At-risk youth the top priority

With three decades of work experience in correctional facilities, Mark Patterson knows how to talk the talk of effective juvenile justice reform. But after three years heading the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility (HYCF), there’s scant evidence that he’s following through with walking the walk.

To the contrary, the warden appears to be far more wrapped up in growing a cattle ranch on the Kailua facility and maintaining an oversized payroll than seeing to it that incarcerated boys and girls actually get access to valuable programs that can help reduce recidivism.

A set of juvenile justice stories by Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter Susan Essoyan should raise concerns among our elected state officials and others about HYCF’s sidetracked direction.

It’s questionable whether Patterson, whose career path started in the mid-1980s with a job as an Oahu adult corrections officer and has worked only in facilities housing men or women, is a good fit for youth corrections.

Staffers, educators and national experts are rightly dismayed by his move — shortly after assuming the administrator’s post in 2014 — to drop programs put in place as part of a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that shifted the facility from a punitive to therapeutic model.

Patterson was cruel to do away with programs that had been yielding promising results and were relatively inexpensive such as “Seven Challenges,” which is on the federal government’s registry of effective therapies. Through it, correctional officers led group sessions after school, helping kids open up about their often-traumatic pasts and learn how to redirect their lives. Also dropped: “Cage the Rage,” which had encouraged better behavior with incentives such as evening and weekend activities as well as outings to help prepare for transition back to society. No replacement programs are in place, leaving the incarcerated essentially warehoused except during school hours.

Patterson has therapeutic drawing-board ideas and shares an appealing take on creating pu‘uhonua or places of sanctuary in the criminal justice system, to heal the incarcerated hurt by traumatic experiences. But his actions are otherwise focused.

For example, during his HYCF tenure Patterson has tripled the cattle count on the property to slightly more than 90. And last year he secured the state’s OK to tap nearly $147,000 in unused personnel money for ranch-related gear including a $40,000 tractor, a dump truck, chipper/mulcher, utility vehicle, rider mower as well as a bull and heifers.

But the incarcerated rarely spend time at the ranch due to school priorities. Instead, Patterson has brought in youth on probation to help as ranch hands, more or less. He’s now hoping to win legislative approval to sell beef and produce commercially. State lawmakers should flatly reject any such proposal that’s not directly tied to a viable program for the incarcerated.

The population at the youth jail has plummeted in recent years due to juvenile justice reform, which diverts offenders to intensive monitoring and services in the community. Reducing costly incarceration, which Patterson has estimated at $300-$400 a day per youth, was supposed to free up money for community-based services. But the warden’s efforts there are falling far short of state projections. Hefty spending allotted for staff overtime and new hires are contributing to bloat in HYCF’s budget.

In a recent presentation, Patterson said the facility remains staffed for 80 or more kids while the average daily census has fallen to just 20 to 25 youths. In defense of continued hiring, Patterson said: “I didn’t want to lose my staff because we were in the process of figuring out what we want to do.”

That prompts questions about how much time is needed for this so-called process, which presumably has been underway for three years. With community programs now foundering for lack of money, this process bears a strong resemblance to budgetary padding. The state’s taxpayers deserve better leadership. As do the youth who spend an average of 271 days locked up at HYCF.

If Patterson cannot swiftly cut unnecessary spending and make strides implementing real-deal “aina-based healing and training programs” for at-risk youth and young adults, the state must replace him with an administrator who can.