Posted on: Thursday, September 25, 2003
ISLAND VOICES
Prison worsens ice problem
By Lance Takada
Halawa Correctional Facility inmate
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.
