BETTER WAYS TO SPEND MONEY THAN ON PRISONS

This time last year we were congratulating Gov. Ben Cayetano for
recognizing that there are better ways to spend the state's money than
constructing a major new state prison in Hawai'i.

That was last year. This year Cayetano is back asking not for one but for
two prisons: one a larger replacement for the bursting-at-seams O'ahu
Community Correctional Center in Kalihi, and the other a treatment facility
on the Big Island.

Don't hold your breath. Why should the state, having been frustrated by a
decade-long search for an acceptable site for one prison, now instantly
succeed in finding two sites?

Making the challenge even greater is the fact that Cayetano wants to put
one of them on O'ahu, near enough to highways for easy transportation to
the court buildings downtown, and the other on the Big Island.

O'ahu residents deeply resent having any facility with a negative
connotation located in their back yards - garbage dump, parole office, or
the like. True enough, OCCC has outgrown its Kalihi site, which is squeezed
by development and residential neighborhoods.

But good luck in finding another O'ahu site.

And Big Island residents have tended to be negative even about developments
that might be good for them. Certainly the prospect of new jobs has not
been enough to get them to welcome a prison.

More important than this practical objection to Cayetano's request is a
philosophical one. Nearly all inmates sooner or later are returned to the
community, the product of having been "warehoused" for years with little
rehabilitation or drug treatment. Too many of them come out worse than when
they went in.

Far more needed, we think - not to mention more likely to come about - are
modest programs for halfway houses and expansion of existing facilities and
additional short-term leases or rental of bed spaces. Some space has opened
up for state prisoners, for instance, in the new federal detention facility
near Honolulu Airport.

But what is most vital is to continue to expand drug treatment programs,
both within prison and outside.

This is crucial. It is obvious that drugs or substance abuse lies at the
root of the problems that bring the majority of people into the justice
system. It is ultimately cheaper - as well as more humane - to spend public
resources on getting to that root problem rather than simply locking up
those who display the symptoms.

Experience suggests that no matter how many new prison bed spaces you
build, a way will be found to fill them.

No one suggests that drug treatment is a miracle. The failure rate, at
least for those who are less than earnest about trying it, is high. But
drug treatment is relatively cheap; the savings from even modest success
rates is impressive.

We will always need prisons for the violent or hardened criminals within
the system. Prison must also be there as a last option for those who refuse
to cooperate with treatment efforts.

But a commitment of state energy and money into intensive, supervised drug
treatment (such as is seen with the successful Drug Court program) is a far
more sensible approach than the thought that we can ever jail our way out
of our crime problem.