SmartTranscript of HCI-2025-02-27-1:05 PM

[Chair Alice M. Emmons]: It is Thursday, February twenty seventh. We're we shifted gears to another, bill that we have in the committee. It's age one hundred and seventy six. It pertains to DOC, Department of Corrections, reinstituting the work group program they used to offer, and it was rescinded a few years ago, for a variety of reasons. And last year, our colleagues in the House Judiciary Committee re we developed the program, but in a very different way. And I'd like to hear how that program is not and also the some this this is it working or not working. Because what the field proposes is that we go we reinstitute the old style workflow. So is it you, I'll take it today. At least people can hear you. [Member Joe Luneau]: Yes. Number right there. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Are you ready? I'm ready. [Nick Deml]: Yeah. So good afternoon, everybody. My name is Nick Demeler. I'm the commissioner of corrections for the state of Vermont. The deck that is in front of you really focuses on the proposal. So maybe to the chair's request, I'll talk first about what work group was, and it's been out of existence for a couple years as she mentioned. So under the original design of Workgroup, the state had created basically a for profit enterprise that allowed the state to contract out labor for individuals sentenced to a work crew sentence. So somebody would do a short, have a short sentence to worker of a certain number of days. They would be assigned to a crew out of a probation parole office, and there would be a work crew leader, a DFC staff member who would run that crew. They would go out and the department would contract with, largely municipalities or state government entities, some other organizations as well. And they would do jobs at various sites around the state. The individuals who are sentenced to that program would do the jobs, and then they would be, satisfy their sentence. The population it relied on, is a population we don't really serve anymore. So it was predominantly folks who are in for DUI one, kind of lower level miscellaneous crimes as a way to, I think, in theory, divert them from incarceration. Them from incarceration. The program was set up to be self sustaining so that it would fund itself and to give you a sense of the kind of work that was being done. A lot of the contracts were, mowing at cemeteries, cleaning up fish and wildlife sites, kind of prepping them for the season. Those types of kind of manual projects around the state. Over time, the population being served by this program no longer came through the correction system. So, the population that that we are currently addressing, really, it's different than the population that this program was designed for. Now as as you've heard testimony over and over again, most of the folks that come through the correction system have a substance use issue, have, other co occurring issues. And we saw over time, both people being sentenced to this program and then also people participating in this program dropped dramatic. And so we received pressure year over year from the legislature because the program began to run pretty big deficits. And really the outcomes that we were seeing were pretty bad. We had correctional officers mowing lawns because we had contracts that we didn't have crews for. So now we've got a state employee mowing a lawn or cleaning up a fish and wildlife site. We had, about two thirds of the individuals who were being sentenced to work crew were never showed up for work crew and immediately were issued a warrant for their arrest. Most of the folks who then get picked up in the system just go and [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: and are incarcerated. And [Nick Deml]: I think that that's a reflection of the changing demographics of the population that was being served by the program. That's kind of generally how it was structured. Happy to talk more about that. I'd flag you know, previously, we had, work crew staff dispersed around the state, and we had work crew equipment. Those were the primary costs associated with the program salary and benefits and then equipment costs. Since we closed the program, those folks have moved into other positions in the department. There are no work crew positions any longer. There's no equipment. That's all gone. And and we got to a point where there were so few people being sentenced to work crew and the costs were getting so extreme that we really had no choice. And and we're at a point where we had let because there were so few people, we had let the equipment kind of age over time because we aren't willing to make major investments, but we're at a point where I think we needed to invest close to a million dollars just in equipment to keep the program going. And so, we decided to move away from this program. We've heard from stakeholders that they really liked the program, that isn't reflected in their usage of the program. And we'll talk a little about that when we get into the data here. So that's kind of the backdrop. I hope that's helpful. I'm happy to talk about the bill, but maybe pause there in case anybody has questions about the way it used to be. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Yeah. Questions. Brilliant. [Member Brian Minier]: You mentioned that you used to have work crew staff. Were they different somehow from other CEOs in training or maybe or anything else? [Nick Deml]: So so there was a an actual position work crew position at and sometimes multiple positions at different probation parole sites. So they were they were different, although they still were trained correctional staff. They were in a probation parole field office. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Okay. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: So the work crew, it was a sentence. [Nick Deml]: It's a It was a It was a sentence. Yep. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: And they usually have enough an underlying sentence. So they had to be in a work group for four months. They violated that. Was there an an underlying incarcerated sentence for that usually? [Nick Deml]: Yeah. So, so if they violated or they didn't show up, then they would have to, they'd have a sentence to serve in the facilities. Over time, you know, this gets a little complicated, you know, it used to be, there were kind of not guardrails on the sentences and we had such a high failure. We started to put guardrails saying, you know, we need to make the sentences limited in time. You can't have somebody with, like, a a hundred and fifty day sentence work crew sentence. I mean, think about if you're doing one day a week of work crew, how long it would take you to satisfy yourself the likelihood you're gonna so we trunk truncated that, brought it down. By the end of the program, it was, I think, fifteen days. Maybe Tim couldn't check me. So we had kind of a maximum work crew sentence. So, yeah, I hope that answered that part. Sure. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Were they ever paid any wage, the worker? No. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: I don't have to say what's the sentence. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Right. And I just want to make this point and I just want to make sure I have this correct. And we have her testimony this session that the current rate of pay for folks who are paid, who are sentenced, and are receiving pay for whatever work ranges from twenty five cents an hour to a dollar twenty five cents an hour. That has not changed since we heard that testimony Correct. [Nick Deml]: Back here. Yep. For folks who are serving a sentence. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Yeah. So it's fair to state that folks who were assigned to work crew are paid less than even that, my word, exploitive rate that sentence folks are paid when they're doing work inside the facilities. Right. They were paid zero. Zero. Thank you. Okay. [Member Joe Luneau]: So oh, sorry. [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Hey. Do do you mind just talking about the process for no shows a bit? Like, so somebody doesn't show up, do you just call the court, or is there a second bite at the apple? Like, PNC calls them up and says come tomorrow. You know? [Nick Deml]: Like Our staff would work with them to try to get compliance. Often, they're not answering the phone when we're calling either after that. But, you know, they would work with them. But you you can pretty quickly tell, I think, whether somebody's not gonna show up. And and then if they were noncompliant, it was set you know, this was their sentence. So if they were noncompliant, then they would be violated and and there'd be an arrest warrant issued. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Great. Thanks. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Yeah. So and then the thing to remember here. Try. [Member Joe Luneau]: No. You I I can wait. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: I just I I have another question too around just liability for injuries and things like that. Who takes on the liability for the work group if they're injured on-site while working? [Nick Deml]: That's a good question. I don't actually know the answer, but that's something we can follow-up with you on. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: So the structure of the old work group was really it came from the courts. It would have been a sentence that the state's attorney, defense counsel, and the judge agreed usually. There would be a requirement of a work group x amount. Was it two weeks x amount of time? And then it was really structured around local PNP office that knew where there was contracts with local municipalities or nonprofits that had entered a contract. Was it with DOC? Yeah. Specifically with DOC to provide work group opportunities. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Yeah. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: And it was [Nick Deml]: it was labor. I mean, we're providing labor. So, you know, I I would think of it as distinct from community service, for example, where you'd go, you know, where we feel say you have ten hours of community service to serve. Here's some community service entities that would accept that, you know, physical labor. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: And do you remember? And I'd like I went to pre COVID because I know COVID really Interesting. You sound so good here. We COVID. Really? I mean, write it down. Maybe it's just just whisper it. Hey. So your translator. So pre because I know COVID really slammed it. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Yeah. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: But pre COVID, could you mention what how many employees you had directly worked a supervisor that would directly involve the work group program? Mhmm. And what costs of the program? [Nick Deml]: Yeah. So we can get into some of that as some of that's in the deck, if that's helpful. One thing before we go into this, I will just say, it because the state's attorneys, the court, even the defense bar to an extent, raised that they they wanted a tool like this, we did work with the state's attorneys, a small group to create a pilot program as an alternative to Work Crew, that is more focused on rehabilitative elements, the direction this body has told us they wanted us to go. And we we implemented that program. It's available in three counties. I think there's pretty good uptake in one county, Rutland County. Three counts? Rutland, Windham, or Windsor. [Member Joe Luneau]: Can [Nick Deml]: you start? Windsor and Washington. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Portland, Windsor, and Washington. Yep. [Nick Deml]: And instead of using a work staff, instead of using work for equipment, the program is designed to leverage existing probation and parole officers to connect people with a suite of available options, and then they go and satisfy the requirement back. So I I wanted to flag that we did work on an alternative. It's certainly not the same program. It's more focused on, like I said, the legal, fated needs or connecting somebody with community service as an option, so that we still achieve that kind of reparative piece, but also connect folks with some type of service, and they're not, you know, satisfying some contract obligation the state has. [Member Joe Luneau]: Do you [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: have an example? [Nick Deml]: So we I think we talk about it's called the alternative alternative community sentence in the deck a little later. But an example would be, somebody comes in for a charge that the court, the state's attorneys, and the defense counsel thinks is worthy of, you know, trying to avoid somebody from going into incarceration. We offer duty service education. I I think there's one other. And so somebody would come in, they have to serve out a certain amount of time doing one of those activities, and that would be in lieu of incarcerated sex. But it doesn't require a DOC work crew leader to wrangle everybody up in a van, drive them out to a site. It's it's much more individualized. And and that started and and we've had a handful of cases start already in in Rockland County. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: And are any of those connected specifically to folks who have been impacted by the behavior? So a truly restorative sort of [Nick Deml]: What do you [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: mean? So gosh. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: I I Like the thing, when they destroyed gravestones in the cemetery. Yes. So are they working with will they be able to work with a town or no local cemetery. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: More specifically maybe the families of those [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: that [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: are caused to the family by suddenly realizing this gravestone is overturned. That's my but other examples too beyond, like, gravestones. [Nick Deml]: Much of that type of work, that reparative kind of restorative justice work is done for us through the community justice centers. And that's an area I think we talked a little in here about it. But last year, the AGO requested that pre charge restorative justice work get pulled out of DOC and moved to the AGO. We then and it was our desire to then use all that bandwidth to do more of the restorative justice work post charge. Yeah. Post conviction. So that's where I think what you're describing would live. There could be elements of that included in the ACS program, but Yeah. I think that's the best. Yeah. [Member Joe Luneau]: Okay. Thank you. [Nick Deml]: So some of the mechanics, so the chair mentioned, the department is opposed to this legislation. I don't think that the state should restart work crew. I don't think it's good for a variety of reasons. One, I think it's fiscally irresponsible. The cost of a program like this is astronomical versus what we get as an outcome. I also think there's some philosophical concerns. I mean, this body has told us repeatedly the direction it wants us to go to focus on rehabilitation, focus on helping people, divert away from the justice system, stay out of the community and be more successful. This program wasn't doing that. But I wanna start first with the cost. So as I mentioned, the program was at best supposed to be cost neutral. And it it since two thousand fifteen, never achieved that mark. So since twenty fifteen, this program cost the state eleven and a half million dollars. By the end of the program, each participant cost us about sixty two thousand dollars. So a worker sends for an individual cost the state sixty two thousand dollars We had, as I mentioned, huge equipment costs that needed to be replaced. And when we closed the program, we estimated that in order to run it another year, we'd need three point six million dollars to run the program. So that alone, I think, really made us rethink our approach to work through and just, hey, is what we're spending here making sense? And what is so DOC is responsible for helping the folks that are assigned to us who are sentenced or or sent to the Department of Corrections for supervision. And we were asking ourselves, is this program actually helping people because maybe then the cost is worth it. And our assessment is that it was not. So we had a lot of no shows. I mean, you're essentially asking people to show up and work somewhere around the state. Usually they go to a probation pro office, they get loaded up in a vehicle and move to the site and they do the work. But we're dealing with a population that has really complicated needs. And that alone was a challenge, getting people to show up, getting people to show up on time. And we saw that trend change over time as our population grew more complex. And many of the folks, as I mentioned, have a substance use issue, which further exacerbates this. Then we're asking them to operate machinery or equipment, and you start to get into some real challenges. Okay. To give you some context on the actual program itself, we saw a seventy percent decline in the number of work group sentences from two thousand sixteen to two thousand twenty three when we closed the program. So the program shrunk by seventy percent in that time frame. That represents less than two percent of the population we're serving. So we were spending millions of dollars on a program that was serving, less than two percent of our total supervised population in the state. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: And what is your total supervised population? Today I think it's [Nick Deml]: forty, about four thousand two hundred. [Member Joe Luneau]: And then [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: that includes folks on probation. Probation, parole, below. All three. About four thousand two hundred. [Nick Deml]: So for folks who were participating in the program, two thirds of them did not successfully complete it and were sent to, one of our facilities. So there there were more people who had a work crew violation than were being sentenced to work crew. At the time we closed the work crew program, there are one hundred and ninety outstanding arrest warrants for folks for failing to comply with the program. I think that number today is down in the one sixties, but we still have one hundred and sixty active arrest warrants for people for not doing work crew. And we're now two plus years out from when we closed it down. It's also just to speak to the impact on the folks who are participating. We're basically asking them to step away from whatever they're doing to participate in this program. And so you think about individuals who maybe are stabilized or are stabilizing, but now you need to step away from work for ten days in a ten weeks in a row, one day a week, or step away from childcare obligations, education, they're missing medical appointments. And these were the testimonials we heard from people who had participated in the program. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Is there any of that data data for that that identifies time spent away from jobs, especially, to fulfill this role. [Nick Deml]: So we could show you the total amount of time somebody who's sentenced to work crew was spending on work crew. I don't think we would have data to show and that was in lieu of work or child care. Unfortunately. But you [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: do have testimonial that that that worker had an impact on these conditions. [Member Joe Luneau]: Okay. Thank you. [Nick Deml]: There you all some of you have been on this committee for a while know this stuff well. Some are new. The council state governments, helped the state work through the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, and I think it finished in twenty nineteen. That was the kind of set the current justice in Vermont to the way that it is. At the time, the canceled state governments identified that work crew was the leading cause of reincarceration in the state. Forty six percent of the technical violations being filed were for work crew. That was more than any returns for all these other listed things I think that are on the slide here. So just highlighting that this was a primary driver people going to jail, which, you know, if that's the outcome being sought, fine, but that's not how this program was built. The program was built as a way to keep people out of incarceration, not send them to incarceration. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: So I think it's important to explain what a tactical violation is because, again, the new folks use the DOC terminology. Yeah. So, [Nick Deml]: a technical violation is, if you're an individual on supervision, usually, it's when we're talking about furlough, but I think it can also be thought of when we talk about parole. A technical violation is a violation of a condition, a violation of some rule that we've set. A nontechnical violation would be a violation of law. So saying, you're out on furlough and you commit a new crime. That's that's a nontechnical violation. You have committed a crime. A technical violation would be like, you have a curfew of nine o'clock at night. If you're not at your house at nine o'clock at night, you're in violation. That's a technical violation. And those are governed differently under the law. So there are heightened rules around the department filing technical violations and the penalties that come with it. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: That's the department that makes that determination with a technical violation, and it's not the courts. [Nick Deml]: As it relates to furlough. Yep. Yep. And then the furlough board, we would file that technical violation with the parole board and they would adjudicate that. So for furlough, that would be adjudicated by the Department of Corrections. And that's where the state has put a lot of guardrails around what constitutes technical violation, what kind of penalty you can have for a technical violation, etcetera. So a couple other things. I mean, to me, this feels a lot like the work crew or I'm sorry, the home detention conversation we had a couple years ago. The department was spending a lot of money on home detention. We we didn't see a lot of value in that program. We came into the legislature and tried to abolish home detention. This body, particularly this committee told us, no, we want you to do home detention. In fact, we want you to do more of it, expand the program, which we did because we're good listeners. And so we expanded the program, we changed some of the rules. When we did that in this committee, we had eleven individuals on home detention. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Today, we have eight. So we have four. [Nick Deml]: We made the program bigger, and fewer people are using it. So we keep getting asked to provide these tools and yet they're not being leveraged for their purpose. I also say, I want you to think through a question that I would pose to you and that's who's really being served by this? At the end of the day, it is my assessment that the work crew program is popular with our other Justice Department colleagues because it is a way to quickly move something out of the docket. But ultimately, it's supposed to serve the folks who are being assigned to the program, who are sentenced to the program, and those people are not succeeding under this program. And it shifts all that burden to the Department of Corrections. So again, to me, this feels like a problem existing somewhere else that's being solved on the back of corrections. And we I raise this because we just had testimony in front of you a couple of weeks ago about the remote court process. It's good for courts. It's not good for corrections. This is another example where it's good for somebody else, but it's not good for corrections. It's not good for the people being served by corrections. And you've spent a lot of time advising and instructing us to get better at treating the folks who are coming into our system better, helping them rehabilitate, helping them reenter more positively, and sending them to clean, efficient wildlife site. Well, that's great for the state because our labor is a lot cheaper than them contracting that to a private vendor. The people are not being served well by that process. And so we did come up with an alternative and it is not going to completely replace worker. I'll be the first to tell you, but we designed this in close consultation with a few of the state's attorneys in the state. And it is working. People have started to be sentenced to this. We have had violations. We have somebody incarcerated today because they didn't succeed in the alternative community sentence program. We at least think that it is more rehabilitative in nature, which is, I think, our goal as a department. But in order for programs like that to [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: work, people need to be referred [Nick Deml]: to them. So I don't think it's fair to come in and say the program doesn't work when people aren't getting sentenced to it. The program's there to be taken advantage of if the courts and others so decide. So I'll pause there. That was a lot to throw at you. Happy to discuss any questions. [Assistant Phil Petty]: My question is on this slide that we're on right now. It said, right, there's a home detention was costing POC two hundred thousand dollars a year. Is home detention still active? [Nick Deml]: It is still active. We have found a way, and and some of it was in working with HCI, to decrease the cost by going to, basically, not active supervision of electronic monitoring overnight. So that was that was one way we drove the cost down. So it is a little cheaper now. It's still, in my opinion, isn't working well, but but we do it. There's HCI. HCI. Of you. Of course. And then Sorry. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: K. [Nick Deml]: That's how we refer to you behind your back. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: I mean [Member Connor Casey]: I was like, that's probably [Nick Deml]: Could be worse. Yeah. [Assistant Phil Petty]: And then the second part of that question, so home detention, you explained it. How is that different than pretrial supervision? What would you like to know? [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: This is this is parole and furloughed. You know? [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Retri home detention is someone who has been detained. The courts have said bail is really high or a person hasn't made bail. They were held in a correctional facility, And DOC and working with that person can say, wait a minute. This person really doesn't need to take a bar in bed. They may be low risk to re offend, And let's see if we could place this detainee on home detention versus taking a hard bed in a facility. DOC would then go back to the court and make the case, and it would be the court then would decide the person could be on home detention. The key for home detention is there's an apartment housing situation for the person, and they are on electronic monitoring. Usually, supervision is very different in that the person, the person has gone through an arraignment and is released back to the community, has made bail if there was bail set, but has been by the court released back to the community with conditions that that court has set. Right now, there's up until the pretrial supervision, there was no DOC supervision. There was no supervision for that person at all, except maybe local law enforcement would be aware of something, and then they would see a violation for new crime. What we put in place last year was a rollover over a couple communities, and this year we got to look at it to roll it out over more communities, is do effectively supervising that person in the community waiting for the court date for trial. They could supervise them with a phone call once a week, a check-in in the parole office once a month, and if it escalated, there were some violations, so they could end up in an electronic bracelet and they could eventually end up on detention. But it was a way of providing public safety to our communities for folks who are pre trial with conditions that have been set, and there was no supervision of them in the community. [Nick Deml]: So there might be no risk of the person or a low risk of the person fleeing, but they usually it's a unique population. They usually have very serious crimes. Mhmm. But the court feels comfortable that they could be in their residence with electronic monitoring. So it is an unusual population the program is designed to serve. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: For the home detention or Home detention. Yes. Home detention. Joe, then In [Member William "Will" Greer]: in certain instances, does just a sentence of community service still exist? Just check into the PO, or is that not a thing? [Nick Deml]: I think under probation, Tim [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: You can be very, very creative. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Very, very creative. Creative. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I would say there's a version of that that could exist. Yep. Well, like, you're working on things. Yeah. Well, [Member Connor Casey]: one question that I just have is about what you have up there. So for brief, why would it cost two hundred thousand dollars for home detention? [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I know someone talked about the pediatric version. [Nick Deml]: So the way that it used to work is, we would have somebody on staff twenty four hours a day who's available to be called if somebody violated their home detention. Okay. So it's not He asked for a statutory change that allowed us to go so that we don't actually have somebody on staff twenty four hours a day. We check it in the morning. We call it indirect supervision. [Member Connor Casey]: Yeah. I got it once. I was like, my head up. The staffing pause. I got you on that. So the second part isn't really as much a question, but I I appreciate where the commissioner is going with it. You know, work crew will not necessarily pose or for, but any any work this isn't this isn't the south in in nineteen thirty as opposed. No work work chain gangs where you're scaring people stiff, so to speak. So our idea is to be real rehabilitative rehabilitative. So the work should be, as you pointed out, related to some kind of rehabilitative activities, not just pulling along. [Nick Deml]: That's our So [Member Connor Casey]: I I I so I appreciate you pointing that out. So it wasn't a question as much as, you know, things like that. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Back to [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: I appreciate the springboard that you just [Member Joe Luneau]: gave me. And, you [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: know, to that's kinda gets at what I haven't been able to put my finger on. And I did do research actually on what we have called these things in the past. Because this to me, and it's almost deliberately spelled out here in the bill, it's another reinvention. Right? Okay. It's the rest community restitution program, parenthesis. We used to call this a work crew. Right? We used to call this the chain gang. That's [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: let me just I'll I'll [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: just do this. Chain gang turned into workings, turned into community. These these are currently being used. Community service crews, inmate work crews. This one cracked me up. Trustee labor. So you get to be called a trustee, a prison trustee. [Member Joe Luneau]: Well, let's just change it to that. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Right. Yeah. So restorative work programs. I I have huge problems with our use of the word restorative when we're not actually being restorative. Prison work programs, sheriff's work program. Those are all the names that I found. And that to me is kind of at the heart of what's not working here for me. We we just kinda keep doing window dressing. Well, let's call it this. Well, let's call it this. And it's it's essentially the same thing. In the past, it's been a chain gang. We don't like that name anymore, so we turned it into a working, and we're still doing the same thing. We're paying people zero dollars to perform services that by and large benefit the state. And I don't know. I haven't seen anything in this bill that shows me we've realigned the principal goals of this program other than to maybe clear dockets. I was gonna ask you what would you call it, but I don't that's that's not a legitimate question. That's not [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: a legitimate question. Unless you all want to wait. What would you call this this time? [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Because rest community restitution program, parenthetically, we used to call this a work crew. It's still a work crew. It's still a work crew. And I just can't get behind this. [Member Connor Casey]: And, like, I don't mind if somebody's not getting paid, but if they're in a pre doing work, well, because to me, the work has to be in line with their rehabilitation. Like, you know what I mean? It's gotta be connected in some ways. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: I don't mind. But not just mowing a lot of real [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: surprise work. [Member Brian Minier]: Right. You [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: know? Totally different purposes. [Nick Deml]: So one thing I just wanted to circle back to, I wanna tell you the ramifications of what happens if you do pass this bill and that the chamber passes the bill. There are no positions in the Department of Corrections for this work. There is no budget in the Department of Corrections for this work. We no longer have policy governing work groups in our department. So we estimated when we still had people and still had equipment, it was gonna cost nearly four million dollars the next year. I don't know what it would cost now. We would, we don't have any equipment. The equipment's gone. We would need fifteen positions. We would need at least four million dollars We need to go find all the equipment somewhere. And the bill, while I understand it's not an appropriations bill, doesn't contemplate any of that. It just says the department will do this. With what? We it's not like we have people, you know, in spades here. We don't have work crew equipment. We don't have the budget. So I I know you all heard our budget testimony this year. We're gonna be close to two hundred and thirty million dollars already without this program. And I don't think this program serves people. So I don't want you to spend money on this. I don't want you to tell us to use our people for this. I think our people can be used for much better purposes, and I think our money can be used for much better purposes to get better outcomes on those. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I'm sure where you're [Member William "Will" Greer]: sending us. [Nick Deml]: But I'll be happy to [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: do whatever you We have option on this bill. We come here, going over to judiciary. I ask for it to come here, and we can send it over to judiciary. [Nick Deml]: I think I'm good right where it is. No. I do feel strongly about it because I just I want the department to be doing things that are really successful. And we have really tried to reorient this department in the last three and a half years to be a corrections department looking at the future, trying to get this right, trying to help people through our system. And where we found things that we didn't think were achieving those outcomes. This is out of alignment with our values. And if this body tells us to go back and do this, I will have a very strong issue with that. [Member Brian Minier]: I think two questions. The first, if you were to hire those fifteen people, how much is that approximately per year? Is that like a hundred? [Nick Deml]: Yeah. I think we estimate about a hundred with salary and benefits. Hundred and twenty maybe. Yeah. We would need the positions, though. We don't have the positions. [Member Brian Minier]: Yeah. Yeah. No. I just want to be able to talk to people about the additional money. That money. Yeah. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: You know? [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: That's true. [Member Brian Minier]: Yeah. The alternative community sentence, the menu of said options. [Nick Deml]: Can you say more about that? Yeah. So I think I can bring you we just finished the policies. Policies been promulgated, and it lays it out. I think there were five categories off the top of my head, but it was, community service, treatment, education. That's right. Feel like I had four a minute ago. But, but we we can certainly provide that policy to the committee so you can see that in the mechanics of how the program works. [Member Brian Minier]: Yeah. That's a good good question. And then maybe I should just wait for that. But, like, education, like, what what would that mean? What's that? [Nick Deml]: Well, so the Department of Corrections can provide free community college education to any incarcerated individual in the state under a five million dollar federal earmark. So that would be one option is to connect folks with CCV classes. If one of the issues is I'm, committing a retail theft because I don't have resources, but, education may help me get on a path towards having a a good paying job, then that seems rehabilitative in nature. It also gets people directed towards a more positive. I think what we're trying to do. [Member Brian Minier]: And so you would not be incarcerated in doing these classes. You'd be doing classes in being incarcerated. [Nick Deml]: Right. But if you're in under under furlough, you're technically incarcerated. Right. It's an incarcerated sentence. Okay. And now we've expanded the program slightly. We don't have to go to mechanics of that. But for folks who aren't ready to leave, they get access to that program for a year after they leave incarceration. So that's one example. But there are other ways that we could get access to educational. [Member Joe Luneau]: So you'd [Member Brian Minier]: be sleeping at home with somebody checking on you that you're doing this alternative? [Member Connor Casey]: Can you is it when [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: the program ever cost neutral commissioner was designed to be, but, like, pre twenty fifteen or was? Yeah. [Nick Deml]: Pre twenty fifteen, I think it was neutral. And at times, I think it made money. But much like the industries program, if you remember when we took apart Vermont Fracture Industries, these programs basically atrophied over time and our population changed and and they just didn't keep up with the models that work today. And so, yeah, years back, it was Just cost neutral. Thanks. [Member Connor Casey]: Actually, it's not a question. We just started this. Can we hear from Kim on the whole second? [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: We're getting there. Yeah. [Member Connor Casey]: I don't want him to run out of time, but I really don't hear. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Other questions? So you just got part of the top box seat until you get put up. Yep. And I know we have [Member Connor Casey]: You're welcome. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: And we have Patrick Heeling, who is from the agreement in cemetery here that did work a lot with the old structure of work crew. And we have Tom Griffin. [Member Connor Casey]: He's Is [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: he still on? Yes. Okay. And I think last year, there were conversations going internally between DOC, the state's attorney's office trying to figure out how we were gonna go forward with the work work group model. And then house judiciary took hold of it and came up correct model. That is a big commitment. And I guess you could talk about your experience and the state's attorney's experience with the old model, And then you could also talk about who the model is or is not working. Maybe it's working in one area and may not be working in other areas. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Absolutely. So Tim Leader Dumont, Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs, I want to preface this by saying we have most respect for the commissioner. We it's good to sometimes debate friends and colleagues, and I'm not trying to have this be a debate. All fourteen states attorneys won't be able to work who back. Doesn't mean I don't care about the cost. I do. And honestly, we learned a lot about the cost through the state and it was very illuminating. All fourteen states attorneys mark this program back. And it isn't just because the backlog. These individuals, this is not a rehabilitative program. [Member Joe Luneau]: It It is [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: not designed to be a rehabilitative program. It is an incarcerated sentence. If you show up and do the work or go do something, it doesn't have to be work. I'm gonna get here just because I know you had a strong reaction to the wording. It doesn't have to be work. The certainty of the sanction is why the program worked. I personally used this hundreds of times in offers. I would say I offered it a few hundred times and I probably cleared one hundred and fifty cases with it during time periods where I could use it. During COVID, it was suspended. So using data during that time period is not something that I would do long term. I would look I would if you wanted to see the utilization, I would look up through twenty nineteen, early twenty twenty, and then maybe I mean, that's really why I would stop the utilization question. There was also time periods where it stopped and started. Also time periods where it stopped and started in certain counties. So, for example, there was a period where Bennington County had zero zero sentences for a worker because it was not available. So there would be a large asterisk next to Bennington County because it wasn't available for sentence disposition option. It's something that right now, twenty three thousand cases, these cases are not going to trial. They're repeat offenders, misdemeanor cases. They failed out of diversion. They are too impoverished to pay fines, and this was an option to resolve their cases. Many of many of the individuals that I resolve these cases with were for repeat individuals, and they were banging on my door, not the other way around. Hey. We don't wanna go to trial for these seventeen retail. We want to go to work group. And the victims often and we haven't talked about victims yet in this conversation, but the victims often were very happy to know that it was wrapped up and that there was a there was accountability. And from my perspective and the perspective of Judge Sone, who last year testified to this exact fact, the individuals who are on arrest warrant status, that is a predetermined known consequence of not showing up for work crew, and it's a very simple consequence. And it's it's something that they know going into it when the judge is sentencing them. Do you know that if you do not show up, you're going to be incarcerated? The maximum of fifty my one comment on the bill, it shouldn't be twenty to sixty days. The maximum should be fifteen days. So we know that's the max that we can negotiate because at the end of the day, these can occasionally happen with felonies as well. But it isn't just a dispositional tool. It is an accountability tool. One of the case law sentencing factors is one incapacitation and two, there is a punitive aspect. Rehabilitation is also a part of that. But for someone that has failed at a diversion is not showing up for court at times. Sometimes I would resolve with a with a work crew sentence for someone that had to be brought into court for failing to appear. So I haven't done the analysis of how much the twenty three thousand pending cases and the fourteen thousand misdemeanors and the eight thousand felonies that are currently pending, how much that's costing us. And honestly, our department doesn't even have the staff to do that analysis, but it's costing us a lot of money right now, the cases that are currently pending. And we had and I want to thank the commissioner. He set up multiple meetings with Isaac and Al Cormier and Cassidy Renfro, other really professional staff who and we tried coming up with this alternative. And I wanna get to the alternative. Rutland County is the only county up to three that has had some utilization. And speaking with State's Attorney Sullivan, there's been a really good faith effort from the defense counsel, from the state down there to try to have some folks engage with this program. One of the issues that they've seen is that the defense bar as a whole has been a little has been nervous and sensitive to this program because it isn't unknown. It isn't what work crew was. I think the true test of this dispositional option, community restitution, will be if the defense bar is banging on the doors of the prosecutor saying, hey. My person has twenty cases I really want to resolve today. They cannot pay a fine. They cannot be incarcerated for three months, and it can't be ambiguous. One of the pieces that I loved about work crew's fire role, and I'll call it work crew because that's exactly what we call it. We didn't be around, you know, Bush. It was work. Is that sometimes individuals would say, I know how to mow a lawn. I know how to do this. I know I can do that and be successful in that for five days, six days, seven days. That's something that made me feel more comfortable about it. At first, I was like, what is what is this? Is this what you were talking about, representative? And terrible images of it's not it was not that perspective. It was a form of honestly engaging with the community as a whole and really paying back something. And when we're talking about us, you know, in judiciary, we're talking about accountability a lot. And I think this committee cares about that too on the dispositional side. It's an important, mapillary doesn't like when I say tool in the toolbox, but that's exactly what it was. An important tool in the toolbox for judges, defense counsel, and prosecutors. Washington County, they're the defense, as far as I understand, is not recommending this dispositional option. For me, personally, that was something that we used to negotiate every single week on using WorkCrew crew as a dispositional option. Windsor County, same thing. I'm really happy that Rutland County is engaging with this, but it's, really something we have to have available statewide as an option. And I think the focus point is the certainty of the sanction. What that work or educational opportunity is needs to be very, very certain. And, unfortunately, I do not have the expertise, regarding how to make a program work. But if it's restructuring and thinking about it differently, I presented the department. We've surveyed the whole department in the last few weeks and got a number of responses, including from some members of the defense department that are now with us. I just wanted to say this one individual who was a former defense attorney at the time, I worked as a public defender and thought that work group was incredibly useful for resolving cases and that it gave each state a win. Each resolving cases and that it gave each state a win each side a win. It gave the state a sentence that was technically incarcerated for certain circumstances, but it also gave the defendant a way to avoid jail time if they showed up for work. Another way it was helpful was in its simplicity. There was no probation conditions or terms that were ambiguous. It was just, here's your work crew sentence. If you do not show up, you'll go to jail. That simplicity is something that I think we wanna encourage, whether it's old work crew or a new program because we have honest conversations at the plea agreement stage. It's not, hey. Like, you're gonna be set up with probation officer Renfrew, who I who I used to work with. She's great. She's gonna work with you, get these conditions done. With this, it's it's not that. And and from my opinion, it has to be simpler than get these three or four conditions done. And I and I you know, sometimes I think people come into your committee rooms and they, like, maybe even some I've done this before and I want to say what you what I think you want me to say, but it's not a rehabilitative sentence. And I would be lying to you if I said that it was, it's to it is to have a final piece and that's for victims, too. Number of victims told me, thank you for resolving the case with workroom. It was actually nice to know that the cases are coming to an end. And whether it's retail theft or whatever, I'm telling you these cases are not going to trial right now. We had one hundred and sixty five percent increase in trials over the last two years. Almost all felonies, violent person to person conduct. We are not having misdemeanor trials in the state, conversations happening in judiciary. We need to have some type of misdemeanor track because if we don't have options like this, we need the ability to go to trial in these cases because these folks are not gonna be able to plead out to other options. And we would like to go to trial for misdemeanors. But in the in the interim, we have to have some options back on the [Member Joe Luneau]: table. So [Member Connor Casey]: you kinda answered this a little bit. I think the commission reset is pretty high rate of showing up, and there's a significant number of people out there with a warrants. So in your mind, in order to clear the backlog, if you will, this is this is a sentence. You'd like them to be able to complete it. That's your goal. But it's an ease it's also an easy way that they know, in your opinion, I guess. Let me Mhmm. That, yeah, they might end up in in incarcerated or in in prison or correctional facility, but it was a simpler way to get there. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Yeah. I [Member Connor Casey]: I simple way of putting it. [Member Joe Luneau]: But I [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: think one thing I just and I and I'm I'm using some of the notes I took from looking watching judge Zona's YouTube testimony last year. But it's not a failure of the program when they're on arrest warrant status in this sentence type. That's something that's known. Think about it like a seesaw. However you wanna think about it, it's binary. If you do not show up, you you are going to be incarcerated, unlike a probation where maybe, right there's there's options you have to exhaust like payment. Maybe you do this in the interim furlough. Right. There's some other furlough status. The parole set, there's some ambiguity here. Reduction of the ambiguity has been really helpful. And for those people on arrest warrant status, I have a lot of respect for CSG. And if they're listening to this testimony, that's great. They're all the ones practicing in our courts in Vermont. And to call this a failure from some out of state entity, I have to tell you, I was pretty offended when I read that because for victims, for many of the defendants, for many of the judges, it did not feel like a failure when we cleared fifty cases in one day. It felt like, hey, we're moving cases to make room for other cases. And it's not just about the backlog. It's about making sure that Vermonters, our justice system is capable of moving as well. And we're in a little bit of a rut for some of our repeat offender types in the state who are looking for resolution to their cases as well. It's not fair to defendants to have many, many of their cases just sitting. And am I ever gonna go to trial? I mean, it would be great if we could tell people, hey. You have five pending cases. Your trial is in ten days. We can't tell that to people right now. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Sean and then So [Member Joe Luneau]: what what are these areas charged with that get sent to work through Chain Gang? [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Not Chain Gang. We don't have that in Vermont. [Member William "Will" Greer]: But No. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I know it. You've missed it. It's an evolution. Oh, sorry. Sorry. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: I I [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: can't I stay so the worker senses that I most often saw that I was negotiating with or that I was getting asked, hey. No probation for my person. Right? Not gonna be successful in probation. They failed at a diversion. They wanna do work crew. A good example would be a retail theft. Someone who's repeatedly had a retail theft, and they have no ability to pay back the restitution to those store owners. They have no ability to engage with things like, honestly, don't commit another crime again in the future. Like, that sort of thing is hard for some people, honestly. And we see it in retail theft, disorderly conduct. Right? And even something like an aggravated disorderly conduct, which sometimes some of our domestics have pleaded down to aggravated a public dispute between two people can be put pled down to an aggravated DC. Some of our pled down more serious cases where witness no longer wants to go to trial and testify against their brother-in-law, right, or their or their spouse. Way to resolve the case, amend down, and resolve for something like a work [Member Joe Luneau]: group. So why does DOC have to take it? Why couldn't it go to the private sector? Why couldn't there be SDRO and take some of those guys and [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: explain that to me. Well, two things. One, I see the president of the BSEA right there. But the the other thing is that my opinion, I I trust the training programs, the accountability structure, and the way that our corrections department runs. And I honestly, you know, having lived in Montpelier and doing work in Washington County as a deputy state attorney, it was good for me. I saw some of the people that I was engaging with in Fort at the cemetery here in Montpelier occasionally, and that I was happy they were not getting incarcerated because they were showing up. On the other side, if they weren't showing up to work, it was good good knowing that a state employee was the one, not not the private sector, but a state employee was the one saying, you know what? This person didn't show up. I'm going to ask for an arrest warrant. And for me, I I trust my state employee population. And not that I don't trust the private sector, but I know that they have they have sworn to certain things, and they have a certain set of high standards that I really trust and appreciate. And they can be called in as a witness, for example, a VOP for people that are on probation. One of the best witnesses we can possibly have in the state of Vermont is probation officers for things like violations of probation. And that's the population I trust to supervise people. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Alright. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Chuck? I'll try to do this succinctly. I wanna get more into this concept not concept, but this fact that people who cannot afford a fine are more disproportionately offered this alternative. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: In the past. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Okay. Yeah. So nationally option. Right. Right. So nationally and I can share citations with anybody who wants them, that I found anyway, these alternative sentencing programs that involve unpaid labor are shown to disproportionately land on marginalized communities. And I will include people who can't afford to find as community in this. I guess, one, does your office have any analysis on who's most likely to receive this sort of alternative sentencing? [Nick Deml]: Two, [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: if the goal is to provide alternatives to incarceration, why does unpaid labor have to be the solution to that? [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I don't think that it does need to be the solution, but also this is in this is not this is an incarcerated sentence. It's Well, it's it's a [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: new form of an incarcerated it's it's it is it it could be considered an alternative incarcerated. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I mean, under law, it is an incarceration. [Member Troy Headrick]: I get that. [Nick Deml]: I get that. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: But philosophically, it's it's it's an alternative to the conventional form of incarceration. So do you so the the two questions I think I have are, do you have analysis on who this is most often getting at that likelihood that it lands on marginalized communities disproportionately to and you've already sort of answered this, but maybe go into a little more depth. Why does that have to include unpaid labor? [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: And so the unpaid labor part was how it has been set up. At one point, I sat in this committee and I said, there are hundreds of libraries in the state of Vermont who are used to dealing with individuals who are on the margins who need help. I don't care or have any preference as to what type of work education. It needs to be very definite, though. Ten out, you're gonna go to Community College of Vermont for ten hours and someone's gonna sign an affidavit saying you were there. If we don't get that affidavit, you are going to be incarcerated. That finality, for me, the work piece is is how it was set up in Vermont. Last year, I I had talked with individuals, some of our state's attorneys, I talked with some of the defense attorneys who were like, hey, we need this thing back. Some of those folks who have come into contact with the criminal justice system felt like, you know, they they were going to be unsuccessful on probation and they did not have the money to pay a fine, but they wanted their cases to be over. There are victims who want the case to be over. And so that population, we don't have statistical analysis center in our in our department. You're looking at it with, yeah, with actually the state's attorney from Rutland who has a an uncanny, depth statistical data analysis for judicial data. We look at each case on its face, case by case, and the judges are the ones who impose this sentence. We're at the table with defense counsel, bringing these to a judge, and it's a judge who signs off on these sentences. We do not have the ability to sentence on our own, but the population has exhausted other rehabilitative remedies. And this state, you can be really proud that you have so many options, diversion, pre charge. And when it comes to post charge, we have all sorts of options with our local CJCs, and you've worked on some of that over the last couple of years expanding that. We have lots and lots of options for rehabilitation. In some of these cases, the victims are are not gonna want as you said, the rehabilitative model, the restorative model. Some of the victims are like I [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: get that. Yeah. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: And the defendants don't necessarily want to engage in that way. They just want it to be done with. I resolved a number of cases with one to two days of work group, something to just end it. You know, the fifteen day thing was a pretty rare occurrence. Obviously, that would have been a really steep work week sense. We're talking more in the three to seven day range was a pretty consistent sense for us. And, you know, I think with our DOC staff, they did a great job of thinking and talking to these folks about, hey, what are what is going on with your personal life? When could you come in? And so having it, you know, that's why I would sometimes go to the one to two or three to three to four days because I didn't we didn't want to interrupt their lives best of our ability. But we also needed to get to the endpoint in the case because the judge is gonna be I mean, some of the times the judges would come to us and say, you want us to go to trial on this disorderly conduct case? Is that what and you don't wanna do the the aggravated domestic case? That's what you want us to do. And we said, have you tried a worker yet? Go in the hallway. Sort it out. I don't wanna see you again till you have an offer. You know? And and I and I really believe in that work that where judges are driving sorting cases out in terms of, hey. We don't we only have a limited number of hours in this courthouse. So in terms of the population, we look at each case on its face. And historically, in this country, people who have been on the fringes have had more interactions with the criminal justice system, and that's something big picture, the resources in our community. Orleans County has different resources than a Chittenden County, and I think, we want more done upstream so that we see less people. This department will always say that. We want more done upstream so that by the time they get to us, other things have been exhausted. But most of these cases do involve victims and people with more than one case who have failed that diversion. Thank you. [Member Joe Luneau]: Yep. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Joe, can you? [Member William "Will" Greer]: Alright. I'm gonna I'm I'm all set. [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Yeah. Sure. So I think first of all, it's kinda funny watching Trium DLC and Deer Alliance here. I think it's hard, Chris. But I I I think the, you know, the representative from Burlington, he he tries my conscience often enough here, and he has got me thinking about some of this stuff. So, like, the first hurdle we gotta get through on this bill before we do anything is is it morally justifiable. Right? And I think, like, Tim, like, a couple of things you're saying are helping me get to that point if I can see this as almost voluntary in nature. Right? What I'm hearing from you is that this is not so much a judge handing down a sentence as the parties coming together. And despite being a very tough guy myself, right, of course, if I had the option of being incarcerated or mowing a lawn for a few days, that would be less scary for me. And that that would be what? [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Being incarcerated. [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: No. Like, mowing lawns would be less scary for me than going into the clink. Yeah. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: So Oh, whatever. We'll do the choice. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Let's continue the choice. Right? That that's that's a false choice. What if you also had the choice to mow lawns for for money? What would you choose? [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Well, it's so that's not on the table right now. [Member Joe Luneau]: Right? That's not on the table right now. Right? That's not on [Member Connor Casey]: the table right now. Right? [Member Joe Luneau]: That's not on the table. Not not my problem. Not my problem. Yeah. That's not my problem. [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Yeah. Like nothing. Yeah. [Member Joe Luneau]: That's no problem. [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: Even as it is now, I would think that works. I would I would feel safer in that environment. I yeah. I would. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: And just to your just to your point, John Campbell, my my predecessor, [Member William "Will" Greer]: talked about the idea [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: of learn crew. And guess what? They have as a part of their new program, educational opportunities. Now I wanna applaud that because that's that's a really creative way of thinking about what to do in the future here. I think part of our issue is they've done a lot of work. They they talk with myself and a few of the other states' attorneys. Sometimes there's fourteen different opinions across the state's attorneys on how this thing looked. We we tried our we tried our best on some of that. It's not getting as much pickup as I want. Rutland, I think it was less than twenty, of these dispositional sentences were were picked up. And there's a straight up basically, we're not doing it from some of the other defense counsel in the other two counties. So for me, despite really good efforts, lots of time that we spent last year at your direction, madam chair, I I think it's gonna be more successful when we're getting knocked on our door by defense counsel because it is most of the time when it was working, most of the time it was defendants and their defense attorneys saying, can we resolve this for a work crew sentence? I mean, if we call it something different, which again, this legislature on a regular basis, [Member Joe Luneau]: I know [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: changes language that then becomes a part of what people use. And I think that's a good use of your time. And, you know, we're making sure we don't have two options in terms of he, she and our statutes. We update those all the time. Him, her, it's it's the person that the people interacting with the system in this circumstance. The finality is what we want and some of the policies that the commissioner, had in place previously, I think were I read them, and I thought they were quite useful. Can they be adopted or adapted? I was throwing more work on the on the department, but can they be adopted or adapted to have it not be work crew, but something else that has the same finality? I think that's what I want to get to, simplicity and finality. And all our state's attorneys rarely agree on anything. Right? All want work crew in some form back. So [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: They just follow-up. But Yeah. Whatever it wants, Paige, like you're truly saying here, does that does that impact sort of you at any level, or would you be agnostic on this? [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I mean, for me personally, I'd probably more. Right? Yeah. I I I think, again, this finality and the simplicity is what's most and most important, from my perspective. And again, there's no money tree growing in the backyard of the statehouse, and I get that. Our department is is in desperate need of positions and resources. So I don't want to, go, yeah, just do whatever is. But at the end of the day, this complicity is what really drove its success in the past. And the state's attorney from Bennington reminded me as I came in this morning, there was a time period where I didn't have the option to use it. So looking at that time period from a data perspective is not was not something that she she wanted me to say today, and I then wanted to make [Member Joe Luneau]: sure you're aware. Thanks. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: So we got more questions. Sean and Brian. [Member Joe Luneau]: Hey, Joe. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Hey, Joe. Hey, Joe. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I have to pick up my kiddo early daycare. [Member Connor Casey]: That's That's silly. [Member Joe Luneau]: Does the the kids [Member Connor Casey]: who come from work crew or [Member Joe Luneau]: the people coming out of work crew, is there any data that shows that it worked? They never went back to do anything bad again in their life? [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Two two parter. One, we put in a recommendation this year. Definition of recidivism means that you have to be incarcerated for more than one year. Most sentences in Vermont are for far less than one year. So our current definition of recidivism is broken and unhelpful. The second part of your question is we don't know. The second part of your question is that things like expungement and sealing make it incredibly difficult to figure out if someone has come back through the system again. But in terms of the success of clearing cases, I can tell you it's a proven tool to move cases. And as I've stated, it's not a rehabilitative tool. A lot of what you talk about is rehabilitative. Probation has that. Furlough has that. Time in the incarcerated facility where they have access to treatment at really incredible levels. There's a lot of options. This isn't that. [Member Joe Luneau]: Yeah. Thank [Member Brian Minier]: you. Yeah. Absolutely. Given the kid pick up, this could be rhetorical if necessary. I don't see if you have anything to say. You're agnostic about the work thing. Why then can't we go with this new idea and say it's been a sales problem so far or an educating people problem? Right? You you don't care if it's that as long as it works. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I think as long as you get pickup and as long I think one of the issues we've seen that I've seen I have some friends in the defense in the defense bar in large numbers, which can come as a surprise to you, but they they have spoken to me about, at least in Washington County. And there's a bit of ambiguity in terms of the sanction Right now, that was a little bit of a red flag for them because there's some discretion and I I trust the commissioner's discretion, but there's some discretion in terms of if you don't complete community service. The other issue is that community service has been sounds good, sounds nice, has been a bit of a problem even under other sentence schemes. Judges used to roll their eyes at me when I said, can we do community service? They say, how are we gonna track thirty two hours? They're getting sentenced. So we gotta bring someone who's been sentenced back to the court for a VOP for community service. It has some issues, even though it sounds really good. And the I would say the other piece that we've seen is I would love it if there was major pickup in what's happened at our all states attorneys meeting in the fall. They said, Tim, we need this across the state. Maybe if it was across the state, there would be a large pickup. Right now, we have a sample size of three counties, which was a which I think was designed to see if there was pickup. I would want the defense bar, people in the field, hundreds of cases assigned to them to say, here's the issues that I have with it, ambiguity of the sanction, right, or something like that. Some of the design features that old work crew had was real, clarity for the defendant. And a defense attorney is not going to probably negotiate on something that has a little bit of a question mark on the end of it. And that, I heard, is somewhat the issue, with at least in terms of Washington County's lack of pickup. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Cool. I'd like to talk [Member Brian Minier]: to them. And the other one is these fifteen positions at a hundred k or a hundred and twenty k, if you have that money, you talk about money's not growing on trees. Yeah. How else could you see that helping in the system? You or whoever? Yeah. I mean anywhere else [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: or I mean, from my my perspective, again, this population that I saw were folks that had exhausted other rehabilitative options. They're going to keep coming back. This group is gonna keep coming back. And if this is an accountability measure that drives them to not show up again one more time in the future, one little data point of non recidivist behavior, some desistance, it saves money into I don't know. I think the commissioner has a huge job of overseeing the current incarcerated population and the supervised population. So I just I don't know in terms of what how that money could be best used. I think some of that money should be used to reinstitute this type of programing again. And again, CSG is listening. It's no disrespect. It's just that here in the ground in Vermont, our folks are really trying their best to move cases, and they just don't have all the options they used to have. [Member Joe Luneau]: Thanks. Yeah. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: So Alright. I [Member William "Will" Greer]: I understand the DOC's budgetary concerns among other things. And and I also understand that I'm aiming for there to be some kind of finality in in sentencing and that there should be some consequences for not gonna be agent. And I and I think there are a lot of people in our state who feel that there's more empathy for for offenders than there are for victims, and I I happen to be one of them. So what would the barriers be to there being some kind of community service program aside from the bench that that that's that's administered by by a PO? It's you know, there's some sort of sign off from from a five zero one c three or a municipality. And, yeah, you have to do x number of hours in certain period of time. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: And that is essentially how current community service functions. One is finding places that are going to accept persons into those types of environments. And the second one is, you know, I think making sure that, hey, it's been four months. How long does it take to complete thirty hours? Right. There's sort of like you've resolved the case, but not really because it's still dangling out there. That's part of the issues with like a probation community service or furlough community service kind of dangles out there. Now with what the commissioner has designed, I think there is some timelines in place where if you don't complete it by that time, then some of the sanction comes into play. The nice thing that we used to have with the with the prior was that whether it's work, whether it's spending time in a classroom, whether spending time observing something like one of the sanctions for drug court, if anyone's other observed drug court, you sit in the courtroom and you watch proceedings. Guess who's got eyes on you? Court officers and the judge. Being creative about what this looks like. You're going to you're going to greet people at the library for eight hours over two weekends. Very clear. And yes, having a PO stop by would be really helpful in terms of making sure they're doing it. But I can't say with those resources and the staffing issues across the state that the commissioner has has testified to. I'm not gonna be able to be like, oh, yeah. Just let them support sort it out. We're all state employees, and I think we need to be sensitive to that and the budget constraints that that they're under and that we're all under. But I think there's other options that could be more simple, in terms of the endpoint, and that's probably why some defense counsel has not recommended this for their clients, as much. And I don't I haven't heard much from Windsor. I'm in Washington County, so that's why I've heard more from the folks [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: here. And and then we're gonna have to wrap this up. I know we have Patrick and Tom. I'd like to reschedule you folks because we have some other testimony that was scheduled and they're waiting. So we're just kind of jammed up here a little bit, and this is gonna take a lot more testimony. The committee wants to continue working on this. So it'll take a lot more work, a lot more time. [Member Joe Luneau]: Thank you. Oh, yes. I'm not gonna ask a question. No. That's fine. No. You can't. Are you convinced? [Nick Deml]: And I do. I mean I [Member Joe Luneau]: heard about that. [Vice Chair James Gregoire]: That's awesome. What [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: What I hear from [Nick Deml]: Tim and and I think he's spelling on is that there's a willful or at least purposeful attempt to not take up the new program by the defense partner, and that's a problem. There's a program in place that would work. [Member Joe Luneau]: But they're [Nick Deml]: like, oh, I don't wanna use it. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Not sending them. [Nick Deml]: And the alternative is a huge financial blow to the state at a time when we can't afford that. I mean, I the question I would have asked him, and I if he's already texted to the room, is what if those fifteen positions were new deputy state's attorneys or transport chair? [Member Troy Headrick]: I mean, you talk to staff [Nick Deml]: and pull people into the hall to talk about, well, they're not in the hall. They're either sitting in a remote car hearing or [Member Joe Luneau]: Well, then let me ask a question for you if I may. I don't know I know this is a naive question, but [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: I doubt it. [Member Joe Luneau]: Why wouldn't this couldn't the system be as simple as if an agreement is reached with the offender and the judge that it's the offender's responsibility to get a certified affidavit or whatever the right word is showing that they've completed the community service by a certain date. And if not, the warrant is gonna go out for their [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: arrest. Right. It's it's submitted to the court? That's it. I think you should maybe join our next work group. [Nick Deml]: Yeah. The point is the [Member Joe Luneau]: point is is the oath is on the offender [Member Connor Casey]: Yep. [Member Joe Luneau]: Who has volunteered to do it, and the paperwork is that straightforward that you either go to prison now Mhmm. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Or you have an opportunity to work it off. [Member Joe Luneau]: Right. And you need to prove that. So where's the fifteen where's the fifteen people? I don't understand the fifteen people. [Nick Deml]: Well, under the previous crew, you needed somebody to run this crew. [Member Joe Luneau]: No. I understand. [Nick Deml]: I get [Member Joe Luneau]: you. I'm talking about it currently. Yeah. Whether they're standing at the library or they're bagging groceries at Shaw's, I don't know what it is. You build up a a list of places who are willing to support this Mhmm. Punitive program. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Yeah. No. I think it's it's It's not a Yeah. It's not [Member Joe Luneau]: a great journalist. Yeah. So so it's closure, and it should be simple. Yes. And it should should do all the things we want to do. And I don't see it right. It takes fifteen people to do it. [Nick Deml]: Well, that's why we gotta tweak the policy. Right? Four thousand to fifteen. Could could I just quickly interject and answer your question? That's how it used [Member Joe Luneau]: to happen. Patrick, could you [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: just Yeah. For the record. [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Yeah. Patrick Healy, Greenmount Cemetery, [Member Troy Headrick]: director. Been there since nineteen eighty six. Yes. That's how it used to happen. This this community service, I've never called it a chain name. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: That's that's just a dumb ink. [Member Troy Headrick]: And, so that's how I used to I used to get a fax back when the faxes were [Member Joe Luneau]: were the I'm never old too. Good. [Member Troy Headrick]: Thank you. From Barry, they'd send me a list to twelve people to come to the cemetery five days a week. I'd get it Monday morning. Sometimes I'd get it Friday, but it depends. I would check off and I'd call him by nine o'clock who you know, the attendance list. And that person who was Fred Flurry, you probably know Fred, would do his do his paperwork. Next, you know, we provided the equipment, everything. If he just show up, we did the work. It worked into a having equipment and and going to other places that didn't have equipment and doing all of our stuff. That can that can be done. But, madam chair, I think you said you would like to reschedule me. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: I'm thinking [Member Troy Headrick]: Which is fine because I'm just down [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: the road. You're down the road into Amazon, YouTube, going on through on Zoom. But the difference between the old work group and what's in place now is DOC entered into contracts. DOC entered into a contract with Patrick to all of the cemeteries, entered into contracts with folks That the way it's structured now, and I would like to see if you have the policy laid out. [Nick Deml]: The new program. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: I'd like to see that. [Member Joe Luneau]: Go ahead, Kyle. Pardon? I emailed [Member William "Will" Greer]: it to you. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Just now? Yes, ma'am. The way it is now, from my understanding, your local PNP person has to go out and knock on doors to a local library, a local food shelf, a local supportive housing, a local family center and say, would you be willing if a person comes our way to come in and volunteer and do some work. That's problematic because some folks are saying, no way. Other folks are saying, well, maybe. And then it puts that PNP person in the hot seat when they do get someone from the court. And then they are up it's up to them to call all of these folks that they have gone over the county to kind of figure out. They don't know if that entity is going to say yes or no that particular day, where in the past it was an established contract that DOC had with certain providers that were nonprofits, municipalities. That, I think, is the big difference. That's the big difference for that. And the other thing that's happening, too, we can say it's easy for these folks to get somewhere. If if you're living in one town and there's a library three towns over in your county that's willing to take it, take you, how are you gonna get there? A lot of folks don't have transportation. A lot of folks don't even have cell phones. We think everybody's got cell phones and they have access. They do not. And that's another issue that's playing into it. So we bring what we can do. We have a lot of avenues ourselves to get places. A lot of people don't. So we we see it from our perspective in terms of what we can access. So a lot of people out there that don't have the luxuries that we do. And I think we have to keep that in mind. [Member William "Will" Greer]: No, it's it's it's true. Thank you for the [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: time today. I thought bit of an interesting morning. So hopefully my directness and lack of coffee didn't come off in the testimony. [Member Connor Casey]: Oh, good. I just got [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: a text from your [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: kid. Yes. [Member Brian Minier]: Just wait. We're [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: We're on the street. Yeah. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: He's on the street. Yes. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: We're gonna reschedule with you if that's possible, Tom, as well as Patrick. We can reschedule. We just we're half an hour late right now for the next thing that we need to do some work on, but, we need to discuss this as a committee as well to see where we wanna go. This is not an easy decision whatsoever. [Tim Lueders-Dumont]: Thank you so much. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Whatever whatever you want wish me to do would be fine with me. Thank you. Thank you for the flexibility of this call. [Member Connor Casey]: Thank you, Tom. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: Can we just take a five minute break? Sure. Assistant [Nick Deml]: Madam chair, just briefly. Thank you for for letting me come down. [Member Troy Headrick]: I have an old old community newsletter from [Member Mary A. Morrissey]: Department of Corrections. Dirty. That I made [Nick Deml]: talks and talks about. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: That's dirty. That'd be great. [Member Joe Luneau]: So I [Nick Deml]: think I'm [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: the only one on the side. [Member Brian Minier]: I heard that. [Chair Alice M. Emmons]: What year was it? Eighty five or ninety

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