 Welcome back, this is our 16th show entitled Rehabilitation Coming Soon, where we have been discussing the mass incarceration practices of the United States, and in particular the effect of those practices on the state of Hawaii. I am Aaron Wills, a William S. Research Head and Law School graduate, and a research consultant for Abigail Quanticoa Research Center, and a paralegal for retired Judge Mike Towns private mediation practice. Over the past 15 weeks, 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 their perspective from a community justice advocate with a lifelong dedication to bringing the community's voice into the public policy arena. She works to increase civic literacy and public participation as she advocates for social, cultural, and environmental justice policy reforms. Our guest today will be Kat Reddy. Welcome and thank you for coming on the show. My pleasure, Aaron. All right. Well, a little background on our guest here. Kat serves as the Coordinator for Community Alliance on Prisons. She's the Assistant Executive Director of Life of the Land, Vice President of Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, Board Member of Kalei Mailei Alii Hawaiian Civic Club, prisoner advocate on several University of Hawaii institutional review boards. Kat is the recipient of the Martin Luther King Junior Lifetime Peacemaker Award, the Kakao Kalaneaneole Award as Outstanding Non-Hawaiian for Service to the Hawaiian Community, O'Leo Access Achievement Award for Continuous Commitment to Free Speech. Surruptimus. Surruptimus. Okay, I'm gonna have to explain to you what that is. A Ruby Award for Outstanding Work to Improve the Lives of Women, the first advocacy award by the critical or the Critical Criminology and Justice Studies Collaborative, the Interfaith Alliance of Hawaii Award for Encouraging Non-Violent Community Participation and Friends of Civil Rights Award for Promoting the Work of Dr. Martin Luther King. Welcome, Kat Brady. Thank you. Okay, well, first question, I just wanted to ask, were you always interested in justice issues and why are you so interested in that? Well, I was born in New York City and I was always the smallest kid in my neighborhood and always protecting everybody, from discrimination, from being teased and whatever. So I've always really had a heart for people and for equality. So for me, that's a huge thing. And my life has really been in nonprofit organizations. I ran Screen Actors Guild in New York for many, many years. And when I came to Hawaii about 30 years ago, I just couldn't believe the plight of the people of this land. I couldn't believe there were so many native Hawaiians that were living in poverty. And I thought, how could that be in their land? So that kind of started me on my study about what about justice in Hawaii and then it really led into, I'm an environmentalist and I started wondering, where the heck is all the money going? We had a lot of money in the 80s and then we had, not in the 90s and I was trying to figure out what happened. So I went down to the budget office and got three big red budget books and brought them home, but they're all in code. Every agency has a code, every division has a code, every program in that division. So once you crack the code, you can kind of follow. And the one thing I discovered was that the Department of Public Safety budget is the one that was almost constantly rising while others were tanking. So then I said, wow, who's in there and how come? Right, right, right. And I found most people are in for drugs or drug involved crimes. So my next quest was how much drug treatment do we have in facility and in the community? And that was really appalling to me. We have about an 85 to 90% people incarcerated who need treatment, less than 14% get it. And in the community, we have about 50% of the treatment slots that we had about 15 years ago I've been told by providers. And I thought, that's bizarre. They're sending people to prison for drugs where you can get drugs, but it's easier to get drugs than treatment. So something is out of the balance. Yes, yes, that's true. And we'll get into one of the reasons why that might be, is because we're in a relationship with CCA and CCA is a for-profit prison. And you understand that underlining and sending for a for-profit prison is to-profit. And when their profit is built on the bottom line of keeping bed capacity full, limiting how many drug treatment programs there might be out in the community so that people can fulfill their drug treatment requirement for them to be released, is an incentive for them not to support that because that would mean their beds would stay full and not empty. And they've actually said that in their annual reports. They've actually said drug law reforms are a threat to our business. Yeah, I actually think I remember reading that. And it's just amazing that they can use a bottom line like that when someone's liberty is at stake here. You know, we never talk about that. We talk about punishment. And for some reason, people don't think incarceration is punishment. But the greatest punishment is your loss of liberty. No, that's absolutely right. Well, so you explained a little bit how you became involved in Hawaii justice issues. I'm just interested. I mean, when you started looking into it, what were some of the things that really popped out at you other than just not having drug rehabilitation centers out in the community for these prisoners who were highly incarcerated for that reason? Well, about 20 years ago is when I kind of started. And I guess the thing that popped out, I was born and raised in New York City where the jails and prisons are black and Latino. Our prisons are brown. They're full of Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and now the latest population are Micronesians. And that's really horrible because they're sent to Arizona where they can't read. All the instructions come on a scrolling TV, close circuit TV. And when our guys try to help them, they both get in trouble. Right. Well, the hard thing about Micronesian, the population in general, is that they've been marginalized by the United States government. And then they've kind of just taken their issue of them marginalizing these people and then dumped it on Hawaii and says, you deal with it. And so that's created a lot of issues because of us having to adapt to you making this big mistake and saying, deal with it. And there's resistance to that even here. It's heartbreaking because the U.S. bombed their islands and these people are suffering from major cancers, deformities, it's just, it's so shameful. And most states apparently got out of the Compact of Free Association, but Hawaii didn't. And people are moving here for healthcare because... Well, and that's one reason. And the other reason is, just to be frank, there's such a high resistance even amongst Hawaiians because Hawaiians don't have anything. We were left out in the cold too and now you're bringing another group here that is being left out in the cold too and then we're fighting amongst each other. And that's sad, you know? Yes, yeah. And it's hard to believe that's not all orchestrated. Yes, that's true. I agree with you on that. Sorry, child of the 60s, I can't help but believe that. Well, let's get back to incarceration a little bit. So where would you, I mean, if you're going to state what the state of incarceration is for the state of Hawaii, where would you, where would you think it is at, right? Oh, I think Hawaii's a real outlier. Most states and jurisdictions around the world are talking about de-incarceration. They're talking about decarceration, getting people out of prison, you know, reducing the population. Prisons are violent places. So you don't wanna put low-level drug users, people who are doing nonviolent crimes, you don't wanna mix populations. The research is really clear, and it shows when you mix populations like that, criminology, criminal thinking actually rises. And why would we do that? So, you know, about, I guess several months ago, about 100 or 130 police prosecutors, law enforcement kind of folks around the country actually submitted something saying, we've gotta reduce the population of incarcerated people because we're just creating crime schools. And that's exactly what's happening. When people go to jail, they don't have many programs, but they have plenty of time to learn the dark arts. And you're right, and you know, I wanna bring up a thing about the time, you know, I think one thing with the time is, you have so much time there. Unfortunately, these people all are put into some kind of work for a low program. You have to work every single day, but what they earn is ridiculous. They earn like 25 cents an hour. At the very most, I read someone, one group, because of a private institution coming in making a whole dollar and 10 cents an hour. You know, and that's on the high end, okay? So what we do with these people is they sit there for 10 years and they work at this rate. When they get out, one of the number one reasons they return back to crime is because of the desperateness of their own situation, that they rely on their criminal behaviors to get them out of trouble. When, if we paid them just minimum wage, let's say $7.25 an hour, they worked a regular work week. They can't spend that money, okay? They can send some of that money maybe to the kids that they have to support outside, but on top of that, let's just say that they saved that for 10 years and they get out and they have a check in their hand where they can get a place to live, a roof over their head, you know, start life like the rest of us with a little bit of money in the bank. That would go so far. And I guarantee you, we would see the recidivism rate drop. Oh, you're totally right. You know, a few years ago, I ran into a minister that I work with and he said, wow, I just ran into somebody on the street. He was in a paper jumpsuit and he had stuff in a garbage bag. And I said, is he houseless? And he said, no, we just got off the plane from Arizona. And I thought, oh my God, what's gonna happen to this guy? He's got nothing. Exactly, and what do we expect him to do? Yeah. Sooner or later, you know what he's gonna do? He's gonna run on it, get desperate and he's gonna hold somebody up or try to steal something and run away and he's gonna be back in on a status offense and then we're housing another criminal. We didn't build up any skills in him. We didn't prepare, we basically set him up to fail. Yes, I just said that at a recent re-entry meeting because I was helping a guy who's been in 10 years. You know, Hawaii says we don't send anybody back from Arizona, you know, they have to have a year left on their sentence so they have time to, you know, reintegrate and kind of find a job in Hawaii and all that. Well, this guy was sent back like February 20th or something and he was released March 16th. No money, no ID. He calls me, it's pouring rain. He says, I'm walking around Waikiki and I'm like, oh my God, so. He's gonna get a ticket for homelessness. Yeah, he basically, yeah, I mean, it's outrageous. It is. And, you know, I said at the meeting, why do we set people up for failure and then we blame them? Exactly, yeah. So, you know, to me, people who go to prison or who commit crimes are generally suffering from a range of issues. Poverty, substance abuse, mental illness, houselessness. I mean, there's a range of issues and if we don't deal with them, do we think just locking somebody up for 10 years is gonna be an epiphany and he's gonna come out and all of a sudden, you know, be a contributing citizen when we've done nothing to help him. And then the interim, you know, while he's doing these small little crimes, we lock him up for these small periods of time, two months at a time. I mean, how many people can hold down a job if you do have a job and you get locked up for little two month periods at a time and expect him to be able to jump right out of jail and land right on his feet and just start working right away. No employer does that. You're gonna have to go door to door. Yeah, you know, exactly, it's very rare. So, I mean, in your opinion, you're kind of talking about it, I mean, you obviously, do you feel like mass incarceration because of the, or just, you know, the way that the laws are written for pre-defender laws and stuff like that, do you think it's a problem here in Hawaii? I think it's a terrible problem. I think Hawaii really got caught up in this whole mass incarceration move that happened in the 90s and, you know, all this tough on crime, three strikes, truth in sentencing, all these laws that basically say, these people are not redeemable. There's nothing we could do to help them. You know what? I have met some incredible people in prison and I just think, wow, imagine if you gave up on your kid and you just said, you know what? You're five, you're just, you're so disobedient, I'm done with you. Wait, not only that, it's just, you know, one thing is like, for example, the campaign back when I was growing up as a kid to put everybody who even came close to marijuana and jail. And now we have a jails full of marijuana dealers, marijuana users, you know, and people who've maybe grown marijuana at their house illegally and have been charged with a distribution crime. Okay, and so they're clogging up our prisons. Oh, but now the states wanna make millions and billions of dollars off marijuana and it's gonna be legal everywhere, maybe in five to 10 years. What do we do about all those years we put on people? Because society changes now that we're gonna take back a few years, we're gonna pay them reparations for, oh, we're sorry, it was a bad law and we were just trying to do it for, you know, we didn't even have a good reason. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, President Obama just relates to a whole bunch of people and many of them were sentenced under the cocaine crack law, where it was 100 to one ratio for crack and less for powder cocaine. And I just thought powder cocaine is the drug of rich white people. That's right. And you know, crack, when I was in New York City, it was kids selling, you know, little rocks of crack outside Grand Central Station for like five bucks or something. Well, you know, up in the high rises, there were all these vice presidents snorting cocaine off their glass coffee tables. So, but who's going to prison? It was those $5 kids. That's right, that's right. So there's always been an imbalance. So we'll be right back, we'll continue to talk with Cat Radio, my name is Erin Wills and this is Rehabilitation Coming Soon. Aloha, everyone. I'm Maria Mera and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show, Viva Hawaii on Sintek, Hawaii, every other Monday at 3 p.m. We are here to talk about news, issues and events, local and around the world. Join me, Aloha. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Law Across the Sea. Please join me every other Monday to hear lawyers from Hawaii discussing ways to reach across the sea and help people and bring people together. Aloha. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech, Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha, I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to, but I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show Education Movers, Shakers and Reformers here on Think Tech, Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. Welcome back. I'm Aaron Wills. This is Rehabilitation Coming Soon, and we are sitting here with our guest, Kat Rady. Well, Kat, let's talk a little bit more about the impact of the privatization of the criminal justice system hardware. So, we talked a little bit about the incentive for somebody like CCA to actually let someone out of prison, and the incentive's very low. We had Senator Willis Barrow on about two weeks ago, and he actually said evidence that the recidivism rate is dropping because we started off with somewhere around 1,800 to 2,000 prisoners over there, and now we're down to about 1,500 to 1,400. Do you think that the recidivism rate is dropping? Well, it has dropped a little bit. Okay. We're about 50% recidivism rate for parole and probation a little more, but people who max out high recidivism rate. And I've been trying to get the legislature to say people who... We don't want people to serve their entire sentence. We want them to get off and be unsupervised parole to help them. Somebody who's been in 20 years to just come out, it's frightening. The world is really different. So, I think it's unfair to the people, for the person, to just let that person out and say good luck. And it's unfair to the community to have somebody thrust on the community who really is kind of lost. And you are lost when you come out of prison. It's very different. Right, and speaking monetarily, it's cost more money for us to keep somebody in the whole time than it is for us to let them out and then have the community programs kind of pick up the treatment part of it and stuff like that. Well, I'm glad you brought up the cost because we keep hearing how private prisons are just so, you know, they're so much cheaper. Well, you know, when you actually look at the, not only the economic cost, but the social cost, there's, you know, on the economic side, yes, it might be a little cheaper on the day rate. They choose who they're going to bring, CCA. So, I mean, the really difficult, hard to manage inmates are here. Right. So, they take the easy people, they decide who they want to take, and then we pay for the law library for some medical stuff for transport. They own their own airline, TransCorp, which transports people. And the lawsuits are incredible. I mean, the community has paid millions in settlements for, you know, some of the things that have happened at CCA prisons. So, when we make justice economic, it is not justice. It's about money. Oh, and I'll just point this out. I mean, over the years that we've been in contract for CCA, each one of those contracts has supposedly been audited and they've received, you know, two thumbs up, full approval across the board. Yet, we've had a prisoner with his head cut off inside of his cell. They haven't been dinged for any safety reasons at all in all of the years that we've been in contract with CCA. So, I find that either the contract auditor is not doing his job or he refuses to dirty up or to say anything negative about a company that they're in a business relationship with. That kind of checks and balances isn't what checks and balances is for. No, we don't really have checks and balances. What's interesting is we didn't always have a contract with CCA. We had a government to government contract when the Lingle administration was in to avoid the procurement law. So, it was a government to government contract. With Arizona then. With Eloy County, Arizona. Okay, okay. Ironically, the mayor of Eloy works for CCA. Of course he does. He has no problem with that. He doesn't see why there's any conflict. And I'm like, you're town, you're the mayor of a town that's mostly people who are incarcerated. I don't think there's many people who actually live in Eloy. It's a desert. But there's all these. Well, the conflict is simply, he receives a paycheck from CCA. That's the conflict. If you receive money from them, you're likely to speak highly favorable of them. Yeah, you're employer. Yeah, so it's a problem when economics really rules and that's what's happening. So the contract was actually, there was an audit in 2010 for contract beds. And it was really interesting because the department basically told the auditor, and this is the legislative auditor, well, we just give the legislature quick and dirty numbers. And it's like, oh, I'm so sorry, but those quick and dirty numbers, that's our money. That's taxpayer money. That's right. To me, that kind of attitude is really terrible. So now we have a contract with CCA and there is a mainland branch, they call it, that actually monitors that contract. For us? Yeah, what's really interesting is that they could actually do it by email because they never talk to the inmates when they're there. They only hang out with CCA people. So that's not really, you know, we're not really finding out. Also many years ago, the monitors would go on quarterly trips and write a narrative. So you'd kind of get a sense of how the prison operated. Well, then CCA felt like, you know, that was just too subjective. So now it's just a checklist. It's a checklist. So now I'm saying, why is there even a need for a trip? Right. If that's all it is. So I asked because New Mexico fined CCA for like $600,000. And so I asked the department. So I've noticed and recorded many contract violations and I've told you about them. So how much in penalties have we collected? They said, oh, we haven't. And I said, why? And they said, oh, because they have 30 days to fix it. And I said, so how do you know they fixed it? Well, they call and tell us they fixed it. Oh, all right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back right after these messages. Aloha. My name is John Wahee. And I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today. Served actually in public office. But if you don't already know that, here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John Wahee. Every other Monday. Thank you. And I look forward to your seeing us in the future. Aloha, my channel. University of Hawaii football team under Rolovich is going to kick butt this season. In case you didn't understand me, University of Hawaii football team is going to kick butt under Rolovich this season. So be sure to follow us on Think Tech Hawaii and Hibachi Top. I'll be at every game. And remember, Aloha. Okay, we're sitting here with Kat Brady. And I just wanted to ask, because we talked about this a little bit before, Bob Merce was one of our guests and he's kind of one of the organizers of this show and with Judge Town, who puts a lot of work in trying to organize these shows. Bob Merce took a trip over to Norway of what they refer to as the most successful prison system in the world where the recidivism rate is around 20%. And one of the things that they're doing over there that's vastly different than what we do over here is they educate their staff and they educate them to the point where they require them to go to school for two years. I got at an academy, then they come into the prison and when they get to the prison, they have to do six months of training before they're even allowed to become what they call a contact officer and have contact with another prisoner. And I just wanted to know from you, if you knew what's happening around the world like that and are we following what the good data says, what the world is doing with the good data says to do or are we just saying, no, we're gonna do it our way. No, we're not following that. Actually, most European prisons, one of the basic tenets is you hold people at the minimum level, absolutely necessary. We don't do that. We have a lot of nonviolent people who are at higher custody levels, which defies all good practice. I love the Norway thing because you don't go get a job in a prison. You register for a two year academy training. And to me, that is really good. Our training is eight weeks, basically take down. And we have a very different population than we had 20 years ago. So we really need people who know how to talk down. People who have some psychological background that can actually help people. Prison is really stressful. So we need people who actually know how to talk to people. And in particular for Hawaii, let's talk about something like OCCC. Are we good at separating out people who have mental illness from the regulars so that there's not that clash? Because I know a lot of times someone with mental illness can exasperate the whole population because of their behavior. Yeah. Hawaii generally is not very good at separating populations because we have people who are minimum in community custody in Arizona, which is a medium security prison. We have them in Halava, which is a medium maximum prison in OCCC. We had a young man who was in there for something violent and we actually put him in a cell with an older man and he murdered him. And so, I mean, right there you would say why would you do that? Right, I agree, I agree. I was just gonna say in the last minute that we have, what are some effective alternatives that we should be expanding on? Well, you know, we can expand the range of community treatment programs and it's not just substance abuse treatment. We need to rebuild the community health system so we have adequate mental health services in the community. We need more job training. We need to do community mapping. We know where people come from and where they return to after incarceration. Let's look at those areas. Do they have enough economic development? What are the schools like in that area? What are the services like in that area? We've got to focus on people rather than money. Right, and I agree. And one of the alternatives that we kind of discussed over this weekend with Judge and Bob was, you know, in my opinion, if you are in prison and you actually have a child on the outside, you need to go to some kind of parent training and some training so that you can understand that when you get out, how to support your child, how to become a respective adult and to break the cycle of incarceration that's affected your family. There's generations of family members in prison and they need this. And a lot of people who go in and sometimes have kids, they didn't plan on it and they're not good parents. Even I, when my son came out, I didn't know what to do. You have to learn. And they need the opportunity to learn. Yeah, so parenting might be easy to do but to start but hard to actually do well. That's right, that's right. Well, thank you for coming on our show, taking time out of your busy schedule. I really appreciate it, it was awesome. Really terrific. Thank you so much and thank you, everybody. We'll 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. Coming up next is Sustainable Hawaii with Kirsten Turner. Thank you.