HOW RELEASE FROM INCARCERATION WORKS Jails and prisons in Hawai‘i are operated and overseen by PSD. Jails are used to detain criminal defendants awaiting trial and to incarcerate people with short sentences—typically less than a year. Hawai‘i’s jails also serve to transition people who have nearly completed their prison sentences and are returning to the community. Prisons are used to incarcerate people who have been convicted of a crime and issued a sentence of more than a year. The average length of stay for prisoners is seven years.
Pre-release assistance for ID, banking, and public benefits would help inmates meet basic needs upon release. Intake People enter the PSD system through the jail intake process at one of Hawai‘i’s four Community Correctional Centers. The intake protocol also includes questions that can be used to help identify whether an inmate is homeless, and which PSD has used to generate data on the number of inmates entering from and exiting to homelessness. PSD has concerns about the reliability of this data because it is based on self-reports and the relevant data fields are not consistently used by staff, but multiple sources reported that PSD is in the midst of a large data infrastructure project that may provide an opportunity to better track homelessness. Regardless of these concerns, the data could, in theory, be used to develop plans to prepare for the inmate’s release, though currently this is not done.
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During the intake process, PSD will also conduct a bail evaluation, which uses an assessment tool to determine whether a pre-trial detainee is a low, medium, or high risk for “pre-trial failure,” i.e., whether a detainee is likely to be arrested for a new crime or fail to appear in court while on pre-trial release.76 According to PSD officials and others, detainees will not be released pre-trial if they do not have a permanent residence address, meaning that criminal defendants who are homeless will remain jailed while awaiting trial, even if they may have otherwise met the qualifications for pre-trial release. The justification for this is that those without a permanent address have a greater likelihood of not returning for later court appearances. However, according to the opinion of one interviewee, many people who are held in jail should not be if they have somewhere to stay, “even if it is only a tent,” and especially if the person is employed.
Release From Jail Once someone is incarcerated, little support is offered in terms of preparing for their release, especially from jails. Unlike prison inmates, jail inmates are offered little, if anything, in the way of programming during their time of incarceration. There is no release planning of substance. Whether inmates are jailed for a day or a year, when it is time for their release they are simply provided with their belongings when they leave. In some cases, they do not even get their belongings. The property room at OCCC is open to releasing inmates Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. If inmates are released during a time when the property room is closed, they will need to come back to the jail when the property room is open. This presents an especially difficult problem for inmates who are released after the property room closes for the weekend on Friday. According to one interviewee, OCCC inmates may be released directly from court in a paper suit with none of their belongings, left to find their own way back to the jail in order to get their things, which can be difficult because they do not have anything—a phone, money, or anything else they might use to get where they need to go. This portrayal of release was disputed by other interviewees who said that inmates will typically be transported to court with their belongings in case they are released. Additionally, the court will often need to issue a written order prior to the inmate’s release, so in most cases, the inmates will be returned to OCCC before release, where they will have access to their belongings.