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Amidst the confines of an Arizona prison ward last September, Sen. Glenn Wakai stumbled upon a strange sight: A flurry of canine companions darting freely among the incarcerated. The sight, which Wakai thought was both astonishing and heartwarming, revealed a reciprocal bond between inmates and sheltered pets. 

The dogs helped the inmates in terms of emotional development, Wakai said, and the inmates provided adoptability for the pets. 

“I thought this is a win-win situation that we need to replicate here in Hawaii,” Wakai said, only he wanted to start with women and cats.

With Wakaiʻs leadership, state legislators are considering a program that pairs inmates at the stateʻs Women’s Community Correctional Center with pets in need of around-the-clock care. The aim is to decrease recidivism, improve inmate behavior and self-efficacy and create a support system for animals in need. 

seeks to provide inmates at the Women’s Community Correctional Center with the opportunity to care for vulnerable kittens while serving the tail-end of their sentences. “This would have a truly transformative effect on both pets and people,” said Brandy Shimabukuro, manager of communications for the Hawaiian Humane Society, “Pilot programs, like this, have launched across the country, and they’ve been proven to be mutually beneficial to pets in need, inmates and organizations that support them.”

There were 290 dog training programs like this implemented throughout the United States in 2016, but research on the programs’ successes is minimal, a professor in the criminal justice department at the University of New Haven.

But early results have been promising. For example, that followed 96 participants found a 46% lower recidivism rate in people who participated in the program when compared to the average prison population. 

A separate published in The College of New Jersey Journal of Student Scholarship, documented that the implementation of pet care in prison assists an inmate’s development of emotional intelligence in the forms of empathy and  self-efficacy and created a decrease in recurring symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD. Additionally, there was an observed decrease in inmate infractions in comparison to pre-program rates.  

The Hawaii program would exclude inmates who have participated in violent crimes and focus on those with good behavior. 

The pilot program would run for one year and take newborn kittens, age 1 to 4 weeks, that are too young to be cared for in the Humane Society shelter. 

Inmates at the Women’s Community Correctional Center would be trained by Humane Society staff, named the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee, to feed the kittens every two hours for the first two weeks of their lives and maintain warmth as they cannot regulate their temperature that young. The kittens then would stay at the correctional center until grown and healthy enough to be adopted. 

The program would help meet the demand for care of young kittens, Shimabukuro said. During kitten season there are newborn kittens brought into the shelter that are either abandoned or in need of care, but the vulnerable state of these kittens require 24-hour care that cannot be provided by the Humane Society staff.

Wakai said this program would likely require about a $50,000 investment from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as well as contracting agreements with organizations such as the Humane Society.  

Wakai added that if this program were implemented it would be a pilot program for the first year, and depending on its status, the program could transfer to the men’s facilities in future years as well. 

In other across the country, some prisons with a capacity of about 700 women take anywhere from five to 70 participants at a time. 

The size of the group relates to the capacity of the prison to make a thorough evaluation of the inmates, considering individual behavior, work history, education and custody level. These measures aim to ensure the safety of animals and inmates.  

“In all the struggles in society,” Wakai said, “here’s one that I would imagine most people can agree is a good thing to rally behind.”

Despite the enthusiasm surrounding the proposal, logistical challenges remain to be addressed, such as transportation for veterinary care and ensuring the safety and well-being of both inmates and pets involved, according to Shimabukuro.