[ OUR OPINION ]
THE prison-building frenzy of the past quarter-century may have kept more criminals off the streets, but it did little to rehabilitate them. A study of 15 mainland states by the Justice Department showed that most inmates released from prison commit new crimes within a short time. The study provides further evidence that building more prisons in Hawaii will not deter crime. Building new prisons
won’t deter crime
THE ISSUE A study shows that two-thirds of state prison inmates commit new crimes within three years of being released.
A report by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that two-thirds of the 272,111 inmates released from prisons in the 15 states in 1994 committed at least one serious new crime within three years. By far, property and drug offenders had the highest re-arrest rates, while offenders of violent crimes had the lowest.
The rate of recidivism has changed little from earlier studies dating back to the 1960s. During that time, the philosophy toward incarceration has shifted from rehabilitation to getting tough on crime to deterrence.
The main thing this report shows is that our experiment with building lots more prisons as a deterrent to crime has not worked, says Joan Petersilia, a professor of criminology as the University of California at Irvine and an expert on parole.
States generally have cut back on rehabilitation programs, such as drug treatment and vocational education, so they could build prisons. Only about 15 percent of state prison inmates nationally are enrolled in such classes.
This year's Hawaii Legislature enacted a law that requires judges to direct nonviolent, first-time drug offenders to community-based treatment programs instead of prison. An estimated 85 percent of Hawaii's prison inmates are believed to need substance- abuse treatment, and a large number of parolees who violate conditions of their release do so for drug-related reasons.
The state has called for construction of a new prison in Halawa Valley, mainly to replace the Oahu Community Correction Center in Kalihi, but also adding 768 beds to the state's existing prison capacity. Hawaii now confines about 1,200 of its 5,100 inmates in privately operated prisons on the mainland at a cost lower than that required to house them here.
The inmate population at state prisons soared from less than 200,000 in 1972 to more than 1.2 million last year, but it seems to have peaked. The head count has actually declined since then, partly because of the implementation of new strategies to treat drug offenders. Turning to drug-treatment programs outside the prison walls and improving other programs on the inside are the best approach.
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