Going Home Hawaii requested support to implement Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion programming. BJA referred this request to the Council of State Governments.
Overcrowding at HCCC: HCCC’s current occupancy is at 193% of its capacity with a headcount of 397 (as of December 31, 2017) for the facility’s design bed capacity of 206 inmates, according to the Department of Public Safety’s End of Month Report.
Almost all homeless inmates with co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders will leave correctional settings and return to the community. Inadequate transition planning puts these individuals who enter jail in a state of crisis back on the streets in the middle of the same crisis. They return to the streets without linkages to adequate treatment, support services, or a place to live. The consequences include homelessness, untreated or poorly managed health or behavioral health conditions, disruptive behavior, threats to public safety, an increased incidence of psychiatric symptoms, relapse to substance abuse, hospitalization, new crimes or violations of conditions of parole or probation, and re-arrest.
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Upon intake, each detainee receives a health care assessment, which includes a mental health assessment. Under well-established federal law, the correctional system is required to provide treatment for any physical and/or mental health ailments that a detainee may come in with. This presents a significant challenge to correctional facilities nationwide but is especially acute at the HCCC, which has suffered from chronic and debilitating overcrowding for years. Overcrowding impacts the HCCC’s ability to provide adequate health care in several ways:
• Health care facilities are extremely limited, as they were designed for a much smaller population than is currently housed at the facility. The area in which intake services and health assessments are provided was designed for a population of 24. The HCCC consistently holds well over 300 inmates.
• It is extremely difficult to separate inmates with substance use and mental illnesses from other inmates.
• There are no facilities to hold seriously mentally ill inmates who need constant observation until they can be transferred to Oahu facilities.
Many of the homeless detainees suffer from a variety of physical ailments caused by life on the streets. After weeks and months of poor diets, an inability to practice basic hygiene, and sleeping outdoors, they are admitted to HCCC, which is required to care for them. This means that while they are in HCCC, they are fed three meals a day, their health issues are addressed, they sleep indoors on mattresses, and they are afforded showers and the opportunity to engage in other basic health maintenance activities. Then, after relatively brief stays at the facility, they are released to the same lifestyle and conditions which caused their deteriorated health.
The Cycle of Incarceration: Many of the homeless and/or mentally ill and substance use detainees are re-admitted to HCCC sooner or later. Most are in for relatively short sentences on misdemeanor charges, but can easily fall into a vicious cycle. Upon release, they are returned to the street and their old lifestyles, where they tend to engage in the same behaviors that got them arrested and incarcerated previously. Public Safety officials keep a list of “frequent fliers”—people who, within the past three to five years, have been in the system more than 10 times. It is reported that there are approximately 200-300 names on this list.
It is also well known that there is a related liability for persons who are homeless to incur more arrests and subsequent incarceration for misdemeanors and a range of minor crimes. This is attributed to the public nature of a homeless existence and attempts at controlling a population that is restricted and “criminalized,” to where acts of subsistence and survival, especially in public places, are illegal and can lead to incarceration.
While these offenses are often minor, failure to pay fines or follow through with court appearances can also lead to incarceration. Furthermore, arrests for “lifestyle offenses” such as trespassing among homeless persons with mental illness often leads to arrests for more serious charges such as burglary, which are likely to result in periods of incarceration.
There is no assistance for the large population of homeless people who repeatedly cycle through
the jails, generally with substance abuse problems and mental or behavioral health issues. These individuals have high needs, but are routinely shut out of services for many reasons. These reasons may include their mental illness not being severe enough to qualify for the limited mental health resources available, and because many services and funding streams do not help people with criminal records. This results in a large number of Hawai’i County’s homeless community continually cycling in and out of incarceration. Their frequent stays in jail as well as their over-utilization of emergency services results in extraordinarily high costs for our public systems, yet fails to improve the outcomes for these individuals or our community.
Please submit a signed letter of support from your agency’s executive or other senior staff member. The letter can be emailed to or uploaded with this request. The letter should be submitted on official letterhead and include the following information:
- General information regarding the request for TTA services, i.e., the who, what, where, when, and why.
- The organizational and/or community needs specific to the request for TTA services.
- The benefits or anticipated outcomes from the receipt of TTA services.
By submitting this application to BJA NTTAC, I understand that upon approval of this application for TTA, the requestor agrees to keep BJA NTTAC informed of any circumstances that may impact the delivery of the TTA, including changes in the date of the event, event cancellation, or difficulties communicating with the assigned TTA provider.
Please call [site:phone] if you need further assistance completing this application.
“Going Home” is the name given to efforts on Hawai’i Island to reintegrate ex-offenders into the community and the workplace. The Hawai’i Island Going Home Consortium (Going Home) comprises more than 30 active public and private entities and their representatives, with a network of over 400 local, state, and national partners. Our mission is to assist Hawai’i Island men, women, and youth released from correctional institutions with reintegration into community life through employment, training, and appropriate supportive services.
While we have been formally organized since 2004, we trace our initiative back to the late 1990’s when the Hawai’i Island Corrections Advisory Commission was created to address severe prison overcrowding. Since the fall of 2004, Going Home members have met monthly, without fail, for over twelve years to address issues and challenges, coordinate services, and promote the need for assisting ex-offenders with their reentry and helping them to become law-abiding, self-sufficient, and productive community members.
In May of 2015, Going Home received its nonprofit 501(c)(3) designation as Going Home Hawai’i (GHH); GHH is the nonprofit branch and the governing fiscal body for the Hawai’i Island Going Home Consortium. The Consortium continues to meet monthly with an average attendance of 25-30 individuals. Many of our members actively participate on committees which include the following: Community Relations/Cultural Competency, Criminal Justice Partners/ Restorative Justice, Education and Training/Job-Readiness, Employer Relations, Faith-Based Organizations, Health and Wellness/Housing, and the West Hawai’i Coalition.
Our membership includes other non-profit organizations, criminal justice agencies, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, educational providers, employment specialists, housing specialists, and concerned community members from both East and West Hawai’i. Virtually every agency that works with criminal offenders on Hawai’i Island is a member of or is aligned with GHH. As such, GHH is ideally situated to address the multiple challenges of offender reintegration, including the complex issues involving homeless and/or mentally ill inmates (often with co-occurring substance use disorders) who are enmeshed in the State’s correctional system. GHH recently organized and hosted the first state-wide Returning Home State Conference in Hilo. Each year, another County will host a similar state conference.