Shift focus of juvenile sentencing

The number of juveniles incarcerated in Hawaii has dropped since the mid-1990s, as have national figures, but the average cost of holding a single youth behind bars for a year has risen to nearly $200,000 — more than twice the national average.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie has announced a project aimed at reducing juvenile crime while lowering costs, a move that should have been made long ago.

Most of the juveniles held in the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility have been non-violent offenders, forced in confinement that is likely to extend to custody in their adult lives for other crimes.

The state estimates that only 15 percent of the 135 juveniles committed to the 56-bed youth facility in fiscal year 2012 were violent offenders. Most of the nonviolent young offenders should be subjects for expanded drug treatment or other community-based alternatives to incarceration.

A crucial component toward any success — for the youth as well as the community good — will be the availability of more drug treatment programs.

"We know that our youth are better served by alternatives to secure confinement that are located in their community," Hawaii Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald said in a Wednesday news conference.

That was similar to the finding in a recent National Bureau of Economic Research report based on information about 35,000 juveniles who came before a juvenile court over 10 years in Chicago.

"If juvenile incarceration either enhanced human capital accumulation or deterred future crime and incarceration, a tradeoff could be considered" for the national average cost of $88,000 for a year of incarcerating a juvenile, authors Anna Aizer and Joseph J. Doyle Jr. noted.

"Rather," they said, "we find that for juveniles on the margin of incarceration, such detention leads to both a decrease in high school completion and an increase in adult incarceration."

Getting effective, appropriate intervention at this point in a young life, rather than drastic incarceration, can well be the difference between a positive path or a troubled future.

Hawaii taxpayers spend for confinement of a single youngster more than four times what it costs for boarding and tuition at the elite Hawaii Preparatory Academy on Hawaii island. That is obviously wasteful and increases the young person’s likelihood to engage in more crime.

It is especially the case of the nearly 80 percent of youths going through the juvenile justice system who have substance-abuse problems. The Bobby Benson Center in Kahuku is Hawaii’s only residential treatment program for juveniles.

Family Court Judge R. Mark Browning points out that "it’s tough" to help youths "early on when they first come into the system," since the state lacks adequate programs to steer them away from abusive drugs.

The project announced by Abercrombie, who was a probation officer early in his career, is aimed at achieving broad acceptance, by establishing a bipartisan, inter-branch working group to analyze the system and make recommendations to the next Legislature.

He assigned the group to "set some of the parameters and the boundaries and the context of the decisions that judges will be making."

The project should need little time to recognize that many youths should be provided therapy near their families for minor offenses or should be treated for drug or alcohol problems, not put behind bars.

The challenging chore will be to redirect funds and efforts to create an effective system that pulls youths out of trouble, not pushes them beyond hope.