Nolan Espinda

Not many people come away from a prison visit believing they belong in that world, but Nolan Espinda did. Back when he was getting his B.A. in political science at California State University-Chico, he got a tour of San Quentin that left an impression.

"It differed from the stereotypical experience you had watching on TV or in movies," Espinda said. "The whole controlled environment that provided for public safety just impacted me, and I wanted to participate."

Espinda, 58, has his personal life — married, three daughters, home in Kailua — but has a strong focus on his career, which since 1983 has been with the agency now known as the Hawaii Department of Public Safety.

Before being appointed director of the state’s prisons system, he was warden at Halawa Correctional Facility.

His goal, Espinda said, remains enabling more of the prison population to resume life more productively on the outside. He counts former inmates, such as DeMont Conner, who is now active within the Native Hawaiian advocacy movements, as proof that corrections can work.

Among other criteria, Espinda’s Senate confirmation as director was supported by testimony citing his pledge to correct a recent problem: the cancellation of weekend family visitations at prisons. The central issue there has been sick-leave abuse among adult corrections officers.

The most current issue is public concern about inmates on work furlough failing to return to prison on schedule.

Given that the program enrolls 492 inmates, Espinda said that the overall success of work furloughs is clear. However, he acknowledged that the 23 "walkaways" tallied this year represent a lapse.

He hopes to tighten controls by redirecting some of the department’s resources for electronic monitoring used for court-supervised inmates toward the furlough population.

Other ideas, such as improved mentoring and outreach, also are being explored, he added.

There is also the overcrowding at Oahu Community Correctional Center. At full capacity, it accommodates 954; on a recent week, the count stood at just under 1,300.

The push to leverage the redevelopment opportunities along the rail route to yield a new OCCC is not his initiative, he said, but he’s happy to support it, if it leads to a larger, better jail.

"We’re being guided toward a certain pathway," Espinda added, "and I really want to grease those skids."

The challenge of the director’s post is daunting, but when it was offered, Espinda didn’t feel he could say no.

"When I was asked, I thought, ‘Karma sure is a you-know-what,’ because I’ve spent 30 years in the back bleachers often commenting what I would do if I was in charge of things," he said. "So when asked, it became a challenge for me to say, ‘I’m going to put up or I’m going to shut up.’"

QUESTION: Is there a shift toward more rehabilitation — getting people out of prison — versus the emphasis of putting people into prison?

ANSWER: No, I think that emphasis is still there. … (But) regardless how we decide to incarcerate people, and at what rate we decide to incarcerate people, what hasn’t and will probably never change is the percentage of people within that group who are going to return to our streets and our communities. So our effort towards preparing people for what eventually is their release on parole, normally, is this work-furlough program.

It’s not inaccurate to say that the work-furlough program, at its full enactment point, is designed to mimic the requirements an inmate has to be on parole.

Our target is to best prepare them for parole, and we best do that by processing them through the system, giving them the treatment and program-ming they need towards work-furlough, which mimics being on parole.

Q: Right. It’s like a test flight, or something?

A: It gives the parole board the best people to pick from in regards to paroling. …

Q: It says in the furlough rules that the inmates have to cover their own expenses. Is that money from an account they have?

A: Once they earn, they have to pay. … Part of it goes back to payment for their housing and shelter and, of course, most of it goes toward preparing them for release. …

Q: What do they have to pay for?

A: It’s a set fee that they’ll get charged, that they pay out, depending on how much they make. A certain fee towards … you know, it mimics rent, or what you’d be responsible for on the outside. …

Q: How do they get placed in a job?

A: If they come in, and the family member has a job for them, fine, we’re going to let them do that, once we evaluate it. But if they’re like many people, they need to hit the streets, and go for interviews, and all of that process. When they start earning, we make them pay.

Q: Do you think there is a way to refine the screening process to reduce the chance of walkaways?

A: There’s always room for improvement. That’s the obvious answer to that question. We evaluate with every particular situation what we might have seen, had we had the benefit of hindsight.

But our criteria for participation is very stringent. If the need to make it more stringent is developed, or we evaluate that through (identifying) a commonality in walkaways, we certainly would do that.

Suffice it to say, it’s very stringent. And the reasons they walk away, and the impulsive decisions they make, are part of human nature.

Q: So is it part and parcel of what got them into trouble in the first place? Or is it just overwhelming, being on the outside?

A: They’ve expressed those types of things. Some readily admit what they did was wrong, and why they did it. Some rationalize what they did. …

I really hesitate, I don’t want to get into excuse-making mode, because every person who walks away represents that much of a failure of the program. But for lack of being perfect in things, we target the highest level of success we can achieve.

Q: Is there any way to quantify how many people are really successful on the program and are now on parole?

A: I wouldn’t have that specific a number. But overwhelmingly, the people who participated in this program progressed towards parole.

Q: Do you have evidence that shows their chance of success on the outside?

A: It’s the basis of the program. Success on parole, from the day that person is incarcerated, is the goal of the correctional system. … There’s a bunch of people who get left behind, because they can’t even behave in prison. These (who succeed) are the people who have done everything we’ve asked them to do.

Although I wouldn’t have exact statistical data, there are certain assumptions that go on. And one of them is that the person who’s best prepared for parole, and has done exactly what he or she was asked to do during the course of their incarceration, has the best chance. And statistically, these are the ones that remain out on parole.

Q: What portion of the prison population qualify for the program?

A: I don’t know the exact number, but it’s not everyone. A lot of people do not ever make it to this phase, where internally we can make the justification that this person has performed to the point where we’re satisfied and willing to allow them out on the street for short periods of time. …

When they come into prison, we will assign them a certain custody level. There’s a max custody level, there’s a closed custody level, there’s a medium, there’s a minimum and there’s community. So depending on where you start in your initial evaluation, your intent is to progress toward that community level, which is what work furlough is.

Many of them never make it to that community level because of their behavior within prison, whether it’s misbehavior, or whether it’s refusal to participate in programming that’s directed of them. Some of them regress back.

But, like I said, everybody eventually gets released; very few people are life without parole.

Q: So many released on parole have never had this experience.

A: They have refused to participate successfully within the correctional system, so they never get the opportunity to have the brief freedom we allow work furloughees.

Q: Is it perceived as a privilege among the inmates?

A: Absolutely. Yes.

Q: But some just think, "It’s not worth it to me"?

A: Many do. … Many don’t want to be supervised under parole, because the parole supervision itself, like the furlough program, is very strict. Many decide that I’d rather "just max out and have my life to myself."

Q: And there’s nothing the system can do about that, I guess.

A: Oh, we continuously urge them otherwise. Because we want you to go to parole prepared and reintegrated with your family, and having a job. We want all those things so that you’re successful. Nobody wants you to go back out, return to a life of crime and end up right back where you started.

Q: Is everyone reclaimable, in theory?

A: Success on parole, our target for rehabilitation, reintegration, is every single person sent to us. We’re not 100 percent successful, but it’s our job every single day to try. …

Q: Does it ever wear you down? It must get tempting to shrug off some people.

A: Well, you know, it’s like being a school teacher. If you look and see and can be proud of the many successes you have, those generally outweigh the failures. And corrections is the same way.

Because Hawaii is such a small place, we see people every single day. Those are success stories. Those things make you satisfied with the work you do.

Q: Can you think of any success stories?

A: Well, there are a lot of quiet stories, people that eventually just seamlessly reintegrated back into society. We never heard from them again, and those, of course, are the successes.

Q: There’s a disproportionate number of Native Hawaiians in prison. Do the culturally sensitive programs help them? What kind of outreach is there?

A: For whatever the reason, the cultural programming is an expressed need that is much more powerfully expressed by inmates who are on the mainland.

Q: You’ve mentioned De Mont Conner, a former inmate who’s now a Native Hawaiian activist, as one who’s turned his life around. That must be satisfying, changing someone’s life.

A: In De Mont’s case, he just made up his mind to change. That happens with a lot of people. … We prescribe treatment and programs, so we’ve got to provide those treatments and programs. We need to provide role models. We need to provide you with spiritual support, if that’s what you need. Some people need more educational support.

It’s our responsibility to provide all those things in a professionally designed, prescriptive plan that’s going to give you the best opportunity to get out and stay out of prison.