STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2501

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2353

       S.D. 1

Honorable Colleen Hanabusa

President of the Senate

Twenty-Fourth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2008

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committees on Public Safety and Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 2353 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING,"

beg leave to report as follows:

     The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds to the Department of Public Safety to provide reintegration programs that combine cognitive behavioral theory with native Hawaiian holistic interventions that address domestic violence, addictions, self mastery through identity, and community connections for successful transitions back into the community.

     Testimony in support of this measure was submitted by the Department of Public Safety, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, The Institute for Human Services, the Community Alliance on Prisons, the Drug Policy Forum of Hawai‘i, and five individual citizens.

     Your Committees find that this measure will help to reduce the likelihood of recidivism amongst the disproportionately high number of young men and women of Hawaiian, or part-Hawaiian, ancestry that are incarcerated.  The reintegration programs will educate inmates with basic cognitive and decision-making skills by using native Hawaiian intervention methods of learning.

     Your Committees have amended this measure by:

     (1)  Reappropriating for fiscal year 2008-2009, the $33,000 appropriated from Act 8, Part VI, section 20, of the First Special Session Laws of Hawaii 2007, to extend the ability of the Department of Public Safety to implement the cognitive restructuring pilot program on a correctional system-wide basis, in the County of Hawaii at the Kulani Correctional Facility, Hawaii Community Correctional Center, and Hale Nani Reintegration Center.  Though the Legislature authorized this appropriation for fiscal year 2007-2008, these funds were never released; and

     (2)  Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purpose of clarity.

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety and Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2353, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2353, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Public Safety and Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs,

____________________________ JILL TOKUDA, Chair

____________________________ WILL ESPERO, Chair