Three hundred people gathered in Kona on Wednesday to discuss and analyze the problem of prison recidivism among former inmates.
Participants of the Going Home Hawaii Reentry and Restoration Summit at the King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel came from government, private and nonprofit backgrounds.
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“Being in this room is a wow moment,” said Mayor Mitch Roth at the event.
Roth recounted his days as lead prosecutor for the county, at which time it became the first in the nation to implement “restorative justice,” which helps offenders take responsibility for their actions, understand the harm they have caused, give them an opportunity to redeem themselves, and discourage them from causing further harm.
“We did things differently here than the rest of the world,” he said. “I think about some of the people I actually prosecuted, and they are my heroes. Failure is a point in time, not a definition of who you are.”
That legacy continues today. Tommy Johnson, director of the Department of Public Safety, will transition the name of the department to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in January 2024.
“This is an ideal time for … us to embrace the paradigm shift needed to affect positive change in the criminal justice system,” said Johnson.
He said he wanted to change the punitive system into a treatment-program oriented approach.
“Our vision is to promote community safety while focusing on rehabilitation and ensure a successful reintegration back into the community,” he said, acknowledging the challenges of overcrowding in facilities and funding.
Johnson said the system is old and antiquated, and the facilities are designed neither for the current large population nor rehabilitation.
He said he wants to partner with community organizations to break the cycle of generational incarceration.
“We need as many jail diversion programs as possible to stop people from coming to jail and provide the services they need,” he said.
Johnson noted it was cheaper to provide those services in the community, where the daily cost for a parolee is $9 versus $258 for incarcerated individuals.
“We should not be incarcerating people who don’t need to be incarcerated. Jail is the most expensive, least effective option,” he said.
He said the corrections division provides services that will enable people released from custody to function as contributing, law abiding members of the community.
“I would like to see these offenders strive and excel in the community to become leaders and role models and to earn not just minimum wage, but a living wage so they can take care of their families and become contributing members of society,” he said. “The needs of the offender today are not the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago, so we need to look at all of our policies and procedures, look at our curriculum to make sure we are meeting the needs of the offender today.”
Jamee Miller, president of Ekolu Mea Nui, said Native Hawaiians are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. “When you scan the world, especially colonized countries, you find that we here in Hawaii are not unique. Indigenous people are disproportionately represented in these types of systems like incarceration.”
She said historical trauma is at the root of societal troubles, inequities and negative outcomes, including incarceration, and that most trauma is connected to loss of ancestral lands, loss of a political standing, loss of a culture, including language, which lead to a loss of practices that kept the Hawaiian society intact.
She noted that native practitioners need to be brought to the table and innovate alternatives to incarceration, including changing laws and policies. Miller added that language needs to change — new terms are needed to replace words like inmate, offender and incarcerated, which carry stigma.
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