Pacific Century Fellows— Public Safety, part 3

To end the day we visited Ke Kula Maka'i, the Honolulu Police Department's training school in Waipahu. There we were greeted by Chief Louis Kealoha, saw a video about the Police Academy process, got demonstration of the new S.W.A.T. tools that will be employed by HPD in the event of a terrorist attack and for protection of visiting diplomats during the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, and got a chance to view the S.W.A.T. K-9 unit. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. (Thanks to Lisa Bail for taking them.)

Pacific Century Fellows— Public Safety, part 2

After lunch we heard from Florence Nakakuni, U.S. Attorney, District of Hawai'i, and Charlene Thornton, the F.B.I. Special Agent in Charge, F.B.I., Honolulu. Ms. Nakakuni gave us a brief overview of the federal U.S. Attorney's office (93 U.S. Attorneys nationally) and its goals:
1) protect the national security of the United States,
2) fight crime,
3) protect the economy,
4) protect the environment,
5) ensure fairness in the marketplace.
To do that the U.S. Attorney's office prosecutes cases for the U.S., defends the U.S. in cases against it, and seeks to recover debts owed to the U.S. 90% of those crimes are criminal in nature with the trend from the last year showing violent crime going down while property crime has gone up. Much of that, according to Ms. Nakakuni and mirroring Clayton Frank from earlier in the day, is due to drugs. 50% of their criminal cases are drug related, and of those cases, 85% connect to crystal meth (followed by cocaine and then marijuana). Marijuana is still the most widely used drug, with prices around $400/ounce. 120,000 plants were seized this year, down from 300,000 ten years ago, mostly due to growing operations moving indoors and more marijuana coming in from Mexico and British Columbia. The Department of Justice is officially opposed to the legalization of marijuana for any use as it is seen, again mirroring Clayton Frank, as a gateway drug that leads inevitably to other "harder" drugs. Even medical marijuana, in their view, send the wrong message to kids that these mind-altering substances are not as dangerous as they can be. They have not been tested by the FDA so there is really no way of knowing the potency or all the negative side-effects.
Char Thornton followed with a brief overview of the F.B.I. as the principle investigating arm of the Justice Department. They currently have 56 field offices in the U.S. and 61 overseas with 30,000 employees, 13,500 of whom are agents (those who carry badges and guns). The Hawai'i office, which also covers Guam, American Samoa, the Marianas Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia, has 205 agents, 103 of whom are agents. Despite our remote location, Ms. Thornton pointed out that HI definitely has the charcateristics of a potential terrorist target: prominent military bases, birthplace of the current president, and the upcoming Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation conference. She said that pre-9/11 F.B.I. field offices had more discretion over what their priorities would be based on their particular circumstances, but now they are national priorities determined by Robert Mueller:
1) counterterrorism— internal threat
2) counter espionage/intelligence
3) cyber crime— Internet
4) public corruption— stimulus fraud in particular
5) civil rights
6) organized crime
7) white collar crime
8) violent crime
Ms. Thornton also agreed with Ms. Nakakuni and Mr. Frank that crystal meth is one of the most deleterious elements in our society, but she conceded that is it virtually impossible to stop it from coming into Hawai'i. In her opinion, law enforcement is not the way to solve that problem ("we can't arrest our way out of our crystal meth epidemic") and that focusing on the demand side is the way to contain it.

Connecting back to my earlier post on Systems Thinking, there appears to be a pretty clear 'stop' with respect to fighting crime in Hawai'i and that's crystal meth. That nothing new to people in the criminal justice system, but it makes me wonder if fighting marijuana is really a wise use of our resources. The question of causation versus correlation with respect to the whole 'gateway drug' argument is problemmatic in my mind. Just because you can draw a line from most crystal meth users to their having used marijuana at one time earlier in their lives doesn't mean the marijuana use lead to their crystal meth use. There has to be a medical explanation about how the two drugs stimulate completely different parts of the brain which would explain the completely different reactions people have when they are under the influence of them. I have a feeling if you asked a police officer if he or she would rather encounter a criminal under the influence of marijuana or meth they would always choose the marijuana user. You might hear about some families' or individual's lives being ruined by marijuana 'addiction', but every family and individual seems to get ruined by meth. So then doesn't it make more sense to focus all of our efforts on eradicating that drug and leaving the marijuana growers essentially alone? I've also heard the economic argument made that leaving marijuana growers alone will cause the product to flood the market, bring the price down and steer more kids and adults towards the cheaper (less violent, less addictive) high while also stimulating the local economy with the extra cash that will stay in the islands. I'm not entirely convinced of that argument, but I'm also not convinced by our leading crime fighters and public safety officials that it is the best way to be using our prevention dollars. Here are a couple of articles from both sides of the debate: Study Says Marijuana No Gateway Drug from Science Blog (I can't vouch for its credibility, but it was the number one hit on Google) and Marijuana is Gateway Drug for Two Debates from the New York Times.

Pacific Century Fellows— Public Safety

Here's a sign all "visitors" and visitors encounter when they enter Halawa Correctional Facility:
You are here because you need help.
We are here to help you.
We cannot help you if you do not cooperate.
If you do not cooperate, we will make you cooperate.

Going into the prison as a one day visitor I was under the impression the emphasis would be more on 'making' inmates 'cooperate' than actually helping them. I expected a very severe place with hardened criminals, angry guards, and cynical administrators. Let's be clear that the place is a medium-security prison and it certainly is not a hotel, but my overall impression from the three hours I spent there is that the place is a lot more hopeful than I ever imagined it could be.

We started the morning with a presentation by Clayton Frank, head of the Department of Public Safety. Mr. Frank explained the department is a part of the governor's cabinet, has a budget of $220 million, and 2,500 employees, but essentially it is unseen by the public unless absolutely necessary. As a result of being "under the totem pole," this department consistently sees its budget cut from one year to the next, but the demand for its services continue to go up, especially during an economic downturn. The prison is currently overcrowded because individuals continue to make poor choices despite being given many opportunities in the criminal justice system to avoid ever getting sent to Halawa. The current facilities are old and obsolete, and the political battles over where to locate the next big prison (not to mention how to pay for it) have caused Hawai'i to send almost 2,000 of its prisoners to a facility in Arizona. The situation is certainly not ideal, as seen in this recent article from the Honolulu Advertiser about a prisoner from Hawai'i getting killed there. One clear detriment is that the gang activity is quite rampant in the mainland prisons, much more so than at Halawa.

Mr. Frank also emphasized that we, as in the entire community, have a stake in the adequacy of the public safety system because 98% of offenders will eventually return to the community. They are not all simply locked up for good, so it behooves us to make sure that there are enough services for these individuals to make sure that they can contribute to society, or at least avoid committing more crime, when they get out. (Halawa currently has a 50% recidivism rate— their goal is 25%.) During the economic downturn the prison population has remained fairly constant but there are more homeless appearing due to the economic downturn and more violent crime. Much of the violent crime, according to Mr. Frank, is a result of drugs, which he says accounts for 75% of the offenses committed by the incarcerated at Halawa. In his determination, crystal meth is the single most damaging factor to families and individuals in Hawai'i. The health costs associated with this drug due to respiratory, heart, and dental damage have steadily gone up while their funding has gone down (that was a consistent theme in the presentation). It currently costs $139 per day to house an inmate at Halawa, approximately $50,000 per year, so it is also in our fiscal interests to prevent these crimes from occurring.

Despite the challenges the prison administrators face every day and every budgeting session, what they presented to us was a very strong product in my opinion. That impression may have been due to my low expectations going in, but the overwhelming sentiment I have after the experience is one of optimism. As Gary Kaplan, Program Control Administrator, showed us around the prison, he constantly emphasized the desire to prevent crimes. The juvenile system, courts, and family counseling structure are critical in helping to achieve those outcomes, but it is very difficult, again due to the prevalence of drugs which undermine the family unit and have terrible impacts on individuals. So once they arrive at Halawa after having traveled through the entire system, it is crucial, according to Mr. kaplan, that they strive to improve themselves. The prison has a very extensive RaD (Reception and Diagnostic) program where they evaluate all elements of an inmate— crime committed, psychological state, addiction, level of education, any specialized skills they might have— in order to craft the most effective plan for their respective rehabilitation. The medical, educational, library, industrial facilities were reportedly well used by the inmates and the people working there appeared to love their jobs and I got the sense they really believe that they are actually helping the inmates improve themselves. To illustrate this point (maybe its cognitive dissonance), the landscaping around "Main Street", the main road that connects all the prison facilities, is beautiful and appears to be professionally maintained. Mr. Kaplan told us that a sex offender had taken the lead on that many years ago and had subsequently trained other inmates on how best to maintain the grounds before he was released. He later returned for committing a non-sex-based crime. (Mr. Kaplan also assured us that most sex offenders did not commit similar crimes upon being released from Halawa.)