The state could save more than $108 million over six years and eliminate the need to send prisoners to the mainland, according to an independent study that seeks to make Hawaii’s criminal justice system more efficient.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie and other members of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative working group said they intend to push initiatives based on the study’s findings at this year’s legislative session, which begins today. Among the main goals are to reduce recidivism, ensure people convicted of crimes are held accountable, and make the criminal justice system more efficient.
A secondary goal is to help the state bring back nearly 2,000 prisoners, roughly a third of the state’s inmate population, from the mainland.
"My hope, my belief, is we have a solid foundation we can go to the Legislature with," Abercrombie said Tuesday.
Not all those who participated in the eight-month-long study agreed with all the recommendations.
City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro said he believes some of the proposals focus too much on achieving efficiency at the expense of the system’s primary mission of ensuring public safety.
Too much of the effort was centered on bringing prisoners back to Hawaii without planning for additional prison space here, he said.
"Without a new prison, it means releasing them into the community," Kaneshiro said. "The focus should not be on how we release guys from prison. The focus should be on how are we going to ensure public safety. … There’s not too much talk about that."
Among the recommendations are to parole prisoners who qualify as low risk for recidivism, limit the term of incarceration for violating conditions of parole to no more than six months, and allow judicial discretion in sentencing second-time felony drug possession offenders to either prison or probation.
Hawaii was one of seven states studied last year as part of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative. The initial study was conducted by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a New York nonprofit assigned to help states improve their correctional systems.
Another recommendation is to make supervision mandatory for all felons when their prison terms are done. Statistics show 41 percent of inmates who "max out" of their sentences are at high risk for committing another offense, and are almost twice as likely to be rearrested after their release than those released on parole.
That would require hiring many more parole supervisors.
Advocates for both victims and inmates said they support the study and the suggestions.
Pamela Ferguson-Brey, executive director of the Crime Victim Compensation Commission, said she likes that savings recognized by the reinvestment program would go toward victim services and community safety programs. Hawaii would be the first state to do so, she said. "That’s really huge," Ferguson-Brey said. She said she also supports the emphasis on ensuring inmates pay their restitution.
Kat Brady, coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons, said she was pleased the study looked at the entire criminal justice system and not at any one part of a complex equation. "There are a lot of things we can do that they’re not doing," Brady said.
Hawaii Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald said some of the recommendations the study suggests are already being incorporated into the Judiciary’s internal operating policies on a pilot basis.
A BETTER SYSTEM
Recommendations to improve Hawaii’s criminal justice system:
» Use swift, certain and proportionate responses to supervision violations. Parole officers have limited options for responding to violations, leaving them few suitable ways to deal with minor infractions.
» Require supervision for all felons released. At present, 41 percent of people who serve their full prison sentences are at high risk for committing another crime and are almost twice as likely to be rearrested after release than those on parole.
» Improve accountability and consistency of restitution collection. Court-imposed restitution orders are frequently left unpaid.
» Speed the pretrial process for assessing risk for flight, re-offense, etc. Procedural delays in this process make Hawaii among the slowest in the nation.
» Focus resources on high-risk offenders rather than forcing everyone to complete programs proved to have little effect on behavior.
