Posted on: Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Youth facility reforms debated

By Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writer

Charges that the state is failing to report to the ACLU about reforms at Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility are unfounded, state officials said yesterday.

The reforms, spurred by a critical report by the American Civil Liberties Union last August, are continuing, and the ACLU has been kept in the loop, said Deputy Attorney General Richard Bissen.

"We have a track record of only cooperating with them (ACLU) from the beginning, and I take issue with anyone who says otherwise," Bissen said at an afternoon press conference. "Making progress does not mean meeting every ACLU demand, or inviting them to every meeting."

Earlier in the day, ACLU legal director Lois Perrin released a letter that accused the Office of Youth Services and its executive director Sharon Agnew of "excluding" the ACLU from discussions on reform at the facility.

"We have repeatedly asked for information and we have received nothing in the way of documentation," Perrin said. "We have been making repeated gestures from this office and they have been rebuffed. To the extent that there was miscommunication, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss that."

Perrin said she hopes the conditions at HYCF can be resolved.

"Unfortunately, we're at a stalemate in so far as the ACLU has been excluded from all collaborative efforts at reform at HYCF and we would like to get that back on track," she said.

For months, the ACLU has been threatening litigation if conditions at HYCF are not improved.

The letter called for Gov. Linda Lingle to intervene on the ACLU's behalf.

At the press conference, Lingle said the state continues to work aggressively toward correcting conditions at the facility, but that the ACLU's comments, released through the media, were not characteristic of the overall interaction the state has had with the ACLU.

She said she has never met or spoken with ACLU legal director Perrin, who was recently hired by the organization.

"This is not the spirit of cooperation that we began with," Lingle said. "It is not in the interest of the children to operate in this fashion."

Lingle said she thought the ACLU made some good points when the report was released last August, and she said she took deliberate steps to make changes.

Bissen yesterday said the immediate removal of HYCF's top two administrators soon after the report's release was the start of a collaborative relationship with the ACLU. He continued to detail conversations with former ACLU legal director Brent White, the author of the report, as evidence that the state has been open with its efforts to reform practices at HYCF.

In particular, he cited a Sept. 5, 2003 conversation between Attorney General Mark Bennett, Lingle, and White during which White said there "was no need for a response (to the report) as long as we (the state) continued to make progress".

Agnew, executive director of the OYS, the department that oversees HYCF, said earlier this month that she is working with recently hired HYCF administrator Kaleve Tufono-Iosefa to re-write antiquated codes of conducts that govern guard's interactions with wards.

In April, Agnew went before the Legislature and detailed every step, both planned and implemented, that OYS was taking to improve life at HYCF.

She said that the facility is also working to adopt performance -based standards for employees. She also said much work has been done to reduce crowding at the facility.

Bissen said yesterday that at the time the ACLU report was issued, the average number of wards at the facility was 90. As of yesterday, he said, 57 wards were being housed at HYCF.

In August 2003, the ACLU released a 34-page report, compiled with cooperation of state officials, that found that there was "a pattern of egregious conduct and conditions at HYCF that violate minimum professional and constitutional standards."

The report also alleged rape, brutality and crowding at the Windward facility. In response, Lingle reassigned the administrator and a corrections specialist at HYCF last August.

In reassigning Mel Ando from his job as the top official at the facility and Glenn Yoshimoto from his corrections specialist position, Lingle said the "report's conclusions are too serious to leave the current management in place."

The letter sent yesterday to Lingle states that in the 10 months since the ACLU issued the report about conditions at HYCF, the OYS and Agnew have refused to provide information about reform and improvements at the facility despite creating a document that lists specific actions taken in response to ACLU findings.

In April a former guard at the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault and one count of terroristic threatening involving a teenage girl who was held in the youth prison last year.

Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.