Public Meeting Notice  Restrictive Housing Oversight Committee Meeting

Meeting Minutes

Call To Order

Chairman Peck called the meeting to order at 11:03AM once a quorum had been established.

January 2021 Meeting Minutes Approval/Vote

There was a motion to accept the minutes by Attorney Marlene Sallo and seconded by Attorney Bob Fleischner. The minutes passed with one abstention by Deputy Commissioner Chris Fallon.

Subcommittee Updates and Update on Outstanding Information Requests from Sheriffs

Attorney Marlene Sallo stated that the latest development has been an outline that was circulated and she received comments back from subcommittee members. She stated that she will be leaving the Committee due to her increased role and time commitment needed in continuing her work at the Disability Law Center. She will be designating Tatum Prichard to replace her.

Attorney Bob Fleischner stated that there are no new updates for his subcommittee and that he hopes to schedule a meeting soon.

Attorney Bonnie Tenneriello stated that her subcommittee is setting up a meeting with the Sheriffs to discuss the individual requests and are working with Carrie Hill at the MSA and meeting next week with general counsels item by item and trying to come to an agreement and resolution on the data requests.

Member Comment

Dr. Brandy Henry raised the question about the cost benefit analysis mandate included in the RHOC statute. Deputy Commissioner Chris Fallon stated that the DOC met with the Sheriffs on the definition of SMI and the cost of different legislative items that came through with CJ reform. Bonnie clarified that Brandy wanted to look at things associated with RH and was advocating the group include other units perhaps. She stated that she was looking at #5 (in the statute) as what is to be included in the report to the legislature.

Chairman Peck asked about the status of the Falcon report. Chris Fallon stated the Falcon Group has a meeting on Monday with the DOC and the Commissioner on what they can expect the report to look like and should have more information at that time.

Bob stated that he was curious about doing some remote interviews if possible. He noted that he previously attended a tour of a facility that was done with a member of the staff holding up their phone and giving a tour followed by virtual interviews with inmates. He suggested looking into a tour of an RH unit and to see if that works with one of the jails as well and begin with a small one. Chairman Peck asked Bob to send him more information and he will look into it further. Chris asked about DOC tours as well. Bob said he would like to see the therapeutic supervision units. Marlene stated that her organization uses video within the facility and often has set up a room to conduct one-on-one meetings with patients/clients and they have successfully done comprehensive monitoring that way. Bob said it worked very well and we should look into it further. Chris and Chairman Peck stated they can explore doing that on their end and Chairman Peck said he will look into the feasibility of doing this with the Sheriffs.

Bob would like to answer questions from members of the public at the next meeting.

Public comments

Cassandra Benisaha said that she is concerned about the number of grievances that came in. She is not sure how many of these came out of RH but it should be looked into.

Mary Valerio stated she has concerns about lockdowns in prisons and numbers of Covid-19 positive inmates. She said she is upset they have not had contact visitors and suggested facilities with low numbers of cases should be opened up.

Adjourn

There was a motion to adjourn by Marlene. It was seconded by Brandy. The meeting adjourned at 11:38AM.