The newly re-designated state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says that with 95% of incarcerated people who come into the state’s prison system eventually being released, moving away from punitive justice has become a “vital” part of its mission.

Formerly the state Department of Public Safety, the department was reestablished Monday as the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation under a bill signed into law in 2022 by Gov. David Ige. The law enforcement functions that previously fell under DPS were also transferred to a new, separate Department of Law Enforcement.

“It is tough when you have law enforcement and corrections both, because they are two different ends of the criminal justice spectrum,” Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Tommy Johnson, who previously served as the Department of Public Safety director, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “As the director of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, I can now concentrate 100% of my staff, our resources and efforts on creating better, more efficient programs, better facilities, to have better outcomes and reduce the cost of the criminal justice system and make our neighborhoods safe.”

The department will oversee about 2,675 positions with a budget of approximately $305 million.

The department’s vision centers around transforming the state’s correctional system, “which has been historically perceived as a punitive model,” shifting to a focus on rehabilitation and restoration, and reducing recidivism.

“We are going to refocus our efforts and all of our resources on the correction and rehabilitation of those in our custody and care,” Johnson said.

Lorenn Walker, director of the nonprofit Hawaii Friends of Restorative Justice, said she hopes leadership “comes to recognize the value of restorative approaches and rehabilitation.”

“From working with people for years in Hawaii prisons, most of them have had really disadvantaged lives — whole families who have been disadvantaged, who have economic disadvantage, have mental health disadvantage,” Walker said. “I think they need a lot of social work and psychological, public health interventions, not punitive stuff.”

Walker said the division of duties between the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Department of Law Enforcement is a good change and that the split, ideally, should make the implementation of restorative approaches easier.

“I think it’s good that they recognize rehabilitation is obviously very important, because we cannot punish people into being nice, good people,” Walker said. “We have to give people opportunities to learn and grow. By just being punitive, it just reinforces their negativity.”

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will reevaluate all of its existing programs and curricula, ranging from its educational programs to its substance use treatment programs.

The department is also working on expanding some of its programs, like an associate’s degree program partnership between Halawa Correctional Facility and Chaminade University of Honolulu, which graduated seven inmates in 2023. The department also aims to create new programs — officials are in discussions with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to bring culturally based programs, such as hooponopono, into the facilities, and with the Hawaiian Humane Society to bring a rescue dog program to the Women’s Community Correctional Facility in Kailua. The department is working toward restarting a commercial license program and expanding identification card services, and looks to partner with agencies to provide housing.

The focus on rehabilitation programs will extend to inmates held on the mainland as well.

According to Johnson, all of the programs available to inmates on the mainland have the same criteria and curricula used in Hawaii. There are currently 876 inmates housed in Arizona, compared with over 1,100 in 2016. He said the department spends approximately $33 million each year to house them.

Johnson said after he began serving as public safety director in April, he ordered that no Class C nonviolent offender be sent to the Arizona facility.

“We’ve slowly been reducing the numbers,” Johnson said. “We will be looking at our policies with respect to when we bring back inmates from the mainland and consider possibly bringing them back sooner than later so that we can move inmates more quickly so they’re not held at higher levels of custody longer than they really should be.”

The department continues to oversee construction at the women’s facility that began in July 2021 of a dormitory, a new administration building and a new visitation building. After completion in April, Johnson said he intends to move all female pretrial offenders and certain misdemeanor offenders out of the Oahu Community Correctional Center and into WCCC, which will become a “hybrid prison/jail.”

“It will put female offenders all together into one location on Oahu which is more efficient, and it will also allow OCCC, which is routinely overcrowded, to spread out some, because that dormitory where the females are, which can hold about 140 (inmates) or more, can now be used for male offenders,” he said.

Other facilities across the state also will see expansion, including a new dormitory and renovations to the intake and entrance areas at the Hawaii Community Correctional Center in Hilo. The department also plans a site selection for a new facility in Kona and a relocation of the Kauai Community Correctional Center, and is finishing the design planning for a new OCCC.

“We believe that by having newer facilities and more efficiently laid out, we can reduce our costs for operating the facilities substantially,” Johnson said.