As a board member of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, I strive along with my colleagues to help families affected by mental illness.

Being the loved one of someone with a mental illness can be the cause of intolerable stress, resulting in divorce, physical and/or mental illness and/or financial disaster.

NAMI’s mandate is to support and educate such families.

In Hawaii, as in other parts of our country, there are many more persons diagnosed with a mental illness in jail than there are getting treatment in mental facilities. This in itself is deplorable. When these prisoners are also denied visits with family members, it deteriorates their already diminished support system.

The visitation rules at Oahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC) allow families to visit their imprisoned loved ones once a week, on a Saturday or Sunday. But for many years now, far more scheduled family visits have been canceled than have been held because, according to Public Safety Director Ted Sakai, not enough prison guards show up to work on the weekends to allow visits. In 2014, the cancellation rate has been as high as 90 percent.

NAMI met with Sakai many months ago, and since then the situation has not improved.

NAMI’s board president has sent letters to the UPW, the guards’ union, offering to work together to fix this problem. The union did not respond to any of our letters or phone calls.

Some people believe that the prisoners at OCCC deserve to be there and should have no visitation rights. The fact is that every study ever done on the subject shows that prisoners who receive visits while they are incarcerated have a far better chance of not getting incarcerated again.

Humanitarian considerations aside, purely economically, if people do not get sent back to jail, it costs the state less money. According to the National Institute of Incarceration, it costs more than $18,000 per year to keep a person in jail.

Many of those at OCCC have not been convicted of any crime, yet they are spending many months awaiting trial. While they are there, families are told week after week, "All visits are canceled."

Sakai has told NAMI that the problem is that guards are using their 60 annual days of family leave and additional sick days to stay home on Saturdays and Sundays when visits are scheduled to occur.

Each year guards call in sick in some of the highest numbers on Super Bowl weekend, and visits are canceled. Firefighters, police, teachers, also have family leave and sick days — yet no one is ever told that the fire will not get responded to, that no one will protect them when a crime is being committed, or their children’s school is canceled because too many workers are out on family leave or home sick.

While things have gotten worse in this respect during Sakai’s watch, this newspaper reported that he has been recognized by his own national organization as America’s best prison chief of 2014. This is an institutional and societal problem that predates Sakai’s tenure, yet he can prove his leadership abilities if he takes this on and implements significant changes.

I hope the next governor of Hawaii will make a pledge to do whatever it takes to end this unfair and counterproductive practice. It is incumbent on the Legislature and the new governor to negotiate a contract with the guards’ union that will ensure that visiting days at the prisons do not get canceled because too many guards are not showing up for work.