PRISON WORSENS ICE PROBLEM

I am a 33-year-old local male. I come from a very good family, and I could not
have asked for a better childhood. At 16, when I started my battle with ice, my
future still had all kinds of possibilities.

Today I write this letter from Halawa Correctional Facility, where I have been
for the last nine years. I will be released next week, right back into my old
neighborhood. I've come a long way in the past nine years, but I can still
remember the old days when all my time and efforts were put toward getting my
next fix.

There was not much I would not do to get it. I've gone as far as stealing from
my own family, putting them through hell. I did whatever it took to get high,
and all my hopes and dreams for the future were put on the side. There were
times when I realized how bad things had gotten, but I just could not stop. I
was a control freak, and while dealing ice, I had all these illusions of power.
I made people do whatever I wanted, and they would do it just so they could get
high.

Because of my organizational skills, I was a very successful dealer. I set up
stores all over my community. I recruited all the car thieves, credit card
bandits and check forgers and taught them to operate as a unit. I rationalized
that what I was doing was not so bad because I was not actually doing any of
the crimes. That's what ice does; it makes the mind see what it wants to see.

Ice by itself is not so hard to kick. You don't have withdrawal symptoms like
heroin; you don't chase it like freebase. It just takes you on a nice ride. It
keeps you up for days. It's a very sociable drug -- you can use it in any type
of environment or social setting. But if you ride the train too long, one day
you will look up and realize you have burned all your bridges. You will see
that you are surrounded by other users and it's too late to get back to the
life you knew.

I see no end to the destruction ice is causing in our community. The prison
system is populated with a majority of inmates who have committed ice-related
crimes. Here at Halawa, we have a substance-abuse treatment program that
graduates approximately 60 inmates a year. Our current population is more than
1,400. In reality, what we have here is a place for ice addicts and dealers to
learn how to become even better ice addicts and dealers.

Since 1996, some lucky ones get sent to the Mainland jails because of
overcrowding here. There they learn advanced ice dealing with an added elective
course on how to process and make ice from scratch, not to mention meeting new
sources. This is one reason why so many ice labs have been popping up in
Hawai'i over the past seven years.

To say that the prisons and programs are not making an effort toward
rehabilitation would be false, but almost all state agencies have their hands
tied because of the lack of funds. From my experience, I see two groups that
need to be targeted. One is intermediate school children, and the other is the
prison population. The children can be reached before they even get started;
the inmates can be reached because their minds will have had time to clear
during their period of incarceration.

Halawa Correctional Facility has the manpower and experience to reach out to
these two groups. First, designate one module (240 inmates) as the Clean and
Sober Module, and run it like the Life Line programs that have been successful
in private Mainland prison facilities. This program is governed by a set of
structured rules enforced by inmate interns from within. One certified
substance-abuse counselor and two carefully selected and screened adult
correctional officers could oversee an entire module.

>From this program, representatives could be selected to tour intermediate
schools and demonstrate to the students exactly where a life of drugs will
lead. As an incentive for inmates to enter the program, their sentences could
be reduced upon successful completion of the yearlong program.

This will not only encourage inmates to do well; it will also save the state
money by relieving overcrowding in the prison system and reducing recidivism.