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Hawaii continues to face soaring homeless rates and an unprecedented affordable housing and public health crisis, exacerbated by the fire recovery efforts on Maui.

Amidst this crisis, lawmakers proposed an unprecedented capital improvements project budget for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (previously named Department of Public Safety) to expand the carceral footprint in Hawaii.

Without robust debate, lawmakers allocated nearly $100 million in the budget toward building new jails and expanding the prison landscape in Hawaii to warehouse some of the most vulnerable members of our communities. A few of the appropriations in are noted below:

• $10 million toward a request for proposal to replace the OCCC jail in Honolulu, with an estimated final price tag of over $1 billion for construction alone;
• $20 million to replace a new jail on Kauai;
• $18 million for a perimeter fence and other repairs at Halawa prison;
• $22.5 million for a new medical facility at Halawa; and
• $16 million for a kitchen expansion at the women’s prison.

Despite clear evidence that jails are the least effective and most expensive response to our public health and housing crisis in Hawai’i and does little to deter crime, lawmakers decided to invest in cages, instead of a policy of “Care First, Jails Last.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Gov. Josh Green has a historic opportunity to use his line-item veto to reject appropriations that would expand the carceral footprint in Hawaii, and instead invest in proven strategies that build healthy, safe and more equitable communities.

Continuum Of Care Is The Solution

No one disputes that most of our jails are severely overcrowded.

Over the years, media reports highlight inhumane and unconstitutional conditions of confinement. People sleeping four to five to a cell designed for two persons, being housed in “dry rooms” with no toilets or running water and repeated lockdowns.

High rates of suicides, limited health care and treatment and brutal beatings in our jails.

Even staff experience negative effects from these toxic working conditions and culture, forced to take mandatory shifts given staffing shortages.

The solution, however, is not constructing bigger jails. Simply put, most people sitting in jail right now should not be there.

According to the Department of Public Safety Intake Center data, approximately 38% of all people in jails in Hawaii are homeless. An even larger percentage of people warehoused in our jails have mental illness or are awaiting trial because they can’t afford bail.

We need to develop a continuum of care that diverts people from our jails. This includes housing and a broad spectrum of treatment services to reduce the number of people with mental illness, substance use and co-occurring disorders in our jails.

We need to maximize diversion from the carceral system at the earliest possible opportunity by implementing proven strategies to safely reduce the jail population:

Pre-Arrest Diversion: During the pandemic, law enforcement increasingly used their discretion to issue citations instead of arrests. This resulted in less people being warehoused in our jails throughout Hawaii, without increases in crime rates.

Expand Pretrial Release: Over 60% of people in our jails are legally innocent yet locked behind bars and separated from ohana. The majority of whom are not a flight risk, nor a danger to the community, but are stripped of their liberty and detained simply because they lack the financial resources to afford bail. Despite the Legislature enacting pretrial reforms in 2019, our courts continue to send too many people to jail while awaiting their trials.

Strengthen And Expand Community Courts: The Legislature had an opportunity to fund and expand the Community Care Courts but failed to do so. Dedicate resources to divert defendants declared incompetent to stand trial from the criminal legal system into clinically appropriate treatment in non-jail settings.

The first response to a mental health crisis should be mental health professionals, not police. Invest and expand crisis response services and create 24/7 county mobile crisis response teams in all counties in Hawaii, and coordination with other providers.

Although we have taken a step in the right direction with the creation of Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement, systemic changes are required to achieve the success of the CAHOOTS model in Oregon.

Other issues:

Invest In Community Care Providers: Increase compensation to clinical staff in community based organizations that provide behavioral health services. This is key for recruiting and retaining providers that are seriously understaffed and under-resourced. We also need to invest in proven peer support programs.

Racial Equity: Native Hawaiians are disproportionately locked up in the Hawaii criminal justice system, making up only 20% of the general population but over 40% of people in our carceral system. (Similar disparities for other Pacific Islanders, Filipinos and Blacks also exist in Hawaii.)

To remedy this racial injustice, we must invest in under-resourced communities and implement the strategies outlined in the Native Hawaiian Justice Task Force Report (Act 170), and OHA’s Disparate Treatment of Native Hawaiians in the Criminal Justice System Report (2010). More affordable and permanent supportive housing options for people with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.

Eliminate Barriers To Treatment: We have waitlists to get into drug treatment and co-occurring treatment programs, but no waitlists to get into our jails — at a cost of $250 a day or over $90,000 annually to lock up one adult. We must increase and sustain fiscal investments in community-based treatment proportional to our communities’ needs.

Taxpayers Deserve Budget Transparency

Hawaii has never conducted a comprehensive audit of the millions of taxpayer dollars spent over decades to plan new jails and prisons that have never been constructed.

Yet, we’ve enriched the pocketbooks of architects, planners, consultants and the like who profit from building cages at the expense of individuals and their families.

Outside public hearings, secret conversations ensue between state officials and lobbyists who represent private prison corporations like CoreCivic. These profiteers are eager to enter Hawaii’s market to build, construct and “finance” new jails.
Don’t be deceived by the slick marketing of private prison corporations and lobbyists trying to convince us that new modernized jails are “solutions” to overcrowding.

Let’s be clear. The prison industrial complex cares about maximizing profit, not the health and safety of our communities.

Bipartisan Support Needed For Carceral System

Now’s the time to shift our thinking and invest resources in creating safe and healthy communities for all, and especially in under-resourced communities most impacted by the carceral system.

Through bipartisan support, other states have invested in “Care First, Jails Last” strategies, successfully diverting people from entering the revolving door to jails.

Additionally, community advocates, working in collaboration with visionary state and county leaders, have blocked construction of new cages and closed jails and prisons, too. This has saved taxpayer dollars and resulted in reductions in crime rates in other states by focusing on the root causes of crime.

Closer to home, Hawaii has emerged as a bold leader in juvenile justice reform. We have massively shrunk the number of youth locked up by focusing on diversion and trauma-informed care for youth and their families.

In 2022, Hawaii was in the national media spotlight for achieving the milestone of having no girls in our only youth correctional facility — a first in our state’s history.

We urge Gov. Green to build upon the success of decarcerating our juvenile system and applying lessons learned from Hawaii and other jurisdictions to significantly reduce the number of adults in our jails and prisons.

We also call upon the governor to enact a moratorium on carceral expansion until a comprehensive financial audit of the monies spent on jail and prison expansion “planning” is complete.

Our hope is that Green will use his veto power to withhold funds for expanding the carceral landscape and chart a new course for systems of care based on equitable access to stable housing, healthcare, living wage jobs, education and restorative justice.

Ultimately, history will be the judge of Gov. Green’s “community safety” legacy for future generations in Hawaii.