John Kema says HOPE, a highly supervised probation program with immediate consequences, helped him get his life back by ending a 16-year-history of alcohol and drug abuse and criminal activity that regular probation couldn’t hinder.

“I was failing so much in my regular probation, but HOPE made me accountable,” said Kema, who will be eight years sober in March and now works as a treatment associate and resident manager at Po‘ailani, a dual diagnosis treatment center. “I had to call every day at 4:30 a.m. to see if they pulled my color for a urinalysis drug test. My first thought every morning was I can’t use (drugs). I think that was the breaking point when I totally surrendered to the addiction.”

HOPE stands for Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation With Enforcement. Launched by 1st Circuit Court Judge Steven Alm in 2004, the high-intensity supervision program assigns sanctions — typically several days in jail — every time a participant violates probation terms like using drugs or missing appointments with a probation officer.

Alm, who is now running for Honolulu prosecutor, said HOPE is working but that, as with any probation program, some participants will get in trouble.

To be sure, the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office has noted that about a dozen high-profile violent crime cases referred to their office since 2015 have been committed by current and former HOPE probationers. In six of these, police shot the suspect, and in three of the cases killed him.

JAMES BORLING-SALAS, the 23-year-old man who died Thursday after sustaining a traumatic injury from an alleged assault at Oahu Community Correctional Center, also was a HOPE probationer. He was at OCCC for failing to meet the terms of probation relating to a 2015 nonviolent conviction.

Honolulu Acting Prosecuting Attorney Dwight Nadamoto said as many as six of the HOPE-related cases have occurred since September. For example, Dallas Pearce, 33, was shot and killed by Honolulu police Jan. 6 during a standoff at Aikahi Gardens. Pearce was an escapee of the Laumaka Work Furlough Center, where he was serving time for first-degree burglary. A former HOPE probationer, Pearce had been found guilty of first-degree burglary in 2012 and third-degree promoting dangerous drugs in 2011.

Alm said studies show that HOPE works and it’s been so successful in Hawaii that 32 other states have adopted variations. But Nadamoto said recent HOPE failures, including Pearce’s case, are worthy of scrutiny along with the state Legislature’s decision to remove third-degree possession of dangerous drugs (pdd3) from being counted as a repeat offense in the penal code.

“Before 2016 if you had a pdd3 conviction and you were a violent offender, you weren’t eligible for probation, and you were going to do some time,” Nadamoto said. “But after they changed it, you weren’t repeatable, and you could get probation even if you were violent.”

Nadamoto said the HOPE program and the pdd3 change “take discretion away from us to prosecute cases to ensure that these people aren’t out in public and committing more crimes.”

“The prosecutor’s office has a duty to protect the public to the utmost. By changing these laws, you are letting these violent offenders out or these people who have a drug problem and may become violent.”

Alm, who was on the 2015 Penal Code Review committee that recommended the change, said “it’s not smart sentencing to require judges to put people in prison for possessing a small amount of drugs.”

However, Nadamoto contends that a few days’ jail time doesn’t deter career criminals.

Since HOPE participants come from higher-risk backgrounds, Alm said he would expect some to be unsuccessful, especially those who use drugs, which correlates to an increased risk of violence. However, he said statistics from a 2010 study conducted by Pepperdine University and UCLA show that HOPE probationers commit half as many new crimes as those on regular probation.

But Nadamoto said the current HOPE pattern is worth questioning.

“Almost all of the (violent crimes) that have been reported recently involved probationers; almost all of them were HOPE probationers. Either they were on HOPE at the time or they were on HOPE before,” he said.

Nadamoto finds fault with allowing HOPE participants who violate probation terms to get smaller penalties instead of facing restarting probation or incarceration like regular probationers. He is critical of HOPE’s early termination policy, which allows those who go two years without any probation violations to exit the program early. He also disagrees with penal code reform that makes it possible for those with repeat pdd3 charges, who are violent, to be eligible for probation.

“The thing about HOPE is you get chance after chance. After a while it’s not a deterrent; it just becomes the price of smoking ‘ice’ or committing some other crime. If they weren’t given the opportunity to go back on the street and re-offend, maybe we wouldn’t have a new case,” Nadamoto said.

Hawaii state Judiciary spokeswoman Jan Kagehiro said judges decide all cases, including sentencing determinations, based on existing laws.

“Violent crimes are less than 8% of the actual caseload, and prison is mandatory for most Class A offenses and crimes involving firearms. For some nonviolent crimes, probation is an option,” she said.

Each case presents its own unique set of circumstances, she said.

“Judges must apply the applicable law to each case in sentencing and consider whether the individuals are likely to re-offend and present a danger to the public,” Kagehiro said.

Alm said when evaluating HOPE it’s important to distinguish that it doesn’t replace prison.

“If the argument is more defendants should go to prison, I agreed with that as a judge,” he said. “But if they weren’t in HOPE, they’d be in regular probation.”

Alan Johnson, president and CEO of the drug treatment facility Hina Mauka, said he supports HOPE, which he credits with bolstering Hina Mauka’s program completion rate and the percentage of clients who are still clean and sober six months after their program ended.

“We’re pretty excited about project HOPE and what it could become,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he’d like to see HOPE add expanded behavior health and criminality at-risk assessments and treatment plans, which aren’t part of regular probation either but, he says, should have a role in all probation programs.

“If they are going in and out of jail and we don’t know what we are working with and we aren’t solving their problems, it increases the propensity that they’ll do bad things,” he said.

ALM SAID all probationers, HOPE included, are given a Level of Service Inventory-Revised assessment that identifies an offender’s problems and risk of recidivism. He said expanded assessments and follow-ups are sometimes used but aren’t required or administered consistently.

“More consistency, more uniformity, could only make the program better,” Alm said. “Nobody has a crystal ball. When you find something like HOPE, you keep doing it. You know there are going to be failures, but that’s because we are dealing with people that are convicted of a crime. You have to compare with actual data — do they do better in HOPE than in probation as usual, which they do — but then how to make it better, how to make both better.”

Alm said he created HOPE after realizing that regular probation wasn’t working for all convicted criminals, especially those who needed swift oversight or viewed the system as arbitrary and unfair.

For example, he points to a Feb. 1, 2005, motion to set aside a conditional discharge that was originally granted to Richard Hodge and find him guilty of promoting a dangerous drug in the third degree. According to court records, Hodge, who was on probation as usual, violated the terms more than 40 times (mostly related to drug use) from April 2007 to when the system intervened. In 2008 he was resentenced to five years’ confinement.

“I really thought if we could tie together a violation with a sanction, we’d have better outcomes. It’s Parenting 101,” Alm said. “I run into people all the time who say, ‘HOPE saved my life. Thank you.’”