce ourselves. I'm Wendy Harrison. I'm one of the senators from the Windham District and chair of this committee.

[Robert Plunkett (Vice Chair)]: And I'm Robert Plunkett, Senator Bennington District, Vice

[Unidentified participant]: Chair. Joe Major from Windsor. Russ Ingalls from Northeast Kingdom. John Benson, Orange District.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Great, so thank you very much for being here. Corrections is obviously a huge component and I think it might be the largest single department in the state of changes happening and we're, we ask you to be here so you can give us an update. First of many conversations. Wonderful, thank you.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: First of all, Madam Chair, thank you so much for having me and to the whole committee. I'm very appreciative of the opportunity to, on day one of the session, get a chance to say hello and to introduce myself. The governor appointed me as the interim commissioner in August, so I am still new to this role. And in many ways, many of you who've been on this committee for years past have more knowledge and experience with the department than I. You're you're correct now. It is the largest department in the state government by headcount as far as authorized headcount, and we are a little shorter than we want to be right now. That's certainly a challenge for us. It's also, I think, one that is really integral to state government insofar as the role that it performs. We are it is an incredibly strong department I have seen over the last five months. I've been really excited and privileged to get to meet and work with the staff, both at the central office and also at the facilities, the jails, prisons that we have, the six around the state, and at our probation and proble offices, the 12 offices that we have around the state and the district managers there. Really incredible people, dedicated people, doing very hard work. The facilities in particular right now are are having a challenge with regard to, as I mentioned before, that staffing. We're not where we want to be with regard to staffing. We're also, experiencing larger numbers of people in our custody than we have in many years since before the pandemic, and that is creating some unique kinds of challenges for us too. I think that we have presented, certainly, can't comment on the specifics of it, but I think we've presented good budget to address these kinds of things this coming year. One of the biggest priorities that I have is making certain that we look not only to compassionate care and custody, that we really focus on the notion that, yes, these individuals have been given to us by the court, a process over which we have no influence. They come from police arrests and then prosecutions and then court decisions, and the number that are in our custody is outside of our control of the Department of Corrections. But once they are with us, it is absolutely our obligation and responsibility to do more than merely hold them in custody, to offer not just custody but care, not just security both for them and for the community, but succor and the notion of assistance and aid and improvement, and we need to do better at that as well. I think that we do a good job. I was very blessed and proud to attend a Community College of Vermont graduation at our women's facility in Chittenden County, our first woman getting her associate's degree. That is a new program for us, an incredible step. It's been worked on for a while by really terrific people within the department and a great collaboration with the community college in Vermont, but we want more opportunities like that. We are expanding, for example, a program that also began at the Chitney Regional Correctional Facility, which is our women's facility, the one of our six. We're expanding a program that began there with the Lund organization that is called Kids Apart, and it is bringing families in, letting children work with moms in who are incarcerated. And we're expanding that to Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, which is a men's facility. Men fathers are parents too, and the idea of being able to include and increase those organizations and relationships is really important in the coming year. The biggest probably issue that we see in front of us as far as the strategic piece is that women's facility. And there are so many wonderful things that are going on in it, and so many things that are done as best as can be done given the people there and the facility's condition. But it is one of our older facilities, it is I believe in the worst condition of our Benning facilities, and we desperately need a new one. And, the sort of effort to make that happen so that we can focus more than we have in the past on reentry, on giving tools for success to the people that are in our custody, really would be greatly accelerated when the new facilities can meet best practices and best standards for the industry, and not just here in America, but elsewhere and then really look to other places and how they hold people who have been remanded by courts to custody and how they then help those people succeed upon their departure. The truth is that in Vermont the vast majority of people who do come into our system are going to leave it and we are obligated to make sure that they leave with all the tools necessary to succeed. And by succeed, what I mean, and I express this both to our folks who are in the facilities and our folks who are in probation and parole, by succeed, I mean that we ensure that once they are released from custody, once they go through supervision, if they do, sometimes after custody they're completely not under supervision, but oftentimes they leave custody to supervision. Once they are done with those processes, we do not see them again. That is the object. The object is never to see these folks again, even though I say that somewhat facetiously because they are neighbors and we will see them again in grocery stores and in communities and at schools. But we want them to do so in a way that isn't under custody or under supervision. That's success. How do we actually achieve that? You know, we're working very hard at that. I know that certainly it's a priority for Secretary Samuelson and the notion of a community level, a level of care. And it's a huge priority for Governor Scott as well to make certain that we are doing that. And I know that it's a priority for you and for the legislature as well. So I am hopeful for, I'm grateful for this opportunity, and I'm hopeful for success in that way. K.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Thank you. So I just have a couple of questions. So the, recidivism is the way that you are, showing success or or or valuing success, which makes sense or or to to be at least one of the criteria.

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

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So where are we now in recidivism?

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: I don't know the exact numbers of how because recidivism is measured in a number of different ways. There's a legal definition of statute, which is actually quite complicated. If we talk about re offense, I don't know that it's great. I think that we can have significant portions of folks who are inside our system, being custody or under supervision, who have done those things before. Frankly, in Vermont, you really don't get into custody unless

[Unidentified participant]: you have

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: an existing record absence on the first time crime.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Right. So it would be good to track that.

[Haley Summer (DOC Communications/Policy)]: Thank you. Part of the issue with the statutory definition is that recidivism is populated every three years. So it's challenging to get a figure that is relatively up to date, but I know it is something that my spouse has particularly interested in, and think it's on the agenda this week actually to discuss the development modified attention to her, but thank you.

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: Haley Summer is our comms and standing in right now as our policy expert as well for the the Department of Corrections and he's amazing and obviously has more information than I at times. So, I'm grateful.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: It's the same. So,

[Haley Summer (DOC Communications/Policy)]: are there questions?

[Unidentified participant]: Well, I would just say in today's age of technology, you should be able to almost provide the number instantaneous. Yeah. It's, it's not one

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: that we currently, we do have ways of tracking it, but as I said, there are, do we mean, for example, somebody who's arrested for the same thing or merely someone who re offends? For me, it really is irrelevant whether or not it's the exact same crime, although that's not always the same. For example, if a person is an adjudicated sex offender and offer and the person goes through the treatments that exist in that particular case, I really do think there's a distinction between a re offense in that crime category versus I was caught with an open container of alcohol or disorderly conduct that in an unlikely situation led me back to being in custody or under supervision. But, you know, for others, an assault versus a domestic assault versus acts of burglary, in those instances, I think that overall the successes is any lack of re offense.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I have received a note, so, we need to stop the Zoom vermin, which means we need to stop the testimony. So I apologize for that, but we'll just take a break right now. Okay? Thank

[Haley Summer (DOC Communications/Policy)]: you. Great. Thanks. So just

[John Murad (Interim Commissioner, Vermont Department of Corrections)]: just Was it a matter of testimony?

[Haley Summer (DOC Communications/Policy)]: No. No.