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Cayetano says Gov. Ben Cayetano said he has had a change of heart about the importance of adding prison space in Hawaii and is now grateful his proposal for a new prison on the Big Island fell through.
state should treat,
not incarcerate,
drug offenders
He says he'd rather
build schools than prisonsAssociated Press
He said he can stay true to his original campaign pledge to build schools instead of prisons.
Cayetano said he has become more convinced that the state should pursue alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders.
He said he was inspired by California voters' passage last month of Proposition 36, which requires treatment instead of jail or prison for first- or second-time nonviolent drug offenders.
Cayetano said he wants to study whether Hawaii would benefit from a similar initiative.
"The drug problem is so difficult to deal with. Incarceration cannot be the answer," he said in a meeting with Neighbor Island newspaper editors Friday.
He said drug addiction is an illness.
"It doesn't discriminate -- it affects all social classes," Cayetano said.
This summer, Cayetano vetoed a bill that would have allowed public employee unions to bid to operate a privately built prison on the Big Island, saying a union-run prison would be too expensive.
He said the state will have to continue sending inmates to privately run mainland facilities to address the problem of prison overcrowding.
Proposition 36 was bitterly opposed by many working in California's legal and law enforcement fields but was supported by 60 percent of the state's voters.
It is the largest and most ambitious drug treatment program in U.S. history, providing $120 million a year for counties to pay for drug treatment, an amount many say is not enough to treat thousands of additional offenders in an already overburdened treatment system.
The measure goes into effect July 1.
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