House Judiciary hears push to fix victim notifications, adds task force language to S.109

The Vermont House Judiciary Committee on April 16 heard testimony urging changes to victim notification provisions in S.109, focusing on Sections 31 and 32 that would create a multi-agency work group to review how victims receive information about offender movement and earned time.

Jennifer Pullman, director of the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services, told the committee the proposals are "truly simple and truly noncontroversial" and urged lawmakers to restore options that let survivors choose how much and what kind of release information they receive. Pullman said the center will absorb stipends for survivor advisors and recommended striking proposed language that would have mandated compensation in the bill.

The committee's discussion centered on two practical problems: (1) victims often do not receive information because their contact details are not entered into the systems that generate notifications, and (2) the content and format of notifications can be inaccessible or misleading — for example, notifying a survivor of a transfer when they believe the offender was being released.

Meredith Pelking, Director of Victim Services for the Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC), described DOC’s victim services unit as "small but mighty," explaining that DOC uses the VINE system (Victim Information and Notification Everyday) for automated post‑adjudication notifications. Pelking and staff described a workflow in which Appriss (the VINE vendor) sweeps the DOC database roughly every 20 minutes to trigger automated messages when booking codes or movement codes are entered into DOC’s offender management system.

Ginny Biss, senior victim service specialist at DOC, explained the distinction between VINE’s public front end and DOC’s back end (VineWatch), which DOC staff and some state’s‑attorney victim advocates use to register victims and manage notification preferences. Biss said DOC can provide earned‑time information manually if victims ask, but the system lacks consistent contact information earlier in judicial processing that would allow pretrial notifications and smoother handoffs between law enforcement, prosecutors and DOC.

Witnesses and committee members discussed practical edits to the bill language. Pullman and DOC staff said the task force should include law enforcement and the vendor (Appriss), and questioned whether DOC should be the sole lead because victim notification spans courts, prosecutors, police and corrections. Pullman supported removing a proposed cap on task force meetings and suggested replacing the bill’s 02/15/2026 sunset with a July 1, 2026 end date if an end date is required by other oversight committees.

Committee members asked how earned‑time notices would work in practice. DOC staff said earned‑time calculations are entered manually and that a statutory change to require notices "no less frequently than every 90 days" to victims who opt in would be feasible as a pilot, with DOC maintaining personal outreach for safety planning rather than relying solely on automated messages.

Several lawmakers pushed for a broader review because VINE does not currently receive contact data from all arrest and court systems statewide. Committee members said that while VINE’s notification engine functions for post‑adjudication movement when it has victim contacts, upstream systems and data flows — between arresting agencies, court portals, state’s attorneys and DOC — are uneven, leaving many victims unaware of VINE or absent from the system.

The committee did not take a final vote on S.109 during the hearing. Members asked for additional testimony from the Department of State’s Attorneys, the Vermont State Police victim services director, and the VINE vendor, and signaled they would return for more focused follow-up on implementation details.

The hearing record shows broad, cross‑agency agreement on the problem and initial support for a work group that would report back to the Joint Justice Oversight committee, but differences remain about leadership, membership and whether language in S.109 should mandate specific technical solutions or simply require the study and a report back.

Looking ahead, committee members asked staff to consult with Legislative Counsel about redundant language in subsection A of the earned‑time provision and about whether the task force language should be made more explicit about vendor and law‑enforcement participation. The committee scheduled additional testimony to flesh out how VINE can be integrated with other state systems and to determine whether pilot manual notifications or a scaled automated module are preferable.

Votes at a glance: no formal motions or roll‑call votes were recorded on Sections 31–32 of S.109 during this hearing.