 Welcome back. This is our 21st show in a series of shows entitled Rehabilitation Coming Soon, where we have been discussing the mass incarceration practices of the United States and the effects of those practices on the state of Hawaii. I'm Aaron Wills, a William S. Richardson Law School graduate and a research consultant for Abigail Quantum-Nicola Research Center and a paralegal for retired Judge Mike Town's private mediation practice. Over the past four months we have heard from numerous professionals in the community who are willing to discuss the criminal justice system and see the problem of mass incarceration from different perspectives. Today we'd like to hear the perspective from the Chief Public Defender, Jack Tanaki. Jack Tanaki joined the Office of Public Defender as a trial attorney in 1985 and has been leading the office since his appointment in 2000. Mr. Tanaki has spent as extensive trial experience having handled over 150 jury trials throughout his career. Mr. Tanaki earned a Bachelor's of Arts degree from the University of Hawaii at Minoa in 1982 and a Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 1985. Welcome, Jack, to the show and thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me, Aaron. All right. Well, the first thing that I want to kind of just approach is just, you know, what kind of cases do the public defender's office, what kind of cases do they usually take on? Well, we are under a statutory authority to take any cases involving indigent criminal defendants. In other words, those are defendants who cannot afford to hire private counsel. And we handle any type of case that has the possibility of a jail term. So in real terms, you're talking about everything from the most minor of cases such as petty theft, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, all the way to the most serious cases, some of the stuff that you see in the media such as homicide, sexual assault. And we have about 103 attorneys statewide and our offices operate on every major island. Our main office is in Honolulu. We have offices in Kauai, Maui, and two offices on the big island, Hilo and Kona. Okay. And so if you're a person who can actually afford private counsel, you can't get the public defender's office help, is that right? We do a financial qualification. So with each client that comes into the office seeking public defender services, we have them fill out a financial statement. So you have to be, depending on the type of case, you have to qualify financially for us to take that case. Okay. And how many public defenders do you guys have in your office right now? We have about 103 attorneys statewide, as I said, and we appear in every level of the state courts, from district court, which handles the misdemeanor, petty misdemeanor, the most, the less serious cases, to family court, which handled juvenile cases and domestic violence, to the circuit court, which handles felony cases, and also we do cases on appeal to the Intermediate Court of Appeals as well as the Supreme Court. Oh, wow. Okay. Now, what is the current structure of your office? How is the office run? I mean, do you guys have like a group of supervisors, a bunch of teams you guys work with? We have a, as in every state office, we have a supervisory staff that administers a staff of attorneys that mans each particular court. So mainly we structure our office to go by the level of case that is handled in that particular court. So, for instance, Honolulu, we have a district court section, handles a lot of the traffic offenses, as well as the more, the misdemeanor, petty misdemeanor criminal offenses, the things I talked about, like petty theft, disorderly conduct, simple assaults, you know, bar room fights, those kind of things. And then we have the family court division, which handles juvenile offenders, as well as domestic violence, and then our circuit court division, which handles the more serious felony offenses, those things that you see in the media. Right, right. Now, I know you guys, you know, you're kind of, I mean, I know a lot of public defenders and I've had a lot of friends who are actually public defenders and, you know, they don't complain about their case, but it's just known, you know, when you work as a law clerk, you know that the public defenders have a high case load. What are some reasons for that? I mean... Well, the biggest reason is that over the years, the legislature has passed more and more criminal offenses, which affect a lot more people and are outlawing more and more types of conduct. And also adding to the high case loads are people are just unable to afford private attorneys. Right, yeah. That's true. I'll give you an example. If you are charged with a DUI, this is a simple, pretty simple case, happens every day, you need to probably have two to $3,000 in liquid assets to hire a private counsel. And that's at the low end, okay? If you get charged with something like a burglary or any type of felony offense, it just goes up from there. So, you know, simple burglary, you might need five to $10,000 to hire a private attorney. So you can imagine how many people cannot afford to hire counsel or to hire attorneys for their children who may get in trouble. Absolutely, yeah. Well, let's kind of switch gears here and let's talk about the specialty courts. You know, I know there's a... and these are just the ones I know of drug court, mental health court, veterans court and hope probation. And we can take those apart each by one if we want to. But how are these specialty courts benefiting defendants? Well, the specialty courts have really blossomed in the last probably 20 to 30 years in our court system. And I think that the main motivating factor for creating these various specialty courts were the growing number of cases, especially drug cases in the case of drug court. Drug court, actually the first real specialty court was the family court system because that's the system where you dealt with the juvenile offenses. But, you know, that structurally was created by the judiciary a long time ago. So I would say that that was the first specialty courts. But then in recent years, the last 20 to 30 years, you have courts which address different types of subject matter. And the drug court is probably the original type of this specialty court. And the theory behind drug court is there's so many offenses which are either directly involving drugs like possession of drugs, distribution of drugs, or are a symptom of drug abuse, like death. A lot of people have to commit death, burglaries to support their happen. So the drug court came about as a way to deal with all of these cases and all of the problems that are caused by substance abuse. And then from there, you had development of other types of courts, the most recent of which is the Veterans Treatment Court, which you have so many veterans now are coming back, especially after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and they're having some real adjustment problems. And those problems include a lot of times substance use, excessive substance use, but also a lot of domestic problems. So a lot of you have combat veterans that are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and those types of ailments. And so the Veterans Court was developed as a way to recognize what these veterans were suffering from, recognize their unique problems, and try to treat those problems humanely and compassionately. And it's been a real success. So that's basically in a nutshell how these specialty courts came about. Cool. Well, you know, I used to work for Hope Probation as a law clerk for a while. And, you know, one thing that I kind of, you know, Judge Alm always tried to prepare what he called, or compare what he called probation as usual versus Hope Probation. So, you know, and when I looked at it and took a step back, I says, you know, if you're going to have to be put under a whole bunch of rules for probation, Hope Probation is the best thing there is going. Because the way it works is if you follow the rules for two years, Judge Alm cuts your probation, you know, at the two-year market. There's no more reason for you to go through any more of this because you've showed for two years that you can pass all the drug tests. You can, you know, follow your probation officer's rules. So I mean, I think programs like that really need to get more attention because, you know, if you're going to have a bunch, the only, the problem is on the back end of it, if you're, if you're one person that messes up a lot, you're going to just do a lot of jail time. Sure. Yeah. And, you know, programs like that have Hope Probation and Drug Court have, their success is proven and they've saved so many people from what would have been longer jail terms. So it, it, these courts pay off from the standpoint that not only do they compassionately treat the offenders, but they also save the state a lot of money because it costs a heck of a lot to, to incarcerate people. That's right. Because incarceration, I believe, costs somewhere around 50 to 60,000 a year or more. Yeah. And then, yeah, when we go into the numbers deeper when it's a woman gets incarcerated and she has three children and she's a single parent, you know, and all the kids who come words at the state and so the cost goes up from there exponentially. Let's see, where is there something I was going to ask you about? Oh, to go into just to ask a little bit about drug court. I know there's a long wait list for drug court and that constantly is an issue because the demand for to get into drug court is so high. Is the problem really drug court or is it because there's not enough rehabilitation programs out there to serve the amount of need that we actually have? Yeah. Well, I think we could expand drug court to more than it is right now, but you're right, you know, the limitations of these courts and that's drug court hope probation included is the availability of substance abuse programming. And, you know, because the courts themselves cannot engage as you know in a day to day counseling of the people, the clients that are in the program, that has to fall upon the substance abuse programs. So there is a great need for that more money needs to be put into these programs so that they can accommodate more persons. You know, and I mean, the issue is always money, but in my opinion, the state has to look at it from the standpoint of well, how much does it cost to incarcerate this person if they're not going to be following the rules or if they're going to persist with their substance abuse problem, it's going to cost a lot more to, as you said, 50 to 60,000 or more a year to incarcerate that person as opposed to pouring some of that money, a fraction of that money into the substance abuse programs. So it's kind of like maintaining a car, you know, if you don't put money into the maintenance of the car, you're going to pay an end with a big repair bill. So yeah. And bringing that up and we'll go into this, we'll talk a little bit about the overcrowding issue we have at OCCC and Halava right now. So we'll be right back with Jack Tanaki. My name is Aaron Wills and this is Rehabilitation Coming Soon. Hi, I'm Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist here in Hawaii and I'm the host of Shrink Wrap Hawaii, which is on Tuesdays at three o'clock. Have a great summer. Take care of your mental health. Aloha. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-host of Keys to Success, which is live on ThinkTech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. Hey everybody, my name is David Chang and I am a new host for the show, The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you how to get the smart edge in life. We're going to have awesome guests in the military, business, political, nonprofit world. So no matter what background you're from, we have something for you. Please join us every other Thursday at 10 a.m. at ThinkTechHawaii.com or on TheArtOfThinkingSmart.com. I look forward to seeing you. Just a minute. Welcome back. I'm Aaron Wills and this is Rehabilitation Coming Soon and we are sitting here with our guest, Jack Tanaki. Okay, Jack, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, there's been a lot of articles written about the overcrowding issue that's going on at OCCC. We see it because, like I said, I work in whole probation so you hear the defendants complain about it all the time. And then there's also an issue about Halabah and one of the things they brought up about OCCC is that, you know, it was built in 1913 or something like that and everything, like you said, no maintenance is really put into it and it's falling apart. How bad is the issue over there if you can comment on it at all or even if you know? And do you think a new jail needs to be built or should we build it like some of the ideas are just to put one on top of Halabah and have both of them housed in the same area, I guess? Well, you know, it is almost at a crisis level. The overcrowding, the condition of the facilities, I don't, you know, there are other people who can speak about that. But as I see it, it's a crisis level and something is going to need to be done in the next decade at least, if not sooner. But the question and the debate at this point is going to be what do we do? Do we, you know, maintain the current facilities that we have? Do we upgrade those or do we build a new facility? And that's a huge political football. I think that's been kicked around for, I don't know, how many years. And I would like to see, and I think that the city prosecutors also spoke about this, that, you know, developing more of like a minimum security facility, which includes a very prolific substance abuse aspect to it, rather than building these big monstrosities with all of these walls. I mean, there are always going to be, there's going to be a need for some facility like that to house the most dangerous prisoners. But the vast majority of them are not a serious public safety danger, but they do have a lot of issues like substance abuse. And they will continue to commit property crimes if their substance abuse issues are not addressed. So I think the majority of the prison population, they need to take that view toward it from the rehabilitation because, you know, 80 to 90 percent or maybe more of these prisoners will return to society at some point. And they need to have the tools to reintegrate back into the community. Yep. No, I agree. We had Senator Sparrow on here, as I told you before the show, and, you know, he got on here and he was, you know, as I was following the way he was talking about, the way he was supporting this, he was always on board of building new places. Well, he came on our show and said, now he's off board of that because it's going to cost, he said, in the range of somewhere over a billion dollars for two new facilities. And so what he was suggesting is building what he calls a reentry program or reentry building where they come and they stay there. And it's kind of like they do these reentry programs until they're ready to be released out into society. And, you know, my whole thing that we started the show on was we wanted to try to bring awareness of we're spending $50, $60 million a year giving CCA to manage our prisoners in Arizona. We need to bring those people back. We need a facility to put them. But as you said, and Warden Patterson brought this up, it's like our system is a cookie cutter system. Because we have some really bad criminals that we have to house in maximum security, we also have to house everybody else there too. And so it does need to be a different system. And I don't know really what the answer is, other than, I mean, I believe that we need to spend the money, you know, because these the crimes aren't going down. And the people over there that were doing their time, it's, you know, Senator Sparrow brought it to the point where it was at like 1,800. Now it's down to like 1,500. I mean, if we're going at that rate, it will never go down below 1,000, you know, in 20 years. And, you know, I mean, I think when you speak to people who are very committed like Senator Sparrow and many others who are in a criminal justice system, we're pretty much all in agreement as to what's needed. But it just needs to be solidified and put into action. A reentry center is an excellent idea. And that's just a different take, I think, than what I spoke about earlier about a minimum security facility with substance abuse. So, you know, we're not, you know, off on way different pages on this, but at some point there needs to be a commitment by the state. And I know they're trying to get this done. And there's some real committed leaders. So hopefully, you know, we can see some movement on this. I agree. It needs to really happen right now. So I wanted to ask you, what are some hot button cases right now at the PDs as far as what's going on? Well, you know, of course, drug cases are always there. It's, you know, that is probably substance, either possession, distribution of drugs or property crimes that are caused by people supporting drug habits is always probably going to make up, you know, 75% of our cases or more. Right now, one of the real hot button issues that we're trying to address is these offenses which are recent creation of the City Council and the legislature to criminalize a lot of the homeless issues. So we're dealing with a really high increase in cases like being in a close park and, you know, sidewalk violations and those type of things. And these cases are problematic from many standpoints. One is just that, you know, they mainly target the homeless population and that population really has no place to go other than the parks. And they can kick them out of a park or they can kick them off the sidewalk and they just move right down the block. So now you have instead of one violation, you got two violations and it's endless. But it also has unintended circumstances because you have a lot of kids back from college, high school kids that are getting caught in the closed parks. So, you know, I've told my own son, don't be in a park. They play this Pokemon Go game. And I've told him, don't be in a park, pass. You got to look at the sign when the park closes because what happens is the citation, the police come to the park, they issue these citations, it involves a court date. And you got to get an attorney and everything. A lot of people think, well, we can just pay it by mail or it's like a traffic citation. That's not the case because the law that was created created a criminal offense. So now you got to get an attorney, you got to go to court and if they're back home from college for the summer, they got to move around their court date to adjust to when they're going to be back home again. So it's a big, it's a hassle and it was never intended to, I don't think it was ever intended to criminalize these people, but that's the effect that it's had. So it's been an overreaction to the homeless situation from the standpoint of making these violations criminal. And then it just ensnares all of these other people. So how long has that law been on the book? Has it been on for a year yet? It's been on, the closed parks has been on for a few years now. So how many cases a year do you see just closed park cases? Actually, I think between the last fiscal year and this fiscal year there was an increase of, I think about the last statistics I saw from the court of a few thousand cases. Wow. And it may have been on the books earlier, but it wasn't really being enforced. But now, because of all of the pressure from the public regarding people in the park and on the sidewalks, the police have started enforcing it. I can understand that. And that doesn't sound like there's an easy answer to that because, like we were talking about earlier, the homeless issue, they're just moving them around and not really solving the actual underlying issue, which is the cost of living. And you know, we've fought against these bills in the legislature, but unfortunately they're... And I mean, it's understandable if you live or work in a certain area of town and, you know, you start seeing encampments crop up in that area of town. It is somewhat upsetting. But there's a lot of public pressure on the politicians, so they react in really the only easy way that... I mean, the easiest way they know how to pass a criminal law, but that's really not the answer. It can't be the answer in the long run. Well, actually, I don't think they really thought it really through because if they criminalize all these actions, these people have no money. What goes back on the public defense, which is just another state agency sucking up all the resources. So let's talk about how Hawaii is compared to other states. How is Hawaii compared as far as violent crime is concerned to other states in the community? I think from that standpoint, violent crime, we're very lucky. We hear about cases involving homicide and shooting, stabbings, but those are relatively rare. You know, you just heard about this case on a mainland where Dwayne Wade's cousin was shot. And for the most part, we don't have those types of incidents happening here. And then one of the reasons for that is Hawaii has very strict gun laws. And that's why in this whole debate about... And I understand the Second Amendment, the people who are strong on the Second Amendment, but Hawaii is very restrictive in where you can carry a firearm, how you have to secure the firearm. How many bullets you can have in your magazine? Exactly. So semi-automatics are outlawed. So that really does have an effect, I think, because although you do see the occasional gun violence here, it's not on the scale of other major cities that are of like size. Just to give a little background on what Jack is talking about, Dwayne Wade's cousin was a female walking on the side of the street with, I believe, a daughter walking her daughter. And there was exchange of gunfire between, they think, gang members. And she was hit as a bystander and killed. And if you know Chicago, and if you know anything about the history of Chicago, they've had gun violence and gun issues over there. And they have very strict gun laws there, too, but it doesn't seem to help. And Chicago is not a real good comparison with Honolulu. It's a lot larger, like LA-8, that kind of thing. But I do think that by having these very restrictive gun laws here, it discourages those types of crimes going on. I agree. Well, we're at the end of our show. So thank you very much, Jack, for coming on our show today. Thank you, Aaron. It was a pleasure. All right. And so join us next week for another show of rehabilitation coming soon as we continue our discussion of the criminal justice system and the effect of mass incarceration on the state of Hawaii. And stay tuned because coming up next is Sustainable Hawaii with Kirsten Turner. Thank you.