The state of Hawai\u2018i\u2019s current prison polices risk the safety of our community and waste scarce public resources.\u00a0 The decision to close Kulani prison is a case in point.<\/p>\n
Hawai\u2018i\u2019s Republican governor Linda Lingle and her prison administration are closing Kulani prison, which focuses on treatment and rehabilitation.\u00a0 At the same time the administration gives $50 million a year to the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) <\/a>to imprison people thousands of miles away from home, which decreases their chances for rehabilitation and risks public safety when they are released.<\/p>\n Over 95% of all incarcerated people are eventually released from prison, and without rehabilitation they are likely to commit more crimes when they come back unskilled to the community.\u00a0 People released from prison without rehabilitation endanger public safety.\u00a0 Hawai\u2018i suffers such terrible recidivism that it has applied for a special grant that is only available for states with the worst rehabilitation rates.<\/p>\n The state has known for years it has failed at rehabilitation, and yet the current administration in particular, has continued on a path of holding prisoners for as long as it can, and not providing effective reentry services or skills to incarcerated people.<\/p>\n The two most important factors for rehabilitation are having a relationship with a law abiding person and decent employment<\/a>.\u00a0 Being imprisoned thousands of miles away from their homes, incarcerated people are unlikely to maintain or develop relationships with law abiding people or find good jobs.<\/p>\n After the recent sex abuse cases at the CCA’s Otter Creek prison in Kentucky, the state returned all female inmates to Hawai\u2018i<\/a>, but it continues to keep almost 2000 male inmates incarcerated at a CCA prison in Arizona that was especially built for Hawai\u2019i\u2019s prisoners.\u00a0 The administration has also said it may send female inmates to a prison on the Mainland<\/a> closer to Hawai\u2018i such as the West Coast.<\/p>\n The state claims it saves money by sending people to the Mainland prisons.\u00a0 It claimed it cost only $58.46 a day to keep someone in the Otter Creek prison compared to $86.00 a day in the Hawai\u2018i state women\u2019s prison.\u00a0 The reported savings, however, does not include the costs to transport people to and from the mainland, medical costs, nor the costs of maintaining state offices and personnel on the mainland to monitor the prisons there.\u00a0 Why doesn\u2019t the current administration include these obvious costs?\u00a0 And more importantly, why doesn\u2019t it consider the long term costs of recidivism from keeping people incarcerated on the mainland and in closing Kulani prison?<\/p>\n Kulani prison <\/a>is located in the country on the island of Hawai\u2019i.\u00a0 Kulani opened in 1946 as a work camp and today is a \u201ca 160-bed minimum-security prison that incorporates vocational training and specialized programming for male inmates nearing the end of their sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the state\u2019s need for minimum security beds for incarcerated people, the state claims closing Kulani will save $2.8 million <\/a>a year.<\/p>\n Oddly the Lingle administration, which is now closing Kulani prison just last year asked the federal government <\/a>to give it about $6 million to finance \u201ctents\u201d to house incarcerated people, which they said were needed.<\/p>\n