Judiciary Committee- House and Senate
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Speaker 5
3:30
Members, if you'll begin taking your seats, we'll
get started here in just a minute. some members if you can take your seats
Good morning. The Joint Committee of the Senate, Judiciary, and House Committee will come to order. I want to welcome everyone here today. I think we have some real informative business before us that I'm looking forward to hearing. I'm glad to have Senator Terry Rice sitting next to me. Senator Clark called yesterday, and something came up that he couldn't be here, and he wanted to let everybody know he hated to miss, but it was something he could not avoid. so I
appreciate Senator Rice you stepping in for Senator
Clark with that members we have a couple
of business housekeeping items we need to take care of first for consideration to approve the September 30th 2024 meeting minutes of the Senate do I have a motion I have a motion is there a second I have a second any discussion of those minutes all in favor of adopting the minutes please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The ayes have it. The motion carries. Members, let's move to agenda item C. Consider to approve the July 10th, 2025 meeting of this committee of the House. Do
I have a motion? I have a motion. Is there a second? I see a second. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing no discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed say no. The ayes have it senator rice i'll turn to you for consideration of a motion to authorize the senate chair to approve special expenses thank
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
5:51
you madam chair i would make a motion to authorize approve the special expenses incurred by the committee members you've heard the motion is there a second i
see a second any discussion of the motion seeing no discussion all in favor
please say aye any opposed say no the ayes have it all right members that now takes us to what we're really here for. Let's move to item E, the discussion of the Arkansas Commission on Children, Youth, and Families. I'd ask the Honorable Rhonda Wood, if she'll come, from the Arkansas Supreme Court. Justice Wood, if you'll come to the table, you'll be recognized to make your report. I see you have maybe a couple of folks joining you. So once you come to the table, if each of you will
identify yourself you'll be recognized to present your part of the program and as you're coming justice would really do appreciate the opportunity for you to come before the senate and the house that's always we appreciate it you're always very good about coming to our committee and helping with the administration of justice and so we really thank you for taking your time today to
Speaker 20
7:04
be with And you're recognized. Thank you. I truly appreciate this really incredible and I feel sort of unprecedented opportunity for two branches to have discussions, you know, outside of the session about the work that we're all doing together to promote justice in Arkansas.
So thank you, Madam Chairperson and Mr. Chairperson as well, and to all the joint committee members for the opportunity to speak with you about the work of the Arkansas Commission on Children, Youth, and Families. To my right, I have Brooke Steen, who is the Director of Juvenile Services at the Administrative Office of the Courts. And then to my next right is the Honorable Judge Ernest Brown, who is a circuit judge down in Jefferson and Lincoln Counties,
who hears predominantly juvenile division cases. And I also want to take a moment to recognize out in the galley here that we have Judge Mary Broadway, who was a former representative. And we also have Mayor of Pine Bluff, Vivian Flowers, who was also a former representative. So I feel like there are good things to come if you guys choose to leave the General Assembly.
But with that, I'm going to try not to be too long and leave time for some other discussions. But I'm going to provide you, because I'm going to assume that a lot of you may not know a lot of work of the commission, but provide you a little bit of background of the commission, talk about a couple of our main projects and accomplishments, and then our current projects. I promise not to take too much of your time. The commission was created in 2011 by the Arkansas Supreme Court. so it has been operating for about 14 years. I've been chair of it for the last 12 years
and it's really been just one of the greatest honors and privileges that I've gotten to do as a justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court. Our mission is that as stakeholders in the pursuit of juvenile justice and child welfare reform, we raise awareness, develop solutions, secure resources, measure outcomes, and advocate for court-involved families. We continually improve the justice system as it relates to children, youth, and families. The membership of the commission
are appointees by the Arkansas Supreme Court. We have four judicial members, one of who's present, Judge Ernest Brown. We also have the standing members are the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of the Department of Human Services, the Director of DYS, and the Director of DCFS. This is purposefully done by the Supreme Court to make sure that the stakeholders include all the branches of government.
Standing stakeholders also include two representatives from the General Assembly. Currently, we have Senator Missy Irvin, and we have Representative Zach Gramlich. I know Senator Scott, who is here, was also part of our commission in the not-too-recent past. Included in that, additionally, are various other stakeholders that are sort of advocacy stakeholders to sort of make it out so that everyone has a seat at the table.
We additionally, a few years ago, in conjunction with the Administrative Office of the Court, created an advisory council that has about 40 other members, and those are additional stakeholders so that we could broaden the influence of other stakeholders providing information into the commission. and I should neglect to say we have Casey Beard here who is also a commissioner that I thank her for being present here and then immediately behind me is our administrator Ashley Figueroa who is
the administrator of the commission as I mentioned Ashley I assume every time the general assembly wants to hear they want to hear about funding and how is how are things paid for we have one position which is our administrator Ashley she is paid for as a salaried position of the Arkansas Supreme Court and other than that we have no funding and our funding is made up of a lot of the work
is volunteer work by the stakeholders and commissioners and members of the advisory council so a lot of the work we do are just research work and time and effort that we put in on our off hours. In addition to that, we have had support from the General Assembly. We have had support from the Executive Branch in Rainy Day Funds, and we have had considerable support from federal grant, probably close to, I would say,
$8 million in federal grant to fund our projects. So now if you want to know a little bit about our two, I wanted to sort of mention two of our past accomplishments that we're most proud of. One was our deliberate attempt on how to reduce juvenile recidivism. This came about in 2015, and this is because we know that juveniles who reoffend multiple times are more likely to end up in the adult system incarcerated.
And we know the effects of that on the whole system, the state of Arkansas and their families and society as a whole. We determined that it was critical that we find ways to reduce recidivism and keep those juveniles and rehabilitate them and keep them out of the adult system and make them productive members of society. As of that, we deliberately looked for key research in this area,
and the Council for State Government had done a very extensive white paper on what are the core principles that lead to reducing juvenile recidivism. And we, as a commission, adopted that white paper and that research study. And the first core principle was to reduce juvenile recidivism, you have to make rehabilitation decisions for juveniles based on a validated risk assessment. You cannot make it based on subjective assessments based on the juveniles in front of you.
Most importantly, how they appear, how they act, because teens will be teens, right? The last thing we want to do is assess, give them sentences, treat them based on how they act in court. So we adopted that. That led to the Savory Assessment. We piloted that in Craighead, Crittenden, Jefferson, and Pulaski Counties successfully. The General Assembly was critical.
You guys were a critical partner in that. After that successful pilot in 2017, we came to you and said, this to roll out statewide we have to have a staff member at the AOC that can train every juvenile officer and juvenile judge in the state and then after that training perform quality assurance on a continual long-term basis. You as a general assembly approved that and funded that position in 2017. Then in 2018 we determined that we needed an earlier risk assessment and so we partnered
and helped validate the first OYAS which was the diversion risk assessment which is the risk assessment for juveniles on whether or not they even enter into a juvenile court case that was in 2018. Also in 2018 the AOC played a critical role in taking a computer-based savory assessment and turning it into an app program which significantly freed up the ability of time for juvenile officers
to complete this. In 2019 the commission came to you and had discussions and I'm not a big person in mandates but after discussions mandated the legislature decided to mandate the use of that risk assessment prior to any juvenile being committed to the department of youth services and the legislature you passed that in 2019 since then the commission feels that project has now been completed and it is now in the stages of quality assurance but that was a major step
for arkansas in the validation on how we treat juveniles our child welfare our major accomplishment was in 2019 the commission decided that it was vital that we figure out a way to have child welfare cases be able to be heard by video conferencing then representative david meeks was part of the commission he co-chaired that committee with me and we spent seven months studying how to do that an accomplishment develop best practices for having court by video
determining what would be the safest and most secure method to do that and entering into a pilot program with a software company that we had never heard of that company was called zoom this was 2019 after negotiations with them the aoc and the commission we agreed to a pilot with them to give licenses to arkansas courts for the use of zoom to start this pilot program that would be
started in april 1st 2020 if you remember what happened in march of 2020 the pandemic hit because of this work of the commission and the commission's foresight arkansas was on the cutting edge in the state that i easily say and tell my colleagues across the nation we were the most prepared to transition to court hearings from any court in the country. And I'm also pleased to say probably to the dismay of Zoom we saved more than any other state in license fees because of that
agreement we had operated and signed for them to have a one-year license. I know that some states in the south were paying four to six hundred thousand dollars for those licenses that we did have to pay that was a huge success of the Commission that really has gone under the radar and so due to the Commission strategic plan and also the AOC's ability to technically roll that out we really saved the state a lot of money and allowed everyday people to access their courts immediately when that
happened so our current projects if you're interested we are currently working on videos for child welfare. We have completed two of them, which involve creating videos that are easily accessible on an iPhone, anywhere, that explain the court process for children in child welfare cases to sort of desensitize them to the process and the roles of everyone in the court. Most importantly, we're very excited about, we're working with DCFS
when parents' rights are getting ready to be terminated and moving in that track they have to watch a video it's called the clock is ticking that name should say enough because we rarely see a clock ticking anymore it's the same video that I showed parents when I was on the juvenile bench in 2007 it is very outdated and no longer relevant parents just glaze over when they see it even just from the way that people visually look and are represented in it so we're working on
recreating that video partnering with dcfs and also presenting it from a parent's perspective because as a parent if your rights are being in jeopardy in that system the last thing you want is court personnel sort of telling you what to do you want to hear from lived experiences from other parents telling you how to make it through that system and so that is sort of the the view that we're taking with these videos and very excited about that on the thin side we are started
a student success committee working to see how to decrease or make better informed referrals from schools to juvenile courts we're currently working with the department of education and we're very grateful for them. They are helping fund and pilot a program in Faulkner County with Judge Troy Roswell, working with FINS and truancy referrals and trying to figure out how to handle those betters at the school and have less coming to the court unless it's critical cases.
On the juvenile justice side, we are in the after a multi-year grant that we received a couple million dollars for we are developing the first of its kind app which is a tool for anyone who is making a decision on whether to detain a juvenile whether that be law enforcement or a juvenile officer what it does is in three to five minutes they can pull it up on their phone their ipad
whether they are on a street corner giving a citation to a juvenile or calling a juvenile officer and they're making the decision they can decide right then they walk through this step in three minutes or so they get asked they answer questions and it tells them a recommendation on whether or not they should take that juvenile to a detention facility a lot of that is based on your legislation and statutory factors including risk factors this will be to our knowledge the
only app in the country that does this we are getting ready to select our pilot locations for this and our goal is after the pilot we can find funding to develop and do validation on this and so we're really excited about that in summing up we just completed and representative Dalby I appreciate you participating in that we completed a strategic plan I have copies here for you for the next five years of the
commission our goals are to improve juvenile justice data expand public education and outreach, foster commission partnerships, build partnerships for student success. And I'm happy to discuss any of these three. What I want to say in closing is that today's youth and families have unique needs than anything we've ever seen before. And our court system is committed to adapting to these changing times. We are here to find solutions. You're going
to hear from judge brown and without stealing his thunder of what pine bluff has done um to create and find solutions the data will show that we it's critical that we do that i am incredibly proud of this commission um and that we use objective systems on how we rehabilitate juveniles and more importantly i am so proud of how we have become true collaborate collaborators in juvenile justice and child welfare and i want to say that the legislature you are a critical partner in this
you have passed legislation improving child welfare funding you have enacted these laws requiring validated assessments you have supported increased county reimbursement for juvenile officer funding you have supported staffing positions at the aoc You have allowed the AOC to utilize extra funds that have not been used for reimbursement to give back to counties for grants to allow Judge Brown to combat gun violence in Pine Bluff.
We could not do any of these things without you. So the commission's accomplishments are all of our accomplishments, and we can't succeed without you partnering with us. So I want to thank you and take this opportunity to tell you how grateful I am for you joining with us and with the one goal of improving juvenile justice and child welfare in Arkansas. With that, I'm happy to take questions now, or I'm happy to turn it over to the next speaker.
Member, excuse me, are there any questions?
This is kind of your opportunity now that we have a justice on the hot seat. Representative Allen?
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
24:44
You're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you all for being here. You mentioned that you all had created
Speaker 20
24:55
this app. What is the actual cost of the app? So we were strategic that the development cost, and I don't want to misstate, I'm believing it was roughly maybe $400,000, right under $400,000.
And that, again, was from the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention out of D.C. So it was roughly $400,000 that we paid a national vendor to help us develop the app. The cost of the app to law enforcement or to juvenile courts, there will not be a cost for that. We kept it where we would keep it in-house, and it was consistent with everything we're doing at the AOC, that there would not be a cost factor.
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
25:38
So this is a one-time cost of $400,000? To develop it.
Okay. yes thank you members any other questions y'all are easy this morning well i can't believe that well i do want to say members i had the opportunity
this summer justice wood invited me to to go to their strategic planning and as many years as i have been in the legislature i really didn't know what the commission did so it was really eye-opening they're doing great work and they're doing great work because we have
supported them I think a lot of times and those of us who have been on these this particular committee over the years we understand that they get into the juvenile system then we're gonna see them in as adults and anything that we can do to help that it was a real eye-opening experience had the opportunity representative Allen to see this app we worked through some of that it really is going to be very helpful to I think our law enforcement and
and uh to our judges who do juvenile work because we all know how expensive it is to incarcerate someone and i think this will help make that clear as to whether or not they really need to be brought into the system or not so justice wood once again thank you for your time thank you for being here and please express to the commission uh our thanks for the work that they're doing because they're not getting paid and they're coming and they're a dedicated group and so i sure appreciate it members anything seeing nothing thank you very much
next while we have brooke uh sitting there members let's move to item f and i will recognize brooke steen thank
Speaker 45
27:32
you madam chair um i'm brooke steen i'm the juvenile Division Director at the Administrative Office of the Courts. I am lucky enough to also be one of the commissioners and get to spend a lot of time working with Justice Wood and the other commissioners
Speaker 46
27:44
on these important projects. I'll be very brief so that we can get on to Judge Brown, but I did
Speaker 45
27:50
want to just kind of provide some general updates from the AOC and or specifically the Juvenile Division as to some of the work we've done over the past year. I'm not going to read to you the exhibit that I prepared, but exhibit F1 just talks about some of the work we've
Speaker 46
28:08
done, some of the education and training we've provided, some of the programs that we are running, and I want to stress the collaboration piece that Justice Wood has talked is so important to the commission.
Speaker 45
28:21
That is so important to the juvenile division at the AOC as well. Our division consists of more than 60
attorney ad litems that serve um all the children that enter the child welfare system so our 60 plus ad litems served over 7 000 children who were in foster care over the last year our division also includes the state casa director who works with our 23 casa programs statewide um the juvenile division also houses the juvenile justice program um specialist which is the person that justice Wood spoke about earlier that does the training for our 250 officers statewide and he has a big
job to make sure that they're all doing the assessments and doing the assessments on the juveniles properly. Our division works directly and I would like to say almost daily with DCFS and DYS. I know I spoke to Michael Crump and Tiffany Wright yesterday on different issues and that is something that is very important to us not only in the commission work but day to day I feel that the stakeholders are in a better place right now than we've ever been and we don't always
have to agree but we all respect one another and we talk daily to make sure that everyone's on the same page and that we're in a good place so just kind of wanted to bring that and please do
Speaker 46
29:45
look over all of the programs and the materials that I put together for you I did bring some data just in case there were any questions in regards to how many cases our juvenile judges are hearing I just did a for kind of a snapshot of the last five years so that you could see the number of
delinquency FINS and DN cases as well as how many savory so we've talked a lot about the assessments and how important they are and you
Speaker 45
30:13
can see statewide we're having more assessments done every year that's what we want to see we want to make sure that the officers are using the assessments when these kids enter the court system and they are so I did bring that just so that you would have a little bit of data from us as to how many cases our judges are hearing and then one resource I did want
Speaker 46
30:35
to bring I know Justice Wood brought copies of the strategic plan
of the commission if anyone is interested. I also brought one of the resources that we put together last year. It's the
Speaker 45
30:46
guidebook for families and this is something that every family who enters the child welfare system gets and it is a very easy explanation of the process. I mean it is very simplified but it also has a calendar for them to keep up the dates that they have
Speaker 46
31:00
court so that they can attend. It has you know kind of an explanation as to who are all these people in the courtroom. If you've never been to a dependency neglect courtroom, there's a lot of folks in the
room. So it's a good explanation as who is this person who's holding a thing over their mouth. Okay, that's the court reporter. They're just taking down what everybody's saying. So we have just kind of an explanation of what to expect, what kind of hearings you should expect to have through the process. And we have gotten so many requests. Tiffany Wright's been kind enough to keep printing these for us because i'm getting phone
Speaker 45
31:37
calls weekly basis i need 100 more copies we're out of them and so she's been kind enough through dhs to print them and ship them out to all of our
courtrooms that need them so that the judges have them
Speaker 46
31:49
available for everybody who enters their courtroom so i did bring a copy if anybody would like to pick one up after and chair dalby i believe that's all i have unless you have any questions well there's some questions yes
ma'am representative Hudson you're recognized for a question okay thank
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
32:13
you madam chair I wondered if you could explain to us a little bit more information about what are the requirements to open a fence petition
how does that process work and also is kind of a follow-up to that are there any circumstances in which an intake coordinator would not open
Speaker 46
32:31
a fence petition well I mean a fence case for those who aren't familiar with it is a family in need of services case so I think legislatively it was created to ensure that if family
Speaker 45
32:43
needs services we're not talking about child welfare situation but they need some services maybe they can't afford them maybe they just need some kind of court intervention they were created to make sure
that we could serve these families to keep them from either entering the child welfare system or perhaps to help maybe a child who's getting into some trouble keep them out of the
Speaker 46
33:04
delinquency world, right? So this is why this was created. FINS is most commonly used now by school districts when we have truancy issues. So a FINS case can be filed by anybody and it can be to help families with any type of services um representative hudson to answer the second part of your question
i'm a big believer in if somebody wants to file something they can um and the same with if somebody goes in with a piece of construction paper with some words scribbled on it at a clerk's office i think it should be filed even though it may not actually with the be um what you're supposed to be filing i think that it should just be filed so i think it's the judge that gets to make the decision as to whether or not something is properly filed that shouldn't be somebody at the front end. But Judge Brown, I don't know if you have anything more you want to add to that.
Chair
Unverified
33:55
Good morning. In my two districts, in Lincoln County, the prosecutor handles the fines filing. But in Jefferson County, it says in the code any person can file it. So we don't have it go through the prosecutor. So I do think it just handles a little bit differently in each jurisdiction so that is a good point
Speaker 57
34:14
i do want to representative hudson just um what judge
Speaker 46
34:17
brown said is a good point it's in our different jurisdictions we have certain areas where it is usually the prosecutor that files it in other areas it is almost always a juvenile officer
who somebody's coming in and is helping them fill out the paperwork so it is a little different across the state but to judge brown's point and again anybody can file
Speaker 49
34:36
one just quick follow-up madam chair um and i appreciate that and i really do appreciate this program i think it's a
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
34:42
great program and very well needed um i i have had a concern recently within the past week or so from someone who's been trying to file a fence petition regarding a violent child their own violent child and has been told by the fence coordinator that they cannot file a petition because the child is
too young and too violent so are there situations in which in that case that fence is not uh able to handle or what would be the rationale behind rejecting offense petition in that case I
Speaker 45
35:10
don't believe there's a rationale for rejecting that and again I think it's up to the
Speaker 46
35:15
judge whether or not services are ordered and whether or not it's proper but statutorily what you're describing would be a valid reason to file offense case and I believe you know one thing is we are not the employers of juvenile officers we do provide the training but if there is a problem with the
juvenile officer I think it is something the juvenile judge would like to know and we do have training and resources at the AOC and so if you ever get a complaint like that while again they're not our employees we are happy to reach out and make sure there's not a misunderstanding and not something going on in that jurisdiction that needs to be corrected because if you heard of it from one family that may be a problem and it's not just a one-time situation so I'd be happy to talk with you and reach out to them.
Absolutely. Representative Barnes, you're recognized for a question.
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
36:04
Thank you, Chair. With your programs that you're offering, number one, if you're receiving any federal funds, I would like to know, are any of your programs in jeopardy because of the reforms that are going on? Well, luckily,
Speaker 46
36:20
as of right now, I don't think ours are, and I'm happy to say that. I mean, obviously there was a lot of concern, but when we're talking about AOC programs, none of ours are in jeopardy as of now.
Our court improvement program is one that allows us to do a lot of the things, like these resources create these things, and I actually have been told that we're getting an increase next year for the first time in a very long time. So that's actually good news, right? Now, we were very concerned about our cost of programs. While the legislature provides pass-through grants that come through the AOC's appropriation and we pass that out, they are also highly dependent on VOCA funding, different federal funds. I do think there is some concern of the local programs.
Again, that's not ours. Our state cost
Speaker 45
37:10
of directors, okay. But the local programs, I do believe, are going to have some, maybe some changes. I think some of the programs are going to consolidate to make sure that they can support what they need to. So I'm not worried about our programs, but, sure, I have concerns about some of the programs and other stakeholders that we work with. Okay. You're
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
37:35
recognized. Follow-up? You're recognized. With the Medicaid and things like that, one big piece to juvenile justice I know is that many of them have to have mental health assessments.
and I was at a meeting with one of the mental health institutions in Pine Bluff and they are in fear of being a closing within a year. What about funding for, say, kids that don't have Medicaid? Would there be some help there for
Speaker 46
38:05
those kids? Absolutely. I mean, I like that you brought that question up. I mean, obviously we have some resource issues in Arkansas, especially when we're talking about South Arkansas. There's just not even that many behavioral health providers, and very few that accept Medicaid, right?
So I don't know about, you know, specifically in regards to that program, but we are constantly supporting courts and, you know, providing treatment needs. I know Representative Dalby's worked directly with our specialty courts for many, many years. We have a lot of grants through that that provides treatment for those folks that are going through that. We are actually working with one local provider right now to start providing some services in southwest Arkansas that's kind of suffering. And we're working with getting a contract for them because we have some other federal grants that we think are going to help them provide some resources there.
So absolutely, it's something we are constantly talking about because we know how great of a need it is. Great.
You good, Representative? Yes, thank you so much. You're welcome. Representative Springer, did you have a question?
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
39:15
Okay, if you'll hit your button, we'll get you on. Good morning, and thank you, Madam Chair. I like looking at data, and I see your data that you have here in the chart, Exhibit F2. And you have the areas of juvenile delinquency, dependency, neglect, fiends,
and then the structured assessment of violent risks in youth. I noticed that there are different trends here. 2020 are we talking about the pandemic kids were not out as much and then as the years go on the numbers get higher is that what is the justification that you all have for that the juvenile delinquency is that what you're yes ma'am i think
Speaker 46
39:51
that's exactly right if you and especially if you look at um a 10-year snapshot of delinquency and especially if you look at dys commitments um you would see how high they were 10 years ago so while if you just look at the last five years
on something like dys commitments or delinquency you're going to see maybe an upward trend but when we talk about the juvenile justice reform that the commission works so hardly on um 10 years ago the numbers are a lot better than they were then so even though it's going up um i do think it probably will just kind of plateau out madam
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
40:27
follow up i want to ask you about the dependency neglect so those numbers are going down what do you contribute that to i
Speaker 46
40:34
think that is the hard work of dcfs and
they are trying to provide services to kids before they remove them from the home when possible and so if if safety if there's not an emergency need to remove those kids from the home and make them court involved dcfs has a lot more programs now than they did 10 years ago on providing resources and services on the front end before they become court involved so sometimes you had to open a case to provide all of those things now you don't have to do that um so we only see the data in the court
data if a case is actually filed so if they are providing the services without having to file a case then those are not included in this data so i think that's a um just means that dcfs is doing a good job okay
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
41:20
well then tell us now about the fans you know that's kind of going in 2020 it was that number then it went down in 21 then it's back up and then it seems like it's trending even higher now in the most recent years so what do you attribute okay so my guess on this one and by
Speaker 46
41:39
the way these are all in my assumptions based on and I think the fans being low in 2021 is a result of kids being home in 2020 um so again i mentioned earlier when representative hudson asked her question about finn's cases most of our finn's cases are trancy cases and these are school districts filing because kids aren't coming to school so in 2020 everybody got a pass if they weren't going to school so i think the 2021 was because in 2020 we just really were not we weren't focused on who was going to school we had other things to worry about i don't think it's
necessarily going up 2024 i'd be happy to get you 2025 numbers but we've been pretty consistent in that 5 000 range with the exception of the one year following covid so i i think we're probably pretty steady there um but again
Speaker 42
42:25
i think that's because the high number of truancy cases we have thank you yes ma'am uh brooke only a
question if it comes back to my mind on
your data and i think this goes not only in juvenile courts but the court system all over is your data and your data
points going to improve when everybody can get online on the new uh court reporting system could you maybe speak to that just a
Speaker 46
42:53
little bit i can't wait for that um so we luckily at the aoc we have really good child welfare data um it's because we have a brilliant woman who created a program called dnut and our ad litems our parent council our dcfs we track so much data in dependency neglect cases the rest of our cases not so much um and juvenile delinquency data is all over the
place because to representative dalby's point um we have some jurisdictions that are using this program and some that are using an excel spreadsheet and some some that are doing this and that and while the AOC has created cover sheets and disposition sheets to try to create this data, it's very inconsistent statewide as to how good the data is. Us having a program that every court is using to track all data across all court types is going to be huge. I think it's going to tell a
better picture than what we can tell now. Again, I love what we can do in child welfare cases because we know the data is good consistent statewide and I cannot say that about the other types of cases so yes I'm very much looking forward to that and the AOC is working diligently and all of our divisions are working diligently with our CIS division that is creating this case management program to make sure we are tracking the data that you need as
Speaker 43
44:15
legislators and that we need to show with what is working what's not working and what we need to change in the future
Thank you. Members, any other questions?
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
44:31
I couldn't see. Representative Ferguson, you're recognized for a question. Thank you,
Madam Chair. Hey, two quick questions, if I may. I was looking at the information on your ad litems, and I was wondering, I think you mentioned you had 60 ad litems for about 7,000 kids. at ballpark figure how many per uh ad litems in terms of the cases that they handle so it's it's
Speaker 45
44:54
kind of hard to give a number but i'd be happy to provide you exact data but here's here's the reason we have full-time ad litems and then we have part-time contracts and our part-time contracts could go anywhere from they have court once or twice a month to they have court 10 times a month so it's kind of all over the place and also it really depends greatly on what area of the state they're serving um so of course we have certain areas like Pulaski County where the ad litems here are serving a lot more kids and I don't have that exact data but I'd be happy to provide what we
have in D-Net because we have good data there um I could actually show you a breakdown per county of what ad litem and is serving um and how many children they are currently serving um because it it would be an interesting thing to look at for sure and my
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
45:38
final question you're recognized here um so it's
your opinion that we have a sufficient number of ad litems for the amount of cases that we have i
Speaker 45
45:49
do believe in our child welfare system we have enough um we have enough ad litem so i do
i do like to always um clarify that we do not have the domestic relations and probate ad litem so it's completely separate from our program it is housed in the aoc as well but it's completely separate our um ad litem director janet does an excellent job of constantly looking at the number of kids that are being served by each ad litem and making adjustments to make sure that they are being served properly our contracts uh it's a full-time job she has a full-time job of making sure that this person doesn't have too many cases that this person has enough cases and is constantly
changing up our contracts to make sure that that that the needs are served
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
46:34
of all children yeah Yeah, Madam Chair, allow me
just one more final question. I just thought about this one. So from year to year, do you see the number of cases increasing? Like from last year to this year? This year, I guess it was, what, about 7,000 kids?
Speaker 43
46:50
Or does it stay? It's going down a little bit, which is great. So, yes, which
Speaker 45
46:55
means, yes, the ad items get more time to spend on their cases.
I think we are at a great number right now with our contracts. mean if we ever have an attorney leave to go do something else like we will have our part-time contracts especially leave to go take a full-time job somewhere and we almost we need to fill them right away but our other items are great to cover that until we get it um filled but yeah i think we're in a pretty good place right now and since those numbers are going down gradually i think we're okay all right thank
Speaker 61
47:25
you thank you madam chair representing barnes you recognize for a
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
47:28
question yes one more question chair uh with this uh app that you all are creating are you do you
have plans of somehow getting all schools on the same page when it comes to reporting those fines, because some schools hold those fines and don't report them and do a lot of interior intervention, and then by the time they get to the court, it's out of hand, and they want the courts to respond based upon all of the stuff that's not at the court. And so I'm wondering if you're going to get to a place where schools are mandated to report But if this happened, you've got to do a FINS.
That way you can get intervention on the early end.
Speaker 20
48:10
So if I may, Representative Barnes, one of the goals and points that we decided to focus on with the commission, with the Student Success Committee, is trying to have uniform practice and procedures. And one of that is related to FINS and to truancy. And I think perhaps what you're discussing is one trend that we noticed where some schools sort of waited until the end of May and then dumped, in a sense, their currency.
And the courts were sort of – there may be legitimate problems, but what do we do with the child now we get in June to, say, go back to school in September? Yes. Right? And so to come up with sort of some uniform guidelines and practice. And our first step is always to say, how can we work collaboratively with those stakeholders, with the school districts? And because we have the Secretary of Education on the commission, we work and try to figure out how we can do that and come up with ways.
And we've done that in other areas with schools. If we can figure out a better uniform practice and solve it without mandates and coming to you to say mandate it, that's the best possible situation, right? Nobody feels like they're being sort of slapped, right? So that's our first goal, and we are deliberately going to focus in working on that. If we cannot resolve that, then it may be in the next session you see some requests. But we have some time to try to work those relationships.
Thank you. Members, any other questions? Seeing no further questions, thank you, Brooke, for your report. We appreciate that. Members, let's move to item G. Justice Honorable Ernest Brown, you're recognized. All right. Thank you,
Chair
Unverified
50:00
Madam Chair. First, I want to thank Chairman Dalby and
Speaker 56
50:04
Chairman, in his absence, Senator Rice is here for allowing us this opportunity to present. I want to thank everybody that's here for your time. As many of
Chair
Unverified
50:17
you all know, I served a couple years in the legislature.
2007 and 2008 and I know the sacrifice that you make so I just want to thank you for your service I want to take a point of personal privilege to thank our local representatives from Jefferson County that are here Representative Ferguson who does a great job Representative Holcomb who was county judge when I got first got elected and Representative Barnes who worked for sixth division for 13 years so he has a lot of juvenile questions because he he did the work So I want to thank them for their support of juvenile programs in Jefferson County and where we are with group violence intervention.
Speaker 56
51:00
So in your packet, you have some information about GVI, group violence intervention. Three years ago, I had no idea what this was. We have struggled, as have many communities, with violent crime, gang violence, gun violence. And we had been searching for a way to address it. So in 2020, we started what at that time was known as GRIP, Gang Reduction Initiative of Pine Bluff,
because we felt like we had a lot of problems with gangs. And it was really more law enforcement oriented. We pulled everybody together. We had a pretty serious violent spat of crime during Labor Day in 2020. So we organized and pulled that together. And we were doing okay with it. We didn't really have the structure that we later found. So Justice Wood, who, a good friend of mine, and I appreciate her leadership on the commission, in one of the studies that they had, we were introduced to some folks from out of state.
And I think I was one of the pilot sites that they had. And they said, Judge Brown, what's the main issue that you're dealing with? And I said, juvenile crime, violent juvenile crime. At the time that we started, we had 16 young people that were in our juvenile detention center for homicide cases. Today, we're down to two. And at that time, because I handled the juvenile transfer hearings, in court, I would see one side who was
Chair
Unverified
52:37
charged with, most of the time, capital murder.
Speaker 56
52:40
a murder that was their life was possibly risking incarceration other side we had a family who had lost a loved one and it's tough to see that and not want to do something about it so the young lady we met at that time michelle darling she was from wilmington delaware she said judge you you really don't have your temple gang problem you have more of hybrid gangs which was loosely organized many times through the schools.
There's been some questions representing Hudson about the schools, truancy, all that works together. We had a lot of those neighborhood gangs we were dealing with. She did a presentation to our former mayor, Mayor Washington, and we were able to use some American Rescue Act funds to start GVI. We were able to hire the program manager. That program manager is no longer with us. Our current program manager is here today, Reverend Crumpton, who I'll introduce in just a few moments. And we started the process of that.
Representative Dalby and I had a chance to sit next to each other at the retreat in Benville. I don't think she knew what she was getting into when she was sitting next to me. Because me and Casey Beard, we wore out the whole time. She was very gracious. They did gang up on me. Yeah. Well, really a gang was only two of us. So that really was just, it was a partnership. It was what it was. And she was very gracious. She listened to us, and she asked a question. She said, Representative Barn, what is GVI?
What's the success of? And I told her that the success is, and you see that in the packet, it's, and I think, I don't know if Colby passed it out, but it's a three-leg school. It's not going to work without that. You have your law enforcement piece, and many of the folks you have behind me here are probation staff, adult probation, juvenile probation, law enforcement, your community moral voice, your parents, your principals, schoolers. We have our superintendent of Watson Chapel Schools representative, Dr. McGee's here, so the school's involved.
We have support and outreach, social workers, violence interrupters, mental health professionals, everybody working together on this. And to be honest with you, when you look at it on paper, we weren't for sure if it was going to work. We knew we were really, Senator Rice, struggling with this, struggling with violent crime. You would see it on the news if you're in this area, another person that's died from gun violence. And one of the key things that I told Chairman Dahlby that was key for Pine Bluff is, one, we stay true to the model, fidelity to the model.
We didn't change this to make it a Pine Bluff thing. We follow what the plan said. So that included shooting reviews, which they're still doing, twice a month. Law enforcement gets together to discuss the shootings, figure out what's going on. They told us a half a percent, a half a percent is what's causing your violent crime. So we did a problem analysis. Representative Ferguson, we found that was the case. It wasn't everybody in the community that was involved with this.
And it's focused deterrent. You're dealing with the ones who are doing the violent crime. Secondly, you have to have your support and outreach working together. We got this idea from Davenport Hour, the Whatever-It-Takes Committee get-together. What do we need to do to help you? So one of the handouts that I think Colby passed was the goal is to stay safe, alive, and free. So we're coming to Representative Tosh.
He and I met when I came to the committee. We both served on state agencies and judiciary when I was in the legislature. We're going to him. I'm going to use some example. Dwight, we know what you're up to. We want to help you if you let us. We'll stop you if you make us. We're here to help you. So we give them this brochure, let them know if they need the assistance, whether it's housing, mental health, we will help you. But if you choose not to do it, then that law enforcement piece comes in place, and you have that.
So we went through every step. We had to take our time in going through, because Senator Rice, we want to do everything right away. But you have to follow the steps. You have to do your problem analysis. You have to do GVI University. You have to be trained on how to do a custom or a call-in, and then we got started. And once we got started, we really had a hunger in our community to see the violence decrease. So in the packet that Brooke put together, and I want to give her a heads up, she said,
Judge, I need to, let me see, let's show everybody what the statistics were for the last 10 years. So if you look at the last 10 years, we consistently were around 30, 20 homicides. Once we started GVI, we went down from 28 to 16. That primarily was attributed to we went 533 days without a juvenile homicide. Let me repeat that again, 533 days without a juvenile homicide.
We had our first one, Representative Dalby, in July. We're now at 73, 74 days without our second homicide as we go through with it. So we made a concentration on our juvenile homicides. We're now getting ready to put more of an emphasis on our adults and working that in place. We think this strategy, because it's not a program, it's a strategy, is going to survive. It's going to survive because we have people in our community that want to change the narrative
from Crime Bluff to being a safe community where families can flourish and thrive, businesses can thrive, and we can make it. In the course of visiting this, we visited several cities. We went to Philadelphia, Chester, Pennsylvania, York, Pennsylvania, Davenport, Iowa, Jackson, Michigan and I have a pin on today that I received when we went to
York, Pennsylvania and their motto was more graduations and less funerals. So for 533 days we had more graduation less funerals and that's what it's about, saving lives, reducing crime and doing it. So we would not have been able to get this done without the grant support from the administrative officer the courts because you know we had to get some buying in our community and make that happen and so just as wood mentioned that we use some of those
funds to send some of our team members on some of the site visits um and we go from there now for a long time i want to be very honest we only had one staff person uh reverend crumpton which you Stan, our GBI program manager, but when the dynamic and awesome former representative of Mayor Flowers got in, she believed in the program, she was a part of the team. We now have two case managers, a juvenile case manager and an
adult case manager, and we have the credible messenger. The credible messenger is a person with lived experiences, so this is a person that can tell the young person, you don't want to go to prison. You don't want to live that life. So Pine Bluff is fully staffed. We're a fully certified group violence site, and we're the first GBI site in the state of Arkansas.
Speaker 98
1:00:44
Come on, you can clap, Senator. Thank you. Now,
Speaker 56
1:00:50
this is what I like to
This is the dream, and that's what we've been to Representative Dalby here about. We would love to see this expand to other areas. There are other cities surrounding us that are struggling because even though our crime has gone down, I see on the news, and I've told Attorney Beard, some of the ones in Little Rock were ones who were once in Pine Bluff, and they told us sometime you move that crime out, they move to other areas, Conway and other places like that. We'd love to see GBI duplicate in other areas.
We believe it can work. And here's the key thing about this, Representative Springer, they don't have to go to Philadelphia or Davenport. They can come to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and see exactly how to do it. They will save the money that we had to spend to go and look at other sites. You can come and see exactly what we've done in Pine Bluff. So I'm going to stop there and see if there's any questions. i think we have a couple senator rice thank
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
1:01:53
you madam chair and judge brown good to have you back
in front of judiciary i always enjoy hearing you speak in each each of the three of you for testifying today thank you and for all the interest in the room when i was scanning over documents last night it it just jumped off the screen to me uh would you testify this morning that on this pine bluff police crime stats that the same criteria was used for all four years
Speaker 56
1:02:26
no sir so we only have done it for the last two years okay so we we we officially came on
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
1:02:35
board 2023 so but on this crime crime data the 2022 three four and five we we see it an extreme drop in that? Yes, sir. That's the same criteria on all of it. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. No exclusions. We've heard that in some parts of the country. Yes. And I want you to get credit, you and everybody that's worked on this, because that just jumped out at me. This can be
done. And it is so enlightening to know that some effort, a lot of effort on people's parts is making a difference. So So for each of you here and, again, everybody else, I congratulate you and keep moving because anything we can do, especially for these young people, to keep them from going the next step forward that's
Speaker 100
1:03:28
going to run their life, I'm all for.
Speaker 56
1:03:32
And thank all of you all for being part of it. And Senator Rice, again, always good to see you. Thank you for your kind comments. And we believe what happened in Pine Bluff can be duplicated. Sometime when you get going, you end up forgetting someone. So I definitely want to recognize City Council Member Bruce Lockett, who was also here, who was the sponsor of some of the legislation that helped us to get the funding in Pine Bluff. So one thing I want to say is y'all have heard we kind of did this piecemeal in Pine Bluff because we didn't have all the funding.
My hope for our other sites, whether that's in Stuttgart, Forest City, Arkadelphia, there are several sites that have been identified, is that the next group can start out with the funding necessary to have the consultant piece and the staff piece to do it. We had a super-duper project manager and director who, a pastor, he kind of fit in all the different roles, but now that we got everybody, We were able to, he's able to be, he's able to have staff in the adult division, juvenile division, at the jail.
He just couldn't be in all of those places at one time. And so for it to really happen the way Senator Rice needs is that you need to have your consultant piece, at least your base staff people to have the results. The city that we kind of partnered with, York, Pennsylvania, about the same size as Pine Bluff, First year, they reduced it by 80%, 80%. But they started out fully staffed. So we did about
Speaker 97
1:05:10
40%, and we're thankful for that.
But we think the best is yet to
come. Representative Richardson, you're recognized for a question.
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:05:20
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you guys very much for being here. What you've done there is nothing short of remarkable. And my question is real simple. How do we move this across the state quickly? right so i guess i've got a concern in some of the some of the areas who may not have been where you guys were but the the opportunity would be to keep them from getting to that point
so have you had other community cities reach out to you guys if they have what's the eta to help this program be moved across the state quickly so
Chair
Unverified
1:05:57
i want you all to know i didn't plant this question So I didn't plan it.
Speaker 56
1:06:02
Representative Richardson, good to see you as well. Fort Smith is on the list of sites, and it's a funding piece. We've identified some potential areas for funding, and we just need to get that funding moved.
The consultants are ready. The cities are ready. And I'm going to have Brooke help me. I think we had Arkadelphia, Benville, Fort Smith, Forest City, Stuttgart, Lake Village, Conway, and then Little Rock. So those were the sites that we had identified. And the thing about it, money-wise, it's doable because you have a site in the state. So there's no need to travel. They can come to Pine Bluff. We can show them how to do it and put those practices in place.
and these are areas where we already have a working relationship and since we started it there have been some interest I talked to Representative Broadway Judge Broadway about even East Arkansas wanting to come on board but we need to kind of move it in a responsible stages so it's so funding funding I know Representative Ferguson Fred Allen came back I was gonna represent recognize earlier Fred and I served together representative Allen we came into the
legislature together good friend of mine there have been some cuts in in in juvenile funding you know we don't have youth challenge anymore and that was a good resource if that funding can be redirected to help this this would be great any other
questions you good representing college recognized for a
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:07:50
question thank you madam chair I'm way over here to your right okay
thank you good morning I appreciate your
presentation and I'm excited about what you're doing down there and your results I do want to ask and just to be fair I've done this sometimes and we've had other presentations and I just want to make sure that I ask the question you've got good numbers here there are national trends going on too and violent crime is down across the country over the same span 22 to 25 have you compared the decrease that you guys have to what's going on nationally to make sure that what you're looking at is the results of what
you're doing as opposed to broader trends that's question one and just point two that 25 i just want to i mean we're still in 25 so that is not a complete year in those 25 numbers i obviously is the case but if you could just address the the sort of comparison of what's going on in these numbers versus what's going on nationally so you can help us understand how much what y'all are doing is driving these outcomes well i did i did
Speaker 45
1:09:02
want to jump in and i'll let judge brown say
whatever but um i've only done it statewide um and pine bluffs doing a lot better than we are in other areas of our state and i'll let judge brown speak about national trends but um you know we are seeing an increase in um handguns being stolen out of vehicles and you know we are having problems with this is not just we're not in a great place statewide right now but if you look at the trends across our state while pine bluffs numbers are of course higher than some other areas because it's Pine Bluff as compared to a very rural area.
Their pro-rata share of crime is way down compared to other parts of our state. But I can't say I've looked at it nationally. Judge Brown,
Chair
Unverified
1:09:49
I'll let you speak to that. All right. Representative Collins, thank you for your question. As a part of the group violence initiative, we have to have an independent evaluator. So University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Criminal Justice Department, Dr. Tim Benzel has been our evaluator. And so part of that is to evaluate the practices that we do versus the previous years.
So the shooting reviews, which I mentioned is a big part of that, when we first started, I think they had 30, maybe 40 cases they reviewed. Just a couple of weeks ago, they had zero. So the independent evaluation that we have for ULR has
Speaker 56
1:10:31
indicated that our practice and what we're doing with group violence intervention is directly tied to our reduction. So it's not just us reporting that and me sitting here.
We have the reporting. I have no problem with sharing that with you from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. They are an independent evaluator. Each site is supposed to have that, like in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania with their independent evaluator, so it wouldn't just be just a national trend that's doing it. It could be based on the results that we have. Good. Well, I appreciate it because, you know, if we're going to try
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:11:09
to roll something out, we want to make sure that we're rolling out the thing that's causing the reduction as opposed to something that is correlated with it,
and it sounds like you guys have done some external research to make sure that, in fact, that is driving it as opposed to just something that's being done during a good time, relatively speaking, for violent
Speaker 56
1:11:29
crime in this country. So thanks. And, Representative Collins, I'd also ask you, and I know you see the packet, if you look at just the 10 years and look at this period of time here with the beginning of the program and what we're doing and staying on track with that, I think it will show that the implementation of the program has made a tremendous impact,
not just with the homicides, but with the violent crime that we have. So thank you for your question.
Thank you. Representative Ferguson, you're recognized
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
1:12:04
for a question? Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Judge Brown, you and I have talked a great deal about GBI and about the cost, And I know you mentioned something about the youth challenge that's no longer in our state budget. But to add, I think we added, we're thinking about adding an additional, what, seven or nine sites.
Speaker 121
1:12:25
That's not included in the site in Pine Bluff, am I correct? It would be eight sites. Eight sites. Yes,
Speaker 122
1:12:31
sir. Not included in Pine Bluff. That's right. So Pine Bluff is, we're fully staffed now, so we'll be more in there just to be a training site. So we're in there to just whatever is needed to train the ones that will be coming
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
1:12:44
to us. So a ballpark figure to kind of get these other eight sites started, what are we talking about? Or
can you just give me some numbers? I know we've talked about it. Yes, sir.
Chair
Unverified
1:12:56
But I've slept since then. I got you. I got you. And between Representative Ferguson, Representative Barnes, and Representative Holcomb,
Speaker 56
1:13:05
I have worn them out, Representative Dalby. So they've heard this a number of times, and we appreciate them. We've met with the speaker and president of the Senate. So we're talking about including the consultant fees, $3 million. And that is to hire each site a program manager, a case manager, and a credible messenger.
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
1:13:31
Yeah, quick follow-up, Madam Chair. You're recognized. So that would take care of those sites for, what, one year, two years? One year. That's right. That's right. Thank you.
Speaker 56
1:13:41
Thank you, Madam Chair. And you asked about the new challenge. What we understood was, and Brooke can correct me wrong, Brooke's challenge is about $2.8 million, I believe. Okay. Okay. Well, that was what, when we worked with the previous director and we talked about it, that was what that would be. So it would not be necessarily new money, but to replace that in place.
All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:14:04
Chair. - Senator Scott, you're recognized for a question? - Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you
for the opportunity to ask the question even though I'm not on the committee as well. Thank you, Judge Brown, Justice Woods, and everybody who has just been so dedicated to this work. I am so proud of this initiative. I have taken kids to Pine Bluff, to the annual events, because I'm just, it's incredible what y'all have done down there. And I think people don't understand the magnitude of the work you've done.
I grew up in a community with gun violence where I couldn't go outside because of gangs and things that were going on in my community. And to be able to speak about data and numbers and say for 500 days, you know what I mean? Like, that's powerful. Our kids live in a constant state of trauma, some of our kids do in this state. And people don't understand the impact that has on their mental health, on them going to school, on them acting out, on just all kinds of things as you grow up. So to be providing opportunities where that's not normal in some of these kids' lives anymore is a testament to everybody's collective effort.
And I just commend you for this work because you don't understand it until you live in these communities and you grow up and this is your norm. It shouldn't be their norm. And so thank you. Sorry, I just wanted to get that out. Wouldn't you agree? Wouldn't you agree, Judge Brown? I would agree. Okay, I'm going to get to my question. Thank you, Madam Chair. I love her so much. But can you tell us about GVI's model that might address domestic violence? I know y'all are known, national.
The evidence is, you know, pretty, it's there in what you've done. But I know domestic violence in our state has been a significant issue that women from all communities, all walks of life have dealt with? And will you be applying for this as you're talking about expanding the services to the adult communities? And I'm sorry, I'm not trying to blindside
Speaker 56
1:16:09
you. I probably should have asked you about this before. No, no, that's not. It's interesting you ask because we have visited about that, the mayor and her chief,
and about expanding because our two-year agreement, that's one thing about the GVI consultant. Sometimes you may think Representative Hudson and it's like a continuous, it's a two-year commitment on the consultant part, and then you're on your feet. Well, we have looked at expanding to the intimate partner violence piece of that, and we're looking at funding and seeing if we can make that work because if we look at our adult homicides, many of those are domestic-related. And so we're hopeful.
Speaker 122
1:16:53
that y'all will. We're hopeful. So a mayor and we've got a council member listening, so hopefully we can see that
Speaker 56
1:17:01
expand because there are some components that are very similar with that.
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:17:06
I look for y'all to be the national model in that area as
Speaker 56
1:17:10
well. Well, you know, we were in the New York Times. I follow the work that you're doing. In New York Times, that was a recent article. And so, you know, Representative Dalby knows, you know, I'm originally a Southwest Arkansas boy, but I've been in Pine Bluff 30 years.
That's my home. That's where I raised my family. I met my wife. I've had great opportunities there to serve as a legislator and to be on the bench now 17 years. That's my home. So I'm very proud of my adopted hometown, just in what we're able to do to change the narrative in our community. And that's what it's all about. And I'm so passionate about it because I know that this can work in other areas. Well, I believe in you.
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
1:17:55
I believe in the work y'all are doing, everybody.
And I want you to keep asking. Keep being relentless because this is important. All
right. Thank you. Representative Richardson, you're recognized for a
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:18:09
question? Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to be clear that I heard you. You said that $3 million, that would fully fund the other eight sites? Yes, sir. That will. Okay. And have you guys taken the opportunity to look at what the total savings to tax dollars by implementing these processes could be in each one of these communities? Have you had an opportunity to look at it
Speaker 106
1:18:26
from that? No, we have not done the economic impact on that.
Thank you. Thank you, guys. You're putting on your
Speaker 56
1:18:33
legislative hat. We've got to add that economic to that. We have not done that. That is something that we need to do because I know that our consultants tell us with the lives we've saved, we had nine homicides the year before, and we haven't had that. just the amount that you saved with lives now being lost. So I'm in Brooke, and Brooke's going to help me with
Speaker 122
1:18:51
that, I guess. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Springer, you're recognized for a question? Yes, ma'am. Thank you again.
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:19:00
And thank you all again for being here. And thank you, Senator Scott, for asking my question. I appreciate you about domestic violence. You asked my question. And Madam Chair, we have some other people here. Can we recognize
Speaker 88
1:19:13
them? I think we have the superintendent. Well, I believe Judge Brown mentioned them earlier,
so we're not going to take time. But
The students that participate, I just want them to. To that point, after the meeting, I'm sure Judge Brown would welcome any committee members to go back and meet everybody individually, and he'll be happy to do that.
Chair
Unverified
1:19:38
I'm real sure of that. Representative Dotcom, and I just recognize them on the record here
Speaker 56
1:19:45
just to do that. All right, so I want to start. We have Superintendent Keith McGee, Dr. McGee from
Speaker 122
1:19:52
Watson Chapel Schools. All right, Dr. McGee, would you stand so they can
Speaker 56
1:19:56
see you like we're in church now? We have our program manager and director, Reverend Kevin L. Crumpton, Sr. We have the chief of staff for Mayor, the Honorable Mayor, Vivian Flowers, Joyce Campbell, who is her classmate.
So I found that out today. Texarkana. Mayor Vivian Flowers, former representative from Pine Blood. We have the sixth division juvenile court staff and these are
Chair
Unverified
1:20:27
folks that work with the juvenile court system who have been supportive. We've even done a youth GVI expansion program, so I'm not gonna call everybody's name,
Speaker 143
1:20:45
but those that work with juvenile court. Would you
Speaker 56
1:20:49
stand? We have the police department, Lieutenant
Thompson. Lieutenant Thompson is back there and
Chair
Unverified
1:20:56
he's been the lead of our shooting reviews and our GVI program there. Oh, the
Speaker 56
1:21:06
GVI staff. I mentioned we have staff now. Everybody with the GVI staff, case managers, credible messengers. Yeah, we just got them this six months ago. Y'all give them a round of applause. I'm telling Reverend Crumpton is so happy not to have to have some additional
staff. So, Ms. Jackson, I miss anybody? Oh, Dr. Ten Bensel. Come on. Representative Collins. So this is ULR, Dr. Ten Bensel and her staff. She's been with us from the very beginning on doing that research. And one thing that I will say, well, he left out, but that would be a key part of it. Any site would have to have the evaluation piece with that as well. And that's also included in there.
with regard to that so her staff or students have done that as well so they're here all
right judge we have one more question in the queue so representative hokum you're recognized
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
1:22:10
thank you madam chair i'll i'll be really brief uh thank you all for being here judge brown we go a long way back working on this same problem together and uh as i look at the statistics that you had before us you know there's there's an amazing change from 2022 to the present
obviously there's been a lot of coordination a lot of work a lot of time a lot of volunteers we thank you for that it the statistics look good but it really means a lot more when you live there and you see the difference like i do and i want to tell you from someone that's been in education for 31 years and then move on to to where i'm at now i i really appreciate it but i heard you when you started say that you had some funding from the courts uh you get a little grant
money i assume i'm not surprised that mayor flowers uh joined in uh in this crusade uh and and offered some resources are you uh and we hope we can we can convince the body here to to give you some funding to move this forward to those other cities we're talking about uh but are you are you currently getting any grant money to help you with this program that's
my first question and then and i might have one more if the chair allowed and
Speaker 56
1:23:39
i'll be through uh representative holcomb no sir
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
1:23:43
not now no grant money at all as jefferson county leadership uh the body there have they offered any assistance to you for
Speaker 148
1:23:50
this for this project no sir well i apologize
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
1:23:55
for that well thank you for your hard work we appreciate all of you and everything that you do and and uh i want to thank you again to don't be discouraged and let's
continue to move forward with this. Thank you, Madam
Chair. Thank you, Representative Holcomb. Representative Tosh, you're
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
1:24:12
recognized for a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. Judge Brown did a good job of introducing people in attendance today, but I wanted to make sure that a former colleague of ours is also in attendance. Wanted to make sure she got recognized, and that's served with her, I think, my first two terms, and that's Judge Mary Broadway. If you would, just wave. Thank you for being here. thank you we're glad to have you I just want to make sure she got recognized madam chair thank
you bet we never know when we might be going
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
1:24:42
through her jurisdiction so and I think I recognize that lady immediately to your left how are you doing good to
see y'all glad you're here thank you I think that that
concludes this section I do want to thank once again on the committee's behalf Justice Wood Judge Brown Brooke all of you for being here taking your time i think it's been very informative members i don't believe i'm overstating if you have questions
offline any of these individuals will be happy to answer those questions or get more information for you and i urge you to make sure you take the strategic plan and the guidebook for families because these are questions that come up in our jurisdiction so thank you all for being here
y'all are free to go about your day thank you uh we have one other item quickly members don't leave we have one other
business i've asked uh kristin clark from the aoc to come give us a brief
report on act 371 and its implementation members you'll remember that's our big juvenile i mean sorry our big district court revision and so i've asked her because that is starting to be implemented you're going to have questions in your jurisdictions about this so kristen if you could give us a brief report i would appreciate it thank
Speaker 154
1:26:04
you chairman dalby and thank you committee for letting me give you an update on the implementation of act
Speaker 155
1:26:10
371 as many of you remember this is the result of
hang on just a minute kristen i want to get the
i don't mind people visiting but could y'all visit outside so we want to make sure we hear the
Speaker 155
1:26:29
rest of this I appreciate it all right go ahead okay thank you this was a bill that was passed as
Speaker 154
1:26:35
a result of a year-long study that joint judiciary conducted along with the other stakeholders who are involved with district courts it went into effect on August the 5th we have
to date provided for trainings to both district judges and district court staff from May to September there were a total of 623 attendees who have come we have two additional trainings for district court clerks plan for November the court automation fund balance report that you all included and required be submitted by September 1st has been prepared and distributed to date there have been 233 responses that have been received we are currently compiling and analyzing that data
that same information has also been provided to dfna and then also to local governing bodies for their own particular courts so dfna and aoc have information from across the state and then your local governing bodies have got the information that's specific to their local courts we've also worked in collaboration with DF&A to eliminate the proportional share agreements that were done away with now that the state is paying all state district judge salaries. We have continued
training for the clerks, the cities, and the counties with regard to the status of what was previously known as their AOJ fund credits. We are working to update the list of courts and their designated court IDs. That's important for reporting purposes so that DF&A can assign the paper reports that they're receiving in with the appropriate court county and city the monthly reporting forms that both cities and counties use there's a miscellaneous fee fine distribution report and then also a uniform court cost and remittance collection report are both being
updated this has been one of the biggest challenges that the cities and the counties and the court personnel have faced since we began the implementation is understanding how to do the new calculations. It sounds simple in that you're going to send 50% of the court costs and filing fees collected to the state, and you're going to retain the other 50% locally, but one of the things that makes that more challenging is that it's based on classes of accounting records. Generally, city cases are part of the first class, county cases are part of the second class, and then the
third class of accounting records is related to civil and small claims filing fees. Having them account for court cost and filing fees in this manner is something new. They have always done that with their fine revenue, but not necessarily with the court cost and filing fee portion. We have also collaborated with the state treasurer's office. We are getting ready to help them implement the transition of who receives these fines. That won't go into effect until July 1st.
And then with regard to software implementation, as you all know, the case management system that the state provides to many of our district courts and all of our circuit courts also has to be configured to implement these changes as well as the other software vendors that the district courts are using. So we're working with all the vendors. Those changes are going to relate to a uniform method of installment payment allocation. Again, accounting for those court costs and filing fees in accordance with those classes of accounting records, implementing the $15 technology fee for
traffic and criminal cases, implementing the installment payment fee reduction, and then also the installment payment fee cap. So that's a update on the work that has happened between the end of the session and today, and we have quite a bit of work that we still need to do, but we're making great progress. And members,
I'm going to get that out in an email form to you because you may have some questions uh in your district so we'll be getting out to all the committee members that
information that kristin's just gone through so i appreciate it very much thank you for sticking around to give us an update because it is a big overhaul of the district court system and so there's some learning curves in there members we don't have any other business i appreciate your attendance this morning with that we are adjourned Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve September 30, 2024, Meeting Minutes (Senate) [Exhibit B]
C. Consideration to Approve July 10, 2025, Meeting Minutes (House) [Exhibit C]
D. Consideration of a Motion to Authorize Senate Chair to Approve Special Expenses Incurred by the Committee
E. Discussion of Arkansas Commission on Children, Youth, and Families
F. Discussion of Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) - Juvenile Division [Exhibits F1-F2]
G. Discussion of Group Violence Intervention Initiative in Jefferson County [Exhibit G]
H. Other Business
I. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — JUDICIARY COMMITTEE - SENATE AND HOUSE, Sep 30, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit B - Senate Judiciary Draft Minutes 09-30-2024 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C - House Judiciary Draft Minutes 07-10-2025 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit F1 - Juvenile Division Update | Exhibit | 2 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit F2 - Dashboard with charts | Exhibit | 1 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit G - GVI overview | Exhibit | 5 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 5
Representative Carol Dalby Chair
Unverified
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
Speaker 20
Representative Fred Allen
Unverified
Speaker 45
Speaker 46
Representative Ashley Hudson
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 57
Speaker 49
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Speaker 42
Speaker 43
Representative Kenneth B. Ferguson
Unverified
Speaker 61
Speaker 56
Speaker 98
Speaker 100
Speaker 97
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
Speaker 121
Speaker 122
Senator Jamie Scott
Unverified
Speaker 134
Speaker 106
Speaker 88
Speaker 72
Speaker 143
Representative Mike Holcomb
Unverified
Speaker 148
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
Speaker 154
Speaker 155