STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2069

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2592

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Seventh State Legislature

Regular Session of 2014

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 2592 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO PUBLIC SAFETY,"

begs leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to:

     (1)  Require the Department of Public Safety to establish a two-year diversion and reentry pilot project with no more than one hundred offenders, subject to a thorough initial screening and monitoring;

     (2)  Require the service providers to collect data from the pilot project and submit a status report to the Department of Public Safety every six months for evaluation of the project's effectiveness; and

     (3)  Make an appropriation for the diversion and reentry pilot project.

     Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Public Safety, Hawaii Substance Abuse Coalition, Community Alliance on Prisons, and the Salvation Army Addiction Treatment Services.  Your Committee received testimony in opposition to this measure from the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney, City and County of Honolulu.

     Your Committee finds that the State's community correction centers are overcrowded.  There are over one hundred forty drug offenders who are classified as low-risk inmates.  Furthermore, fifty percent of the State's prisoners are dependent on drugs, yet less than twenty percent receive formal treatment while incarcerated.

     Your Committee further finds that structured community-based treatment programs produce measurable outcomes and enable nonviolent offenders to transition into the community and achieve self-sufficiency.  The diversion and reentry pilot project will establish an alternative to incarceration by diverting nonviolent offenders with substance-abuse issues from incarceration into a coordinated system of community-based treatment programs, resulting in long-term savings, a reduction in the prison population, and a reduction in recidivism among nonviolent drug offenders.

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2592 and recommends that it pass Second Reading and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs,

____________________________

WILL ESPERO, Chair