an energy efficiency bill that came out of the energy committee on a vote of 19-3. now, i just became the chair of this committee, but i have served on it now for almost 18 years. and just a few weeks ago i became the chair. i've had the privilege to work with republican and democratic chairs of this committee and i'm excited about the opportunity to try to find a path forward with you, madam chair, who's been although not a member of the committee, an absolutely outstanding leader on energy issues since arriving in the senate and really look forward to working with you and members from both sides of the aisle to actually deliver what i think the american people want is a sensible, mainstream energy policy for america that increases domestic energy production, efficiency and

conservation, creates millions of jobs right here at home, makes us more energy secure and energy independent and works with our friends, not our enemies. and i think we can get it done. i've been around here long enough to know that things aren't easy but i refuse to be cynical, i refuse to be, you know, woe is me, the world is coming to an end, which i hear a lot around here. i think there's a lot of positive things going on in our country today. the economy is improving. in north dakota, your state, i think you have zero unemployme unemployment. i think we come in second at about 2% unemployment in louisiana because we are busy working -- not fighting but working together to produce energy jobs for the country. so i was very proud to support this efficiency bill in

committee. i would like, of course, to see some other additional things added to it, but in -- to move it forward, voted for it, to move this bill forward to the floor. when i became the chair of the committee, i had committed to ron wyden, the former chair, and lisa murkowski, the ranking member, which it is really their work, along with senators shaheen and portman, two outstanding members of the committee, to see what i could do to move this bill forward. i want to talk a minute about why this is important and frame this in a way that our members here can understand it. first of all, i'm going to talk about the bill itself in a minute, but let me just step back and say this. there have been 302 bills filed in this congress that relate to energy that have been sent to

our committee for review. i am sad to say -- and i think my constituents and others will be disappointed to hear -- that only 13 of those bills have become law. i want to repeat that. 302 bills have been referred to the senate committee on energy and natural resources since the beginning of this congress and only 13 have become law. one of the reasons i wanted to bring the energy efficiency bill to the floor is because i think we need to make that 14. i think this record is pretty dismal and this is not a -- this is not a negative statement t to -- to the leadership of the committee prior to my being there. it is, rather, a reflection on the lack of cooperation that we

are getting either at the committee level or here in the senate. it most certainly is not a reflectionly on talents of the chairman -- former chairmen, ron wyden -- reflection of the talents of the former chairmen, ron wyden and lisa murkowski. this is sort of the underpings on this. underpinnings on this. you couldn't find two more leaders who wanted to work together. and i know because i sat together for 18 years on the committee and watched them. and i'm an eyewitness to their cordial, respectful conversations both on and off the committee, when the cameras are on and when the cameras are off. so nobody can question about this or deny it because everybody knows it's true, and there are many eyewitnesses besides myself. so the question becomes, if a committee that's important as

jurisdiction as energy and natural resources is to the committee, has two people that are working well together, how is it possible that we can only get 13 out of 302 bills passed? that's a really interesting question. and why couldn't we get 14 done this week? so that's why i brought this bill to the floor or asked for it to come to the floor and particularly because it's important to both democrats and republicans. let's talk for a minute about how important this bill is. i have in front of me, which i'm going to submit to the record, 10 pages of single-spaced list of businesses, organizations that support this shaheen-portman bill. now, remember, it came out of committee, one of the few of the 300 fiecialtion300 files, on a .

there are roughly 200 organizations and businesses -- i'm going to submit all their names to the record but i just want to read a few to understand the breadth of support for this bill before i talk about what this bill does. alcoa, american air inc., aspen skiing company, b.a.e. systems, caterpillar inc., dow corning, eastern mountain sports, intel, international paper, owen corning, raytheon corporation -- one of the large nest the world -- solar turbine incorporated, universal lighti lighting, american jewish committee, christian coalition, conserve america, earth day network, the sierra club, national wildlife federation, american chemistry council, american institute of architects, american lighting

association, consumer federation of america, league of women voters, the u.s. chamber of commerce, u.s. conference of mayors, u.s. green building council. i could go on and on. but the point i think is clear -- there are organizations from the left, the right, the center, large and small, business coalitions, consumer coalitions saying, act now on energy efficiency. now, we may not be able to, and i doubt sincerely that in the next four days on the floor of the senate we can draft an energy policy for america. that would really be i think a bar set a little too high for what we will be able to do between tuesday and friday. but i think we could do two important things for the count country: pass this energy efficiency bill and pass the keystone pipeline, something

that i am proud to vote for, you will vote for it and it is a piece of the energy infrastructure that this country needs, this country deserves and we need to move forward on it. and so in the spirit of balance and compromise and fairness and common sense, which we're not finding around here very often, i thought, well, let's see. we've got an energy efficiency bill that's supported by a extraordinarily broad and deep coalition of business people, supported by two of the most respected members of this body. may i remind everyone, jeanne shaheen was a governor before she was a senator. she's been serving for decades in public office, well-known and well-respected. bob portman is not only the senator from ohio but formerly was the o.m.b. director, office of management and budget, so he understands about finance and

cost and savings. i don't think either he or jeanne shaheen would have put their names on this bill, which they've been working on now for five years. this is not an election-year bill, as some would call it. this is a five-year, really hard effort by these two wonderful legislators to provide a bill that the country needs. so why aren't we all just jumping up and down voting for it? that's a good question. so rob portman, who was also the u.s. trade representative under the bush administration and i think saw firsthand when congress passes very poorly thought bills or makes mistakes in bills that we pass and seeing so many jobs leaving to go to china and india, he probably jumped on a chance to create jobs right here in america. thank goodness for rob portman.

so that's what our energy efficiency bill does, it creates jobs for america. the one thing that when i go home and i'm out in my parish whether it's tanjabaho, or cara parish or east baton rouge, people look at me and say, senator, i don't know why everybody's yelling and screaming in washington, i don't know everyone's yelling and screaming about the president or this and that. would you tell them we want high-paying jobs. and, yes, i'm for raising the minimum wage, i'm going to vote for it. they don't want to make the minimum wage. they want to make $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year. they want an income for their families so their kids can go to school and college, they can live in their home and retire securely. do you think you can do that at the minimum wage, whether it's $7 or $10 an hour? no.

so here we have a bill on the floor that is going to create american jobs with american manufacturers. maybe not all u.s. technology, because, frankly, we get good, you know, energy efficiency technology from around the world. but americans are pretty good at this, very good at it. in fact, so good that in an old graph, which i'm going to have updated and blown up because no one can see this but me, unfortunately, it's so small. but if the cameras could pick it up -- and this is dated but i'm going to have an update by this afternoon -- you can see here that it says, "energy efficien efficiency: america's greatest energy resource." "energy efficiency supplies 52% of our overall resource. petroleum is 35%. natural gas, 23%. coal, 19%. nuclear, 8%." so think about energy efficiency

as our nation's greatest energy resource. energy savings from efficiency are real and save americans money. since 1970, energy efficiency improvements have reduced u.s. energy costs by about $700 billion from what it would have been otherwise. when you think about energy saved, it's the cleanest energy, it's completely or almost all completely american, because we're the ones saving it. we may import a little of that technology from other places but it's all american all day, all clean. why aren't we doing it? now, the other side -- and i know that senator thune's going to speak in a minute -- the other side said, energy efficiency is not enough for us. we want to build the keystone pipeline. so i agree. i agree. i think that it's time to do both, to do this energy

efficiency bill, to build the keystone pipeline. why? not because i don't respect the process but because the process is over. five years -- five years, five studies, as required by law, five studies completed, the last of which was the state department study that concluded that it is actually environmentally safer to transport oil from canada, from the oil sands in canada, to the refineries in the gulf coast to provide energy for this nation and create anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 jobs, depending on conservative or liberal facts, talking points on this, and, you know, to create jobs and to put america and canada closer together.

we already are together but even closer together to be a north american energy powerhouse. canada has very high, madam president, as you know because you visited the oil sands -- i'm looking forward to going as soon as i can -- but i know because you've shared with me about your experiences that it's really amazing and spectacular and exciting to see the environmental safeguards that canada has used to produce this resource that's so important to them in the alberta province and to usmen us. so why not have an energy efficiency bill that's very popular with democrats and supported by republicans, and then a energy piece, just a piece -- not the whole energy policy of the world, not the whole energy policy of the united states -- but two important pillars, efficiency and production, put them together, try to find compromise and move forward on these two pieces of legislation.

get it over to the house, let the house decide what they would do, move it to the president's desk separately. because the president has powers in the constitution, we have our own powers. you would think that that would make a lot of sense, and that's what i was hoping to do by asking the leadership to allow the shaheen-portman bill to come to the floor. but evidently as balanced, as fair as that sounds, i think, it's, unfortunately, probably not going to be sufficient to move this issue forward. we shall see. we're going to open this up for debate. i wish the debate could be about energy efficiency and the importance of this bill, things that might improve this bill relative to energy efficiency, not on other matters that both

sides know does not have this kind of broad-based support. some of the matters that want to be filed as pieces of -- as amendments that are pending or i know of that might come to the floor have not even come through our committee. this bill did come through the committee on a 19-3 vote. while the keystone pipeline has not yet come through committee, it can come to this floor and there may be enough votes to pass it. very, very close. we have about 57 to 58 votes, as i stand here. we need two or three or four more. we might get those votes as the debate goes on and as people listen to the importance of promoting america as an energy superpower. and i'm going to talk more about that later in the week. i have a lot more to say about the importance of the keystone

pipeline. but for right now, i want to ask our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to really think about the benefits to their district, to their people, to our country to support the energy efficiency bill and to agree on a vote on the keystone pipeline in hopes of getting a balanced effort moving forward. there will be time to talk about other issues that are much more controversial, although i support many of them, they are much more controversial. , if you can believe it, then than these two. even though the keystone is controversial, we still have almost 60 votes. it's worth trying for. so that is my pitch, to try to be as cooperative as we can. i think leader reid has been extremely reasonable in allowing the efficiency bill to come to the floor, knowing that there

are lots of -- hundreds of amendments that could be talked about that are extraneous to this issue, and technically, agreeing to a stand-alone vote on keystone which is a big concession for the leader of a party where the majority of our members, unfortunately, aren't supporting it. i support it. senator begich supports it. you know, senator tester supports it. senator heitkamp supports it. but as my friend on the republican side should understand this. when boehner says he can't take up an issue unless the majority of his caucus is for it, they all jump up and down and say go, speaker boehner, yes, that's the way to go. yet when harry reid tries to stand up and say listen, i'm going as far as i can go here, the majority of my caucus doesn't support keystone but i'm going to allow a vote on it and they want to just, you know, push that aside as if he is not cooperating, is disingenuous.

it's hypocritical and it is unfair. now, harry can fight his own battles, he doesn't need me to fight them for him. but let me just say to the other side i don't want to hear from any of you all, we can't get that done because even though we have the votes in the house we don't have a majority of republicans. this is about republicans and democrats sometimes crossing the aisle to do things that are right for our country and maybe not being held hostage by the side wings of our parties and i wish i had a little more help around here doing that. anyway, we're going to give it the old college try and try to get this energy efficiency bill through, get an up-or-down vote on keystone pipeline. if people will cooperate, we will get it done. if not, then we will have only 13 bills passed out of this congress in the energy committee, and we'll have to role up our sleeves and go back to work and figure out a better approach. this is the best one i could come up with.

may work, may not. i yield the floor. mr. thune: madam president,. the presiding officer: the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. mr. thune: i ask unanimous consent at the conclusion of my remarks, senator barrasso be recognized followed by the senator from arkansas, senator pryor. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: madam president, i would modify that unanimous consent request and ask that senator pryor be riefd at the conclusion of my remarks followed by senator barrasso. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: madam president, "usa today" and the pew research center released a poll that found americans are dissatisfied with the direction that the country is going. 62% of americans rate their personal financial situation as poor or fair, and a whopping 65% want the next president to pursue policies different from those of the current president.

madam president, what i would suggest is that the american people are tired, they're tired of seeing their bills go up while their paychecks don't. they're tired of having to work harder just to stay in place, to say nothing of getting ahead. and they're tired of economic promises that are often repeated but never fulfilled. our economy is supposedly been ben in recovery for years but it's a recovery that feels a lot like a recession to ordinary hardworking americans. nearly 10 million americans are unemployed, more than a third have been out of work more than six months. while unemployment finally declined last month, decline was driven more by the fact that 806,000 americans dropped out of the work force entirely than by any meaningful surge in the number of those who are employed. had the number of americans participating in the labor force stayed flat last month, the unemployment rate would have

actually gone up, not down. in fact, if the labor force participation rate were the same as it was when obama took office, our nation would have an unemployment rate of 10.4%. so what's happening is more and more people are leaving the labor force, completely discouraged. but the labor force participation rate is falling. and one of the main reasons is because so many americans have become so discouraged they've given up looking for work entirely. our our country has experienced recessions before but have always bounced back. our recoveries from this recession has been so slow that many are wondering if the last five years of sluggish growth and recession-level unemployment could be the new normal. and they're right. it could be. if we continue the policies of the last five years. madam president, the widespread dissatisfaction with the economy reflected in the pew poll may

not be what democrats want to see but it's the natural outcome of their policies. they've spent five years pursuing policies that have been unsuccessful in creating jobs but all too frequently have actually hurt job creation. take obamacare. it's hard to even know where to start when talking about the damage obamacare is wreaking on jobs in the economy. there's the obamacare tax on life saving medical devices which has cost thousands of jobs in this industry already and will cost thousands more. there's a 30-hour workweek rule which has forced businesses, state and local governments and nonprofits to cut the hours of workers in this country. there's the employer mandate which has caused businesses to rethink their plans to expand and hire new workers and then, of course, there is the burden the law places on small businesses. the title of an article in the las vegas review journal over the weekend summed it up nicely and the headline went like this, own a small business, braise for obamacare pain.

this article pointed out something often overlooked in discussions of the law that the people who suffer the most from the small business health plan cancellations that obamacare will cause in nevada around around opportunity are those who can least afford it. the kind of people the law was supposed to help. some workers and i quote the article states "are at high risk, higher risk than others of losing company sponsored coverage, professional companies such as law or engineering firms will bite the bullet and renew at higher prices but it goes on to say moderately or low skilled people making $8 to $14 an hour working for landscaping businesses, fire prevention firms or fencing companies could lose work-based coverage because the plans ost cost so much relative to salaries" -- end quote. that's right, madam president, it's low-income workers in places like nevada who stand in the greatest danger of losing their employer sponsored coverage. that's frequently the story when it comes to the democrats'

so-called job creating spolts. democrats like to -- policies. democrats like to suggest republicans are indifferent to workers' plights and only democrats have a plan to offer help but, in fact, democrats' plans to help often pose the most danger to low-income workers. there's obamacare, of course, as i mentioned but there's also the minimum wage proposal which the congressional budget office says will eliminate up to one million jobs. and those one million jobs will be eliminated. these aren't doctors' jobs, not lawyers' jobs, they're positions held by low-income workers who will be the first to suffer when employers have to cut back on hiring or hours as a result of the minimum wage hike. then, of course, there's the keystone pipeline which we're talking a little bit about today which the president has resolutely refused to approve despite the fact it that it would support 42,000 jobs without spending a dime of

taxpayer money. the people who will be hurt the worst by the president's disietion to kowtow to the environmental workers are the restaurants and the small businesses who would defendant from business during constructions. and, madam president, it's not just keystone. almost all of the president's energy policies would do serious damage to our economy and to working americans. take the restrictions on ground-level ozone level the president's e.p.a. is scheduled to release by december of this year. in 2010 the e.p.a. proposed lowering the permitted ozone levels from 75 parts per billion to 60 to 70 parts per billion. energy industry estimates suggest that lowering the ground-level ozone concentration would cost businesses -- get this -- more than $1 trillion per year. $1 trillion per year between 2020 and 2030.

job losses as a result of this measure would total a staggering 7.3 million by 2020, devastating entire industries. most especially u.s. manufacturing. my own state of south dakota would lose tens of thousands of jobs in manufacturing, natural resources and mining on construction. and just to take a look at what this would actually do, these are the areas under these proposals that have been put forward, and today there are probably a couple hundred counties in the country that are not in compliance that what are we call nonattainment areas, most urban, heavily populated areas of the the country. if you look at what their proposal would do, madam president, on this map, this map right here represents those who would be affected if you went to 60 billion -- went to 60 parts per billion as opposed to the 75 pars per billion today. instead of focusing on those counties in this country who are

not currently in attainment and getting them to full attainment first, we're talking about expanding dramatically the impact that this would have across the country. look at my state of south dakota, for example. we'd have areas that wouldn't be in attainment. we don't think of south dakota as being a place where we have air -- proshes with clean air, ozone issues. but this is clearly a regulation which if put in effect would cost the economy literally billions and billions of dollars, in one estimate, $1 trillion per year between 2020 and 2030. madam president, if you look at the -- where this hurts people the lows most, it's the people that are the lower and middle-income americans. today the president will have hold press events to raise alarm about climate change and push for more job killing, industry-crippling policies, but it will be interesting to see if he spares a line or two

for the millions of americans whose jobs will be lost and households budgets shattered as a result of his proposals. this week the senate will consider the shaheen-portman legislation. i plan to introduce three amendments to protect. the first amendment will require congress to vote up and down on any e.p.a. regulation that has an annual cost of more than a billion dollars. pretty straightforward but the people's -- let the people's representatives vote. if you're going to put regulations that cost more than a billion dollars, let's have congress vote on those. the second amendment would print the e.p.a. from finalizing greenhouse gas regulations if the g.a.o. determine those will raise energy pries pryces or cost jobs. so if the department of energy and the g.a.o. determine the regulations will not impact jobs or energy prices, the e.p.a. could go forward and finalize those regulations. it is time to be honest with the

american people about the costs of these regulations. taken together, these two amendments are a strong step toward placing a check on e.p.a.'s regulatory train wreck. the final amendment i'll offer, madam president, is specific to the administration's upcoming proposal on ground-level ozone which is the most expensive in e.p.a.'s history. the costs are so great when the e.p.a. first proposed lower levels in 2010, the white house delayed those regulations until after the president's reelection. my amendment is straightforward. it would require the e.p.a. to consider the costs of regulations. the e.p.a. isn't even allowed to consider costs when setting new regulations. my amendment would fix that. additionally, my amendment would force the e.p.a. to focus on the worst areas of smog before dramatically expanding this regulation to the rest of the country. as imansed on the map here -- as imansed on the map here, 227

counties don't even meet the new standard. it makes sense to focus on these urban areas before expanding these ozone regulations to areas of west virginia where we clearly don't have a smog problem. 85% of these counties would have to achieve full compliance with the existing standard before the e.p.a. could move forward with a lower level that dramatically expands the reach of owe does on regulations. i hope that the senate will get the chance to vote on these proposals. i also hope the senate will get a chance to vote on the keystone amendment so that we can get those 42,000 jobs opened up to american workers. it's been a real long time since we've had a real energy debate in the senate. but given the sluggish economy and the danger that the president's energy proposals pose to any future growth, i'm hoping that the majority leader will decide it's time for a debate. madam president, the election-year agenda offered by democrats and the president is just more of the same job-killing, growth-stifling

legislation the democrats have been offering for the past five years. like the legislation the democrats and the president have offered for the last five years, it will do the worst injury to the americans who can least afford it. pundits may warn that our current economic malaise is the new normal, but it doesn't have to be a this way. we can get the economy going again, lift the heavy government regulations and create jobs and we can make it easier, not harder, for middle-class workers to find stability and for lower-income workers to make it into the middle class. according to the pew-"usa today" poll, 65% of americans want the next president to pursue different policies. it is stimulus a couple more years until the next -- it is still a couple more years until the next presidential election but there is no reason that the congress can't pursue different policies today. the american people have been struggling long enough. i yield the floor.

mr. pryor: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: thank you. i want to thank my colleague from wyoming who allowed me to jump in front of him in line. i am sorry for my voice today. i sound a little bit like daffy duck. i've got a cold and am working through right now. i want to talk for a few minutes about something that here in this country we take for grants, and that's electricity. you know, every since the rural electioelectrification act passn the 1930's -- for the most part, not every single person, every person has had access to electricity. basically, that program has basicked extremely well and continues to work. and as we all know, madam president, you can you come from a rural state, sometimes you have investor-owned utilities. sometimes you have these cooperative-type utilities and

sometimes you have municipalities. i rise today to really focus on something that the arkansas electric cooperatives have been involved in, and that is i want to thank 25 power linemen and the 12 electric co-ops in arkansas who recently completed a mission to electrify two remote guatemalan villages. and they combined with the this project, the 2013 project, the arkansas cier cooperative linemn have provided electricity to 770 guatemalan villages. the rural electrification initiative is part of the arkansas, what we call, "organization raiserback guatemala "kings that started in 2012 in cooperation with the national rural electric cooperative international. after a year of plan ago, the

linemen are arrived in guatemala on march 26 and then traveled approximately nine hours to these remote villages of las forest to light up the land. i commend them for giving their time, n.r.c., and know-how to improve the lives of hundreds of guatemalans that before this they didn't even know. because electricity is a critical element to improving the quality of life, the quality of health care, the quality of education, and some of the basics that we often take for granted in this country, like clean water and many other vital services. this area in guatemala processes and exports coffee beans that end up with companies like nescafe, mcdonald's, starbucks and other coffee outlets. this new, reliable access to electricity will help these

villagers increase the quantity and quality of their locally grown coffee, resulting in economic prosperity and a better quality of life for present and future generations. so they're going to be even more connected with the global economy because of what these people from the arkansas electric co-ops did to help these folks. i know that senator boozman cannot be here today, otherwise he'd be here sitting over at his desk saying a few words. but he did pass on for me just a brief statement he wanted to read. senator boozman wrote, "we are proud of the arkansas electric cooperatives of arkansas's willingness to support people around the world who need safe, affordable, and reliable electricity. operation laserback has been a real success that will result in improved economic prosperity, a higher quality of life, and more opportunities for guatemalans today and for future generations. sharing our knowledge, expertise, and technology will

make a lasting impact. these guatemalan villages will never be the same thanks to the progress made by the volunteers of the arkansas electric cooperatives of arkansas." i would like to now recognize -- we have a few of those people with us today. duane hiley, the c.e.o. and then kirkly thomas, who is the vice president of the arkansas electric cooperative cooperation in arkansas. mel coalman, c.e.o., paul garrison, one of the linemen who actually went on the trip, and i mentioned to him earlier, madam president -- i said, what's the first thing these people will get? and he said, lights. you know, naturally that's what they're going to try to get. so again we appreciate them. and joe anne emerson, longtime colleague from the house side, president and c.e.o. of nrcea.

in addition to their time and support, the group also trained local linemen, they donated infrastructure materials and distributed humanitarian aid items to these local villages. i want to thank the co-ops and acknowledge them for how they're making not only arkansas better but also making the world better. thank you, madam president. with that, i yield the floor. mr. barrasso: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you. today president obama is doing teltell televised events and talking about climate change. i also want to talk about environmental stewardship today, madam president. i want to talk about how what's going on in some of our states where they're actually doing something, not just talking about it. today the senate and congressional western caucuses are issuing a new report called "washington gets it wrong; states get it right."

"washington gets it wrong; states get it rievment" the report shows how regulations imposed by washington are undermining the work being done at the state level. the work being done to manage our land, our natural resources and to protect our air and our water. now, more often than not, washington regulations and a one-size-fits-all approach mandates do get it wrong. in the west we take very seriously our commitment to ensuring that the health and viability of land, of wildlife and environment -- that's at both the local and the state level. federal agencies like the environmental protection agency and the department of interior, wwell, they like to think of themselves as the ultimate protectors of our nation's skies and open spacesment but we've seen time and time again that the work being done at the state level is more reasonable, more effective, and certainly less heavyhanded. now, thousands of people are

working across the west to protect their communities. these are people who live in the west, not bureaucrats in washington offices. nobody is better qualified than they are. those folks who actually live in the west because they actually walk the land, they breathe the acres the land and the air that they're trying to protect. our our report looks at the work being done by state agencies to protect not just the land they live and work on but also the people who rely on the health and the safety of that land p. as this report demonstrates, extreme regulations imposed by washington undermine -- undermine -- the work being done at the state level. whether it is to manage lands, manage natural resources, protect air and water, or conserve species. when you look at the work of these state agencies, as the western caucuses have done in this report, it is clear that when it comes to conservation and environmental efforts, the

states do get it right. more often than not, washington gets it wrong. it's time for washington to stop the overreach, stop their overreaching regulations, and the continual drip, drip, drip of mandates. it's time for washington to stop getting it wrong and start recognizing how states get it right. the report has details about specific things different states are doing, but i just want to mention in ou four categories. the first is protecting species on the ground. this includes conservation policies that states are developing, where they work with industry and landowners to protect species without hampering multiple-use policies, that's multiple use of the land. second, states are showing the right way to protect our water, our land, and our air. they're putting in place ideas that are tailored to the needs

of their own comiewrntses. they're looking at what's unique about their state and the best way for people to solve problems locally. third, states are promoting access to fish and wildlife. states understand that they need to manage and protect land and waters in a way that allows for public spaces to be enjoyed. that means ensuring that those spaces remain intact for future generations. so these are called natural resources for a reason. they're meant to be enjoyed by all of us, not just sealed off under washington's lock and key. fourth, the report looks at what states are doing right when it comes to in-state scientific and support staff. state agencies are employing thousands of people who live in the communities that they're trying to protect. now, who has more incentive to protect local environments? the people who are living there the people who are working there, the people who are raising their children in that's

communities, or some bureaucrat locked in a washington, d.c., office? who knows more about the specific unique features of the state or a local area and what will work best there? the senate and western -- the senate and congressional western caucuses have put out this report to highlight a few of the initiatives that we believe are working. i would hope that the president will take some time today to not just talk but to actually listen and to read our report and see some of the ways states are getting it right and washington is getting it wrong. and others are interested and like to read the report, they can certainly find it at my web site, www.barrasso.gov. site, www.barrasso.gov. >> the senate this morning voted to advance a bill that would provide incentives for energy efficient manufacturing and

promoting energy savings in buildings. party leaders negotiate behind the scenes for approval of keystone xl pipeline project. the senate as you heard in recess. they will be until about 2:15 eastern or so. they are attending their weekly party lunches and also taking the official photograph of the 113th congress. that could mean the senate is in a little bit later than the 2:15 time we had set there. in any case watch live coverage of the senate when they return here on c-span2. off the floor today, the senate armed services committee has been in meetings since 9:30 this morning or so hearing from military leaders and officials on military compensation. the head of armed forces five branches along with joints chief of staff and vice-chair are testifying. that hearing is still underway. you can see it live on our companion network c-span3. coming up this afternoon, more live coverage. the senate foreign relations committee will hear about russia's intervention in ukraine with officials from the

treasury, state and defense departments. that is live at 3:00 p.m. eastern also on c-span3. >> the glass-steagall act that was passed in 1933 after fdr came to power was a very clear line between the speculative versions and services and things that a bank could do and the deposits it took and services it provided to regular individuals and small businesses there. was a very, very clear distinction. the bankers were on the same side as fdr the population was on the same side as fdr and things became stable for many, many decades, several decades after that. you contrast to what happened in the wake of the 2008 crisis which has been a much more expensive crisis for the general economy, for the actual unemployment level, not sort of tag line unemployment level. for what was lost to individuals

throughout and relative to the bailouts and subsidies that have been given since, and dodd-frank came along and did nothing remotely like dissecting speculation from depositors and traditional banking activities. >> a look at the relationship between 1600 pennsylvania avenue and wall street. saturday night at 10:00 eastern, and sunday night at 9:00 or after words. part of booktv this weekend on c-span2 online our book club selection, it calls you back, by former gang member and community activist, louisiana j. rodriguez. join other readers to discuss the look at booktv.org. >> the reason i did this book is martha. when she arrived in berlin with the family, she, she was in love

with what she referred to as the nazi revolution. she was enthralled by the nazis which e which really struck me as complete surprising thing given what we all know, hindsight. how could you be enthralled with the nazi revolution but there she was. >> aerik larson, unique voices from 25 years of book notes and c-span conversations. available at your favorite book seller. on monday the defense department released its fiscal year 2013 report on sexual assaults in the military. major general jeffrey snow, head of the dod sexual assault and prevention office talked about those findings. we heard from the defense department's federal advisory committee which was created to review the systems used to investigate and prosecute sexual assaults under the uniform code of military justice. this is a 90-minute portion from yesterday's meeting. >> all right.

general snow, we see that you do have some further information that responds to a question from one of the panel members. perhaps you could go ahead and do that for us. >> thanks, ma'am. i actually appreciate the opportunity and again for the group, said if you have the breakdown and we do it is reflected on that slide. so for my comments i mentioned the bumper which is, when the department take action in every case where it has jurisdiction and sufficient evidence to do so and i quoted the 73%. the reason i could do that i can start at the top of this and walk you through. so when we say fiscal year, exactly that fiscal year. if you look at it, that number, the total subjects you see of 3858. the number that come out of that, that's why we call it the waterfall, 624 of those, each of these have to be investigated impartially. in some cases that investigation is not complete during the fiscal year. so in this case 624 of these

are, investigation is still pending and that will be detailed in our next report. so that gives you the 3234. i mentioned some of these allegations are unfounded based on that investigation. so that is a 437. that gives you the 2797. and some cases you could see that the subject, accused a either civilian, foreign, unknown or desserter. in some cases unfortunately in some of these cases the alleged perpetrator even after a thorough investigation you don't know. that happened in 503 cases. that brings you down to 2294. i made the comment, some of these remain under civilian jurisdiction. so in this case it is 145. so that gives you the 2149. and then what we do, we break that down. so you if look at the corresponding number, that 2149 where command action was

considered, then you see the breakdown. so 838 court-martial charges were preferred. 210 were non-judicial punishment. 139 were adverse action or discharge. and 382, you could see they were, some type of action was taken but it ended up not being on a sexual assault crime. other than that. okay. then you had a number there, the 580, where command action was not possible. you see that is broken down into insufficient evidence, 382, 189 where the victims declined. i have to say, and again, many of you have much more experience than i am, are hopeful or optimistic that the legal counsel will begin to drive that number down so they're getting the advice that they need, so fewer of them will decline to participate. but unfortunately that happens, okay? and then nine of those you could

see statute of limitations exceeded. so, ma'am, that's the best i can do in one slide. hopefully that is helpful. >> i think it has been very helpful. miss fernandez. >> just one more quick question. dean shank brought it up to me during the intermission was in your records you're showing a lot of the reports are assaults that happened prior to enlistment in the military. as you said before, you're dealing with people who have come in and all the problems that they have when they come in. one of the things that we've seen on the victim services committee is that one of the key indications of getting assaulted in the military is a prior assault, prior to getting into the military. i want to tell you, looking at those numbers and trying to create programs that can address those individuals. >> answer is yeah. i will do the first part and tell you that, i mean, when i

make the call at 10%, that happened prior, those are not reflected -- they are, but they fall outside, fall under the category of under civilian jurisdiction. because it happened prior to them coming in, so that is the 10%. but the second part if you want to respond to that. >> absolutely. as a matter of fact a number of the services are putting together programs to address the folks with history of sexual violence. clearly everyone can go into mental health counseling provided by the department of defense or each of the military services and address those issues. one of the challenges is is that when folks come in they want a new life. they want something different and a lot of times the military is that bridge. and so trying to, we have to be able to offer those services in such a way that allow them to, number one, is to deal with

their past and their history but at the same time is remain somewhat anonymous and stay out of the civil because no one wants to jump up and say, me, me, i was a victim earlier in life. part of that sensitivity that we want to be sure that we're paying attention to. so i know the, a number of the services are looking at, how can we deploy those kinds of services and balance those two interests but they are working on it. >> thank you. anything else? general, thank you, once again. >> thank you for the opportunity. >> we're going to now go to the report out of the comparative systems subcommittee. and beth, while you're setting up, let me just explain as i did in my opening remarks, this is an interim assessment that's being presented by the subcommittee to the rsp, to the full panel.

this assessment is, will be deliberated and finalized by the full panel. it is not the report of the panel. our purpose is to accept and discuss and deliberate the findings of each of our subcommittees. maria, is there anything you want to add to that or does that cover it? >> that's fine. >> okay. i'm sorry, does everyone have a copy of this in the audience? great, professor? >> [inaudible] >> i would like to start out by thanking the staff -- [inaudible]

all of us have to work under the direction of colonel to make this possible. that is a pretty -- [inaudible] >> got it. >> i also am here today to -- tell the subcommittee about the comparative systems subcommittee which was going to bring subject matter experts to help the members of this panel with these big issues. the try to understand the difference between military and civilian -- not talking about one thing when we talk about military response. -- types of installations that military members serve at and -- [inaudible] of the.

-- encompass many different approaches to the problem of sexual assaults of the so the subcommittee, is four members of panel, that is judge -- [inaudible] broad expertise is military engagement and prosecution, civilian investigations and prosecutions and, entire process of responding to sexual assaults. so, we have a lot to tell you. in order to not make understand -- to make it understandable we'll focus on framing issues in a way that will make it make some sense. -- [inaudible] >> professor, could we just stop for main. i want to make sure, everyone, do you have a mic up there? >> integrated mike in the podium. >> as long as everyone can hear you. and also, i don't know whether

your charts are going to be, or you are going to be picked up by y span? c-span? are you good? thank you. >> thank you. thank you. so there are nearly 80 recommendations we'll make covering six different subject areas regarding surveys and data collection which you heard from the office, which is a critical foundation for our understanding of the problem and solutions all the way through sentencing, the full spectrum of response systems to sexual assault. today we'll present those findings. we'll seek to frame the issues and we'll try to give the panel a sense of how and why military responses is different from civilian responses and we think i am problem is possible. before i start i want to encourage questions from the panel as we walk through these. i also want to emphasize this is an interim report. unlike our sister subcommittees, we haven't finished.

but we're close and, these do represent a very close to final version of the recommendations that we'll submit to the panel but we haven't quite finalized those. as wave seen in plenty of our deliberations and in the presentations of witnesses the devil is indeed in the details sometimes and we do have to hammer out some of the terminology and some of the precise avenues we think should be followed going forward. before i start to, i do want to note that this is a complex and tragic and intimate subject matter to tackle. the nature of it makes it very hard to see clearly. that means it is hard to see the problem and it is hard to see the solution and i want to emphasize that we're not alone in trying to device solutions here and trying to understand the problem and we stand on the soldiers of many researchers, civilian and military officers and jurisdictions that are now engaged in review of military

justice practices, military response systems and civilian response civiles to this overall problem. okay, with that, i'm growing to turn to our slide. so first, this is a list of who is on the comparative systems subcommittee. as i mentioned there are four members of the response systems panel and then six subject matter experts. i will introduce some of those subject matter experts to you later as they help me present the materials in our report. so here's our mission. which is a little bit to do in 18 but 12 months. investigate military and civilian systems from the beginning through the end of the military justice response to 6:00 wall assault. so specifically investigation, prosecution, and adjudication for adult sexual assault and related offenses. we did have nine objectives. i will lay those out for you next. so the end result here that you will see today in this interim phase of the subcommittees' work

is 77 recommendations and we split those into six different categories. so these are the objectives that were assigned to us by the secretary of defense. first assess the effectiveness of military systems. this includes the uc m.j. definitions, administration, investigation, prosecution and adjudication and that mandate was set out to us with the time limits of 2007 to 2011. we smashed through those barriers and looked really right up to the present to the extent possible because we continued to get data as we did this morning to update our understanding of the problem. . .

>> in part because of the high turnover of military personnel. so we, we assess the training of the many different actors in response to sexual assaults, and we compare that to what happens in federal and state systems. number five there, another objective, was to look at conviction rates for adult sexual assault and compare it to the extent possible with civilian, similar civilian numbers. six identified best practices from civilian jurisdictions. as you heard in this morning, there are some best practices from the military that civilians, civilians interested, civilian institutions -- not just criminal justice systems -- are adopting to. number seven, address weaknesses of legislative initiatives.

now, congress stands still while the systems panels works, and this was a little tough. i appreciate the efforts to try to keep us up to speed on the many proposals by congress to address this issue. so we'll see in our recommendations we specifically address some of the proposals and some of the impacts of the initiatives already adopted by congress. number eight, this is a very long objective that we set up for you in text, but really this is about collecting information to populate a database of potential sex offenders that would enable investigators to be more effective going forward even if the victim who identifies that suspected perpetrator in a report decides not to pursue an investigation. so we make a recommendation about that in the -- that you'll see later. and then finally, assess opportunities for clemency. appropriateness of clemency and the way it's used. so in this assessment of clemency has also arisen because

of changes congress has made in the authority of convening authority's power to alter the findings of a court-martial at sentencing, after sentencing, and we'll talk about our reaction to those changes and our suggestions for moving forward. so just to be clear on what the format is here, we're reporting out to panel with an interim assessment of what the subcommittee thinks are the right, sets out the right path for going forward here. the final report of the subcommittee will be submitted in a couple of weeks as judge jones set out, and then the panel will deliberate on that subcommittee report. so how did we do the? thirty panel meetings and subcommittee meetings and preparatory sessions to gather information. and in those meetings we heard from more than 380 presenters. and the list there gives you a sense of all the different parts of the response that exists out there and our effort to try to hear from as many, as many interested and as many expert

individuals and agencies as we could. so it runs from statisticians, experts on social science and statisticians right down to people on the ground in the military justice system and civilian jurisdictions where they're responding through sexual violence units, special victims units to respond to sexual assault. and the last bullet there, we did this -- we managed this flow of information with a web site that posted much of it due to the efforts of our staff and also multiple and progressive deliberation sessions where we tried to break down the different parts of our scope, assign them to expert members of the subcommittee, bring it back to the subcommittee to deliberate and then hammer out our final recommendations. i'll say that not everybody agrees on what to do next. just to make that clear. okay. these are site visits that we undertook in order to try to see to the extent we could given the short time that we had what's

happening on the ground elsewhere. that is, besides the impression that we were getting from the leaders of military response teams and civilian response teams reporting in to us. so we, the members of the subcommittee, committed to making these site visits, and everybody -- just about everybody participated in these site visits, and our staff participated in every one which made it possible for us to go. so we went to the first few there are the civilian agencies or locations we visited. the forensics science center and the georgia bureau of investigations laboratory, made sure we understood the forensics side of a successful prosecution part of this. next, the philadelphia sexual assault response center to understand the ways in which civilians' organizations are integrating the various aspects of responding to a report of a sexual assault. and then the rest there are military installations that we visited. army and air force, navy and

marine corps installations we visited, and we talked at those installations to people from all the different aspects of the response to a report of sexual assault. we heard about prevention, we heard about the reporting process, to whom these are reported, we saw some reports happening in action. we talked to the first responders. we talked to investigators. we talked to defense counsel. we talked to prosecutors. we talked to commanders. and we tried hard to get a sense of the entire chain of events that happens when a report triggers these responses in the military. in addition to the site visits, we also collected as much information as possible. so we heard from witnesses, we visited these sites, and then we requested information on the many subjects that we weren't entirely clear about what was happening at this time. so that included more than 150 requests for information to the secretary of defense and to the service secretaries, also input from victim advocacy

organizations. we have and we will receive more at this hearing, public comment. we've got those both in testimony from individuals who came before us, but also written submissions that the public made. in the site visits, as judge jones specified earlier, we made clear that the comments we received were not for attribution, hoping to get as clear and unvarnished a look as we could in those visits, and finally we transcribed the meetings. so all of our deliberations were transcribed very bait m so that -- very bait tim so that our staff could see how the deliberations went in the process of crafting the final report. and then the last piece of methodology here, we also looked at a lot of documents. so as i mentioned earlier, we're not the only ones to look at this problem. a lot of others have looked at it, and our analysis would be incomplete were we not to reckon with those reports. those constitute much value, much information and value and a

lot of recommendations on the past, many of which have been implemented, some of which which have been left hanging. we looked at those in analyzing the recommendations, we also reviewed the transcripts of witness testimony, and we assessed the data that was available getting updates from the military and from civilian organizations whenever possible on the numbers that we could possibly compare. so this is the structure of the recommendations that i'll set out for you today. the findings and recommendations are in six categories. we start with trying to define the problem. i said this was complex to see, it's tough to see the problem. we'd like to share with you our perspective on how we do and don't understand what the problem is right now. that's the survey section at the top here, because it's really the surveys on which we reryed; that is -- relied, that is in assessing the problems in the military. we heard a lot of testimony, and we want to characterize what that testimony taught us about how the surveys work in the military compared to civilian

surveys to which they're often set next to. next we'll talk about informations, training -- investigations, training, clemency and proposed legislation. and the comments about legislation appear in some instances throughout different sections of the report. i don't want to hide the ball for you too long, so i want to tell you what our big conclusions were at the start and set out some themes that run throughout this many dozens of recommendations. so, first, crime victimization data is difficult to collect. we need it to complement the workplace assessments and our understanding of the environment and the culture that's out there on the ground that some of the public health surveys that we do give us more information on. so without crime victimization data from the military, it's tough for us to compare the victimization numbers from the military to civilian jurisdictions.

second, training is absolutely essential. there's no military unit that doesn't realize this. it's certainly true in responses to sexual assault. in addition to training, collaboration with civilian experts and with more expert military members is essential to being effective on the ground because of the breadth of the reach of the services' installations, the diffuse nature of where persons get assigned and the need to leverage the experience that's out there so that we're effective on the ground. because we don't have the same length of time in similar duties in the military that we do in the civil sector. third, we need to balance the emphasis on prosecuting the cases that should go to trial with resources for defense counsel. this is important to protect the rights of the accused and to protect the legitimacy of the military justice system itself. we can't have a system that tilts so far towards prosecution that it runs roughshod over individuals who are prosecuted for crimes.

three more. we need to make sure that investigators and prosecutors comply with the rights of victims and the requirements that have already been set out and continue to be elaborated for those persons who have the courage to come forward as victims of a sexual assault. they need to be treated with dignity and respect, that needs to be a central premise throughout our responses, and we would be remiss to not put that in the comparative systems look here because it's certainly a premise that underlies all the effective response to civilian sexual assault as well as military that's out there. number five is a little technical, but we just have to standardize terms here. we need an easier way to understand what's happening across the services and compare it to what's happening across civil sectors. the same problem compares what's happening in los angeles to what's happening in new york or iowa to florida. but we have an advantage in the military in that we can actually

establish what the reporting process ought to be, and we can create data that will, in fact, be comparable. in order to do that, though, we need to set that out, and we make some recommendations on how we can do that. because although we have a uniform code of military justice and a single department of defense, we have a lot of commitment to different ways of counting tar out there in the bran ofs of -- branches of service that leads to what are reasonable distinctions, but leads if reporting and in -- in reporting and in terminology that actually leave us unable to make the distinctions and understand success and assess progress given the way it is right now. and then finally, by granting military judges greater authority, authority that's closer to what judges have in civilian criminal justice systems, we can enhance fairness, we can improve efficiency, rationality, and we may also be able to improve the competence of victims -- confidence in victims of the treatment they'll receive from

the beginning to the end of of the system. okay. so i'm going to pause here and stop talking for a moment and introduce one of our subcommittee members, our expert subcommittee members to you, to introduce the topic of -- oh, i'm going to do surveys first, right? i'll do surveys first. i'm already looking for help, and i shouldn't be yet. [laughter] so i'll tackle -- this is most related to what you heard from safro which is the assessment of the slides, and, in fact, the assessment that dr. gal braipt put up here right before i started s. so we'll do the surveys first and then informations. so -- investigations. we think there should be a crime victimization survey that's developed in conjunction with the bureau of statistics to actually assess the incidence of crime in the military. this would enable comparisons on common principles rather than what we have right now which is comparing a workplace assessment to crime victimization survey numbers.

our challenge there is that the surveys that estimate incidents in the military don't necessarily overcount, undercount, but don't count in the same way that civilian crime victimization count. and because of that, we really don't get numbers that are useful in terms of drawing comparison. so the last bullet there mentions that public health surveys are distinction from crime victimization surveys, and tsa because public health surveys apply to the military just as much as they do outside the military, but today don't give us numbers about this thing which is crime victimization which is when we use uncertain definitions, it leads to confusion. so the first recommendation there is that we have a crime victimization survey so we get numbers that we can compare. second, we want to define some of the terms in these surveys. we think we should use the uniform code of military justice, because it exists, and it sets out what sexual assault constitutes.

this would enable us to actually have data that we can compare unless we change the statute again which will make it difficult to compare and which we think might be a good idea. so recognize some of our recommendations exist in tension with each other, but we do think that comparing data over time is important, and unless we use the actual definitions of crime when we collect information on crime victimization, we won't be able to assess whether those crimes are being reckoned with properly. this will also help us track law enforcement and prosecution definitions because we'll stick to the same language and terminology throughout, will help us better deal with the unknown nature of the -- [inaudible] of this problem because of the fact of it being so underreported as a crime and will help us assess success of some of the programs we've already implemented. next on the surveys, the workplace gender relations assessment which is the survey that the military has used to

which general snow referred and i did as well earlier this morning is what the numbers about the actual incidents of sexual assault in the military have been drawn from. that survey is intended to assess attitudes, identify areas for improvement and then revise workplace policies as needed. it's not structured in a way that gives us reliable and comparable crime victimization data. its definitions don't match the definitions of crimes. it's certainly not irrelevant to the question of crime victimization, it's a critical backdrop, but it can't result in numbers just by its very design that lead to something we can compare specifically to the sort of crime victimization survey that is the bureau of justice statistics does in the civil sector. okay. the next thing on surveys that we recommend here, this is a not-surprising recommendation. we want to comet to improve response -- continue to improve response rates and not only improve them, but keep them from getting worse because of the extent to which we use surveys to understand critical things

tar happening. the -- that are happening. the last workplace assessment survey was 24%. that's low. that's lower than other military surveys. we got much higher at the national service academies in part because of the nature of those service academies and our ability to deliver those surveys and get responses in a way that we can't do with the force out there at all the different military installations that they are. so in general, social science experts tell us that response rates under 80% require a nonbiased analysis. and so you can see the bias that's apparent in that limited response rate to the workplace gender assessment, gender relations assessment. that leads us to some unreliability of that data, and the unevenness over time leaves us really not knowing what quite the actual incident rate has been. there's some other things that also affect our ability to understand what's out there, but this is one of them, the low response rates. we want to keep working to get higher response rates.

we have to survey to get data on unreported information, but because that's so common in this particular area of crime, we have to make sure we get responses that we analyze appropriately. and related to that, we want more help from outside analyzing the data that we do collect. many of behavioral scientists to whom we spoke who study crime were excited about the extent of data that's actually been collected in the military surveys. if we release that data and we publish the nonresponse bias analysis that's been done by safro, we will enable more independent researchers to better understand what's happening in and outside of the military, because that information and the way in which the questions have been set up has been done in accordance with a lot of the best practices out there. we'd like that information shared so we can collectively get better at understanding those problems. there's some specific suggestions there, too, from efforts that could flow from sharing that data; targeted prevention and understanding environmental factors.

because our harm reduction and prevention efforts can take place on a broad scale, but the targeted efforts that specify particular things we know can lead to faster improvement and a sense of momentum that will enable the entire effort to proceed more effectively. okay, number six on the survey recommendations, not only we want to release the data that's already been collected, but we want an expert advisory panel. general snow referred to rand as, safro had outsourced to rand. that's probably the wrong term, had selected rand to do the next survey. and they're developing that. finish we think they should consult with experts, especially the experts who came from the bureau of justice statistics. the committee on national statistics there, specialists in studying sexual violence who can help us make sure we're tracking best practices there. the survey design, the survey design can lead to tremendous

differences in response rates, and because of those -- that is, response data, tremendous difference in outcomes. because of that, the crafting and the implementation of the survey are really critical to us getting useful information out of it. okay. terminology slide. i'll just let this wash over you for a moment. [laughter] the terms that a we use here are not consistent across the services, the branches of service, so you may see some that are unfamiliar to you even if you have a book of military acronyms already in your held. there's also some acronyms that refer to more than one thing. number two and then the last one on the page, for instance, the special victim capability is something different than the special victim counsel. so the special victim capability is that set of resources that enable effective prosecution that includes a few different persons in that that i'll talk about. the special victim counsel is a new set of lawyers we've

integrated into the process. so these are some of the words that i'll use if i'm staying on track when i refer to these, but you should be familiar with in terms of understanding the way we talk about these in the military. okay. here's the special victim capabilities slide. i'm not sure you can read that from where you are, but let me just summarize. the top line is the civilian general approach, and the lower line is the military general approach, and it starts with an advocate for the victim. so in the civil sector, the advocate is from a nonprofit organization who is sometimes a medical person, sometimes is from the police department, sometimes a sexual assault nurse examiner. they get support there too. so that's the victim advocate. for the military there's a sort of more robust accompaniment through the process that begins with a victim advocate, the sexual assault response coordinator and then the special victim counsel from the start. and that second block that is

empty is a carryover, because that team of persons in the military who start, actually work through the process with the victim after a report happens. the victim witness liaison which is listed both in the civilian and military lines of this slide is designed to make sure that the prosecution process, the criminal justice process gets translated to the victim in a way that makes sense and keeps the victim engaged in the process. and you can see the individuals that the military assigns throughout these different processes. this is about the integration of investigators, prosecution and all the support, victim advocates and special victims counsel that we assign to victims as they move through the criminal justice process or observe the criminal justice process when the offender they've named in their report, the case moves ahead. okay. so i'm going to turn to russ now to talk more about this, because he's our investigative expert.

so mr. russell strand has almost 40 years of law enforcement experience on education, investigation and consulting. he's right now chief of the u.s. army's police school behavioral sciences education and training division, and he was an important -- he has been an important leader on these issues for some time, has been the architect of some of our responses not only in the military, but in the civil sector as well to investigations. and i'd like for him to flag some of the issues he thinks are most important here. so, i guess, do you want to come up here, russ, to talk? i'm going to ask him to talk about what he thinks is most important here, and he'll run through the slides. and he'll correct me as i get through the slides. >> thank you, dean hillman. it's been a real honor to work not only with the subcommittee, but the great staff and the leadership of dean hillman. what's been equally fulfilling is to be able to go across our nation and look at all the professionals, both military and civilian, that are really working hard every single day to

get after this most difficult scourge that we call sexual assault. i'm going to be highlighting some -- i'm just going to do an overview of some of these, and we'll get into the details as we go along on our investigative recommendations, and i wanted to echo major general snow's assessment that this is a dynamic moving train. it's far different than we are today. the way we were investigating ten years ago is different than today, five years. and so every year we just seem to be getting better and better at it. what we're realizing and what we've realized is that investigating sexual assaults is far more complicated, far more difficult and many more biases than the average homicide case. homicide cases, in my opinion, are much easier to work tan your typical alcohol-related sexual assault, than your typical one-on-one sexual assault. one of the things i hated, that term he said/she said because there is no such thing as a he

said/she said case. there are far more offenders that we need to look to. so as we've looked across the spectrum and we've looked at some of the great agencies out there in the civilian world and compared them within the great agencies of the civilian world, i'm going to add a couple more terms. the people that work within military criminal investigative organizations are, in fact, agents. and we often confuse agents and investigators. and so you'll see some of that even in our recommendations. but in the military we have, basically, a three-tiered law enforcement response system. we have patrol, whether it's military police in the army, whether it's security forces in the air force, some of the other security forces, military police in the navy, coast guard response systems, that's their first tier. our patrol are generally told and trained to respond. they are not investigators. they will not do anything other than protecting the crime scene,

making sure the victim is safeguarded, making sure everything's safe and making sure people get to the right places and the investigators notified. the second tier is what we call in the army military police investigators, what security forces in the air force call security forces investigators, what the navy callings their masters of arms and also what the marine corps and the navy call cid investigators. now, there's a difference between cid investigators and u.s. army cid agents. basically, that second tier will handle the vast majority of misdemeanors and also some felonies. up until the recent changes that congress paid for the military criminal investigative organizations, military police investigators -- well, actually, security force investigators and some of the navy investigators were handling some of the nonpenetrateive crimes. so to add to your long list of

abbreviations, there we go. i'm going to highlight just a couple of things that i really feel strongly about in some of our recommendations. certainly, the volume of cases from even the last several years has increased exponentially at a time when the air force and the navy were told, you know, you're going to shift a big portion of your sexual assault investigations only to the ncios. and so our reports have significantly gone up. and my hope, and i think it's the hope of everybody in this room, is that we're going to continue to see a significant rise in reports of sexual assault. because until we get even close to that prevalence, we've got a lot of work to do. our hope is that we're going to see a 50% increase every year. but what does that do to the investigative climate? what we'd like to do is revisit the opportunity to maybe bring in some of our investigators again, our second-tier folks under the auspices of the military investigator organizations to conduct some of these nonpenetrative cases and then have them reviewed, worked

for and reviewed by the military organizations. we think that mights provide some relief, some sharing of some of the resources. we have a significant amount of training that we do as has already been highlighted by dean hillman, and i think it's in that training that really makes a difference between how our agents see these crimes and the complexities in alcohol-facilitated, same-sex, marital sexual assaults, just the whole spectrum, the neuroscience that we're now bringing into all of this and some of the new innovative techniques we're exploring. i will say that the navy criminal investigators service, the air force office of special investigation, the army criminal investigation decision and also the coast guard, coast guard investigators have all done a tremendous job in seeing, in meeting these training requirements. the big difficulty we have is oftentimeses advance training is taken out of -- [inaudible]

advanced training is, you know, the services have to give up some funding, dok has to give up some -- dod has to give up some funding, but there's only so much in that pie. as we progress and the need for advanced training continues, when we take the eye off the ball -- and someday we will. someday we won't be having hearings and all kinds of interesting committees and everything else to get at this problem. we're going to move somewhere else eventually. what our concern is that funding may also move somewhere else. so very much like back in the '80s when we were talking about child abuse and domestic violence, congress decides that we're going to give specially appropriated funds only for family advocacy. we're asking for the same consideration in the area of training for advanced training for investigators, for agents. because if we don't have that, our concern is now that we're taking some money out, you know, as we're actually shrinking the military, the budgets are shrinking, there's going to be a lot of competitiveness, and so we don't want some of the money

we're now using to go back into the operational requirements of the services to meet other needs, so we're asking for special congressional mandates for funding. victim collateral misconduct was a huge issue as we've seen, and we've compared between civilians and military. in a civilian world, you know, if i'm a detective and i'm interviewing somebody about underage drinking or interviewing somebody about smoking marijuana or some other misconduct that i really don't care about as a detective, i'm not going to do anything with, i'm not going to stop and interview -- stop and read that person their rights generally for a couple reasons. one is, under miranda, they have to be in custody, and victims generally respect in custody. under article 31, custody doesn't matter. it's if i'm official to the government and i suspect misconduct, i must read somebody their article 31 rights if they're a member of the armed forces. so that creates two problems. one is they're not in custody, but they might feel like they're in custody.

the other issue is when we read someone their rights -- imagine this for a moment, it's not hard to do. i'm talking to a victim who's sharing the most difficult, the most intimate thing that's ever happened to him or her, and right in the middle of that they might bring up something that i now suspect they might have been involved in the admission of a crime. excuse me, i just need to stop here for a moment and advise you of your rights. the chilling effect that has on every single human being is amazing. what it does to that victim at that point in time, creates a profound, overwhelming sense of what do i do now? where do i go? i reported a major crime. i reported a crime to the department of defense, and they want to know about it. i'm volunteering my information, and now you're reading me my rights. we took a long, hard look at that. we've got some recommendations in that area as well of either developing a list of -- that secretary of defense would accept as in the area of sexual assault, you know, minor misconduct that he would be

allowed to give immunity for or some other, you know, some other -- i'm not sure how we would do this, but a list where as an agent, i wouldn't have to read somebody their rights for these types of misconducts. also maybe looking at article 31 for minor misconduct in the area of sexual assault. the other issue that we have is case determinations. as we've seen with some of the comparisons, dean hillman mentioned that, you know, it's really hard to compare not only between military and civilian, but within the services. each one of the military criminal investigative services looks at case determinations a slightly different way where, for example, the army unfound cases based on some -- after coordination with sja. we make some determinations. the navy and the air force do not. they basically wait until the case gets to the commander. the commander decides whether it's unfounded or not, and that goes back into the mix. so what we're recommending is that we look at uniform crime report which almost every single

law enforcement agency in the united states uses for case determinations. we think that'll clean up some problem areas. we don't believe that all the unfounded cases we're getting are baseless or false, but what do most people think when they hear the term "unfounded"? we want to rely on what civilians rely on for making those determinations. and there's one other, a couple more areas and i'll be done. one is in the area of the -- we have a lot of really good, dedicated sexual assault nurse examiners. we can't have one size fits all. under the fiscal year '13 ndaa there's a requirement that if you have an emergency room with 24 hour, seven day a week, you know, they're open that much that there's going to be the same exam. as we looked at small, medium

and large areas, that's virtually impossible. even some of our centers don't have nurses, fort hood, for example. but they have a very capable system off where they can go to these nurses and get the same experience, and we're even told those same nurses will travel to fort hood if requested. so what we'd ask is that the service secretaries have the medical folks take another look at this and maybe look at making some recommendations to where one size doesn't fit all because it certainly doesn't. along the same lines, we went out to the defense forensics science center, the crime lab in georgia, and we talked to a lot of experts. our defense forensics science center is nothing short of amazing in what not only they're doing, but in the research they're doing for touch dna and other things we're going to have in the future. but all of the people that we talked to, all of the experts we talked to said no more -- [inaudible] currently, in the department of

defense sexual assault kit there is a requirement to pluck hairs, and the lab people, the experts we talked to said there's no need for that. there was back in the '60s and '70s and maybe even the '80s, but no more plucking. that's one of our themes. we'll get a bumper sticker for that maybe as we go along the way. but we recommend that be taken out. and then the last recommendation before i turn it back over to dean hillman is this: in restricted reporting, you know, we want to hold offenders accountable, but this is two recommendations made on that accountability. we know that many sex offenders are serial offenders, and currently under our database with victim advocates, they don't put in offender data. so if we have a multiple-victim case at an installation, we have no way to go back and say, hey, has there been some restricted reports, unrestricted reports. and so we're making recommendations along those lines. but another thing that we're

going to recommend is unrestricted reporting. if a victim reports to law enforcement, there's an automatic investigation. and we went out and action oriented and several other police departments have some really good best practices where if the victim wants to come in and talk to detectives, after they talk to detectives, they may determine they don't want an investigation, and these police departments will not conduct an investigation. we think we should have that same opportunity for victims to come forward, ask us questions about the investigation, ask us questions about how we're going to do and maybe gain some confidence with them. so what we're asking is that the restricted reporting provisions be relooked at to allow a victim with the special victims counsel or a victim advocate to come in, talk to one of our ncio agents and tell us what happened, share what happened, give us the information and then after they get done talking to us, make a determination on whether they want that investigation to go forward or not. we think it would not only increase reporting, make it

easier to report, but also answer questions along the way instead of a victimming with told by some -- being told by some other party you don't have to talk to law enforcement which almost sometimes sets up a negative. so we're asking for consideration on that. and then, and so that's a very important aspect. and what we have found is that victims do want to get more information. we want them to make a more informed decision before they go forward, move forward. so those are some of the things i highlighted, they've going to be in the recommendation, and we look forward to any questions and comments and give and take. but it's just been a really rewarding experience for all of us, and thank you for your leadership, dean hillman. >> thank you, russ. judge jones, i'll make a suggestion here that i walk through the recommendations 1-22 and then see if the panel has --

>> yes, that would be a great idea. >> will okay. about the surveys or the investigative part before we move on to the rest of this. the slide that was up here behind russ as he spoke, and he actually highlighted much of the this, so you have a good framework for understanding our recommendations. this first one says that the secretary of defense should direct that nonspecial victims agents coordinate with special victims agents in all sexual assault investigations. this is recognizing the distinction between the structure of civilian agencies and the structure of military agencies, but having special investigators handle all of these investigations regardless of severity is challenging in terms of resource allocation. so this recommendation points in that direction. this does as well. this is another point mr. strand mentioned which runs to the importance of training. the secretary should direct continued, careful training of supervisoryagents and investigators for the special

victims unit, utilizing civilian agents because of their experience whenever probable. and in particular, we want to make sure we have confidence and commitment in those who are investigating, that we have supervisory agents to insure continuity and, finally, that we do have -- we are attentive to the need to reassign when necessary because of the challenge of investigating, these cases can certainly create burnout, and we need to protect the people who are responders to this too so that they can be there for the victims who come forward: this runs to our point about the importance of funding. we recommend congress appropriate centralized funds for mcios to provide advanced training because these are complex and difficult crimes to investigate and prosecute. already military investigator training is more robust than our civilian counterparts for the most part. however, continuing that and maintaining it is important. we also want to make sure we target, continue training on the importance of reducing bias and

eliminating bias because it has so long been a challenge to victims who come forward and encounter that. and finally, we want to avoid the language in reports, in fact, in interviewing, etc., that applies a different event happened than what the victim experienced. we know how to do that now. we want to make sure we train our investigators on that. next, this is about the response, the different types of responders to incidents in the military. we recommend the secretary direct the role of military police investigators continue to be to protect the crime scene, to insure safety and well being and to report to the military criminal investigative office. so civilian patrol officers have some discretion here. military police do not have discretion and have to refer. this insures a specialized processing right from the outset that improves, dashed improve the experience -- that should improve the experience for the victim and improve of the response overall and the

potential success of a prosecution. next, this runs to the increasing caseload. as numbers increase, the burden on investigators does increase as well. we recommend that there be a little more flexibility in resource allocation so that less severe incidents of sexual assault -- and, remember, sexual assault is a very broad term in the military because of the extent of behaviors that are prosecuted as sexual assault -- the minor incidents be investigated under the supervision, under the oversight of special victims unit agents. so the increased reporting, the increased reporting and the requirement for investigation of all the article 120, that's the military sexual assault statute, has created that increased caseload. we need to get some for flexibiy here for better resource allocation, and that's what this recommendation runs to. next, here we're getting into the details, but this came up

repeatedly as we talked to investigators. we need a standardized procedure to streamline and expedite the military criminal investigative officers' use of this investigative technique. in accord dance with the law. so this is very effective. you know, we mentioned our visit to the forensics labs and how impressive the defense forensic capability is, but we need to recognize too that forensic evidence is not available in many, many cases and that getting information from the individuals involved is a key part of what the investigators need to do. these pretext phone calls and text messages to social media investigations that need to ensure are an important way to -- that need to ensue are an important way. right now the process isn't standardized, there's different approval procedures. we want to streamline and expedite a way to make this happen in the military as it does in civilian industries so so -- there's actually forensic evidence that's available. and next, this goes to a

critical point, and it's the investigation of a sexual assault. and the success of responses altogether. because this also runs to the confidence of victims in reporting and our efforts to increase the reporting rates for those who experienced sexual assault in the military. in this goes to collateral misconduct which mr. strand mentioned. so we recommend the the secretary standardize the policy regarding rights advisement during the interviews of sexual assault when they disclose minor misconduct. first bullet points out civilian investigators do not advise of rights because law does not require them to. the potential prosecution for collateral misconduct a barrier to reporting, and it is a barrier to effective investigation. the current policy of convening -- affords the convening authority discretion to waive liability, criminal liability for minor misconduct, and practices right now vary as to how article 31d is actually

implemented by investigating officers. we believe there should be a standard policy, we believe we should make it clear to our investigators what they're supposed to do and make it clear to victims what they can expect if they come forward with the courage it takes to report a sexual assault, and then there's also -- as there often is -- collateral misconduct associated with the incidents around that assault. the second part of our recommendation here is in realization of the fact that article 31 does require rights advisement right now unless it's modified, and we want a procedure that grants immunity for victims who disclose collateral misconduct along with a list of qualifying offenses. and we want to consider recommending change, that congress change article 31b. so what this would do is remedy the confusion around the immunity that's available to victims who are potentially liable to prosecution for collateral misconduct. we want to protect the rights of the victims there, standardize practice and get our understanding of article 31 in line with what the law requires.

next, on the site visits we realized that the sequestration and the furlough had had a negative impact on the effectiveness of investigations, and we recommend that to the extent possible the secretary should exempt dna examiners and other examiners at the defense forensics science center from furloughs in the future. this next recommendation runs to a point that i raised at the beginning of this briefing and that mr. strand also mentioned which is about collecting information. we recommend the secretary establish a policy that will allow us to collect information about persons identified in the reports of victims even if those victims choose to submit a revictimmed report -- restricted report and not engage in the unrestricted report and investigative process. so this means that the sexual assault response coordinator would enter information on restricted and unrestricted into the existing database.

it would then be available if that alleged offender is identified in another reported assault. right now that doesn't happen, and there's no information that gets provided, so we think this would enhance our ability to build on the information that we get through both restricted and unrestricted reports. and this next recommendation runs to the same thing about a change in restrictive reporting policy. here we'd like to allow a victim to come forward with a restricted report and talk to an investigator without triggering the unrestricted report and the degree of disclosure that that involves for a person in a military unit. so right now a victim cannot talk to a law enforcement agent or investigator without making an unrestricted report. this would allow the victim to speak to that investor with the protection -- investigator, with the protection of a victim advocate or a special victim counsel. this innovation in the military response to sexual assault which gives a victim an attorney early in the process. so law enforcement could not

initiate an investigation without the victim's consent. so the victim would have to convert to an unrestricted report in order for an information to ensue, but it could increase confidence of the victim, it could increase the conversion rate, and it could increase the intelligence, the information that we're able to collect from restricted reports in addition to what we get from unrestricted reports. next is an audit. like we think there should be some outside experts who advise us on the surveys that we create about crime victimization to make sure they're right and workplace assessments, we also think there should be an external audit of dod sexual assault investigations. we do internal checks right now. some civilian police agencies use external audits, we think that would enhance our understanding of what we're doing right and what not. we also recommend that the secretary direct the -- [inaudible] to coordinate and standardize with trial counsel. this is connection between investigators and prosecutors to

insure that all the appropriate investigation happens before there's a report out to the commander. we don't want reports going to commanders before everything's been investigated. we heard some instances in which that happened. service procedures also vary across the branches of service. we think there should be clarification here on how that coordination should happen and that all investigation gets done before the commander is faced with the convenience or faced with a decision about what to do next. next, this runs to our definitions here. so we recommend that the secretary direct the uniform crime reporting standard for -- [inaudible] be adopted across the services and department of defense. there's no reason that we could see to not use an established civilian standard for what constitutes a crime it is a unfounded. unfounded means false or baseless. it should only be used to mean that. we shouldn't use other definitions or fail to define that term when we use it in our reports. second, this is about the decision to unfound.

that decision to unfound should be done in coordination between investigators and prosecutors, so that's the recommendation there that we ought to have that take place with lawyers and investigators involved who understand what that assessment means about unfounding rather than the unclear process and unclear authority to which that decision is involved, is deinvolved at this point -- devolved at this point. three more here, and then we'll take some questions. this is about sexual assault nurse examiners. we recommend that the secretary direct the surgeons general of the services to review the new requirements for sexual assault nurse examiner at all the military treatment facilities with 24/7 emergency rooms. because we don't see that as the only way to meet the very important requirement that we have qualified -- [inaudible] out there to meet the demand. so the integration and the leveraging that we think needs to happen with civilian facilities and civilian experts applies to -- [inaudible] and we think i that's the

authorization. the ndaa right now is too narrow to enable the military and victims to find the best services they can going forward. that last point is an important one. although we're talking about this as a very big problem and it no doubt is, we also need to recognize that smaller civilian jurisdictions and small military installations may not have enough incidents of sexual assault that they maintain personnel with appropriate expertise. you may be trained as a victim advocate in your unit, and you may have that job for two years and never meet a single victim. we need to have experienced people with fresh expertise. just like trial counsel tell us their skills are perishable, we need to have enough of a caseload, actually, to maintain expertise. so this enables us to leverage the civilian expertise that's out there. okay. russ talked to you about this already, this is the pluck hair recommendation. so in order to protect victims

from unnecessary intrusiveness in the sexual assault investigation process, we need to end this process and recommend the secretary of defense do that now. and then the last recommendation in our investigations section is about collaboration on safe training. so here we think the secretary should develop a working group to leverage expertise to create a course for military and dod practitioners. we think this is a place where common experience and expertise across the services would help. we think there could be a joint course at the joint medical education and training center. there could also be portable forensic training, there could be joint courses that run -- we have different programs that try to meet the same goals here, and we recommend collaborating here through whatever working group would recommend so that we don't duplicate our efforts in each of the services, but instead, build a common ground of expertise in

the different kinds of cases that come forward to us. so, judge jones, i'm going to pause there and see if there are questions on either the surveys or the investigative part of our recommendations. >> jim. >> thank you to the panel and thank you, dean hillman, for what looks to be a terrific set of recommendations, a really detailed and rigorous approach to this issue. and i personally see a lot in it that looks like it's really wore worthy. a couple of questions. three questions, actually, one more than a couple. on slide 34 you talked about audits and outside auditors. any idea who that might be who's qualified to come in and sort of sit in judgment on what dod would do?

did you have -- just sort of seeking additional information what you had in mind there in terms of who outside auditors might be. >> yes, sir. when we looked at some of the outside agencies, who they were bringing in, postally victim advocates -- mostly victim advocates. looking at one city, tradition, had a victim advocate review in every single case. one other city had victim advocates reviewing the potentially unfounded cases to make sure that nothing was missed, things like that. just get another professional to look at it. much like in our collaboration in prevention with rain and some of these other nationally-known organizations, perhaps reaching out to some of them. and, you know, some of the victim advocacy groups, folks who do multidisciplinary training, some advocacy there. taking a look. not any specific organization, but some nationally-known organization to periodically look at our cases, look at a sample of our cases much like the dod-ig does, see if they

see any trends that we might have missed within the department whether it be from the investigative side, the prosecution side. because really right now when dod-ig is looking at an audit. tear looking at procedures, they're looking at making sure we followed the rules, but we don't have a good outside organization looking from another perspective to see if we've missed anything on the victim side or the health side or something like that. so we're not sure what organization, but we would look to some of these national organizations. >> thank you. i do wonder if audit is exactly the right term to describe what you're describing there, but the idea of collaboration with outsiders seems like a good one. on slide 29 and 30, i think, there is the sort of fundamental issue of collateral misconduct. and i wonder beyond the procedural recommendation that you're doing if secretary of defense start of standardize and

uniform this which i think could be really helpful. i wondered if you had further thoughts on how you all would categorize minor and account for the obvious difference between civilian society and military society and the role of what you all have characterized as minor offenses. >> what we've looked at, sir, is the biggest one is underage drinking, you know? most police departments don't -- i mean, they care, but they're not going to hold anybody accountable. certainly in the military every violation of every order and every law is really important, because we have good order and discipline. and so separating out, and that's why we asked for the secretary level to do it in conjunction with leadership. but we saw things like underage drinking, maybe missing a formation because they were doing something else, maybe even some marijuana use. we don't know what that list

would look like, but when compared with civilians, it would not be concerned with that would inhibit people from coming forward. other things like in a combat operations area, having consensual sex is a violation of orders sometimes, so today might be involved with a con sense yule relationship that went nonconsensual. now they have to come in and admit that they had, you know, a relationship that led into rape and led into some of these other things which now they can't come forward without, you know, fairly consistent, you know, reviews of that misconduct and potentially even if it's not just from the criminal justice side, but administrative repercussions from those. so just, you know, underage drinking, you know, some of the -- maybe a violation of some of the general orders and some of the other regulations and policies may be appropriate. >> i think the challenge will be in your own use of the word "minor" and then your own characterization of all these things as "really important" to

reconcile that bridge between minor and really important. >> right. >> the last question i had was slide 36, the conclusion that mcios and trial counsel should make the decision about whether something is unfounded, and i wonder what role do you see for the commander in that decision making process? it doesn't mention the commander, so i wonder how you all are thinking about that. >> sir, when we were looking at the civilian decision making process, you know, obviously, we are different. they don't go out to the manager of walmart and things like that. but significantly different is when we get done with the investigation, we want to make sure that it meets the elements of proof. we want to make sure that we have, you know, that we have violations that we can report before it gets to the command. commander. we don't see any utility in the commander weighing in on whether it's founded or unfounded, because that commander has to

make other decisions. not to whether the offense occurred, but what to do now when an investigation substantiates an offense. one of the problems we've seen along the way is in a variety of ways that we determine unfounded is if a commander determines something to be unfounded, does that mean it's baseless? not necessarily. does it mean it didn't happen? not necessarily. what they determine, again, it just goes to the whole spectrum, so we'd like to refine that and institutionalize to where a trial counsel and an agent, organization looks at this and says do we have enough to determine if an offense occurred? and then if it occurred, do we have enough to determine, you know, within probable cause that this person did this? right now it's all over the map. for example, cid unfound reports by the organization. that's compared to other services, and that unfounded report rate is significantly higher. but does that unfounded report mean false or baseless?

unfortunately, it doesn't can. it could be a whole spectrum of how we look at this. so we want to standardize that and just take a look at it. but we didn't see any need for the commander to be part of that case determination process. we want to run the same we do with civilians because then we compare civilian founded and unfounded rate, it's much cleaner and easier to grapple with. >> thank you. >> you're welcome, sir. >> [inaudible] >> i have a question to follow up on what admiral hauck asked. when does trial counsel get named in connection with these -- [inaudible] at the investigative stage? >> yes, ma'am. generally in most of our services and our recommendations we might quantify when that happens, but generally within 24 hours for most services that trial counsel will be notified. we've got a recommendation to insure that's consistent across the service, but generally within 24 hours that trial counsel will get notified, be involved with the case. most of the services that trial counsel is involved from the

very beginning, in fact, in many cases that trial counsel will go to the office and maybe even view the interview, start, you know, looking at the evidence that we have from the very early on stages. >> okay. but your recommendation would make it a requirement. >> yes. >> to all the services. >> yes, ma'am. that the trial counsel be notified at least within 24 hours. >> and with regard to the collateral misconduct, what do you see as the -- or did you look at, another question. did you look at any possible downside of eliminating the collateral misconduct in all cases? >> yes, ma'am. >> what did you find if. >> that gets into a bit of a sticky situation because some of the ramifications could be -- although we have to evidence -- you know, if i've been involved in collateral misconduct and i'm going to be in trouble, say i was smoking marijuana or underage drinking or having consensual relationships with somebody in a come