Analysis Area 1: Analyze crime trends, including recent increases in all categories of violent crime, to help the state understand the impacts of these trends on the prison and jail populations, as well as other parts of the criminal justice system.
Background: Despite having lower crime rates than most other states, Vermont’s crime rates have been rising in recent years. Vermont’s 2017 property and violent crime rates were both second lowest nationally, but between 2007 and 2017, the violent crime rate increased 33 percent, which was the fourth-largest increase among states. Although this increase represents a modest rise in the volume of crimes (less than 400 additional reported violent crimes, driven by increasing aggravated assault and rape totals), it does indicate a concerning trend. Due to data analytic limitations, Vermont is not able to determine the extent to which these increases in violent crime may drive prison populations in the near and long term, as well as their impact on other areas, including law enforcement and victim services.
During the first working group presentation in August, CSG Justice Center staff presented national arrest and crime reporting data. While Vermont’s violent crime rate rose between 2007 and 2017, the state’s property crime rate dropped by more than a third, falling in all categories. National arrest data indicate an overall decline in drug arrests across the state, but analysis of state-level data will provide more information. Working group members noted that decriminalization of marijuana likely contributed to the decline in drug arrests and expressed interest in looking more closely at certain types of violent offenses, especially domestic violence offenses.
Update: During the November presentation, CSG Justice Center staff presented National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) reported crime data, which showed increases in categories of more serious offenses, such as assault, rape, and intimidation. During the working group meeting and in separate conversations with victim providers, law enforcement officials, states attorneys, and others, there was agreement that overall domestic violence was likely not increasing significantly, but rather, more existing crime is probably being formally reported and processed through the criminal justice system as a result of law enforcement receiving domestic violence training and state’s attorneys charging practice changes.
Analysis Area 2: Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of community supervision to understand the causes of recidivism and technical violations that result in jail and prison admissions and identify possible alternatives to incarceration for violation sanctions.
Background: Vermont’s probation and parole populations have decreased considerably since the state first engaged in JRI in 2007. The probation population has fallen 33 percent, from 6,862 people in 2008 to 4,570 in 2018, and the parole population has decreased 20 percent, from 1,049 people in 2008 to 840 in 2018. Although Vermont has a history of stable recidivism rates (the three-year return-to-prison rate), the recidivism rate slowly and steadily increased between 2010 and 2015, rising from 43 to 52 percent, respectively, (for cohorts released between 2010 and 2015). However, with limited data analytic capabilities, the state is not currently able to identify more refined metrics of recidivism and revocations, including how many people on probation are revoked to jail or prison, for what types of violations, and for how long.
Update: In November, CSG Justice Center staff presented on best practices for supervision and behavioral health.
Analysis Area 3: Assist the state with developing a DOC population projection to inform Vermont lawmakers’ discussions on how to ensure that limited prison space is prioritized for people who are convicted of the most serious offenses.
Background: Vermont’s corrections system is unified, and DOC is responsible for all pretrial, sentenced, and supervision (probation and parole) populations. As a result of JRI and other changes in policy and practice, the state’s corrections populations have largely decreased over the past decade. Between 2008 and 2018, the state incarceration population decreased 16 percent, from 2,053 to 1,724 people. However, during the same period, the state’s pretrial population increased 30 percent.
In FY2018, Vermont’s prisons were operating at 138 percent of capacity: 1,513 people were being housed across 7 prison facilities with a total design capacity of 1,100 beds, and approximately 230 people were serving Vermont DOC sentences out of state. Vermont’s correctional facility system is aging, and five of the seven facilities are in need of either replacement or significant maintenance improvements. In particular, the DOC is struggling to deliver appropriate and costly health care services—including mental health and addiction treatment—to an incarcerated population that is spread across several small facilities.
Vermont leaders are interested in ensuring that jail and prison space remain prioritized and available for people convicted or charged with serious offenses, but without more information about trends and drivers behind crime increases and revocations to prison among people on supervision, the state cannot reliably achieve such public safety-focused corrections planning.
Update: No update.
Analysis Area 4: Assess the state’s response to people under correctional control with behavioral health needs, particularly opioid addiction, and identify opportunities for improving treatment access and quality.
Background: Vermont has been hard hit by the opioid crisis. Between 2007 and 2017, Vermont’s drug overdose death rates increased 115 percent, from 10.8 deaths per 100,000 residents to 23.2 per 100,000 residents. Deaths due to opioid-related overdoses are rising each year, from 56 deaths in 2011 to 110 deaths in 2018—a 96-percent increase. Understanding the prevalence of opioid use and addiction among people in Vermont’s criminal justice system and ensuring that they receive access to withdrawal management, treatment, and recovery services tailored to their unique needs is critical to ensuring that the state is able to uphold both public safety and public health.
Update: In the November presentation, CSG Justice Center staff presented on best practices for behavioral health and held calls with a range of behavioral health stakeholders in Vermont, including DOC staff that oversees the health care contract with Centurion—a private contractor who provides mental health and addiction screenings, assessments, and treatment within DOC facilities—as well as community-based providers, including additional Hubs and Spokes and state agency staff who oversee mental health crisis training for law enforcement personnel and social workers.
Analysis Area 5: Evaluate Vermont’s data systems and capacities and identify sustainable opportunities to help policymakers access information they require to make safe and critical policy decisions.
Background: When Vermont first led JRI in 2007, the CSG Justice Center provided the state with new and critical analyses of corrections populations that continue to inform decision-making related to supervision best practices and other policies. However, since then the state has encountered data challenges, including limited staff within DOC dedicated to research and data analysis and siloed data collection and reporting across state agencies that prevent a more comprehensive understanding of the whole system. The Vermont DOC has migrated to a new case management system in recent years, and while basic analytics have been sustained, it is far more difficult for DOC staff to conduct in-depth research projects that require custom case-level data exports. As a result, key public safety and system measures, such as supervision violations and revocations, remain difficult to access and analyze. As mentioned earlier, Vermont is unable to even produce a prison population projection, which would help inform policymaking and future planning. Instead, the state is only able to look back at projections that were produced during the first JRI effort, which do not reflect new pressures and realities associated with the opioid crisis and other systemic drivers.
Update: During the November presentation, CSG Justice Center staff highlighted the existing NIBRS data collection challenges, including that crime data from 2015 appears to have a major reporting deficiency, so it was not able to be included in the analysis.
Other Updates:
The December working group meeting will be five hours (past meetings have been three hours) to ensure the group has adequate time to review the DOC data analysis and assessments of DOC programming, community supervision, and behavioral health interventions.
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• Meeting with Vermont State’s Attorney (Washington County) to discuss the preliminary crime and sentencing analysis and learn more about criminal justice trends and challenges from a state’s attorney perspective.
• Meeting with Chief Justice (Vermont Supreme Court), Court Administrator (Vermont Judiciary), and Administrative Judge (Vermont Judiciary) to receive feedback on the draft presentation for the upcoming working group meeting.
• Meeting with Community Justice (Vermont Attorney General’s office and Justice Reinvestment Working Group member) to receive feedback on the Advisory Panel on Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice and Juvenile Justice System, including their upcoming report that will likely have data collection and reporting recommendations.
• Meeting with Commissioner (Deputy of Corrections), Deputy Commissioner (Department of Corrections), Housing Administrator (Department of Corrections), Community Justice (Department of Corrections), and Director of Policy and Program Integration (Vermont Agency of Human Services) to discuss reentry housing practices for people leaving DOC facilities, including the possibility of matching correctional data to homeless information management data to understand the population of people in the criminal justice system who are also accessing homelessness services.
• Meeting with Captain (Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs, Vermont State Police) to learn more about the Fair and Impartial Policy and Community Affairs division within the state police system, the Advisory Panel on Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice and Juvenile Justice System, and training state police and other law enforcement are receiving related to cultural awareness and working with communities of color and other minority communities.
• Meeting with Advocacy Director (ACLU of Vermont) to debrief on the October working group meeting and discuss next steps for the project.
• Meeting with Commissioner (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Mental Health) and Community Justice (Vermont Attorney General’s Office) to discuss mental health challenges for people in the criminal justice system and share the major takeaways from CSG Justice Center’s Behavioral Health division’s meeting of a National Advisory Group on Competency to Stand Trial.
• Meeting with Team Two and Washington County Mental Health Services to discuss the statewide Team Two program that provides crisis response training for local law enforcement, mental health workers, and dispatchers.
• Third meeting of the Justice Reinvestment II Working Group.
• 11/1: Call with Director of Policy and Program Integration (Vermont Agency of Human Services) to discuss housing challenges for people leaving Department of Corrections and opportunities for other state agencies to partner with the Department of Corrections.
• 11/1: Call with Medical Assisted Treatment Director (Chittenden Clinic Hub) to discuss community-based treatment available for people with mental illnesses, substance addictions, and co-occurring disorders who are in the criminal justice system, including MAT through a Hub and Spoke in the Burlington area.
• 11/1: Call with Mental Health Director (Department of Corrections) and Mental Health Division (Vermont Department of Corrections) to discuss the behavioral health policies and practices of the department for identifying and connecting people with behavioral health needs who are in Department of Correction facilities to treatment.
• 11/2: Call with Vermont State’s Attorney (Chittenden County) to introduce the Justice Reinvestment project and learn more about the criminal justice challenges from a prosecutorial perspective.
• 11/7: Call with Vermont Legislative Counsel to discuss the legislative process and the likely Justice Reinvestment policy recommendations timeline.
• 11/14: Call with Senator (Senate Judiciary Chair and Justice Reinvestment Working Group member) and Vermont Legislative Counsel to continue discussing the legislative process and the likely Justice Reinvestment policy recommendations timeline.
• 11/18: Call with(Vermont State’s Attorney (Windsor County) to introduce the Justice Reinvestment project, discuss reported crime and sentencing trends, and learn more about the court system from a prosecutorial perspective.
• 11/18: Call with Chief (Newport Police Department) to introduce the Justice Reinvestment project, discuss reported crime and learn more about law enforcement challenges.
• 11/20: Call with Counsel (Vermont Prisoner Rights Office) and Counsel (Vermont Prisoner Rights Office), to learn about the parole revocation process from a defense bar perspective.
• 11/21: Call with Chair of the Advisory Panel of the Racial Disparities in the Criminal and Juvenile System to learn about their upcoming report and major challenges and opportunities in the criminal justice system related to racial disparities.
• 11/21: Call with Commissioner (Department of Public Safety) to debrief on the working group meeting and discuss opportunities to increase the number of social workers embedded in police departments to help in responding to mental health crisis calls.
• 11/22: Call with Manager of Clinical Services (Department of Health, Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs [ADAP]) to share initial behavioral health findings and receive guidance on additional community-based providers to connect with.
• 11/26: Call with Director of Human Resource Development (Department of Corrections), to learn more about training that new correctional and community officers receive and ongoing training and development programs.
• 11/26: Call with Director of Policy and Program Integration) Vermont Agency of Human Services), Housing Administrator (Department of Corrections), Community Justice (Department of Corrections), and Administrative Director (Vermont Department of Corrections) to continue discussions about a possible match of corrections to statewide homelessness data.
CSG Justice Center research staff’s engagement with the Vermont Justice Reinvestment project in November was focused first on final PowerPoint development for the November 15 working group presentation, and secondly on analysis of Vermont judiciary data on probation violation hearings, and Vermont Department of Corrections admissions, release, and risk assessment data. As the November 15 presentation approached, final analyses and visualizations were completed on topics such as crime trends by county, census data trends by county and demographics, court sentencing patterns by offense type, probation sentence lengths, and descriptions of caveats and limitations surrounding the data and analysis. CSG Justice Center staff delivered a draft of the presentation to funders and key stakeholders and incorporated their feedback before the presentation was delivered to the working group. Because the Vermont Department of Corrections data is challenging for them to export, and because it does not include clear admission and release types for people moving in and out of the various incarceration and supervision populations they are responsible for, obtaining DOC admissions and release information in an analyzable format has taken several tries over the last few months.
In early November, CSG Justice Center research staff received a final data set of all movements across DOC legal statuses over the past five years. Significant time was devoted to coding that allowed research staff to trace people across legal statuses over time in the data and create admission and release categories for the detainee, sentenced incarceration, probation, furlough, and parole populations in Vermont. CSG Justice Center research staff also received a couple of different iterations of Department of Corrections risk assessment data, which was put through a cleaning and formatting process and later matched to both DOC snapshot and admissions and release data to allow analysis by risk level, which will be conducted in December. In addition to DOC data, CSG Justice Center research staff also received a new file from the Vermont judiciary on violation of probation hearings to examine the volume of people failing on probation from the court perspective in order to compare against DOC probation data. Visualizations of analyses conducted in November are underway, and a draft of the December presentation to the Vermont Justice Reinvestment Working Group is currently in development.
• 11/1–11/9: Analysis of probation and incarceration sentence lengths from sentencing data. Revised visualizations of crime data trends by county. Call with the judiciary staff to request data on violation of probation hearings. Risk assessment file received from DOC, data explored, and feedback and questions returned to DOC. Presentation draft submitted to Vermont stakeholders for review.
• 11/10–11/16: Final changes to presentation completed, including feedback from stakeholders, CSG Justice Center leadership, CSG Justice Center Communications, and BJA.
• 11/17–11/23: DOC admission and release data received; coding for admission and release categories started. Second iteration of risk assessment data received from DOC. Follow-up with DOC to review the reception of the November presentation, plans for the December presentation, discussion of our plans regarding projections and impact analyses, review of risk, admission and release data issues.
• 11/24–11/30: Draft presentation started for the December working group meeting. New visualizations of DOC snapshot data by offense type and demographics added. Coding of DOC admissions and release data continued. First results of the admissions and release data results shared with DOC for feedback. Visualizations of DOC detainee and incarceration admission types, supervision revocations by type, length of stay among revocations, and DOC populations by risk level added.
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