COMMENTARY
An open letter from inmate to Gov. Lingle
By Mike Coleman
Dear Gov. Lingle,
Advertiser library photo • Sept. 18, 1995
Thank you for the change you have promised Hawai'i and your emphasis on a more treatment-oriented concept for our courts and prisons.
Our "correctional" system is in disrepair. Taxpayers believe prisons to be crowded with dangerous criminals, not nonviolent pot smokers.
We now positively know it: drug addiction fuels 80 percent or more of all crimes, and it is our neglected, high-risk youth who become most of those addicts.
Our "correctional" system is in critical disrepair. Taxpayers make terrible sacrifices to build economy-crippling prisons because they believe them to be crowded with dangerous criminals.
But the truth would shock them: One of my nonviolent cellmates sleeps on the crowded floors at Halawa prison for smoking pot. Another was reincarcerated by the Hawai'i Paroling Authority, while he was in a drug program, for a year-old positive urinalysis.
As with its re-arrest rate, the average time that the Hawai'i Paroling Authority makes all of its offenders serve is among the highest in the nation. They frequently "max them out," making them serve their entire sentences.
Such draconian measures only serve to eliminate incentives for reform or good behavior while denying the offender — and society — even the briefest period of the supervised transition that reduces recidivism.
"Sometimes a parole officer looks at his (too heavy) caseload and (arbitrarily) decides which 10 go back to prison today," says a veteran Halawa sergeant.
I documented numerous incarcerations like these after the Paroling Authority returned me to prison. I did not commit a crime or fail a urinalysis test in three years on parole. With money I had earned from a good job, I founded a small nonprofit, "Like a Child," to help disadvantaged children.
The young agency could not afford to give me a salary yet, and because I volunteered my services instead, I was re-incarcerated — at taxpayer expense — for "failure to provide proof of income."
It gets worse. When Tommy Johnson, the Paroling Authority administrator who arrested me, was asked by supporters of our agency to explain the re-arrest, he launched into a criticism of Like a Child.
Two exhaustive audits by separate accountants and our own board review indicated there was "not even a hint" of wrongdoing involved with the agency.
Advertiser library photo • Sept. 23, 1996
The report that parole supervisor Kathy Shimata prepared for Johnson to justify my arrest is, I believe, a study in duplicity: It is full of half-truths and distortions. For instance, one page claims I had no drug treatment and another acknowledges the date I graduated from a program.
Zero tolerance for a drug-positive urinalysis is a misnomer for zero common sense. Too often, we overlook the impact of zero compassion on the vulnerable children of the reincarcerated parent/addict.
Another man is here in Halawa for failing to report a minor contact he had with police a year earlier. He was working hard to support his expectant wife and now-fatherless child.
Yesterday, in the visiting room, I could not take my eyes off the four children of a man arrested after a single dirty urinalysis — which merely confirmed his need for treatment. An estimated three out of four of the children of prisoners grow up to follow their parents to prison, and I kept looking at those four innocent kids, wondering which three it will be.
Zero tolerance for fathers like these is just a misnomer for zero common sense when it comes to drug treatment. As Lorenn Walker reports in her Dec. 9 Advertiser op-ed piece, the average addict relapses repeatedly before recovery takes effect.
All too often, we overlook the impact of zero compassion on the vulnerable children of the reincarcerated parent/addict. Prisons not only fail to "correct," they literally perpetuate their dysfunctional force in the lives of prison orphans sentenced to visit their fathers here, under the gun towers of Halawa.
This is not theory; it is a brutal, statistical fact.
The drug treatment our prisons do have is inadequate.
Kelii is 11 years old and lives with his brothers, Keola and Keahi, in Kuhio Park Terrace housing, surrounded by drugs and gangs. They were in Like a Child's "Pays-4-A's" program which constantly encouraged and rewarded their scholastic improvement. If you've never seen a million-watt smile before, you should have seen Kelii when he proudly showed me his first "A."
Every weekend, for two years, we took the brothers and their friends fishing, litter-collecting and a hundred other places to keep them out of trouble. Their whoops and grins grew on me — as love might — and I knew I had finally found my life's work, finally turned the trick of remaining drug-free for the rest of my life.
When I was re-imprisoned, Kelii began calling our secretary in tears every Sunday, angry with me for suddenly walking out on him. I told her to tell him that I had to go away for a while, but he isn't buying it. He is a resourceful boy, and had his job selling the Honolulu Advertiser moved to the traffic light near our office. She saw him there a few times, waiting for me to drive by so he could scold me and make me take him fishing again.
Gov. Lingle, we are making two socially insane mistakes:
- We are misdirecting vast resources into prisons while doing little, sometimes nothing, to identify and impact the children they will soon house.
- The prisons we have are oppressive, hostile environments where there is little or no incentive to change and no quality programs for those who wish to.
Mike Coleman, president of Like a Child, is an inmate at Halawa Community Correctional Facility.
