Editorial: Prisons require outside oversight

The management of Hawaii’s state prison system has caused no small degree of consternation in recent years. Overcrowding and poor conditions. Inmates diverted to mainland facilities. Mixed results in its rehabilitation efforts.

Most recently, there’s the disturbing revelation that Hawaii’s prison system has a high suicide rate — the seventh highest in the nation.

Now, in a draft report, a task force has identified at least one clear path toward implementing needed reforms. The solution would start with creating an independent commission to provide ongoing oversight of Hawaii’s prisons. It’s a system used elsewhere on the county or state level, and it is sorely needed here.

The report was issued by the House Concurrent Resolution 85 Task Force, first convened through the passage of HCR 85 in 2016. It was prompted at least in part by a concern for the unsustainable costs of a prison system that focuses mostly on incarceration, while falling short on the imperative to reduce overcrowding and lower recidivism.

The task force issued an initial interim report February 2017, providing a “broad outline of the direction we think Hawaii’s correctional system should take.” The overarching recommendation was that Hawaii’s system should “transition from a punitive to a rehabilitative, restorative and therapeutic correctional model.”

This update was intended to flesh out some of those ideas, according to the draft document. A final version will be presented to the 2019 Legislature.

The report identifies several strategies for reform. Among these are bail reform, improvements to the state’s probation program, and more community-based alternatives to short prison sentences.

But one of the most chilling aspects detailed in the report was the suicide problem. A total of 26 inmates have committed suicide in Hawaii’s prisons and jails since 2010.

In the four-month period from July to November 2017, according to the report, there were four suicides in the state’s correctional facilities, including two inmates with a history of mental illness.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser writer Sophie Cocke reported how Jessica Fortson took her own life July 17, 2017. Fortson, 30, was serving a five-year sentence for nonviolent offenses at the Women’s Community Correctional Center.

She committed suicide while in solitary confinement. Her father told the Star-Advertiser that she had suffered from bipolar disorder.

Jailing the mentally ill is a bad option, according to the report: “When correctional officers are in charge of the mentally ill, things often go wrong.”

A 2005 inspection of the Oahu Community Correctional Center found that staff employed methods of isolation, seclusion and restraint on detainees with mental illness.

The state Department of Public Safety conducted its own investigation into the Fortson incident, but provided no information to the general public on preventive steps taken as a result.

In Hawaii, the only publicly mediated oversight on prisons is provided by the state Office of the Ombudsman, which handles complaints arising from virtually every state and county agency. It’s not equipped to deal effectively with the complex problems occurring within the state’s opaque prison system. More focused expertise is required.

Hawaii spends an enormous amount of public resources on corrections. A fuller understanding of the system’s strengths and weaknesses, especially regarding inmate rehabilitation, requires more and better due diligence. It behooves the government and the public to shine a bright, independent light on what happens behind those locked prison gates.