 Okay, we're back. We're live. It's 1pm on a given Thursday. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is think tech and it's about community matters, which matters community matters. Okay, we have Victor Gemignani. He has been with the Apple seed foundation and he is now with lawyers for equal justice. Okay, very important. You know, I always, I always say that, you know, law school teaches us about the rule of law, but very often it does not motivate us to actually make the rule of law happen and participate in the political process and make our community better. Too many too many people get out of law school. They're not oriented that way, but I want to assure you that Victor is Victor is oriented that way he participates in community. He cares deeply about the state and federal government. And we're here to talk about the prisons, but anything and everything that associates with the prisons. We have a problem with the correction system and justice system in our state. And I would like him to talk about it in the time of the corona crisis. Welcome to the show Victor. Happy to be here to make a slight correction. I'm retired at this point and I created lej first lawyers for equal justice to be a litigation arm for the legal aid society of Hawaii. And that merged after many years of the why just the Apple seed Center for law and economic justice, which I mostly recently resigned from retired. Great, but that, you know, that qualifies you to discuss so many things in our community and in our social policy. So I would like to ask you, you know, we've had we've had a number of issues around around the prison, although you know people don't think about the prison much you know isn't that true. It worked out on Main Street, so to speak, you know why people don't know about it. They don't care about it unless they have a relative inside. You know, that's them, and this is us. And they don't address the issues that come out of it but there are plenty of issues. I mean, you know, one is, is, and the most primary read really these days is, is it safe. This is like out of the marathon man. Is it safe to be in O triple C right now, or are you are you exposed to a higher risk than everywhere else of getting the virus. Well, I think you clearly are. I mean, the examples we've had on the cruise ships with contained people being potentially exposed to the virus as an indication what's happened recently in our navy with one of the major aircraft with the powers being withdrawn because I think something like 1000 out of 4000 people were sailors were infected. You're going to see this as an uptick in our Hawaii jails and it's happened to by the way around the country. We are fortunate to be in Hawaii and that there hasn't been the rate of infection you found in other major places in the United States but in those where outbreaks have occurred, particularly where there are federal and state prisons and populations that have infected individuals despite you're just too close to them. You don't have the opportunity to have that sanitary conditions. You're eating facilities are different. You're treated differently. So bottom line is you share a very small quarters with normally more than one person. So the bottom line is potential for infections is significant in in Hawaii jails as well as any other jail in the United States. Yeah, so, you know, lawyers for equal justice also includes lawyers for equal medicine for equal medicine. Are they getting equal medicine, the people who are incarcerated in OCCC and other other prisons in Hawaii. They're not getting equal just to see that we all know that. Yeah, when you're caught in that system you're in big, big kimchi. The bottom line is if you have a medical condition you'll stand in line until you can get some form of a person to take a look at you and give you some initial advice as to what you may want to do but in terms of serious oversight and treatment. I don't think anyone's going to make an argument you've got equal access to medical treatment than others around the society can walk around and access to the nonprofit hospitals or their emergency boards. What does stand in line mean does that mean wait a long time. Yeah, that could be. Not like, not like Julianne in terms of what's happening in the medical system or in our jails but yeah definitely stand in line priorities and all kinds of situations are set. And clearly, when a prisoner wants to get medical attention for something that they may think they have. They're going to have to wait for their priority to come up and their number to come up and maybe I may be low it depends on who's on staff at the time to evaluate the request. It depends on the opportunities or capabilities the individual person has to provide medical. Much less contracts with outside providers that at this point may be somewhat skeptical about taking inmates in given the potential for infection. Yeah, sure. And that is the old problem which which I've seen this problem addressed earlier and that is the problem of families, visiting their relatives who happen to be incarcerated. If they haven't been tested you don't know but you know that they're at a higher risk so does the family go to see them. And then could the family carry that right outside. The family may not even be able to see them in some situations depending upon whether there's any outbreaks that occur in our prisons who's getting who the authorities will shut off contact. The most tragic thing that I've seen to be frank with you of what's been happening throughout the entire United States in particular the visuals you get from New York City are loved ones saying goodbye to their grandparents and their mothers and their fathers and their sisters at the door of the emergency ward and never seeing them again and those people dying by themselves without having the touch of their families available. The ability to start the healing process as quickly as possible. That's going to be double triple for inmates, particularly if in fact, people don't even have a chance to say goodbye because the people all of a sudden are locked in continually because of an outbreak of spike in the in the jail. Visitors are not allowed visitor and it makes kids sick and hopefully doesn't die but consequences are significant in terms of communication and comfort in these times, much greater than I think from the average citizen. And for understandable reasons I'm not suggesting that these are not barriers and problems that have to be overcome. Well, I mean, it offers another question and that is, what do you say to people in the community who are perfectly law abiding who don't really care about OCCC or the justice system. They're not involved. It's not not they're barely wick at all. And they don't care. They don't get it. If these people are convicted of a crime. Why should we care about them and their health. They are where they have to be just keep them away from me. I'm not particularly concerned. I have my own issues, my own risks, my own health to worry about. I'm out of money. I don't have a job. That's the last thing in my agenda. What do you say to them. I say to them, the majority of people were talking about our pre trial. They are there held there for normally minor offenses, sleeping in the park at night. The sweeps that'd be going on continuing during the entire virus that we've had, walking on the beach, whatever the misdemeanor might be, they're in there and it hasn't even been tried yet. They're pre-trial. They just don't have the bail necessary to get them out. So for a variety of reasons, there's a general understanding our jails are way overcrowded. There's a differentiation between jails and prisons. Jails are institutions that keep people prior to conviction. Then after the conviction is either upheld or denied, whatever's going to happen that person's life takes place sometimes often transferred to a jail but not always. So I would say to the person two things. Number one, the great majority of people we're talking about that are incarcerated in the institutions we're talking about right now are prejudgment. They have not had a trial that presumed to be innocent. Number two, overwhelmingly number of people that we're talking about in this category are in there for minor offenses. There's nothing significant in their lives. Nothing that has victims attached and there's potential for communities to suffer again because of the act being committed again. These are mostly nonviolent people that have just stuck in jail because they don't have a bail and they're in an unfortunate situation of being found to be arrested for something. Sometimes guilty, sometimes not. But again, prejudgment. Yeah. That should mean something, presumed to be innocent. Well, I think we all have to care about our fellow human being there, but for the grace of God, go all of us. Some of them are there completely erroneously and we have to care about all of them. And that's the lesson I suppose people keep saying that we're in this together we have to care about our fellow human being and this is an example of where it really counts. But let's talk about, let's talk about what can be done. You know, I wanted to mention to you that I saw an article not too long ago about the fact that old triple C was overcrowded clearly and for years, but there's a prison Northwest of Northwest of Hilo out in the boonies there near the volcano, I guess. That is under crowded. The population there is smaller than designed for. Why don't we equalize this so that you don't have overcrowded one place and under crowded and another wouldn't that be better for everyone. Other solutions like decriminalize a number of laws that we have that are throwing people in for the really not doing much for purpose expect costing us a lot of money and putting them in terrible situations. There may be, I'm again is not my Kuliana, but there may be transportation issues when you have someone that has trials and appearances that are necessary to be done in Honolulu, you have to transport them back and forth back and forth back and forth to Hilo. So it really would determine be determined by who's going to be maintained there are the long term or short term is a pretrial or a post trial and post conviction. Are they going to have certain needs that they're going to have that are going to require return to Honolulu or some of the jurisdiction are is the jail safe and Hilo to populate the people you missed be wished to populate how biggest is the is the place in Hilo or the amount of land available and by the way I guarantee. And if you talk about expanding jail population or jail capacity in Hilo I imagine the people in Hilo going to probably say I really don't think that's something we want to do in our community but I'd leave it up to the people of Hilo. And then years my community and I think probably kind of the right answer but bottom line is there's lots of problems potentially with that but that's not my Kuliana just don't know nothing about it. Okay, well, you know, right now, if we wanted to do something to deal with this issue, we really couldn't. The legislature is not in session. And it's not likely this is going to, you know, be at the top of the heap if it were in session. But what issues have been pending for reform in Hawaii, and how successful have they been in terms of prisons. Yeah, or economic prisons. Again, not my Kuliana, but the ones I'm aware of that there have been continuous attempts, futile attempts at the legislature was not unusual legislature is a choice for child for delay and kicking the decisions down the road. But there have been some issues around decriminalization and redefine definition of what kind of penalties are really appropriate, more money and more programs put into renovating someone rejuvenating their abilities to produce something meaningful in their life and and deal with the goals that they have, the abuse that they may have suffered or the mental illness that they're certainly suffering from. So, a big emphasis on expansion of hospital or mental mental health capacity for prisoners, big expansion on preparing them to rejoin society in this way in terms of with some skill that's marketable, and some attempts to avoid the incarceration to begin with by declassifying certain laws that are really not things that we ought to necessarily criminalize or at least not the degree we are today with the case of incarceration being a potential result. You know, I don't know why but this raises the comparison of American justice the American justice and correctional system with Europe. I remember on, I guess it was 60 minutes, a couple years ago, they had a various thing examination of prisons in Germany. They were integrated in many cases that there were individuals who had committed what we would consider very serious crimes like murder. And they were out in the community that part of their prison sentence was served out in the community and they were treated as rehabilitated, you know, early on. And they were given every chance to reintegrate into the community. The title or a show rehabilitation coming coming soon. And they really believe in that and that's their system and it works, at least according to that documentary. Why can't we do that in this country why we, why are we living in the 19th century Victor, what can we do about coming into the 21st. It was an old enough and I'm old enough to remember the Dukakis campaign in 1988 pushed the first, the father and kill them in a campaign, when with the Willie Horton commercial, basically Willie Horton and Horton as you remember is a man that led out a jail on parole and been approved by the governor and a variety of other individuals and the guy went back and killed I think a woman, a white woman unfortunately and it became even more racist in terms of the campaign that did. I when we saw that I thought Dukakis campaign was over which it was him that him riding around in the helmet and one tank, totally out of character. The bottom line is I think that politicians too often have used the threat of criminal violence being put upon you to terrify the population to some extent and not prevent provided a kind of fertile programs that have track records and are measurable in terms of how they're produced and going to go and say we ought to do you said it while how can you justify how can I guide the guy industry when he's seeing everything's okay but these guys committed a violation law and they're locked the way I don't care about how do you reverse that kind of trend you're reversing I think by making people understand that number one some of these people are definitely rehab and we ought to start programs that are proven to be able to do that. Put a face on the people that are languishing and the lack of development they're going to have in terms of the ability of taxpayers to get out from under the burden of paying for these individuals are incarcerated and you well know the cost of the incarceration in this country is is unbelievable you could spend a kid to send a kid to Harvard on a yearly basis for the amount of money we put into taking care of one person in the federal penitentiary so bottom line is there's economics and the Republicans I think about 15 years ago and national vote and party grabbed on to this is as a ability to save dollars and progresses grabbed on to it because of ruined lives and we came together and there was in fact a significant change to the opportunity for people to get probation and get out and start their lives again about six months ago eight months months ago is very much PR by the president as one of his major civil rights issues or agenda agenda issues that he is saying with more like that are necessary more leadership at the local and national level and more opportunity by the by the way for communities and more responsibility for communities to allow the development of institutions that are going to maintain in a proper way and to the integrated way populations to be in their community but these people have to be put to somewhere and more you keep them in a dungeon state more they're going to come out with a dungeon mentality. I should tell you when I started my litigation in the 1960s in the south and Atlanta and Georgia. I did primarily prison litigation when I came out of this shoot as a young kid out of law school. So I got to know a little bit about the systems that were in play back in Georgia in 1969 1970 1971 in the small little jails and a little bit in the larger jails around Atlanta and the mentality that basically people had was from in their lock up the key and this is pre dating pre pre trial as well as a sub trial. How do you reverse that mentality except modeling better behavior, finding commonalities of why people should support things that they normally wouldn't support together. I eat physical difficulties that we're going to encounter misstate, as well as elsewhere in the country. And the opportunity to have redemption which is a core value I think of Hawaii and our people here, as long as it's not done by con people. Oh, I found religion after being caught drunk at some alley and a politician, you know, I found religion and have now second run mayor governor. You have to be realistic about who's ultimately going to be redeemed but as a Christian as a Catholic as a fallen Catholic that someone was trained by the Jesuits for 20 years. I very much appreciate the opportunity for individuals to make corrections in their lives and get about the business of being productive so we ought to have all of that in our brain as we try to figure reconfigure our institutions, especially now, given the lack of dollars that we're going to have the funnel dollars into the state priorities. I mean, your income strength is disastrous in the state right now. You know, your GT has been decimated, you have no tourists, they pay a third of it normally, you don't have no tourists coming over here. It's being borne by the backs of the poorest of the poor, for the most part, much higher tax rates with GT for lower income as opposed to the higher income. And the jobs have disappeared so you have income that is not there at all until maybe you're going to get unemployment. I have friends all over here that are still waiting for the first unemployment check they put it in two months ago and they're not people that can survive without a paycheck. So we have lots of issues to deal with in this community and a lot of them have dollars and cents associated and a lot of them have funding streams. What do we want to do about tourism? Is tourism going to be the gorilla on the hill the way it has been? I can tell you, letting me Kailua, to walk on Kailua Beach and see the beauty and the pristine nature of that beach. I don't think anybody here wants to go back to where we were three months ago, packed with tourists, you know, as far as the eye can see. So leaders of our state are going to have to put all of this together. And I would suspect if they're enlightened and want to save money, prison reform, maybe something, one of those opportunities that rises from these crises, which I think are the most valuable thing we can ever do when you have a crisis, use it for something that's good. And every crisis provides opportunities for redefining of what you're doing and resetting of a business plan that may or may not work in a teacher, new technology, deliver a product you're trying to deliver, whatever. Amen to that. You know, one thing, you know, certainly it costs a lot of money to incarcerate a lot of people in this country has tens of millions of people in jail and it costs everybody a lot of money. And of course, Hawaii a lot of money. Ergo, you know, the thing about we don't have the prisons here. So we send them to where is it Arizona, cheaper and more brutal. That's what I get out of it and more distant from everyone they need in their house in their lives that to get back on track of why they one don't want to be in jail. And it's ridiculous. It's totally self-defeating in terms of rehabbing the prisoners. We ultimately could separate them from families. How could anybody defend that? I mean, any government of dollars and cents dollars and cents and what you said before, Jay, who cares about prisoners. I think we ought to care, but who cares too many people don't. And number two, our leadership, which is a disaster in this issue of a of ours of our state legislature and governors and has been for a long, long time. It's just no sympathy, no leadership to go forward and say and paint a different picture of what life could be, how life is different in another place that we admire and we respect. You were talking about Sweden. They didn't even close doors. They shelter in home that country. We'll see the results of it, but there's different ways you can visualize how society operates. And clearly we have enough problems in our community. We ought to be looking always elsewhere to find out whether there's something relevant that can be brought home and changed around culturally to fit nicely into how we want our lives to be in the future. Yeah. And you know, one thing you mentioned, of course, that we have a challenge at an opportunity going forward. Let me add this thought. You know, there's been a lot of talk about scammers who take advantage. They use COVID as an opportunity to rip off other people. And my own, my own belief expectation is that the hungrier people are, the more street crime we're going to have, the more perclery we're going to have, the more, you know, I don't know what to call it, petty crime. But crime, crime that emanates from hunger. We're going to have a lot of that and some of them will go to prison. They'll go through the justice system. Although right now, and I want to ask you about this right now, the justice system is a little gummed up. We can't, we can't have trials, so we can't prosecute so well. It really must be a kind of a tumult in the justice system. So, you know, we have, we have challenges during and we have our challenges afterward of having a lot of people who are driven to criminal activity because they have no food, which is serious problem. But, you know, what do you think about that? This is a sort of a very uneven road, a road filled with pottles before we even get to the point where we think about long term reform. Great. I mean, the more desperate people become, you know, they have themselves to support or more importantly, they have their families and their children to support. So, attractions that they may not ever consider when their employee and everything is functioning in their lives are starting to start to be considered. That's a fact of life and crime will obviously have to have an uptick. I would suspect unless people find a way to survive during the next six to 12 months in a way to allow them to readjust their, their spending patterns and readjust their employment possibility. So, yeah, it's going to happen. That's even more of a reason, in my opinion, to start to put as much effort and quality work in rehabbing a community because we're going to continue to have that kind of drain if they're not. You either keep people incarcerated under bad conditions for a very long period of time and then you have whatever comes out of the system. That's basically what you've created. Amen to that. I think that's a piece of human nature. You know, if you look at the history of terrorism in the Middle East, you find that every single terrorist, including Osama bin Laden and all his friends, they all got proselytized in jail. Every bloody one of them and in jail means even in relatively civilized countries like Egypt. I don't know how civilized you would say it is, but they were in jail. They were brutalized in jail. They were tortured in jail. It was all terribly unfair. Some of them started out as students who attended a protest before you know it. They're in jail for a long time. Terrible unfair things happen. When they get out, they become died in a wall, you know, lifelong terrorists bent on destruction. And so you can see that jail can be a very negative feature even for a person who is, you know, young and impressionable and doesn't have to go that way. Why don't these terrorists came from, you know, well-to-do families, but they got proselytized anyway. They got, you know, what's the word? They got switched around. And that must happen here to maybe the same, you know, the same way, but maybe to a lesser extent. But we have to be very careful about being humane in jail. The worst thing to me is when you get a kid for whatever reason, 18, 20, 22 years old, maybe foster care system alumni probably abuse in their family. If some form as they were growing up, either mental or emotional or physical or sexual God forbid. And they go into a system like the jail for shoplifting or stealing a car. They have two options. They can either listen to the people, the other prisoners in the jail, they're going to bring them in, like part of their al-Hana. And they're going to learn a trade and occupation about how not just to do shoplifting, but how to hot wire car, how to fence a car, the parts in a car. How to break in houses, how to hold people up. They're going to learn the techniques that people in jail that are die hard, die hard are going to understand. And therefore our kids are basically being put into the system where they have very few options available to them unless they have a incredible strong ability to resist the temptations and the physical violence. They're going to be suffering and decide to go the straight and narrow and work for parole at some point to make sense and do whatever they can to access programs. They're going to educate them. They're going to have a lot of options. In my sense, especially when your kids are young, get them out of that system as early as you can and get them into a track that's going to help them both. And that's a lot of mental health by the way. It's stuff that our state just not want to do. It's stuff our state decimated in the leadership in 208, 209, last great recession. We decimated our mental health system and it's one of the reasons you have the problems you have in our Hawaiian industries right now. The bottom line is, again, get the kids out of the system as early as you can and get them into appropriate processes that are measured, that are non-profit for all intents and purposes and quality based and have abilities to be able to show that they got the track record to produce something better than what they had when they started with the child coming into the system. So who's on the line here? Who is speaking to this issue in the courts and public among the institutions that can do some change? Yeah, there's only a couple, unfortunately. And Hawaii Apple City has not been in the forefront of this and lawyers for equal justice has not been in the forefront. The ACLU, right now there's litigation going on with the public safety department to try to get as many people released from prison that are appropriate as possible. Who we are doing that work for all intents and purposes is the ACLU, Lawyers for Equal Justice, and the public defenders. They've gone to the Supreme Court. They've got a petition to the Supreme Court. They've got a special master appointed Dan Foley. He came back with a recommendation. That recommendation was reviewed by the Supreme Court. The three advocate programs that I suggested went back in so we ought to have something more extensive that is appropriate. And the Supreme Court came down with a really good order that's going to prioritize certain people that at least when you take a look at them, their files seem to indicate they're a candidate for release. And then it goes back to a judge to make a final choice as to whether that candidate should be released. But the public defenders arguing on one side and the Attorney General on the other side, prosecutors on the other side. So bottom line is there'll be a process and it'll be a fairly quick process to start to take a look at the population and start to decrease it as significantly as possible within the shortest time possible within the context of safety, safety, safety, public safety, safety, safety. So that's a hooey that's been doing that work outside of that hooey, which was a group that came together and had relationships in the past but not really did work together very, very closely. Not because of priorities, but because of work that we did and not that similar in some situations. From before that there was only the ACLU that spent a lot of time on prison work, not particularly successful as best I can understand but again I have not been involved directly in that work it's the legislature that is not particularly cooperative. And there's an organization run by a woman who's the God sent I mean the angel from heaven in the community cat Brady has been around for quite some time, and she runs an association I wish I knew their name of prisoner form advocates and work closely with the ACLU and others to ultimately get more discussion and hopefully results in prisoner form. Yeah, I don't think they've been particularly sex successful with this leadership but you know this leadership has never been particularly supportive of most of these ideas in my opinion. You know a lot of people including me grew up to think that the federal government was concerned the Attorney General of the United States was concerned about human rights and civil rights they were the codification of our morality so to speak. But now we have we have an administration that you couldn't say that about this administration and Donald Trump his name be erased. You know, I don't think he's been doing anything about this, and I don't think William Barr may his name be erased is doing anything good about it. What's missing there. Do you think that they're going to write in one day that the federal government can write in and be concerned about civil rights and human rights and do large scale nationwide prison reform to alleviate some of these problems. Again, the hope would be that Republicans and the Democrats in the National Office and the President, which happened this last four or five months ago could come to agreement on certain things that they think are necessary to depopulate the systems in a humane way. I think that's possible, because of the progressive nature of most Democrats and the fiscal traditionally fiscal concerned leadership of the of the Republican Party that sort of disappeared big time under Trump administration for all intents and purposes they used to be politically conservative, which meant they want to save dollars but not appropriate. So that who we that partnership could get together that political partners could get together. I personally have a crew up again civil rights in the south. That's where I did most of my early work. And so I have a great respect for the Department of Justice and they were unbelievable allies in Georgia and South Carolina and Florida and Tennessee, all through the 60s and 70s and to be frank with you into the 80s, although got a little bit a little bit soft under Reagan. And they were great under under Clinton and they were great under Obama to both George Bush is I don't think did harm to the Justice Department they may not have put them on priorities that thought were necessary from their perspective, but they didn't do any harm the way we've had in the last three years. I don't worry very much that the depopulation of our institutions Justice Department, the Department of Human Services Department of Housing National Department of Education that they have been so personalized of people that supported those kinds of agendas that it's going to be hard to repopulate them again. So they're going to have a hard time struggling not only to find the leadership that's going to be able to get them back to where they we think they have to be institutions we respect and honor that are above politics and honor the issue that they're responsible for. We've been in bad shape for a long time we've got to populate those with leaders and you got to populate those with lower staff members that can get up to speed quickly, because they basically take an institutional memory and institutional mechanizations and they thrown them out, because he doesn't like 30 and be frankly issues economy and the more you can get government out of any form of oversight of economy hey everybody's free do what you want to do. Money will just roll in for all of the people that have have that as an as a priority in their life where our economy is being screwed, our kids are not getting educated, our airs being be found, our waters being be found. Tax policy is being driven more and more to the wealthy is all bad. So the question is, are those institutions ever going to be able to find their way I believe I believe very much in this country I think it's an incredible place. We've gone through a bad spell, and someone that by the way traveled internationally continually after 6570 state countries in my life. The respect we used to have was unbelievable and the nose dive has taken the last four years is just it's heartbreaking. We can get better and we will use the quote I put in paper recently from Alexis to topical in a democracy people get the government they deserve. And I personally think we didn't deserve the government we got. But maybe we did, because we relaxed in certain places and certain agendas and certain messages got through certain people to allow them to be convinced we needed a new start maybe we didn't listen to people, you know, except in the islands, you know, and those people that ultimately felt disenfranchised and elected this terrible man. Bottom line is, we were a democracy and we got what we deserve. I can't imagine knowing what we know now in another six months that we're not going to have a different result. Everyone has seen this this court this boat virus has always been driven home what we were always afraid would happen, we'd have a crisis during his time nuclear war with Korea, war with China, either economic or whatever, or real. We never thought pandemic, but bottom line is he's been a poster child for God I hope you can just get through four years and it's clear we have not been able to. And this when we open up which we're dying to do right now in a lot of places, it's going to be a spike and it's going to go right back to where we were and everybody says, Oh, forget about we'll have a virus yeah, you're not going to pick up the pieces of this and the mentality people have gone through with it with a virus infection, antibiotic protection is here, people have gone through a man and imagine unimaginable threat and challenge to their life and who they are. You don't get rid of that immediately people going to say, how do we get here. How do we not want this to happen again in our future. Yeah, they're smart. Thank you Victor Victor Gemini of the Apple seed Foundation also lawyers for equal justice retired retired, and it's not as coolie Anna but it sure is. Thank you so much Victor. My pleasure. Thanks for asking me. You take care.