Honolulu Lite
THERE'S an old joke that goes like this: A guy gets a flat tire in front of a mental hospital. As he's putting on the spare, the four nuts for securing the tire to the car accidentally fall down a storm grate. He's distraught because he doesn't know what to do. A mental patient watching the whole episode from behind a fence says: "Why don't you just take one nut off each of the other three tires and put the spare on with those? That should hold you until you get to a service station." The man is amazed. What a great idea! Then he says, "But you're a mental patient. How'd you think of something so clever?" The patient says, "I'm crazy, not stupid." Many fly over the
cuckoo's nest in HawaiiI think of that story every time someone escapes from the Hawaii State Hospital. Everyone seems so surprised that people can escape from the mental hospital. Hey, the patients are crazy, not stupid. The state hospital isn't a prison. A hospital spokesperson said that on television after one more flew over the cuckoo's nest last week. The latest escapee was James Huffman, a 38-year-old criminal sent to the state hospital because a judge said he was too cuckoo to stand trial for robbery. Other judges haven't been so accommodating. According to reports, Huffman has been convicted of violent crimes in several other states.
There's been more than 20 escapes from the state hospital in the past year, although, the word escape is probably a bit strong. The Australian term "walkabout" is better. Because most of the patients who leave the facility simply go on a walkabout around the island after strolling off the grounds.
This wasn't Huffman's first walkabout. In April, he ran through some bushes in his flight to freedom. I guess bushes aren't the best material in perimeter security situations.
Last week Huffman had a harder time breaking out. He had to jiggle a window lock.
Other mental patients with criminal records have followed the method of escape popularized in the Ken Kesey novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:" They simply chucked a television or some other heavy appliance through the window and climbed out through the resulting hole. Again, you don't have to be Einstein to figure these things out. You can be as nutty as a Big Island macadamia plantation and still be smart enough to escape from the state hospital.
So why do we keep violent criminals in a facility that obviously was not designed to hold them? How do we go from the legal concept that someone is too crazy to stand trial to automatically housing him in an insecure facility? I guess we do it because it's unseemly to have someone who has not been convicted of a crime spending years in a real prison. So instead of "inmate" he becomes "patient." And the first time someone at the hospital isn't watching the doors (or windows or bushes), he goes from "patient" to "tourist."
It's terrific that we are protecting the rights of crazy criminals. But since the current system puts the rest of us at risk, it makes you wonder who's really cuckoo.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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