STAND. COM. REP. NO. 335

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 75

       S.D. 1

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Seventh State Legislature

Regular Session of 2013

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Judiciary and Labor, to which was referred S.B. No. 75 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO CORRECTIONS,"

beg 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 Hawaii's opportunity parole with enforcement pilot program for no more than twenty inmates to be subject to high-intensity parole supervision;

     (2)  Require the Hawaii Paroling Authority to report to the Legislature regarding the parole pilot program; and

     (3)  Make an appropriation for the parole pilot program.

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Public Safety, Hawaii Paroling Authority, and Community Alliance on Prisons.

     Your Committees find that probationers often fail to appear for scheduled appointments with their probation officers, decline to take mandatory drug tests, or test positive for illegal drug use.  Studies show that as many as half of all probationers break the law again.

     The parole pilot program would replicate the successful Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) program, which was instituted in 2004 to impose sanctions for each probation violation.  The HOPE program has reduced recidivism and has made a large contribution to reducing the prison population.

     Your Committees have amended this measure by replacing the Department of Public Safety with the Hawaii Paroling Authority as the entity that will establish and administer the parole pilot program.

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Judiciary and Labor that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 75, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 75, 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, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Judiciary and Labor,

____________________________ CLAYTON HEE, Chair

____________________________ WILL ESPERO, Chair