Scribe Research Group presents Act 40 data showing frequent police contacts concentrate in small cohorts; committee presses for follow-up on bail and community-

Monica Weber, executive director of the Scribe Research Group, and Dr. Robin Joy, the group's director of research, told the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Feb. 6, that a multi-agency data pull for the Act 40 report and follow-up work with local Public Safety Enhancement Team (PSET) partners shows a small number of people account for a disproportionate share of police calls for service in several Vermont towns.

The data matter because they appear to separate two distinct problems for local public safety: repeated disorderly contacts that rarely produce arrest, and separate cohorts who account for retail theft and other property crime. "We are an independent organization," Weber said, describing the Scribe Research Group's role as a Statistical Analysis Center and contracted analyst for state and local agencies. Dr. Joy framed the data scope: "So when we come in to talk about data, we're only talking about data that happens in these official records, right?"

The presentation summarized Valcore (calls-for-service) data from Brattleboro, St. Johnsbury, Springfield, Bennington and Rutland gathered by the PSET. Weber and Joy said the Brattleboro analysis covered roughly 28,000 calls for service tied to about 54,000 business-location entries and produced about 2,000 arrests over the study period. Analysts grouped numerous agency call codes into a single "disorder" category (noise complaints, suspicious persons, trespass, disorderly conduct, family disturbances, etc.) and found those disorder calls were the most frequent type of response for the departments studied.

Joy displayed person-level contact charts for the top 20 people linked to disorder in each jurisdiction. For one individual in the Brattleboro study period she said the person had about 151 disorder incidents and nearly 198 total police contacts across roughly a two-year study window; Joy said that individual was arrested only about 16% of the time. Across the towns studied the top 20 people accounted for roughly 5–11% of all calls for service, depending on the jurisdiction.

Presenters and committee members stressed these frequent contacts rarely involved the most serious violent crimes. Joy said that among the frequent-contact cohort the presenters observed only nine arrests for assault across the top 20 people in the cited example, and that disorder and trespass were far more common. The presenters emphasized the human-service angle: many frequent contacts appear linked to cycling homelessness, substance use disorder and acute mental-health needs rather than to a small group of persons committing high-volume retail theft.

Multiple committee members asked how communities should use the findings. Weber described how Brattleboro used the data to convene police, schools, social-service providers and local nonprofits so stakeholders could identify named individuals on multiple caseloads and design wraparound responses. Committee members and presenters discussed "situation tables" (multi-agency convenings) and the PSET model used to coordinate short-term interventions and referrals without defaulting to arrest.

The Scribe presenters also reviewed the Act 40 Criminal Justice Investment Trends Report, which required assembling linked extracts from state systems — including Valcore (police calls), the Attorney General's law-manager system, the judiciary case system Odysee, and the Department of Corrections case and movement records. Weber and Joy described the practical limits and quality-control steps required by those MOUs: extract requests are identifiable, must be specifically described in contracts, and can take months to compile. They told the committee that some judiciary extracts arrived only weeks before the report was finalized and that cross-system variable harmonization (for example race/ethnicity categories or incident coding) remains uneven.

On national reporting standards, Joy said Vermont has been NIBRS-compliant since the 1990s and uses those incident- and property-level tables for many analyses, but that NIBRS combines some Vermont statutory distinctions (for example, simple assault and certain domestic-violence counts) into single national categories — a limitation analysts must handle when producing state-level statute-specific counts.

Committee members asked about bail and pretrial status. Weber said the Scribe team assembled a first pass at bail data but that timelines and dataset scope matter: the report captured pretrial release status at case disposition and also a separate first-imposed bail amount; she said the judiciary provided the bail extract only shortly before the report deadline, limiting deeper longitudinal analysis. Joy and Weber explained a key operational difference that affects downstream consequences: the FBI/NIBRS definition treats on-the-street citations differently from custodial arrests (and jurisdictions also differ in how they record "citations" versus "arrested and transported" events). The presenters noted COVID-era changes in arrest classifications and a disparity signal: Black people in the data were more likely than other race groups to be arrested on a warrant and less likely to appear in citation-only categories.

Members pressed the presenters on funding and sustainability. Weber said most of the Scribe Research Group's SAC funding comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and that the Act 40 work was supported with a BJS grant; she said the SAC grant amounts have not increased in many years and that continuing this integrated, extract-based reporting depends on finding more or renewed federal or state funding.

Committee follow-up items recorded during the hearing included a plan to invite the Department of Public Safety commissioner back to testify on the PSET rollout and a request that Scribe return with more detailed bail sequencing (changes in bail amount and conditions across arrest, lodging/after-hours holds and arraignment). Weber and Joy said they could produce additional, narrower extracts but that doing so would require new data pulls and time.

The committee scheduled additional work on bail, and presenters said the data had already prompted local action in some towns — notably Brattleboro, which hired an analyst and used the names/contacts with police consent to convene local service providers.

The Scribe Research Group presentation gave lawmakers concrete person- and place-level evidence that a small cohort of individuals consume repeated police response time while a separate cohort appears responsible for retail thefts and other property offenses — a distinction committee members said must guide policy choices about when to invest in law enforcement capacity and when to invest in social-service interventions.

Looking ahead, Weber told the committee she expects to provide updated extracts if the committee requests them and to return for a follow-up session on bail and pretrial sequencing; committee members said they would schedule the commissioner and other local PSET consultants for additional testimony.