When Gov. Neil Abercrombie took office in 2010, he announced that he would bring back to Hawaii the 1,750 inmates incarcerated in Arizona.

But there was a dilemma: Hawaii’s prisons were filled to capacity. So, in June 2011, the governor launched the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) to examine ways to bring the inmates back.

The report was released in January 2012 with findings and recommendations. JRI was directed at "reducing correctional cost while enhancing public safety." However, there were no recommendations to enhance public safety. Most of the recommendations focused on reducing correctional cost by releasing approximately 1,150 inmates within five years.

JRI’s recommendations relied on these findings:

» Crime and victimization rates had declined 18 percent from 1997 to 2010.

» The state’s prison and jail population rates grew by 18 percent.

» Inmates released on parole declined by 6 percent.

» Offenders who didn’t go to prison were spending longer amounts of time being supervised on probation.

» Offenders sent to jail and prison were spending longer times there.

The last four findings were actually major contributors to the lower crime and victimization rates. Yet among JRI’s recommendations is a mandate that releases inmates from prison to parole, or supervision outside of prison. Further, if the parole board brings back a parolee for violating conditions of parole, it cannot keep that offender in prison for longer than six months.

JRI also recommends that the felony theft threshold be increased from $300 to $750, which would result in fewer offenders being subject to prison terms. Most felony theft offenders sentenced to prison are repeat offenders and career criminals subject to mandatory minimum laws which impose prison terms. Increasing the threshold leaves no effective consequence for theft and many Hawaii businesses will be adversely affected.

JRI further recommends that probation be reduced from five years to three years. When an offender is not sentenced to prison, he or she is usually placed on probation to be supervised. Reducing that probation time means a shorter period of supervision for criminal offenders.

Most important, while JRI recommends that more criminal offenders be placed on probation or parole, it does not provide for more parole and probation officers to supervise the added caseload. JRI also calls for more programs for offenders without any increased funding for these programs.

If the administration is determined to release inmates from prison and deflect more offenders from going to prison, the necessary number of probation and parole officers should be in place beforehand. In addition, there should be an increase in funding for more programs like Drug Court, where offenders are supervised as well as treated for their addictions.

I was the state director of public safety in 1998 when the decision was made — because of prison overcrowding — to send a number of inmates to the mainland. This was supposed to be a temporary solution, three years or so, until a new prison could be built here.

The plan was set in motion, only to be abandoned. The practice of sending inmates out of state became policy. Now, after all these years, the problem has come full circle and the ultimate solution remains the same: to ensure public safety while accommodating the return of all Hawaii inmates from Arizona, a new prison needs to be built.

Short of this, JRI needs to show it can provide for a sufficient number of parole and probation officers along with funding for inmate support programs —including drug treatment, anger management, job training and social services — before it recommends any releases.

Public safety should be paramount when discussing the return of 1,750 inmates to Hawaii, not the reduction of correctional costs.

How can you justify to a victim of crime that the system is more concerned about the cost of incarceration than public safety?