Tighten prison furlough policy

Killers, rapists, armed robbers and other violent criminals go to prison. Hardly any of them stay there forever.

In Hawaii, 95 percent of individual inmates eventually return to society, having served their full sentences or been rewarded for sustained good behavior with supervised parole. Given this fact, the Department of Public Safety’s efforts to rehabilitate convicted felons and transition them back into communities as useful citizens are essential.

Programs such as the Laumaka Work Furlough Center, intended to ease that transition for selected inmates nearing parole, merit continuing support — but they also warrant intensive scrutiny in the wake of charges that a furloughed inmate committed the kind of sexual brutality that sent him to prison in the first place.

Michael Lee Carter, a serial rapist whose violent criminal record dates back to 1993, is accused of impersonating a police officer and raping a 21-year-old woman on the grounds of Royal Elementary School on Sept. 15, a Sunday. He was arrested more than a month later in Chinatown. Since June, Carter had been living at Laumaka, the minimum-security facility a block from the Oahu Community Correctional Center, allowed to leave for an approved job during the day and required to return every evening.

To qualify for the furlough program, an inmate must be classified as a minimum security risk who has sustained good behavior behind bars, completed any required programs, such as drug treatment, and be within 24 months of parole. Carter met the standard, DPS officials said. To stay in the program, inmates must show up for work reliably, obey the law and return to the facility at day’s end; a portion of their pay goes to rent, victim restitution, taxes and savings.

DPS officials recognize that Laumaka and similar prison work-furlough programs throughout the state face heightened scrutiny in the wake of the Carter case, and vow to do all they can to improve the management of — and public confidence in — programs that are vital to public safety.

Among other measures, DPS is increasing random compliance checks of inmates on furlough; the monitoring already includes regular checks with the private businesses who have hired the inmates. These beefed-up measures are necessary, and overdue.

Nearly 400 inmates statewide — of a total 6,000 incarcerated here and on the mainland — participate in furlough programs. Most of them successfully complete this important step toward reentry to the outside world.

Eighty-seven of 360 participants in a work-furlough program for inmates at the Oahu Community Correctional Center were terminated from the program in the past year, including 21 who walked away from the program. They face new charges, including escape, which can tack another five years onto their sentences; they also are barred from the program for seven years. (All but one was quickly apprehended without committing additional crimes, according to the DPS. It’s worth noting that Carter did not flee the furlough program; he was arrested when the alleged victim pointed him out to police).

In Hawaii, as elsewhere in the United States, inmates who "max out" of prison directly to the streets are much more likely to commit new crimes than those who go through transitional programs that lead to supervised parole. Programs such as Laumaka help to reduce this recidivism rate.

This important work, however, should never come at the expense of ordinary citizens.

DPS must identify the scope of management and oversight problems related to Laumaka and other furlough programs and take every step necessary to correct them. Only then will the public safety be assured.