EDITORIAL
Whoa! Not so fast on building new jail

Lots of things have changed in the three years since lawmakers authorized Gov. Ben Cayetano to negotiate directly with developers to build a new jail.

So much so, in fact, that they now should retract that authorization and go back to Square 1.

Not only has the state's financial ability to build major new facilities eroded, but it appears a promising new corrections philosophy is evolving.

Moreover, while we generally admire measures that allow projects to get done quickly and efficiently without legislative micromanagement, we're afraid the public is too much in the dark about the bidding process, not to mention the location, scope of operations and even the price, for the jail.

The state certainly has a problem with crowding in both its jails and prisons. First, be aware that prisons and jails serve different purposes. Prisons are long- or medium-term institutions — penitentiaries or correctional centers for convicted felons. Jails are normally used to confine people serving misdemeanor sentences, or those awaiting trial or sentencing.

The state has a long-standing but highly doubtful plan to build a major new prison on the Big Island. And now it wants to replace what passes for a jail in this state — O'ahu Community Correctional Center in Kalihi — with a new jail, to be built next to or as part of the state's largest existing prison, the Halawa Community Correctional Center, in Halawa Valley.

It's clear that modern Kalihi has grown up around OCCC, limiting its security and safety. OCCC has a rated capacity for 954 inmates but now holds more than 1,100.

The state proposes to build a new jail with a capacity of as many as 1,700. As long as this facility is used as a jail only, it thus has no effect on overcrowding in the state's prison facilities, which are so packed that the state has had to send 1,250 prisoners to Mainland prisons — and which may be a more urgent target for what clearly is the state's limited ability to spend for such big-ticket items.

Meanwhile, in the first sign of an evolving philosophy, lawmakers and Cayetano this year approved substance-abuse treatment rather than prison for nonviolent offenders who are convicted for the first time of using or possessing illegal drugs.

An important follow-up step will be to take a close look at felons who have served their mandatory minimum sentences, but then violated the terms of their parole with drug use or possession. Lawmakers must decide whether drug treatment doesn't make more sense than the present practice of returning these offenders to prison to serve out their maximum sentences — in many cases longer than they served for the actual crime.

And finally, they must begin to study criminals whose violent offenses were drug-related. We're not suggesting that drug use reduces a criminal's responsibility for a crime. We're suggesting that in cases where drug treatment can do as good a job as incarceration in reducing recidivism, society can reap enormous savings.

The combination of sending first-time drug offenders to treatment, substantially reducing long-term imprisonment for parole violators for drug charges, and perhaps sending other offenders to treatment instead of parole most likely would relieve overcrowding a lot less expensively than building new facilities.

Building a new jail seemed to make more sense three years ago than it does now. In addition, the terms of development for the proposed facility are causing major second thoughts.

It's time for lawmakers to start over.