 Aloha, welcome to What's On Your Mind Hawaii, a new show format that takes our camera out of the studio and out into the streets to hear from you and those issues which are important. Today's show we listen to Mateo Caballero, legal director from the ACLU about efforts to reduce jail overcrowding and allow those charged with the ability to make bail. We will talk about the reversal of the United States net neutrality policy and our last interview is an interesting conversation about how much more difficult it is to get ahead in America. I'm here at the ACLU Liberty unions to talk about bail reform and I'm here with Mateo Caballero. He's the legal director for the ACLU here in the Hawaii chapter and Mateo, you just gave a presentation on your efforts and your proposed efforts in bail reform in the state of Hawaii. Tell me a little bit about it. Sure, so let me take a step back and tell you why we're working on bail reform and why now. So well the first reason is that Hawaii has had overcrowding and you know really inhumane conditions at its gales and prisons for a very long time going back to the 80s and this is one of those recurring and very difficult to tackle problems in Hawaii. All our jails are overcrowded. They operate at double their design capacity. They have the people in jail and just to explain to your audience what is the difference between jail and prison, you know jails are places where people are housed for short periods of time meaning pre-trial detainees people are waiting trial but haven't been convicted of anything people that perhaps are parole or probation violators or folks that are convicted of misdemeanors. But our jails are just full of people that are their pre-trial essentially because they cannot afford bail. To what degree is Hawaii, what's the ranking of Hawaii compared to other states as far as pre-jail people that didn't make bail that are in prison or in jail? So Hawaii is very much in line with other states. I believe the national average is actually a little bit higher than Hawaii's where 70% of people in jail are their pre-trial. In Hawaii as I said is about 50%. Of course different states use their jails a little bit differently. Hawaii is somewhat unique in that is one of the few states where the state operates the jails and the prisons. In most places the jails are operated by the counties and in Hawaii that used to be the case but that changed in the 70s. So during the presentation you mentioned that in pre-trial status the state is spending 147 dollars I believe per per individual is that correct? Yes it's 146 dollars per day and this is again according to the Department of Public Safety's own numbers and that translates at the current rate of incarceration for pre-trial detainees to about 61 million dollars per year. 61 million a year? Yes. Just in Hawaii state? Just on pre-trial detainees so we spend a lot more you know as part of the Department of Public Safety but this is how much the Department of Public Safety spends to keep someone in jail that is pre-trialled you know it hasn't been convicted of anything should be presumed innocent but for some reason or another it's you know it's cannot afford bail or cannot post bail. What are the top three reasons for people not making bail and getting you know being released on their own cognizance? So the main three reasons the first one is that bailing Hawaii is very very high as you know you know we have we live in one of the most expensive states or wages are relatively low compared to the cost of living and yet the bail amount set by the judges which for the most part follow schedules are very very high so that most people in Hawaii cannot afford to post bail so that's the first reason. The second reason is that let me just interrupt on that point is there a difference in bail amounts based on a violent crime versus a nonviolent crime? Yes so the schedules that you know judges follow and they are by the way not necessarily written schedules they are kind of the facto schedules they do differentiate between the type of crime which to some extent is problematic because the idea of bail is that or cash bail I should say is that it makes sure that you reappear in court however you know if you think about it it doesn't make sense that it would defend on the type of offense because you know essentially the wealthy person that murdered someone could get out on bail but the you know the poor person that just stole you know like a pair of sunglasses will be in jail until until trial. What are the bail amounts typically here in Hawaii? So the bail amounts have a wide range for felony the classy felonies is between normally between 11,000 and 15,000 dollars and by the way we over-classifying Hawaii so we have a lot of things that are for example mere possession of any drug with the exception of marijuana is a classy felony and then class B's and class A's kind of go up from there I don't have the numbers my colleague Ainsley would be able to give you the exact numbers for those but I know we have had situations where bail is set as high as like a million dollars and that's not the norm across the nation there are other places where bail is much less than that. So other than cash bail requirements what are just a couple more situations why people are not they're still in pre-trial jail? So the other reason people are held pre-trial is because it takes a long time for judges here to either reduce bail or to essentially release someone on with some sort of you know conditional release and and you know no one really knows exactly why that's the case but we have very very long periods in fact it takes here in the first circuit on Oahu it takes about 61 days on average to get someone out of jail sometimes even on their own reconnaissance and what I've heard is that it has to do with the time it takes sometimes for the pre-trial risk assessment to take place but that's really outside of the norm in terms of national averages in most places you're out of jail within a couple of weeks but for some reason here in Hawaii it takes four times that long so that's one of the reasons we have a lot of people in jail. And I understand another reason was that judges kind of just follow a follow a cookbook kind of formula on whether they release or not release someone on bail is that kind of accurate? So what happened with judges is that what the initial bail is normally said by the police and the police normally you know follows some sort of guideline as you said based on the crime that that was committed and so when it comes to for the judge the judge essentially follows that same guideline and kind of affirms the amount said by the police unless really there is some sort of showing that they should deviate from that and that kind of puts things on its head because the idea of bail is that it should be individualized and the due process requires that the judge looks at you and determines are you a danger to society are you a flight risk and then tries to determine what is the best set of bail conditions that they should impose and cash is not the only way you can release someone you could have someone on house arrest you could have curfews you could have someone to get text you could have ankle monitoring there are a number of ways you can release someone and make sure they appear or make sure they do not commit another crime and that's kind of what we're seeing across the nation that you know places are realizing that cash is not a very good option for for bail okay step over this way here a little bit as we move into the new 2018 legislative session I heard that there are going to be some proposed hopefully some proposed bills that address bail reform can you kind of summarize what those might look like so I haven't seen them and I haven't seen the the bills yet we hope by right before legislative session to have our own set of requirements for those bills and what we think this should look like so there's going to be a bail report that will summarize all the data that you know our one of our fellows has gathered over the span of six months essentially looking at every case in circuit court between January 2017 and June 2017 and you're seeing what are the bail setting practices in Hawaii and then based on the data we made recommendations as to how and what types of reforms we need here in Hawaii kind of a battle do you anticipate in the legislature over this issue so you know this is one of those issues where the evidence is very clear which is that you could release a lot more people and have better results you know it costs less money to the state to just supervise someone out in the community than to house them in in old triple C which cost as as we said 146 dollars so the evidence is on our favor other states are doing you know are having really good results with bail reform the main concept the main issue is really fear fear of change fear that if you let someone out that person is going to commit a you know a crime and then there's going to be political backlash either against the legislature or against the judges and a lot of late people you know they they how do you how do you approach that risk reward equation with a legislator because you're right it's there is a big concern that by making these reforms that there is the opportunity that you know that one person that gets released or should have been incarcerated wasn't incarcerated then all of a sudden now that person has recommitted a crime and it doesn't look good for anyone yeah well there are a couple of things the first one is that our current system really doesn't deal with that issue either essentially it's all about whether you have the ability to pay or not and if someone can pay they get out and they still can commit another crime so it's not like a current system is really keeping us safer uh the other issue is that ultimately it's about following the evidence and and seeing you know what the results are in in other places and in hawaii the fact of the matter is that we have very very high uh reoffending rates you know people that go to jail and prison and then get out and then commit another crime and and people don't see that as a failure of the system they don't see that as a failure of the state to rehabilitate someone but we should be as concerned about that failure as we are about that person that gets out and commits another crime and once we have the shift once we start realizing that in fact the state of hawaii is failing to rehabilitate people and therefore we're you know it's more dangerous for us then then i'm hoping they will realize that it's not about that you know one case it's really about looking at the wider system and whether it's working or not okay well mateo i want to thank you very much for spending your time with think tech hawaii i'm here with calvin and calvin i'd like to ask you about what your opinion is but the net neutrality issue that was just decided on today to do a complete reversal of the existing policies what's what's on your mind about that um basically i think um you know first of all i'm opposed to the whole thing um because i believe every consumer should have their own you know choice of what they will want to do and who they will want to you know choose as far as providers and shouldn't have to worry about having their services filtered um but i think also um being that i am in the tech industry um there are workarounds so and i think the biggest thing right now for i think the average person is to realize that there is a bpn solution so are you concerned about um issues of monopolies and uh the big the big existing media companies taking over the broadband space and then kind of edging out all the smaller providers absolutely um i think that's you know the key in this i think you know anytime there's you know a big change in our society you also have to worry about okay what's going on on the back end you know there's there's gotta be something to make something going on in the back end to make a move like this to uh to seem justifiable i mean it hasn't been a problem in in our country for years and now all of a sudden this is a big issue you know as we move forward in the 20th century you'd mentioned before we started the interview about uh what i think a lot of people don't know about it's called vp vpns yes vpns what about that virtual private network so virtual private networks have been around for a long time uh there's various flavors to them i think um the average like said the average uh you know average person or consumer is just something that they just really don't they they don't really know about unless they're and they're pretty tech savvy so um it goes on to this day a lot of the kids are into it now but there's all type of applications out there for them is that a way of gaining access without going through the the major media companies like AT&T and all those big firms um yes i i think you know you still would you know use one of those guys as your your your service provider but um by the same token you still can use a vpn solution within your own home so you can connect to outside you know networks and you can tunnel traffic through that way you can see uh things that are filtered so um yeah i think vpns is probably the way to go so if you had any discussions with your friends or family about this issue um yeah everybody just it just says that they're they're going to do vpns everybody i know who i work with they said hey you know if it passes we'll just you know we'll just i'll set up a vpn so how easy is it to do that um you definitely you definitely would need to know something about you know uh you know technology in order to set it up but um there are different ways there's different things that you can do to to get it set up so um you know the average person you just google vpns or reach out to somebody you know that may know a little something about um technology sounds like a business opportunity someone just had a vpn vps consulting service uh definitely definitely there's probably you know opportunities out there for people but more importantly i think it's just a way a solution to allow people to continue to view and and and and look at content that you know they you know so wish and please to them so this net neutrality really just concerns the united states correct i mean it doesn't really affect canada or or any of our other our neighbors or anything like that it's just primarily the united states is affected by this policy is that your understanding yeah that's my understanding is this united states i know there's a lot of countries outside of us that you know have their own policies in place uh till this day so uh it's just you know uh uh it's unfortunately that it has to hit home now do you have any um theories as to why of a sudden we're doing a 180 on this policy that's already been established in the obama administration era i think there's any um any real motivation to change this policy that's pretty ingrained already now um no no i you know i i can't i really wouldn't you know i don't really have no comment for that but um it does seem it does seem a little a little suspicious but you know well actually it does it looks like just about every policy that uh president obama implemented is being reversed on his face just absolutely reversed so doesn't surprise a lot of people but the the ramifications could be pretty good they're pretty big actually and um just wondered if if most people really thought about that and the implications are going to have down the road yeah um you know yeah i i i i can't really comment on that but it definitely will have some implications on down the road and i think that um you know it it's just unfortunate like i said for me it's just unfortunate we're in in in the situation and i think that with the administration that's in place it seems like you know that's all they're they've been focused on it's just you know um you know overturning and undoing what obama has already put into place so so if you had any advice for someone who's not tech savvy and reading the headlines about the reversal of net neutrality what would you say to them what would you say don't worry or would you have any advice for them um i would just say hey you know you pick up a book google whatever you do find out about vpn solutions and um just set one up as quick as you can you know that would be my advice to them you know um other than that i mean that that that's really that really seems like the only um uh alternative solution in this case so yeah get a vpn okay calvin i want to thank you very much this is tim apachella and we're on the streets of wikiki and this is what's on your mind hawaii for think tech hawai aloha gene what's on your mind we before we started the interview we talked about uh the future and your grandchildren so let's go from there yeah the world i live in is greatly dictated today by what i see out ahead for my grandchildren and i'm not optimistic i'm not optimistic here that the world i live in has changed dramatically in the years i've been here and whereas it was the land of opportunity when i came that you came in 1964 64 years and when i came to california when i came to california california at that time was probably the greatest place that ever existed in the history of mankind well this i have to hear why how for the common man and the common man did remarkably well and the common man did remarkably well for a number of reasons one there was a part-time legislator there was just a limited amount of damages the politicians could do two there was no withholding tax despite that california had an infrastructure that was absolutely pristine um this the public school system in california i think you measure countries and states by the quality of public education and the public school system in california when i came was the best in the country at a time when the nation's schools were the best in the industrialized world and today california schools ranked 48th i believe in the nation and the nation's schools are on the bottom of the g20 number 20 and they're the bottom of the industrialized world well you you should know because i early and i believe had one of the best school systems in the entire world it started out when i was a youngster very very poor system because you simply didn't have the resources but in time they changed and in the late 60s they uh set about rebuilding the schools rebuilding the curriculum and doing everything they could to invite foreign investment what's your concern for your grandchildren specifically is it uh is it the environment is it the education system is it all a multitude of things i suppose the multitude of things um the the incentives to work have been greatly reduced i mean this is a state with an enormous welfare system california is a state with an enormous welfare system and so there are fewer and fewer people paying in to support that and more and more people being incentivized not to go to work it happened to me i paid so much taxes that i retired early you know from a wonderful job and uh that i loved but i was just working for the tax man and i think most of my friends were you were self-employed or did you work for a corporation i worked uh both actually through my lifetime and and the burden became incredibly uh steep for the amount of effort the reward became very little for the amount of effort you were putting in and it's just it has grown system with this pending tax uh reform if you are or tax cut however you want to look at it that donald trump and his administration has proposed you you know that the corporation tax is going from 35 down to a proposed 21 do you think that's going to filter down to the middle class of this country uh the middle class is almost nonexistent in the world i live in poor i live it's all very well off people or people who are on welfare for the most part middle class has been pretty much gutted um yeah i think anything that encourages investment in the country is good and certainly is a bad thing to have to have these enormous corporations keep the money offshore i mean apple has like a quarter of a trillion dollars bank in in a bank in ireland for that sake so in your mind um you just made a statement which i think is rather dramatic and that is the middle class has been squeezed out if you're a student of history you know that government insurrection and and rioting and revolution usually occurs when there's the haves and have nots and there's not a middle class are you concerned about that i am concerned about that long term it's one of the things that concerns me about my uh the world of my grandchildren are going into um first of all they have to uh deal with the advances in technology which are not necessarily favorable to creating jobs for everyone and the other thing that that's going on is is uh robotics that in 10 years we won't recognize the world we're in robotics will take jobs by the score every day by every month and so you have to compete with that issues we're largely being dismissed at this point and saying that we're going back to the blue cholera industries of the 60s and the 50s no absolutely not there's there's no turning back the clock in terms of of technology here we are you know playing with these toys ourselves and it's remarkable but it doesn't lead to a lot of new jobs and it doesn't lead a lot to a lot of well paying jobs there'll be a lot of uh poorer poorer paying jobs but there'll be a handful at the top i think and everybody else will be scrambling the neighborhood i live in is a beautiful neighborhood when i went to live in it it was all middle class folks today it's hedge fund managers attorneys and doctors and and me well let me ask you this um because i'm concerned about my children and their children and what advice do we give them whether the cost of education now can run you 75 100 000 150 000 more um what advice do we give our our children and our grandchildren regarding education and and what they should be doing should they go directly into industry or should they go to school and and try to uh enhance their skills that way if i knew the answer to that question i'd be a very wealthy man so tomorrow it's uh it's i don't think anybody knows and least of all people in government you know i think that they are out of touch with that with the world and so we'll see how it plays out well we know that unemployment's a huge factor whether or not we have um basically low crime rates and prosperity for the entire nation and certainly has an effect on you know the economy and gmp and the increase of gmp um do you think this tax cuts going to get us there uh president trump is just today i think or yesterday was estimating that we could be five six percent gmp with the corporate rate cut and some of these tax revisions and that seems a little aggressive and a little bit uh fairy book strategy but uh what do you think well i hope he's right i hope so you so so too but you think he's realistic in that well i think there there are real i look at everything from the the prison living in california and so you drop the rate to 21 in california and your apple you bring it back and jerry browns adds another 13.9 percent on top of that and you're going to say gosh that wasn't such a great deal after all you know so i think that those large companies that are um have their their base in the high-tax states i don't think they're going to be greatly incentivized to haul money back in and i think in the states for instance where you come from up in washington they don't have an income tax do they they should benefit microsoft for us it should should benefit mightily from this and uh but i don't see apple uh hauling their money back or yahoo or you know facebook i think they're going to concentrate and and investing abroad rather than at home which i think is terrible well that is the argument that's that's the whole rationale for cutting the corporate tax that that's going to bring that offshore money back in the united states um you know there are corporations and many of them out there that are sitting on a ton of cash and so the question is why are we giving them further tax incentive when they're already sitting on mountains of cash and they're not necessarily reinvested into equipment or you know maybe they're buying their stock back but they're not necessarily reinvesting it in the employees or the education of employees or certainly a capital uh capital improvements i think if they give them the right incentives that bring it back home in a flash if you had a zero tax rate they turn this country into the greatest uh free enterprise zone in the world everyone would want to come and work here and uh you would generate a lot of tax from that i i don't know how now wait a minute i don't i've got i've got to ask you a follow-up question on that are we talking about a zero percent corporate tax or corporate tax yeah money that's offshore yeah and i'm talking about offshore money this idea of taxing offshore money is a is a loser and uh if you have the option to take the money off if you didn't have to pay a tax and you had the earnings offshore would you bring them back home you go business your money once in a while enjoy it there wouldn't you that's true it depends on what country it's in i suppose you know if you could take an ad tax for you take it somewhere else right but it's uh this this idea of taxing money that's earned offshore is a loser i think and i don't know that any other country does that i may be wrong but i i don't think too many of the the major countries in the world tax offshore earnings if you have any recommendations for how this administration or even future administrations proceed either in the form of taxation or you know just making america a better place to be what would be your top two things that you could think of that we really should strive for as far as improvement uh for example is it is it a shot to the moon as the new announcement of the moonshot is that the way we go or is that something else i think it's a tough one i think you reduce taxes and regulation and i think regulation has become the monster that's ruining everything in this country and i don't know how true this is but i read an article recently and it suggested that the last year of the obama's administration there was 91 000 pages of regulation added to the national register the federal register and the year before that 85 000 the year before that 80 000 and every page of regulation has a cost to the taxpayer they're going to have bureaucrats they're going to get on well the bureaucrats can't even enforce their own regulations that's the problem but they know how to hire people to make their departments bigger right you know and and and if you take a look at what's happening it's the size of government and it's the cost of government it's a real problem and and you have friends who work for you know the city of of hana lulu or the state of hawai you see the pensions again i mean we had a bus driver in our county retire recently and his pension was five times what uh one of the trades i can't remember which one of the trades and the guy that the tradesman had like 50 years in the bus driver 35 years that's been in our paper and that is called gaming the system where you're getting overtime you're getting overtime for four years you have a look back of five years and therefore your normal salary wouldn't even come close to that pension payout so if one of the great sins that we have to endure but this idea that you can spike your pension i could tell you stories all day long about friends who spike their pensions and it's it's stunning it's been in the paper so well jean i want to thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and sharing what was on your mind today i'm tim apachello with jean and jean and i are going to say aloha and thank aloha and thank you for tuning into what's on your mind hawai i want to say thank you very much for joining us this week for what's on your mind hawaii please join us in two weeks from now on january the second 2018 uh and also if you have something important on your mind that you think you would like to be interviewed for i'd love to hear from you so please contact me at this following email address apachello 58 at gmail.com again thank you for joining us and we'll see you in a couple weeks aloha