Drug treatment stretched thin by other prison costs

By Johnny Brannon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Most inmates in Hawai'i's jail and prison system need some level of treatment for drug or alcohol abuse, and ice is the No. 1 drug of choice, officials say.

Drug-treatment programs at Hawai'i's jails and prisons are insufficient and aren't evenly spread throughout the system, a recent study found. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

At the same time, the cost of incarceration is steadily going up, along with the number of prisoners.

The system has been dangerously crowded for years, and the state needs to spend nearly $1 billion over the next decade to replace neglected facilities and build new ones if the prisoner population continues to increase as expected, the study found.

Many prisoners with addictions don't want help. But those who do want to get clean can find it difficult to get into treatment programs while in custody, or while on probation or parole.

The result is that their drug problems remain, and they're more likely to remain addicts or commit new crimes, most officials and drug-treatment advocates agree.

When treatment is available, it is usually toward the end of an inmate's sentence, often after years of confinement among hardened criminals.

Rehabilitation efforts would be far more productive if started early and reinforced at key transitions during sentences, according to the study, a 10-year corrections master plan prepared by Carter Goble Associates.

"The continued and growing prevalence of substance abuse and dependency in jail and prison populations is so widespread that limiting treatment to only a few facilities is not sufficient for a correctional system that desires to try to change criminal behavior and reduce recidivism rates," the report says.

But state corrections budgets have been stretched thin for years. Just a fraction of the new money proposed for the system next year would pay for drug-abuse treatment.

Gov. Linda Lingle's proposed budget includes $35 million for jail and prison repairs and to pay for more rented cells to ease crowding. Another $353,000 has been earmarked for parolee treatment programs, and the judiciary is seeking $1.2 million to sustain and expand Drug Court programs on Neighbor Islands.

An 18-member Joint House-Senate Task Force on Ice and Drug Abatement has recommended spending $21.6 million on treatment, prevention, and related programs outside prison.

Department of Public Safety director John Peyton said good treatment programs help reduce the number of inmates who return to prison, but that Hawai'i clearly also needs more cells.

"We need to expand, and we need to replace," he said. "The question is how to prioritize with the money that's available."

The master plan projects the annual average number of state prisoners will increase from 5,657 last year to 7,083 in 2008. To handle that growth and return Hawai'i inmates from rented Mainland cells, the state needs to more than double the rated capacity of its jails and prisons, from 3,369 beds to 7,625, the report said.

Others worry that such a build-up could hurt efforts to expand drug-abuse treatment programs outside prison.

"The prisons are in physically bad shape, and something definitely must be done," said Kat Brady of the Community Alliance on Prisons.

"But it's ludicrous to think that we can build our way out of a substance-abuse problem, especially when the administration isn't putting any money toward this growing, desperate need that we have. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're going to need more space if they're just going to continue to lock people up and not provide treatment."

The state spends more than $101.5 million a year to run Hawai'i's correctional system, and $31 million more to rent cells in private Mainland prisons and from the federal government.

The Mainland cells are expected to cost $1.2 million more next year under a new contract with the Corrections Corporation of America. Plans to send an additional 200 inmates to those facilities would cost an extra $5 million, and nearly $1 million more would pay to house 25 additional inmates at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu.

Hawai'i's prisoner population nearly doubled during the 1990s, and the state began sending prisoners to Mainland facilities in 1995 to relieve crowding while officials decided where and how to build new facilities here.

But the arrangement became permanent as construction plans stalled, and the number of transferred inmates grew from 300 to nearly 1,400.

Hawai'i is now dependent on the private prisons, and would have one of the most crowded corrections systems in the nation if the transferred inmates were suddenly returned, according to the master plan.