For decades, community-based organizations in Honolulu have provided re-entry services for formerly-incarcerated women to help them become contributing family and community members. However, the current and very successful re-entry program, Ka Hale Ho‘ala Hou No Na Wahine, is now in jeopardy due to a misguided decision by the state Department of Public Safety to cut its funding and try running the program itself.

The Ka Hale Ho‘ala Hou No Na Wahine program has been part of the YWCA for five years, and has served almost 200 women, and provides gender-responsive, trauma-informed, culturally competent care and wrap- around services to help the women heal from the past and plan for the future. Our community, comprised of people who care about women and re-entry, must object to this terrible plan in the strongest way possible.

Both cost considerations and public safety are involved here. The Department of Public Safety spends $198/day to incarcerate someone. The Fernhurst program contract with the department costs $120/day after the YWCA picks up an additional $40/day per woman. Ka Hale Ho‘ala Hou No Na Wahine is less expensive and less harmful than prison, with a low recidivism rate of 16%. And, less recidivism means less crime.

When the department witnessed the outpouring of community support, it then said that the decision was “temporary.”’ The plan, if carried out, will disrupt the lives of women who are working on their recovery, mostly from trauma they have suffered, and then retraumatizes them by moving them around like chess pieces.

We need to consider the impacts of this decision on the women in the program, on the women at the Women’s Community Correctional Center (WCCC), and on the children waiting for their mothers to return home. The community needs to get involved and make the state accountable for the fall out of this terrible idea to gut the program.

A community-based work furlough program is an important part of reintegration because it fosters independence while providing a safe place to live. While the women are going to school or finding employment, they are interacting with different communities of people and learning how to live law-abiding lives. Things are certainly different when your address is a prison, rather than an apartment in the community when applying for a job.

The decision undermines the progress that so many wonderful women have worked hard to achieve. If the women were to be sent back, they would have to quarantine for 14 days. They are worried about their employment, and rightly so. This presents a myriad of problems for the women who have lived at Fernhurst in a secure and healing environment. This is the problem when we donʻt acknowledge the humanity of people, much less the importance of this successful program for community safety. (A short video with testimonials from women who graduated from the program is at www.ywcaoahu.org/work-furlough. )

We understand the budget challenges the state faces, as do all of us, but respectfully ask the state Legislature to look at the big picture and see the harm this decision could cause the women and their families and make provisions to keep this successful work furlough program open.

There are two ways to help save this program: by signing a petition started by program graduates (www.ywcaoahu.org/fernhurst-women) and by contacting your state legislator.

The department plans to return the women to WCCC on Tuesday; therefore, it is crucial for the community to speak out now against this plan when the forward progress of the women is disrupted.

Kat Brady is the coordinator of Community Alliance on Prisons, a community initiative working on justice policies; Marilyn Brown is a sociology professor at University of Hawaii-Hilo focusing on re-entry and women.