State lawmakers are set to have final negotiations this week on two bills aimed at making fundamental changes to Hawaii’s criminal justice system by releasing low-risk inmates earlier and using the savings to fund treatment and supervision programs, victim services and more public safety staff.
The Justice Reinvestment Initiative is backed by the governor, chief justice, director of public safety, and House and Senate leadership, who say it will help the state spend public-safety dollars more efficiently and reduce recidivism.
"This is the framework of meaningful change within our justice system, but … (there is) a lot more work to be done," said Rep. Henry Aquino (D, Pearl City-Waipahu), chairman of the House Public Safety and Military Affairs Committee. "We hope to … put out policy that would ensure public safety first and foremost, and second of all see where we could reduce costs without compromising safety in the community."
But critics of Senate Bill 2776, the main bill for the initiative, and House Bill 2515, which addresses parole issues, warn the bills could compromise public safety because community treatment programs might not be immediately ready to handle an influx of inmates released once they have served their minimum sentence and are otherwise qualified for release.
"The discussion really focused on (how) the savings would be able to provide for the programs, but the savings would not be realized until after inmates were released to the community," said Sen. Clayton Hee (D, Kahuku-Kaneohe), chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee.
The proposal to release inmates earlier would dovetail with Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s call to reduce the number of Hawaii inmates kept in private prisons in Arizona.
"We must change the way in which our laws work, change the way in which the system works, so that we can make a clear distinction between those who need to stay in prison to keep the public safe versus those who present little risk," Abercrombie said in his State of the State speech in January. "But, we must also provide proper and consistent supervision to those who are released."
The state spends about $45 million a year to house roughly one-third of its total inmate population of 6,000-plus people in Arizona prisons.
The plan outlined in the bills would decrease Hawaii’s out-of-state prison population by nearly 1,200 over the next six years, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center, which conducted an in-depth, data-driven analysis of Hawaii’s correctional system last summer at the request of the governor and other state policy leaders.
Hawaii would save an estimated $150 million in that six-year period through a combination of bringing inmates back from the mainland and releasing low-risk inmates at an appropriate time, said Darin Kawazoe, re-entry coordinator for the Department of Public Safety.
The Justice Center suggests reinvesting $42 million of the savings into victim services and recidivism prevention programs to increase public safety.
The idea behind the initiative is that Hawaii — because of bottlenecks and backlogs in the system — holds too many inmates past their minimum sentence who are either nonviolent or have demonstrated a low risk of re-offending, said Robert Coombs, a senior policy analyst and public affairs official for the Justice Center.
Releasing people when they’re ready to be released will reduce the pressure Hawaii has to house prisoners on the mainland, Coombs said.
"Over time the (prison) population will be reduced back down to its appropriate amount because you’re not holding people longer than they need to be held," Coombs said. The inmates who would be brought back from Arizona would be those who are "naturally graduating out of their sentence," he said.
"We want to be able to have inmates in community settings who belong in community settings," said Sen. Will Espero (D, Ewa-Honouliuli-Ewa Beach), chairman of the Senate Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs Committee. "They of course will be monitored and they will have oversight, (but) it’s less expensive to have them in community-based settings and with programming that they can do on the outside, while at the same time not jeopardizing public safety."
Keith Kaneshiro, Honolulu prosecuting attorney, has testified in strong opposition to most of the provisions because they deal with letting inmates out sooner.
"They have a knee-jerk reaction to just bringing back inmates, releasing them from prison so we can cut down the costs of incarceration, which is wrong," Kaneshiro said. "If no one is going to talk about public safety, that’s my job, and I have no problems being the No. 1 voice … because that is my responsibility to the public."
Kaneshiro has said he doesn’t think the programs needed to serve released inmates to ensure public safety are in place or working at the capacity that would be required should the bills pass.
"My approach has been, you put the infrastructure in place before you even start considering these programs to release," he said.
Coombs emphasized that "this is not early release," adding, "We’re not changing anybody’s sentencing or their release date or the length of time they’re supposed to serve."
Coombs said another aspect of Hawaii’s system that the Justice Center found of concern is that high-risk inmates are increasingly exploiting loopholes in the law that allow them to serve their time and be released — unsupervised — into the community.
Kat Brady, coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons, an advocate for inmate treatment programs, said the recidivism rate for prisoners who "max out" and leave the system without supervision is 69.3 percent, compared with 48.8 for people assigned to probation and 48.5 percent for people on parole.
"If you just let people out after they serve their maximum, that’s scary," Brady said. "Especially if it’s a Class A felony where somebody’s in for 20 years."
Some of the major provisions in the bills include:
» Making probation an option for second-time drug offenders.
» Limiting the time parolees can be re-incarcerated for technical violations.
» Increasing victim restitution payments.
» Expanding the Hawaii Parole Board to five from three members so more cases can be heard.
One of the more controversial features of the Senate bill would require, with certain exceptions, that Class A felons be released 18 months before the expiration of their term, Class B felons released 12 months before their maximum sentence and Class C felons released six to nine months before the end of their sentence to allow for mandatory supervision and participation in re-entry programs and prevent prisoners from "maxing out."
The Senate bill also calls for more accurate pretrial assessments to reduce the number of inmates who are allowed to serve their maximum sentence and leave the system without supervision.
It would be the state’s first effort to identify people’s needs individually and "make strategic decisions about what type of programming and supervision that person needs in order to best reduce their risk of re-offense," Coombs said.
According to some proponents, the savings from bringing inmates back from the mainland would immediately be realized and made available to organizations that would provide services to released inmates. Critics say expanding community treatment programs can’t be done overnight.
"Suggesting that there somehow is an immediate savings that can be turned into programs is not accurate because programs take time to develop," Hee said. "If there’s an expansion in drug treatment centers, for example, you need time to get the treatment centers up and running; you need to have personnel and you need to have facilities, and these things take time."
Alan Johnson, chairman of the Hawaii Substance Abuse Coalition, acknowledged that developing and expanding programs to serve additional inmates would take time.
"We’ve had pretty successful outcomes of people becoming positive and productive," Johnson said. "The issue would be how many people come out and how fast and what is the reinvestment."
Martha Torney, deputy director of administration for the Department of Public Safety, said public safety officials believe programs are in place to get the job done and that the department has been in contact with some already.
"Much of it is there, but state funding has dried up so much that programs have reduced state contracts," she said. "The only reason they don’t have the capacity now is because they’ve had to let staff go."
The Justice Center plan calls for 410 prisoners to be brought back from the mainland in the first year, 384 in the second year, 257 in the third year, 111 in the fourth year, 29 in the fifth year and four in the sixth year, for a total decrease of 1,195 people over six years in privately run prisons in Eloy, Ariz.
"It’s not like we’re just releasing people," said Jodi Maesaka-Hirata, state director of public safety. "There has to be a caveat for the process to happen," such as coming up for parole.
