Problem with prisons: Build justice, not jails, for public safety

Ever wonder where your tax dollars are going? One place you might not have thought about is pretrial detention — locking up people who have been accused, but not yet convicted of any crime.

The state is pushing to build a big new Oahu Community Correctional Center to replace Oahu’s jail with little to no community engagement and absolutely no analysis of more cost-effective alternatives.

The misuse of jails in America is helping to drive mass incarceration and overcrowding a system that is neither economically sustainable nor beneficial to public safety, community well-being and individual rehabilitation.

Nearly 75 percent of both pretrial detainees and sentenced offenders are in jail for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses. Underlying the behavior that lands people in jail, there is often a history of substance abuse, mental illness, poverty, failure in school and homelessnes (“Incarcerationʻs Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America”).

In examining the population of OCCC, we find individuals suffering from mental health and substance misuse issues. We also find that many people were houseless at the time of their arrest. Do we really want our jails to serve as the mental health and shelter facilities for some of the most vulnerable people in our community?

In November 2016, the Department of Public Safety reported that 51 percent of the people imprisoned at OCCC were pretrial detainees — some who could not make $50 bail. That costs taxpayers $573,475 a week and over $2.2 million a month.

In misdemeanor cases, pretrial detention poses a particular problem. Research suggests that it may induce otherwise innocent defendants to plead guilty in order to exit jail, potentially creating widespread error in case adjudication. While practitioners have long recognized this possibility, empirical evidence on the downstream impacts of pretrial detention on misdemeanor defendants and their cases remains limited (“The Downstream Consequences of Misdemeanor Pre-Trial Detention”).

The state has allocated more than $10 million for the design and planning of OCCC. This is a waste of taxpayer dollars as it simply “invests” in an approach that has proven costly and ineffective in reducing recidivism.

After spending $1.5 million, the Legislature is now concerned that the consultants (Louis Berger Group) have only looked for 20-acre sites on Oahu and has now directed them to look for smaller sites in town that are 4.5 acres.

Most major cities have their jails right in the center of town with better access to the courts. OCCC is perfectly situated between Family Court in Kapolei and the District and Circuit Courts downtown.

Conversations about mass incarceration tend to focus on prisons, but local jails admit 20 times more people annually. Today, jails log a staggering 12 million admissions a year — mostly poor people arrested for minor offenses who can’t post bail, and for whom even a few days behind bars exact a high toll. There’s no simple fix, so the work includes using alternatives to arrest and prosecution for minor offenses, recalibrating the use of bail, and addressing fines and fees that also trap people in jail (“Incarceration Trends: Reducing the Use of Jails”).

This continued waste of taxpayer money is the result of poor planning and a lack of vision for cost-effective reforms that recognize that jails are the gateway to mass incarceration.

Communities across the nation are striving to reduce their jail populations and costs through innovative programs such as: diverting individuals with mental health and substance abuse issues to alternative facilities; finding alternatives to bail for individuals who can be safely supervised in the community while awaiting trial; having expedited hearings for prisoners who are jailed for technical probation violations; expediting indigence screening and program referrals; issuing citations for low-level offenses instead of arrest and jail; and offering individuals charged with low-level, non-violent offenses the option of being adjudicated in community courts instead of in the criminal justice system.

Currently we are asking legislators and community to support bills that would implement pilot programs that will help to reduce the OCCC population: SB 108, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion; SB 716, diverting individuals with mental health and substance misuse issues; and HB 457, Community Court Outreach.

The bottom line is that jails and prisons are making us poorer, not safer. We can’t build our way out of these social challenges in Hawaii by constructing more jails and prisons.

Kat Brady, top, is coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons; Marilyn Brown, Ph.D., is with the UH-Hilo Sociology Department; Carrie Ann Shirota, J.D., is a Soros Justice Fellow 2009.