Editorial: Hawaii’s corrections commission needs more funding

Gov. David Ige last week said he would release funding to hire staff for the Hawaii Correctional Systems Oversight Commission — a welcome change from earlier this year, when he declined to put the funding into his budget, citing the pandemic.

It’s now up to the Legislature to appropriate the money, which it appears willing to do through Senate Bill 664. The bill emerged from conference committee yesterday with a $330,000 appropriation for the next two fiscal years, effective July 1.

Well, better late than never. The Legislature created the commission in 2019 to oversee the state Public Safety Department (PSD), to address its persistent problems and provide independent guidance.

Since then, the all-volunteer commission has been limping along without the ability to properly investigate complaints and monitor a system that has seen rising inmate suicides, COVID-19 outbreaks, severe overcrowding in its jails and prisons, and a destructive inmate revolt at Maui Community Correctional Center.

The commission needs a staff empowered to enter and inspect correctional facilities without notice and to have full access to PSD records. Only then can the commission effectively carry out its mandated oversight mission.

Otherwise, all the commission can do is what it has been doing: offering general views on overall policy, which PSD can then ignore — effectively negating the Legislature’s actions and intent.

Among the commission’s biggest challenges is a substantial transformation of Hawaii’s correctional system from a punitive to a rehabilitative model. Such reforms would include eliminating money bail for certain poor, nonviolent defendants, and diverting those with mental health or substance abuse problems to treatment facilities.

More broadly, it includes lowering the risk of recidivism by providing more rehabilitation and training for inmates getting ready to reenter normal society.

The goal is to reduce the population of inmates, and the staggering cost of housing them, without endangering public safety.

Progress on such changes will inform the decision on the size and scope of a new jail facility in Halawa that would replace the decrepit Oahu Community Correctional Center in Kalihi — a necessary project for the safety and health of jail inmates and staffers.

All this depends on the willingness of PSD to embrace and advance long-term reforms. This seems unlikely; the department can barely maintain the status quo. The persistence of a fully empowered corrections commission, attuned to both PSD and the larger community, is required to move the ball forward. Once its staff is in place, the commission needs to forge ahead.