House Standing Committee on Public Safety

Convening Committee on Public Safety Informational Briefing. Today is Monday February 3rd, 2025, 9:00 am in Conference Room 411. Good morning all. Good morning Committee Members and good morning to our presenters.

Thank you very much for attending this informational briefing for all of the presenters who have worked diligently, I know over the weekend to really put together what I consider a Public Safety 101 for the Members of the Public Safety Committee.

This Committee is comprised of 10 Members, 50% of whom are new to this Committee, including myself as chair. So I think to begin the important work of Corrections, rehabilitation and reentry for our side of the table.

It was really important for me to set this informational briefing so that we are all on the same page and we all understand kind of the scope and functions of the Department, the scope and functions of the Oversight Commission and some of the work, really critically important work that has been done both on facilities across the Department as well as work more recently done to engage the community.

So to the Members of the public, thank you for joining us because this is going to be a conversation that we're going to be having throughout the legislative session and throughout I believe the two years of this legislative biennium. Corrections is an important, important part of our government.

It got a mention in both Madam Speaker's opening day remarks as well as the Governor's State of the State address. So those words are not just throwaway words, they are a commitment to the fact that we have to do better with with corrections, rehabilitation and reentry Members. Our first person up is going to be Mr.

Tommy Johnson, Director of the Hawaii Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or his designee Director. I'm going to turn it over to you first. Go ahead.

Okay, thank you. First, I want. I'm Tommy Johnson, the Director of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. I wanted to thank the Chair for scheduling this information brief. And I think it is important for the Committee to to know more about the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

So with that said, the packets that were just passed out to you are just take away information about the Department, the functional statements for each major program and then some more salient drill down program information for each of the major programs within the Department of Corrections Rehabilitation. So thank you Chair, Vice Chair and Members of the Committee.

So we'll start the presentation with just a little bit about our our system. So the first slide indicates that we are Hawaii operates a unified correctional system, meaning the state owns and operates the jails and the prisons. There are only six of us state in the country that do that.

The other 54 states, the counties own and operate the jails and the state owns and operate the prisons. So we're unique in that. And I think that was done because the counties are too small to absorb those kind of costs for the jails. The second slide gives you the major programs of the Department with some cartoon figures.

The reason why I'm crying in the slide is because we've been severely underfunded for years. And so it's my way to throw some levity into this. We have three major program divisions, the Administration, Correctional Institutions and Rehabilitation and Services. There gives you the Program, the Position Information. 149 Administration, 1900 and 1.4 Positions in Corrections.

I might add that the corrections division is large as the entire judicial branch of government. Statewide rehabilitation services and programs. Approximately 530.6 positions. There. Our annual budget for fiscal year 2025. 26. In the next slide for 2000 for fiscal year 25, it's $318,000,993. 3. $387. For fiscal year 26, it's $320,555,674. Our authorized position count is 2,615.

However, as you can see, we have a number of vacancies. 794.5 vacancies. That's an overall vacancy rate of about 30.4%. That doesn't include about 89 or 90. So emergency hires who we brought on board. So it's a little over 700. But those positions, they're technically listed as vacant because they're not permanently filled.

We started bringing on more corrections officers as emergency hires because we saw that we were sending them through the academy, spending a lot of money and they weren't being retained. Corrections is not for everyone.

It's a different environment to work in the jail and the prison, and particularly our jails and prisons, which are old and antiquated and in some degrees obsolete. On the next slide, it gives you an overview of the offices that fall under my office, the director's office. I have an Executive assistant, public information officer, private secretary.

We have an internal affairs office, inspections and investigations. So you might ask, what's the difference in the two? Internal affairs and inspections and investigations. Our inspections and investigations office, they handle things like the. They review investigations completed by the facilities and make a recommendation regarding discipline, if any.

They also do inspections of the facilities for health, welfare and safety. Inspections of the facilities. We just recently got a food service inspector, so now we can do a better job.

Of monitoring the food that's served in our facilities and the quality, and not just that, to make sure the temperature is correct in the food, that it's stored appropriately, those kind of things. A civil rights compliance office, Litigation coordination office. Two attached agencies, the Hawaii Pronoun Authority and the Crime Victim Compensation Commission.

Now those agencies are separate agencies. I exercise no control over those agencies. The Department acts as a pass through for their budgets because they're small, they don't have the infrastructure. So we assist them with personnel related matters, recruitment, those kind of things.

And one administrative Attached Committee which is a Correctional Industries Advisory Board, which we finally got stood up late last year after about a three year hiatus. So their main function is to review the operations of the Correctional Industries Division.

That division helps us provide employment opportunities for inmates and look at the business plan and see how we can grow ATI. ATI is 100% self funded. They get no money from the Legislature whatsoever. So they have to continually look at revenue streams to keep growing ATI and to maintain their operations. Next slide.

This is the Deputy Director for Administration. There are four major programs under that. My Deputy Director for Administration is sitting behind me, Ms. Melanie Martin. There's a fiscal office. They have accounting, payroll vouchering, administrative services, planning, research, operational budget, procurement, information technology and office services.

Human resources, which is our human resources section headed by our Department of Human Resources Office of four. They have labor relations, staffing and technical services, employee relations and transactions. Transactions are any employee transactions, promotions, demotions, pay, things like that. We have training and staff development. That is our academy where we train our corrections officers.

We train our corrections officers in what was an 11 week academy down to four weeks. They will do the three weeks as part of their initial probationary period. We did that to get more officers on the floor quicker. And I'll explain that as we go down. Next slide.

Next is our Office of the Deputy Director for Correctional Institutions. This is our largest division, as you remember. It's 1,901.0 positions. We have the Inmate Classification Office. That office reviews inmate classifications to look at when we can adjust their custody levels up or down rather due to misconduct or due to completing programs.

So that's how we move inmates through the system, through the MA classification process. Then we have five community correctional facilities which are our jails. The women's facility will now become a true hybrid facility. And let me explain why. We moved all of the female offenders from pretrial and sentenced misdemeanors from OCCC to the women's facility.

So now the women's facility in Kailua will take all female intakes on Oahu, whether it's pre trial, parole violators, convicted felons, probation violators, and then we have three prisons. We have the Halawa Correctional Facility which is our male medium security facility. We have our Wava Correctional Facility which is a minimum security facility.

And we have our Kulani Correctional Facility on the Big island which is our premier sex offender treatment program. And both Waiava and Kulani are actual work camps. There are no fences around those facilities. Those are community custody inmates that are on their way out who will next stop is work furlough.

Then we contracted one private prison, the Soro Correctional Facility in Eloy, Arizona via Corecivic. Right now we have about 937 inmates housed at that facility. The average is about 700. We moved 240 inmates there a few months ago because we had to close two housing units at Halawa to do major electrical work.

And once that electrical work is done, we'll move some inmates into those areas, do the other housing units. And once the final housing unit is done, the, the 240 will be brought back. We'll have the space for them. Now for our next slide, please.

For our detainee and offender population, this just gives you a breakdown of our population. We have pretrial detainees sentenced petty misdemeanors, sentence misdemeanors, pretrial felons, sentence felons, parole violators, probation violators, and we have a few extradition cases where people, people get arrested here on an outstanding warrant from another jurisdiction.

We hold them in custody until the jurisdiction issued a warrant to say let them go. We're not going to come get them or they're going to come get them and extradite them out. There's been a number of cases recently where some counties on the main have issued warrants, but it's a $1,500 warrant.

So if it's more than $1,500 to bring them back, they say let them go. So we have to let them go. Unfortunately, we have about 3,717 people in custody. That is the breakdown of those populations.

Just to give you an idea of the scale of our cook operations, kitchen operations, we serve about 13,300 meals per day on a five week cycle, including medical and religious diets. Corrections offices are also authorized to have one meal while they're working. Our population reports are posted weekly on our website and right under the title.

You'll see the address to the website. I would like to state that. Next slide please. Next gives you a facility breakdown of our design capacity of each facility, our operational capacity of each facility, the current headcount and then occupancy rate. So I'll call your attention to item number seven. The special needs facility has been closed.

We've notified the unions. We previously moved the staff down to the medium security facility. It is in such bad shape that it's a detriment for people to work there. So we will be coming in next year to request funding for demolition of that site.

And since the water, sewer and electrical infrastructure is there, we will come in also for later on for money to put a facility there as well, a smaller facility. It's a 90 bed facility. It can hold 132. At the time we close it down, we had about 120 there.

We moved them down to the medium along with the staff. When we moved the staff down, we moved them down coinciding with the new work schedule. So all the staff that moved down, the corrections officers took their seniority with them. They got to pick their post based on their seniority. And so no one was harmed in that.

Also, as you can see if you take a look, it's our jails that's overcrowded, not our prisons. So let me explain why. Waiava and Kulani are at 43.4% and 38.5% respectively. Inmates move down the classification system through sequential phasing.

We had Professor Janet Davidson from Chaminade University take a look at our classification system because I believe we were over classifying folks, meaning we were keeping them at higher levels too long. And so it was time driven. So I'll give you an example.

If an inmate commits the greatest misconduct, he goes back to medium for 18 months without any reviews. I believe based on reviews we should move the person look at them every six months and then move them back down as appropriate. So Professor Davison is finished with her study. We're going to review the final report.

And so what we prefer to do is move people down based on their behavior. So instead of being time driven, it should be event driven based on their behavior.

That being said, we also recently entered into a pilot project beginning the 1st of January where instead of bringing people back under 353hrs.35348 months, we're going to try to start bringing them back within 60 months. And because their TPD attended parole data so far out, they're automatically classified as medium.

We're going to reclassify them to minimum and bring them back and try to fill some of these minimum security bids you see open here. So I think that will help us one, get the work camps up and running. But two, it will help us repopulate and bring some inmates back sooner than later. Next slide please.

So next is the office of the Deputy Director for Corrections for Rehabilitation Services and Programs. There's six major programs under that. There's Victim Notification with Savin and the Restitution and Victim Services, the RAFT project.

So just so you know, we combined, we relocated the Savin and the RAV staff to be in the same building as the Crime Victim Compensation. Crime Victim Compensation Commission. So we created a one stop Victim center there. We have the Re Entry Coordination Office.

Our concern with that office is now we have one person where we should have four professional staff. We're recruiting to fill those three professional staff vacancy positions. But it is challenging for us. We have the Hawaii Correctional Industries Division. I explained that a little while ago. They provide meaningful employment opportunities to inmates.

We are now venturing into STEP program into providing dentures, believe it or not. So that more to come on that we just started that venture, but we believe that would be very fruitful for not just HCI but for but for our inmates as well. We have Correction Program Services Division.

That's one of the largest divisions where we have education, food service, substance abuse, sex offender treatment, library services and volunteer services under that one division. Those are separate branches as well. Under that division then we have the Corrections Healthcare Division. That's our medical, clinical and mental health services.

And we do have a shortage of our mental and medical staff across the board. We're trying to fill those vacancies.

I did ask the Director of D Herd to look at our vacancies where every class of work that's 20% vacancy rate or higher to add a shortage differential so we can try to attract people into those positions, into those facilities. And with that, that's all I have.

Okay, Members I and presenters. I apologize. I had said that I was going to run through all of the presentations and then take questions. But if there are like just very basic questions, I do want to open it up to the floor. And then we'll turn to you Ms. Johnson, just some very basic questions.

I do have one Director on the slide where that you have the SNF closed?

Yes.

That's at what, what facility?

That's at the Halawa Correctional Facility. Okay, so that's the first building as you go in and you take the right turn. That's the building on the Left.

Okay. And then I believe, Vice Chair, did you have a. Just a clarifying question about this slide.

So on one, on the page, so I see HMSF, but then on the other page where you have all the abbreviations, lava is called HCF.

But I think that is Halawa Medium security.

Yep.

That is correct.

So hmsf, that's what it should be.

Got it. Sorry about that. No worries. When you work on Saturday and Sunday, that's what happens.

Okay. Members, any other. Just basic, basic questions and otherwise we can move forward and there will be more time at the end for other questions.

Yeah, I don't know what is considered basic, but I guess I have a question on Office of the Director numbers. Specifically nine. You mentioned two attached agencies, that they're separate. You have no control over them. I was wondering how they function and how they interface with you.

So that's the Paroling Authority and.

Yes, and then another question is. And you don't have to answer at this point, you know, because of time restraints and so forth and maybe we can get the information later on slide. DCR, detainee and offender populations. You have a total of 3,717 people and you have a list of different categories.

I was wondering if you had a breakdown of those numbers just for an idea of where the population falls.

Yes, I do. If you look right at the top of the slide, that's the. That's the address where we post the population report once a week right under the title. Okay, thank you. Yeah. And it does give a breakdown. It gives a breakdown for male, female by facility, all the categories listed.

I see. Thank you, IEO Chair. Thank you.

Okay, Justice. So the two attached agencies is the Paroling Authority and the cvcc. What is.

Yes, that's Crime Victim Compensation Commission.

Crime Victim.

Yes.

All right. Do you want to answer those questions? Sure, I can. Yeah, let's do that now.

So we work closely with the Hawaii Paroling Authority because all of the people who they grant parole come through our system. And so we work closely with their pre parole staff. We identify what programs and services the person needs.

The Hawaii Paroling Authority checks with the person as they're coming up for the TPD with their pre parole staff. If they've completed all recommended programs, haven't had a misconduct in X amount of time then, and if they had a viable parole plan, then chances are they may get paroled.

So we work closely to find out what is the criteria, what is the board looking for, what is that product that they're looking for. That we can provide them so they don't return that product to us. Right. Via parole violations.

With respect to cvcc, we work with them on the Savin Project, the statewide automated victim information and notification system and then the Restitution project very closely to make sure one, that we are taking money out of the inmates accounts. 25% of every deposit goes toward restitution as owed along with fees and fines. Restitution comes first.

There's a list in HRS3,846 of the which comes first. Restitution comes first. Then there's fees and fines that are taken out. Also they work closely with the prosecutor's office, the victim witness staff and the prosecutor's office to notify victims of upcoming hearings. If a person signs up for Savin, anybody can sign up. It's free.

They'll get notification via text message or email that a hearing is coming up. There are 21 triggers in the seven about an offender. The only thing that is not immediately released is two things. One, if the inmate dies in custody, we have to notify the family first.

And then two, transfers are not listed until after the transport takes place for safety reasons. When we're transporting inmates between facilities, we don't necessarily want people to know when that person's moving to stop any type in addiction. I'm sorry, what did the letter stand for again? HPA stands for the Hawaii Paroling Authority.

CVCC stands for the Crime Victim Compensation Commission. The Hawaii Paroling Authority sets minimum terms of imprisonment. We have a determinate system here in the State of Hawaii where people are sentenced to 5101520 years, life with the possibility of parole and life without the possibility of parole.

If someone is sentenced to five years in prison, I'll give you an example. HPA determines how long that person will stay incarcerated over five years.

Thank you. You're welcome. All right, so Members, in 2019, after a lot of community engagement, the Legislature enacted and established the Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission. At our last hearing, we actually got a lot, a little bit of the history. But I really wanted to take some time to give Ms.

Johnson an opportunity to provide just an overview and then ask again basic questions and then we'll move on to the corrections portion of this, the correction facilities portions of this information briefing. The floor is yours. Ms. Johnson.

Thank you so much and thank you for having us. So my name is Kristen Johnson. I'm the oversight coordinator of the Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission. I would also like to introduce two of our commissioners. Behind me we have our chair, Mark Patterson and then Martha Tornay, who's one of our amazing commissioners.

They've been here since the beginning, so I'm really happy they could be here today. Next slide, please.

So today we're going to move pretty quickly, but we're going to do an overview of oversight, the history of the Commission, looking at the powers and duties of the Commission, our vision, mission and values, looking at the commissioners and the team, an overview of our accomplishments, our impact, and then, of course, questions. Next. Next slide, please.

So to start off, what is correctional oversight? So, the National Resource Center for Correctional Oversight defines it specifically as an independent external mechanism designed at a minimum to ensure the collection, dissemination and use of unbiased, accurate and firsthand information about correctional conditions and confinement and the treatment of incarcerated individuals, primarily through on site access to the facilities.

So overall, the goals of oversight are to improve transparency, increase accountability, and also change lives for the people who are impacted the most, whether that be the people living or the people working in those correctional facilities. Next slide, please. There are 20 states with prison oversight specifically, probably more with jail oversight.

They're trying to get a count actually currently, and oversight's been around for a long time. So the oldest oversight agency is actually in Pennsylvania. It's the Pennsylvania Prison Society. They were established in 1787. And just to give you an idea of how old that is, the Bill of rights was ratified two years later in 1789.

I just think that's an interesting topic. Next slide, please. So These are the 13 principles of oversight. I won't go through all of these, but basically I just wanted to highlight and point out that there are very specific standards of oversight that every oversight in the ages in the country really tries to follow.

And we try to be in alignment with this as much as we can as well. Next slide, please. And then this slide really breaks down the benefits of correctional oversight.

So, you know, it benefits incarcerated people and staff is, you know, they feel like they get a voice, they feel like they get to be heard and that somebody's coming in and really looking at the conditions and bringing that to the public's attention.

It can benefit correctional administrators by being offered new ideas by an outside entity and also allowing the institution to just talk openly about what's going on when we already put the information out there. There's no benefit of not talking about it once it's already made public.

It also benefits judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and policymakers because it helps them understand what programming outcomes, living conditions, and also rehabilitative and reentry efforts are going on and then benefits to the media and General public. As you know, oversight promotes transparency, accountability, and also overall democratic values. Next slide, please.

So now we get to jump into our Commission. And so our Commission is administratively attached to the Attorney General's Office. And the history of the Commission is that in 2015, a group of stakeholders from Hawaii went to Norway. Norway is known for having the best corrections system in the world.

So they had the privilege of going to Norway to get an idea of what was going on over there.

And they were so inspired that when they came back, they actually created a legislative task force to really dive deep into the criminal justice system and specifically the correction system to see what's going on and what needs to be improved.

That task force report was released in 2018, and one of the recommendations from it was to actually create and oversight Commission over corrections. And so that was moved forward in 2019. The Commission was created. We are mandated by HRS 353L. And in 2022, funding was released. And that's when the first oversight coordinator came on board.

That's when the actual office itself had opened and all the reports started coming out and the work really started in earnest. Next slide, please. So these are the powers and duties of the Oversight Commission. Again, this is all found in 353L3.

And basically the overall takeaway here is that we investigate complaints from people in custody and from staff. We help the Department facilitate a transition to rehabilitative and therapeutic practices. We set population limits for all of the facilities and also create policies to help those populations not go over. And then we also oversee and monitor reentry.

The reentry piece of our mandate is very large and very specific. There's a reentry law that's 353H. And so our law talks about how we really oversee that specifically, but also reentry as a whole, including the Hawaii Polling Authority. Next slide, please.

So our vision is that the HCSSOC will be the leader in corrections oversight and will set the standards for for best practices nationwide. I am absolutely determined to make that come true.

And our mission is that through targeted change, accountability, transparency and engagement, the HCSOC will produce progressive and sustainable outcomes to better public safety in the State of Hawaii and facilitate a correctional system transition to a rehabilitative and therapeutic model.

One thing that I do want to mention is that Michelle Deitch, who's the Director of Prison and Jail Innovation Lab and also the founder of the National Resource Center for Corrections Oversight, stated that in just a couple years, Hawaii's Correctional System Oversight Commission has gained a national reputation for the excellent quality of its work and the effectiveness of oversight they provide.

That was a huge, huge honor for us to receive. Next slide, please. This lists out our values. So we have a lohilohi, which is being upfront and honest about our work and what we do. Kuleana. Always following through and following up to accomplish what we said we would do. Pono. Being honest and having strong moral principles. Aloha.

Being genuinely concerned about other people and their needs. And ha, ha, ha, intentionally looking for ways to lift others to higher level of confidence. Next slide, please. So this is the breakdown of our commissioners and staff. Our five commissioners up top. Those are our important people. Those are our policymakers.

So the commissioners up top, who you see are unpaid volunteers. And each of them are designated by different agencies across the state. So Mark Patterson was chosen by OHA, Hon. Ronnie Barra was chosen by the Chief Justice. Martha Tornay was chosen by the House Speaker.

Honorable Michael Towne was chosen by the Senate President, and Honorable Mark Browning was chosen by the Governor. Then you have the Oversight coordinator, who is myself. The Commission chooses the top three candidates for oversight coordinator, and then they send those three names to the governor's office. Ultimately, it's the Governor who points the oversight coordinator.

And then the other. The other three here. Two staff are actually onboarding next week. They start on February 10th. And then we have George, who is my special assistant, who is just amazing. Next slide, please. So this covers our process and projects.

So very briefly, the overall takeaway from the slide is that, you know, we tour jails and prisons and reentry housing to really get an understanding of what's going on. We collaborate with Dcr, with the unions, with community and impacted individuals to not only hear and understand where they're coming from, but also get insight.

We collaborate on diversion and also deflection efforts, and we review judicial and parole hearing processes. And then we, of course, ensure that all of our reports are public so that we can gain feedback and insight. And then our projects. We worked hand in hand, actually, with Kathy Hoschar here on the Breaking Cycle Symposium.

That was definitely their project that I'm sure she'll talk a little more about. But we are proud to be a partner in that. We also had the privilege of sharing the House Concurrent Resolution 23 Task Force and published the report. We have all of our facility specific. Sorry, facility specific reports which come with recommendations.

We also track and monitor recommendations and the impact. We tour facilities with stakeholders. And then we have two reports we wanted to highlight one that just came out, the correctional staff survey findings and recommendations, and one that is coming out very soon, which is the current State of reentry.

So this is giving kind of the big picture of the Commission. So looking at oversight and public accountability and what that looks like for us. We host many public meetings. We've hosted over 70. And that includes monthly public meetings, facility specific meetings, and also community talk stories. And then we also do a lot of public reporting.

And so we report on deaths in custody. And since we started doing that October of 2022, and since that time there have been 31 deaths.

And we've also published 55 public reports, which includes monthly reports, facility specific reports, annual reports, strategic plans, and also a one year in review that just kind of highlighted since the Commission gained staff after one year, what had happened. Next slide please. We've also gone on over 65 facility visits.

And some of the notable facility tours here is that, you know, we toured with the Supreme Court Justices, we went to HCCC with the Prosecutor's office, we went to Halawa and OCCC with the Senate, excuse me, also HCCC with House Members, Saguaro with the Senate, OCCC with a group called amend, incredible group.

And then also we took some legislators to Las Colinas Detention reentry facility, which is in San Diego. Next slide, please. So this is a breakdown of our recommendations. We have put out over recommend over 100 recommendations from facility specific report. And this is the breakdown of how many recommendations are sitting at each facility.

And then in addition to that, we have eight recommendations that are really system wide. So either system wide being that it covers all of the facilities, or system wide being that it's really looking at the state and suggesting, you know, maybe the Department works with the prosecutor's office, for example, to work on xyz.

So that's what those are. Next slide, please. And then this is recommendation tracking. This already actually needs to be updated as the Director did send me some updated information.

But basically what we're looking at here is that 21 of our recommendations have been resolved, no further need to intervene, 13 have shown improvement, 24 are unresolved, 7 have reassessment necessary. Which means we just need to go back and check in, we believe the Department, but it's always good to check.

And 34, which the Director did follow up on, are just recommendations that the Commission on our side need to follow up on to make sure that we have that information in our spreadsheet. That spreadsheet is a beast. It's a lot of work. And then this is talking about the impact.

So over the years, you know, it's taken the Commission quite a bit to get on our Feet, honestly, you know, first of all, to even get the funding released in the first place. The funding was released in 2022.

When that funding was released, it was good for one year because it came from the Bill that created the Commission. And then after that, you know, it was the intent and the goal for the Commission to be embedded into the annual. That actually didn't happen. We were not included in the budget our first year.

That wasn't something we expected, but luckily, the governor's office actually stepped in and funded us for one additional year and just made it clear, okay, you got to get funded by the Legislature. Now, last year was a very stressful legislative session for us because it was make or break.

We either got funded by the Legislature or we closed. We're very, very happy to say that we were funded. We're very grateful for that. We're so proud of the work that we do. And I wanted to highlight here some of the testimonies that have come through. We have testimonies from DCR employees, current and retired.

We have testimony from the prosecutor's office, from the ACLU, from community Members and different organizations. And throughout the years that we were fighting this fight, we had 159 public testimonies submitted in support of the Commission. And we're so proud of that and really grateful for the community for standing by us.

Other than that, we can go to the next slide. That is it for us. Thank you so much again for having us today to talk about our work. And of course, myself and our commissioners are here for questions.

I just have a simple question. You said that you've had about 70 plus public meetings. Who attends these meetings? I'm just out of curiosity. Are these family members of inmates?

Yeah, that's a great question. So the individuals. So a couple things. So we have our meetings live streamed on Facebook and YouTube as well. And so for the people who actually attend the meetings, I would say most of them are advocacy groups and nonprofits. And then we also have many family Members of those who are incarcerated.

And then what we're really aiming to do this year actually is send out our agenda specifically to the prosecutor's office, police, you know, various stakeholders who might be interested or impacted by what the Commission's talking about. And then, of course, the Director always attends as well, or at least most of the time. Awesome. Thank you.

Yeah, I have a basic. Any other. Some simple questions. So noting that, you know, you said that reentry is a big part of your mandate, has the Commission been at the seat at the table with Dr. Champion's group within the Governor's office related to the mental health and justice reform programs that they're undertaking.

Yes, we meet with Dr. Michael Champion relatively frequently. We actually just ran into each other very recently at the Capitol and had a good long conversation. I was on maternity leave for a good part of time. But now that I'm back, we're looking forward to meeting more consistently and working together on those different programs.

And I believe you said, you mentioned previously that there was a staff Member who did regularly attend those kinds of meetings.

Meetings, yes. Yeah. So Kara Campani was our previous RE entry. At the time her title was reentry and diversion specialist, Oversight Specialist. Now we changed it to reentry so that I can take on diversion a little more directly because it is a really important topic. But yeah, she was the one who attended those meetings consistently.

And then our onboarding individual, you know, we'll make sure that they're included as well.

Okay, so you folks are tracking like the act, I think 26 programs with the judiciary, the pre trial programs as well as a post booking diversion programs. Yeah, on all those, yes.

Yes. And then I would say that we're most involved as far as like us literally having a seat at the table. It's the post booking, jail diversion that we attend the meetings consistently and are a part of.

Director, this is for you. Are there regular meetings for the pre trial diversion efforts within the governor's office? Because actually it's that pretrial problem that is key, which the Commission should ask for a seat at the table if you are not there at the moment.

We were initially at those meetings, but Dr. Champion realized that we, we come in at, I think it's the second tier, second phase. So he's trying to do jail deflection for jail diversion. However, we started meeting with the judiciary to look at, I think it's once a month.

We meet at the Supreme Court and Deputy Director for Rehabilitation Programs Sala Munoz is here and I apologize I didn't introduce her earlier. She attends those meetings along with our Frank, who is our Corrections Program Services Division administrator.

I know I'm jumping the gun a little bit, but what you folks are kind of talking around is the sequential intercept model that I hope that Dr. Schar is going to be able to speak on, or at least that her work is going to, is built upon that. Right.

So while I understand Director, your folks might be more interested in the jail diversion piece and that's really good to hear that you guys have monthly meetings set up with Judiciary. I think Ms.

Johnson, for your point, even though it's not, even though the jail deflection projects may not kind of overlap in your area, that jail deflection process is in fact a very keen, important process of the community based services and the continuum of care that we keep talking about.

And again, I think it's imperative that you find, you know yourself making sure that you're at those conversations about jail deflection. Again, you're going to see the nonprofit service providers, they actually operate in both worlds with the post trial diversion, post booking. This is so difficult, the post booking population as well as the pre trial population.

And so the seat at the table for both of you and Ms. Johnson, that will be able to give you the kind of context that I think you need, you need further context and deeper dives into the Mental Health Division and the judiciary because the problem of overpopulation is not solely on dcr.

It's actually an all of government issue. And so it's really important that you're there.

Yeah, and I, the Commission wholeheartedly agrees with that. Yeah, absolutely. I think the two staff who are about to be onboarded will really help with that because we do have our mandated reporting that we have to get out like those monthly reports are by law. And so. But yes, I agree and I will reach out to Dr.

Champion to see how we can further collaborate.

Awesome. Thank you Members. Any other questions? And then I think, I know I'm kind of like hinting at what's ahead, but I think it's really important that we understand that the silos need to be broken down.

And in fact, if we were to have a broader hearing process, we really should have Mental Health Division here as well as Judiciary. And I know they're listening, so they're on notice that we'll be calling them before future briefings of this Committee. At this point we're going to be able to question all of these presenters.

But I do want to turn to the issue of correction facilities because our facilities do the important work of housing pretrial and sentenced individuals. And so we also know that the State of facilities is not ideal.

And so we have a team that partners with the Department of Corrections to assist with ensuring that those facilities are brought up to speed and that it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of investment.

I will say that while the numbers are staggering of the amounts that we have invested, I think I dare say that some people would say we actually haven't invested enough given the State of our facilities. So I want to turn this over to Mr. Wood.

I want to acknowledge that Comptroller Keith Regan is here, so he's available for questions. But Mr. Wood really has a detailed understanding of the inner workings and all of the projects across the island state for the big projects that are being worked on in the corrections facilities. So the floor is yours, Mr. Wood.

Okay. First of all, I should say, you know, you may wonder why Public Works Division is here next to DCR. And Public Works Division is charged with providing centralized planning, design and construction services to an array of agencies. And DCR is just one of our frequent flyers. One of our more frequent flyers.

And in our relationship, DCR always establishes and maintains the vision for each facility, the intent and the scope of the work that we're to accomplish on their behalf. Frequently, they receive the funding appropriations, and then they delegate those appropriations to DAGs so that we can be the expending and implementing agency on their behalf.

And then, of course, once our projects are completed, they take over occupancy and management of the facility once again. Okay. And as I say, DAGS serves as the Procurement and implementation agency. Okay? We're not necessarily experts in corrections. We're experts in planning, design, and construction of facilities. Okay?

And so we take any of the facility projects from soup to nuts. And on behalf of our user agencies, including DCR, in terms of current projects that we have for DCR, okay, we've got. That's 101322 active contracts right now. For construction projects, we have even more active contracts and planning and design for them as well.

Okay. But for the active construction contracts right now, we are currently working on four facilities on the Big Island, and we have one project that is about to start. We just need to issue notice to proceed. Okay.

On Oahu, we've got three active projects, and then we have five other projects that are awaiting notice to proceed and will soon be active. On Kauai, we have two projects that are awaiting notice to proceed, and actually, that is incorrect. Sorry. We have our food service unit project that I believe has recently commenced.

And then on Maui, we've got two projects underway, including the very important medium security housing project over there. And we have one more project that is awaiting notice to proceed. Okay? So DCR is keeping us busy.

One of the projects that I should talk about a little bit more, I think, though, is the OCCC Relocation project, where we will be relocating OCCC from Kalihi to Halawa. That's what we're working towards. We've been working that since 2016. Okay.

And so far we've made a lot of progress on it and we have a lot of work that is ongoing at the moment. We've completed planning for the project. We issued a request for interest, which is our way of sounding market interest in participating in the project. And we have other activities ongoing in that regard.

We've completed an updated population forecast for the facility. We've accomplished our geotechnical and hazardous material surveys. We completed the HRS343 EIS process and we have an accepted EIS for the project. We have completed a master plan for the new animal quarantine station. And you might say, well, why?

And that's because we want to relocate the animal quarantine station from where it currently is with 1000 kennels across the street to a new location that will have a much smaller number of kennels and then the old location will become part of the site for the new occc.

We've updated the OCCC development program and have prepared a request for qualifications that will eventually be sent out to the marketplace so that people can become pre qualified to submit proposals on the project. We've completed a number of the property entitlements. We have the plan review use permit that's been approved by the city.

We've also been working with the Federal Department of Transportation on reallocating some of the lands there that had been allocated to DOT and a lot of other entitlements. Entitlements seem to go on and on and they keep cropping up as new ones become apparent.

And then of course, since 2016, we've been working diligently for our community outreach and engagement, which we're also helping DCR with now, the.

Before you move on. Yes. So a lot of work since 2016. What has been the monies expended to complete all of these different tasks which understanding that NEIS has already been completed. That is a huge task. What is the amounts of money that have been.

Okay, we've completed both of our planning phases, phase one and phase two, and together we've spent about 10.6 million on those. Those activities. And those have included the population forecast, public outreach and evaluation of alternative sites, which led us to the conclusion that the Halawa site is the preferred site for the relocation.

And then to put this into the context of all of the kinds of projects you guys do across departments. Right. You know, to us in the public, 10.6 million is going to be like, zero, that's a lot of money. But is that typical of this Kind of larger project that we're looking.

It is typical of this kind of project. And after a bit, I'll run through the different kinds of projects that we undertake, and you'll see that this is fairly typical for the kind of project that it is. It is a large amount of money. Okay.

But it's also a very large project and very complex because it involves two facilities as well. Involves two facilities. It has a huge price tag.

And with the kind of procurement that we'll be pursuing for this, we need to be extraordinarily careful about the documentation that we prepare and the relationships that we start to build with the eventual developer.

Okay. And I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you go ahead.

No problem. No problem. Okay, so that's for phases 1 and 2 of planning, and those have both been completed. We're currently looking at a phase three. Three, which will be for design. But I will come back to what design entails here, and I don't have a figure for that at the moment.

We are negotiating a contract with the selected consultants. I am aware that there has been another $10 million allotted. I don't expect that this phase three contract will consume all of that 10 million. So let me talk about what design entails. Okay.

For this project, we are going to be pursuing something called a public private partnership, or P3. And I'll talk more about that in a few minutes here. For a P3, the Design Services that the state needs to accomplish will provide basic documentation for the developers to base their proposals on. Okay.

And so our consultants will be engaging in design of a sort of straw facility, if you will. It'll be 30 to 60% design complete. And they'll also be developing performance specifications. And those specifications will tell the developers what we expect them to accomplish and how the building is to perform over its life.

And that differs somewhat from our usual prescriptive specifications that tell builders, you know, how many nails have to go into that sheet of jet board and so forth. It's not that kind of degree of detail. It's more. This is what we are expecting it to do. Do.

And so while I say design, there should be no expectation that our consultants will be producing 100% design for this and we can just go out to bed and build it. That's not at all the intent. Okay, so let me talk about how we procure construction projects for the state. Okay.

We have basically three alternatives that we use at this point. We have design, bid, build or DBB. We have design, build or DB. And then we have public private partnerships, or P3s. Okay. Design bid build or DBB is the most common way that we procure construction projects for the state. Okay.

The vast majority of our projects use Dbb, which is also called Low bid. Okay? And under the Low bid process, we DAGS engages architects and engineers to do a complete design for the project. Okay? 100% design. We go to bid and then we award a separate contract to a construction contractor. Okay?

And design Bid build is entirely state funded, 100% state funded. Okay. And the construction contract award goes to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder.

From time to time, we also use Design Build, which is different from Design Bid Build in that for Design Build, we engage a design build contractor to both design and construct the facility on behalf of the state. Again, this is 100% state funded, but we hand off full responsibility for realizing the project to the Design build constructor.

And we use that from time to time. But we have to be very cautious with it because it is quite different from the more traditional dbb. For very large and complex projects, we have begun using public private partnerships. P3s are relatively new for the State of Hawaii.

There have been some successful ones here, relatively small successful ones, but they are quite common across the continental US and they have been part of international realization of projects for decades. Okay. Under a public private partnership, we enter into an agreement with a developer to design, build and generally finance the project as well. Okay.

And that's a way of transferring some of the risk for the funding of the project from the state to the developer. Okay. And also of making the state's initial contribution to the project less than what the actual project will cost.

And we rely on our agreement with the developer to finance that delta between what the state puts in and what the project actually costs. And then we pay for that financing over a period of, say, 30 years for this project. We're looking at a.

And I should stop myself and say, I'm going to tell you two common things about P3s, common sayings. One is if you've done one P3, you've done one P3, because every P3 is one off. They're all custom. The other is P3 is not P free.

And there has been for a long time the perception that, gosh, the developers are just going to give this very expensive facility to us for free and we don't have to pay for it. In fact, that is not the case. You pay for it over time.

Instead of an upfront investment for this project, we're going to be using or we intend to use a model called design build finance maintain so it has four components rather than just three. The selected developer will design the facility based on that 30 to 60% design and performance specs developed by our consultants.

Then they will construct it after they complete their own design.

Okay they'll finance the cost for it except for an initial state contribution and then they will be under contract to maintain the facility for 30 years after it's completed and that will allow us to avoid what is a very common problem not just here in Hawaii but for governments across the country and that is the practice of engaging in the very best of deferred maintenance and what that does to our facilities and hobbling them over the years and making them less than effective in what they're supposed to be accomplishing.

And with that I'll open to any questions that you might have regarding the kinds of work that Daggs Public Works does or the way that we procure projects Members.

Any questions.

If there's some just simple questions then we can. But we are also going to ask questions for all four at the end as well. Go ahead.

So how does the developer or the selected P3 awardee generate funds in this OCCC project?

Okay. There are typically two ways that the developer achieves funds. One is for a revenue producing project. They realize the revenues and use that to offset their financing costs and make a profit basically. Clearly OCCC is not going to be a revenue producing project.

And so instead we'll be using a model that is based on what's commonly called Availability Payments. Okay. And those are payments, periodic payments that state will make to the developer after assessing the operation of the facility and making sure that it is achieving the performance criteria that we set. Okay.

And the beauty of Availability Payments is that we can set the magnitude of the payments at the start of the 30 year period so that it becomes very, you can anticipate what the costs are going to be over the years and that sets the maximum payment that the developer will achieve. Okay.

And if there are any deficiencies in their performance or the performance of their facility, then those payments will be reduced. So it gives them a strong incentive to, to keep the facility performing at a high level.

So that's a pretty important negotiation that has to be set at the beginning then. Indeed that has a lot of variations and factors to consider.

Yeah, absolutely, yes. And that's why sort of our processes to procure a P3 can be very expensive because we have to bring in not just the usual slew of architects and engineers, but we also need very high powered legal and financial advisors on our side as well. Okay.

Because the developers will have very sophisticated legal and financial advisors on their side.

Follow up for Design Build Finance maintain are there across jurisdictions. Are we seeing more governments engaging in this kind of process for prisons and jails?

We are seeing some of this done across the mainland. Yes.

And then do we have any example of Design Build Finance maintained here in the state?

Not for a correctional facility, no other facilities. The uh, has done a couple of Design Build Finance maintain projects up there. There is, let's see, there was the YMCA sort of across from Sinclair Library there. And that, that's, that has been completed and very successful project. Right.

And is your team in conversations with the uh, teams on how they navigated that process?

Uh yes, yeah, yeah, we have, have talked with them. Although their projects are very much smaller. Okay. A little, little bit easier to handle.

Understood.

Okay, go ahead.

I just wanted to ask a follow up question about the Design, build. There might be some jurisdictions that have done these private, public, private partnerships that. Could there be people, I mean, could there be criticism of some of those and how they're operating and the outcomes for other jurisdictions that are using this for corrections?

Or are you saying other people are doing across the board it's all working out well? Is there an alignment now?

It's not uncommon for a P3 project not to reach fruition. Okay. And so there have been some failures in that regard. The ones that have been completed, to our knowledge, have been successfully completed and the user agency is happy with what they've. They've been able to achieve.

Because one of my concerns is, I know, I believe the city and County of Honolulu regarding their incinerator. There's a contracted minimum of waste that needs to head there in order for them to make their money.

And this is what causes me some fear around this, this private public partnership model is that we'll need to incarcerate more people in order for them to make their money back. You know what I mean? Which might go against our policies and our goals.

Yeah, I understand what you're getting at, but you have to realize that in forming the contracts that will bind the developer and us together, we intend to build some flexibility into those contracts so that if the facility, if the internal use of the facility needs to be adjusted at some point in the future, we can adjust the terms of the contract at that point as well.

So it's not necessarily that we're locking ourselves into 30 years of we must incarcerate 1700 people at any one time or something like this? Not at all. No. We can take portions of the facility and convert them to other uses and adjust the agreement at that point.

Thank you.

I'm going to head off to another meeting, but I hope to my things to come back.

Please.

I just have a brief question as well. Yes, that's okay. How do you determine which model you're. Going to use up front? Because, I mean, you're saying that, uh, it's more like maybe not as complex projects that use the P3 model, and obviously the correctional facility is much more complex.

So how do you determine up front which model?

It takes a lot of discussion and a lot of modeling, financial modeling and so forth, to determine which model you should go after. One of the relatively common models across the country is actually design, build, finance, operate, maintain. Okay.

And we felt that looking at that model, it would not be appropriate for us because we want DCR to continue to actually operate the facility in terms of achieving their programs and so forth.

Now, we may add a small O so that the developer then operates things like the hot water system, the ventilation system, things like that, but not so much that they interfere with the actual operation of the correctional facility itself.

I want to hone in onto that point because I know that we have public employees who are probably listening very carefully to this. And it's really important to note, you know, when people throw out P3, sometimes they think it's going to be the whole kit and caboodle. It will not be privately operated.

The new O, Triple C will be publicly operated by dcr. And we can get that. That's a confirmation. Right? All it is design, build, finance, and maintenance, which is. And maintenance is the problem where legislators have been at fault at, governors have been at fault at. We collectively have been at fault at.

So that it's not about operations. Can I get that confirmation from the Director? Maybe not from you, Gordon, but from Director.

Yeah. Under the P3 that Gordon was talking about, the state will operate the facility. So everyone at the current OCCC would transfer to the new occc. If the new OCCC had less ACO position because it's more efficiently run, then the bidding process is.

They would bid for the positions based on seniority, those vacancies and then those staff left over will be transferred to other Oahu facilities to fill our vacancies there, which will cut down on overtime there. But to answer your question bluntly, the state will operate the facility with state employees.

Okay.

That's very important to me and I think to many of, you know, many people in the state. I want to hone in on one more point. And then we're going to turn to Dr. Schar. Unless. Do you have any other specific questions? Because. And I think when we have Dr.

Shar, and then we can open it up to all four, I think we'll have a richer conversation. But I really want to drill down on this with you, Mr. Wood. You know, you mentioned in response to Vice Chair Iwamoto's questions about this flexibility. Right. I think there's a misconception out there that we're locked into a hardened facility.

And I don't know what is the number of beds that is this. This new OCCC facility is designed to be built around.

I'll defer to Director Johnson on that.

There's approximately 1300 beds, with 250 of the beds being a community transition center, which would be work furlough those people transitioning out of the facility. And.

And Instead of sending probation and parole violators who have technical violations of their terms and conditions that are putting them in a heartbeat of halawa, we put them at the CTC to do a reassessment and try to get them back out, providing they didn't have any new charges in about two weeks so they don't lose their job, they don't lose their connectivity with the families.

And then the remaining bed spaces would be in the facility itself. About 640 of those would be indirect supervision, a stable population. The rest would be direct supervision, which would be the higher profile, higher risk cases, the pre trial felons, the mental health, some of the medical cases, things like that. 250.

Okay. So what I'm hearing, I mean is that in this process you are actually also going to be pulling in pre trial felons and sentenced population. So this is going to become like a, this is more like a. This is a jail versus a prison.

It is a jail, but all of the. Right now, all of the intake for parole violators and for probation violators will go to a prison facility.

What we're proposing is we should do an assessment if it's a minor violation of, technical violation of terms of conditional parole and not put them in the hard bed unless it's absolutely needed to do a reassessment to figure out what the issue is and see if we can get them back out as quickly as possible without jeopardizing public safety.

Okay. I want to transition to the connection of the bed space and to what Mr. Wood's shop is going to be able to do in like designing out the performance expectations, the specs of this project. Right. There is flexibility that the 1100 or so that would be both for medical purposes as well as direct supervision.

I mean, and then the 250 for the community transfer. There's flexibility in there to design even potentially multiple facilities on this OCCC footprint. Is that correct? And can you maybe speak a little bit about what could be envisioned in this process.

I think what you're talking about is how creative can we be in forming this facility to make sure that it is flexible over the 30 years and longer? Okay. And I think that part of our thinking is, yes, to consider how portions of the facility could be transitioned to other uses.

If we have, for example, if we have significantly less demand for pre trial populations and so forth. What do you do with the beds? Do they just sit vacant or do you use them for some other purposes? And for our side, we've had some very preliminary Discussions regarding perhaps use for AMH or things of that nature.

And AMH is adult mental health.

Mental health, right. Yes, Right. For things that would not be incompatible with the basic mission of the facility, but might not be the same as pretrial detention, for example. Okay. So alternate uses for the same spaces.

Okay. And understanding that there's this flexibility in the process, in the conversations that you're going to have with the development of, you know, of these, I don't even know what it's called, performance specifications, the RFI process that you're currently in or you're finished with the RFI process.

Can you say how all that flexibility flows into that flow of things that you have to do for procurement?

Okay, yes, very good. Yeah. The rfi, we've done one RFI request for interest so far. We may do another depending on timing.

And those have been valuable for us to engage in conversation with the market out there to see what might interest them and what features or elements of an agreement would be necessary for the market to actually participate in this project. Okay.

And so that's what that is all about, being in conversation with the market of potential developers out there. And we are engaging the. Not just in that single rfi, but we also attend national conferences of the American Correctional Association, national conferences on public private partnerships and other sorts of opportunities to interact like that. Okay.

Very important to this kind of project to be in that conversation so that we're not just going off on some branches that nobody's going to take a look at.

Okay. And then so the additional. Maybe this is a question, this is maybe a joint question for both of both you and Director. The $30 million request for the current, in the current budget is going to cover what part of these processes, continued RFI process, RFP process, rfq. Like what is that sequence?

Okay. As I indicated earlier, we have drafted the request for qualifications. With the sort of delay of the project that we're experiencing and so forth, we're going to have to revise that to a certain degree and so forth.

And as part of that also, we need to develop the request for proposals, which is an extraordinarily complex activity because that then becomes the contract document that ties us for the next 30 years. Okay.

And that's where we bring in the high powered legal counsel, the financial advisors and so forth, along with all of our raft of experts in design and operation of this kind of facility. Okay. And that's where a good portion of that 30 million will go to those.

Efforts towards the RFP process to empower.

As well as assessing the proposals that we then receive out of that and engaging in the contract negotiations that are certain to occur after we receive the proposals.

Okay, so one of the things I've heard is that. And maybe what's missing in this conversation at this point is that you and I have had talks in the moment of construction or completion would not be until 2033.

That is correct, yes.

Work from there. Like, what is the steps that have to happen from 2033? Because that's a long time off.

It is a long time off, right? Yes. And of course, a lot of that time is just going to be eaten up with achieving the kinds of funding, state funding that we need for this. And the fact is that, you know, there's been a request made for $250 million as the state's initial contribution to this project.

We haven't secured that funding request yet. And without that funding, we really can't proceed with the whole RFP process because no one will take us seriously. Okay. And so we have to hold off on those activities until we are able to achieve funding for the state's initial investment. Okay. And so that's. That's some years there.

Then the meantime, the 30 million is to do what? To accomplish what? The initial RFP process. That's what I'm trying to understand. Yes. Yeah, yeah. 2025 and 2033. What are the.

Part of that. That 30 million will. Will be spent in that. That interim period there until we achieve the state's initial funding. Okay. To set up the foundation for all of the work that needs to come after that for the next 30 years.

Okay, I'll go finish your thought.

Then we'll put out the rfp. We'll give them six to nine months or something like that to respond because they will have to come back to us with fairly detailed designs and their financial proposals and so forth. And we have to give them the time to do that.

Then probably about another six to nine months of actually evaluating those proposals that we get, because it's not something that you can take one look at and go yay or nay. And then once we award the project to a developer, then they will need time to design their project.

They'll be using or basing their design on the 30 to 60% design and performance specifications that we provide. But they have to come up with their own design, and that will take at least a year, probably more like 18 months. Then you have to engage in permitting.

And we all know the nightmare that permitting is here on Oahu and we expect It'll take another 18 months before construction can actually start. And that's where that timeline gets eaten up towards 2033.

Okay, I'm going to want to map this out and so we'll take that offline. But I think it's really important to have all of those kind of milestones to know that we would not even have a facility until 2033. Representative Shimu, did you have a follow up?

Yeah, I have a few questions actually. So you had mentioned earlier that you're in phase three design and there's been 10 million that has been appropriated and that you wouldn't be using all of the 10 million for this phase three design.

So subsequently you mentioned an additional 30 million for additional administrative planning, whatever, and 30, the RFP would be included in this. So I guess I'm trying to understand. Phase three does not include RFP. And there's an ending point to phase three design, quote design.

Because in my mind I'm like, phase three is the last phase and 10 million, you're not going to use it. So why are you asking for 30 million now?

Okay. Part of the 30 million will be expended post award also. Okay. Because we'll need to maintain a cadre of consultants to help us to manage the project after award and through the life of that 30 year agreement.

Okay, I got it, I got it. Thank you for explaining that. So, you know, I've been attending Aiea Neighborhood Board meetings. Aiea Community Association and AHL Architects Hawaii have been presenting, you know, pictures of their design and stuff. So is that design part of the 30 to 60% or is that just conceptual?

Or that is could be superseded with further planning and allowing the P3 awardee flexibility on how they want to design things to meet the specifications or the requirements?

Yeah. Okay. As we engage in a project like this, throughout the project our architects will be coming up with conceptual plans and so forth that describe our thinking at any particular point in that process. Okay. And so those designs will change over time.

And yes, the design that the developer actually builds for us may be quite different from that, although it will have to perform the same as what AHL has been developing for us.

Okay. And then you mentioned 250 million initial funding. So I've heard estimates that the current OC, if it was built today, would be roughly 1 billion. $1 billion with AB. So would it be like 250 million would be the state's initial and 750 would be the P3's responsibility to self Fund that?

Yeah. Yeah, that's the in gross numbers. Yes, that's correct. Yeah. So the 250 million you might almost look at as like a down payment on a house, and then you're mortgaging the 750 million after that.

Okay, I understand these are very simplistic, you know, questions and concepts and, you know, flexible and fluid. You mentioned the permitting, and my understanding is that the state is exempt from the county permitting process, and we should and could take advantage of that.

Okay. The state can exempt itself from the county permitting processes. There are a lot of good reasons why we generally will choose to apply for permits. Okay. And that's a whole long conversation that we can have, perhaps offline. But there is value achieved by applying for a permit.

I would assume that's associated with liability.

Maybe there's liability. Yes. Yeah. It transfers some of the liability to the city's review processes. Yes.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Thank you, Chair.

And just to follow up on that, you are not suggesting that you guys are going to exempt, because in the timeline that you mapped out, you do, in fact, build in time for permitting. So it's not something that we're just.

I'm not at all advocating exemptions. The state exempting itself from building permit processes.

Okay. I think this is really important time now. Let's shift to Dr. Schar, because the process that Dr. Schar was engaged in. Director, did you want to say something? And I'll.

Yeah, just real quick. I just wanted to mention 1.0. Because this project is so large and so complicated, it is our intent to look at hiring an owner's representative for this project.

The owner's representative normally gets around 2% of the cost of the total project, but they historically can save 13 to 15% of the cost of the project. That's over $100 million. So I just wanted to put that out there, because I think in our discussions with Dags about the same thing, they were supportive of that.

It makes sense. So you have one person overall, and that's really a company that comes in and manages a lot of these things. And keeps people involved.

What that process is, that mechanism, it's.

Called an owner's representative. So they represent the state, if you will, in the process and making sure that everybody stays on task, everybody. And everybody stays on a certain timeline. And that helps save money, and it helps reduce the change orders as well. That's going to be the key for us. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

You know, these things seem far afield from corrections, but it's really important for us to understand it because this is the real world context that these projects operate in and that we have to if we want a product at the end of the day that is humane versus the rundown product we currently have, there really is kind of no way to pause this.

And there's also, from what I heard, a lot of flexibility in the process to engage to make sure we have the right product at the end of a long eight years. Okay, so I want to shift to Dr. Schar because she's engaged the community in identifying the things that we want to see.

This is the aspirational part of it. And so I'm going to turn over the floor to Dr. Scher. Dr. Scher.

Okay, thank you. Aloha, Members of the Committee on Public Safety, thanks for allowing the University of Hawaii Community Design center to present a brief summary of our work with Dcr.

My name is Kathy Ho no Doctor I'm an associate Professor and one of three principal investigators representing our team of faculty, full time staff and students that spanned architecture, planning, peace studies, public health, social work, Hawaiian studies and law at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Okay, our slides are up.

In 2022, we were contracted by DCR to engage the community and stakeholders to explore alternative models for a new facility to replace occc. And in parallel, we were also committed to engaging the community around the development of a community based continuum of care to address root causes that reduce incarceration.

So our project deliberately focused on both the facility and the system because of the relationship between the two. So our work on the slide here shown in yellow, was developed independently from the professional Master Planning and Programming team led by DAGS or Public Works and their consultant ahl.

This allowed us to engage and develop a community vision without any bias or obligation to previous planning and design work. Next slide. So these were our goals. To engage diverse stakeholders, research restorative justice models, consult with peer facilities, share knowledge, develop proof of concept designs, and to draft a guideline document to inform an RFP and future work.

Next slide. So part of what prompted this partnership with DCR was the call from the community for more community engagement around the planning and design of this facility.

To respond to that, we conducted a broad engagement process which included 120 talk stories, 18 site visits which included 16 listening workshops, three public symposiums, three pop up exhibits, six co design workshops and five community of practice meetings. The 120 talk stories that we started with were on Zoom.

This allowed us to better understand the perspectives of a diverse array of agencies, organizations, care providers, health providers, victims organizations, elected officials, advocates and community Members. Next slide we also met people where they were and engaged individuals and their support network at treatment and reentry facilities, cultural and health centers, churches and correctional facilities.

And this was to speak to justice impacted individuals and their support. Our first round of engagement Next slide Revealed a shared desire to bring stakeholders together to break down silos, as you as you mentioned, across health, housing and justice systems to address problems at that systems level.

As a result, we co=hosted with DCR, as Kristen mentioned, the Oversight Commission, the Correctional Reform Working Group and YWCA a two day breaking cycle symposium that invited 40 speakers from Hawaii, the US and Norway to share approaches to breaking cycles of substance abuse, mental health, need, houselessness, joblessness, trauma and incarceration.

We also hosted two additional smaller symposiums to extend this public conversation about breaking cycles. Next slide we conducted a neighborhood workshop and attended neighborhood meetings to understand perspectives of the Aiea and Halawa community surrounding the proposed site and to hear their concerns about safety and well being.

Next slide we engaged we also engaged individuals incarcerated in our system twice actually, to ask them directly what they thought they needed for successful rehabilitation and reintegration.

And these are collages on the right that they made and they presented to us and in those sentiments shared their connections to their families, culture and their desire for opportunities for change.

Next slide Toward the end of our project, we convened monthly community of practice meetings to provide progress updates on our work, to gather feedback and to strengthen relationships that we hope will continue to support this the larger work ahead. Next slide the findings from all of these engagement activities were synthesized into a design framework.

In that sort of drawing diagram, the individual is represented as the kaikoikalo which exclusively grew in Halawa and the drawing shows the critical components and relationships needed for health and growth. The design principles and design considerations reflect the community's design aspirations. The community wants a holistic, health centered, trauma informed approach.

They also want the design to focus on building relationships, connections to Ina, culture and identity, safety, personal strengths, education and respect and dignity. The design considerations on the right focus on programming, site design, staff spaces, housing modules and transition housing. They focus on the kind of programs and the physical design of the facility.

Next slide we also visualized design elements that were described to us by the community. These are elements on their wish list that fell into nine categories Malama Aina, spiritual reconnection, Keiki to Kupuna, ritual and practice making and Makana art and music, sustainability and resilience, learning and working in restorative landscapes.

So all of these Are not big ticket items. You know, these are the simple elements like a loi or a native medicinal garden, murals, flexible classrooms, workshop space, an Ahu Hale Building Area, kid friendly visitation space and walking paths. And these support wellness for both staff and for those in custody.

The community sees these elements integrated into rehabilitative programs and supported by community partnerships. Some could be supported by collaborations with the State Foundation for Culture and the Arts or outside grants or donor funding similar to the murals that went into the women's facility last year.

Understanding that jail stays are short, the community sees these elements as a way of connecting individuals to community partners that could continue to support these individuals after release. So the jail becomes a place where individuals are connected to a continuum of of support. It's actually a catalyst for longer term rehabilitation. So I think Next slide.

All of this informed three proof of concept approaches. I want to reiterate that these are community visions. They're not designs that incorporate all of the technical, regulatory and financial requirements necessary for the actual project.

The first approach was a step up campus where individuals progress from the bottom of the site to the top with environments that offer graduated freedoms and responsibilities. This is a sort of educational campus model. The second is a community resilience center intended to focus on social and environmental sustainability and resilience.

This is sort of a hospital campus model. And the third is a community resource hub with a courtroom, diversion services, intake, assessment and reentry services that support individuals and families both in and out of the jail. So sort of a kind of civic center model.

And all of these approaches incorporate an open green space item based activities for both staff and the people in custody. And consider light air views of nature which have been proven to reduce stress and improve health outcomes overall. You know, this was a vision given to us of a space for rehabilitation rather than punishment.

And the next slide, I want to end with the key concepts in this report because this represents possible action items for all stakeholders involved. So this is not just the comments that we gathered were not just pointed at Dcr.

The community is calling for systems reform and a strategic statewide plan for diversion and reentry to address ways to reduce incarceration outside of corrections. And as you mentioned, we have a number of SIM reports that are a good foundation to start from.

Many felt that the state should lead this process and call on state and city agencies and community partners to identify priorities, agree to a plan and benchmark our progress. They would also like to reframe corrections as a public health issue with more focus on addressing the substance abuse and mental health issues that are root causes of incarceration.

The community also preferred investments in prevention, especially family, youth, teen adolescent services to address needs far in advance of any crime. They also strongly supported more diversion. As you mentioned and as people discussed, diversion has its own system which can only work if all of the parts are coordinated and in place.

So this requires multi agency coordination, dedicated personnel assessment tools, crisis training, mobile crisis centers, crisis centers, long term residential treatment beds and permanent supportive housing to divert people permanently from our jails. So the community supports investments and that they were also clear about their advocacy for community partnered reentry.

They would like to see reentry in the community closer to family, jobs and transportations. They want to see more community partners involved to ensure warm handoffs and a continuity of care.

There is some interest in seeing the original O Triple C site transformed into a therapeutic community along with Laumaca that can offer a range of diversion and reentry programs and housing. Key concepts for the new facilities Moving to the kind of the relocation of OCCC as a project.

Those key concepts include gathering more research to align core needs with future programs. There are communities looking for a new mission, vision, values and function for the new facility and even a new identity similar to the renaming and repositioning of the Department from Public Safety to Corrections and Rehabilitation.

They would like to see a new name to reflect a new model. They also are interested in starting correctional culture change now, which is a long process. So a new rehabilitative facility filled with old punitive mindsets will not lead to success.

And the community considers this critical and supports investments in training and staff wellness and hiring of social work and community health personnel. And most people were surprised actually by this unprecedented level of engagement from Dcr and they really want to see this community engagement continue. They're concerned about the proposed size and population capacity.

They would like to see less beds in the new jail, more beds off site. But without these alternatives in place, our report recommends designing for different scenarios and demonstrating the ability to eliminate or convert parts of the project to non correctional uses.

As Gordon mentioned, there is enthusiasm for some brand new federal policies that would allow federally qualified health centers to provide services to individuals in and outside of the jail. This would allow federal subsidies to cover this care and reduce some of the financial burden to the state.

And finally, the community would like to see the outcomes of this project inform the future work on the new facility and to bring the actual project closer to their vision. We do understand that there are challenges to achieving this that require alignment across agencies and stakeholders and in closing, I do.

I want to thank DCR for supporting this new and different and unique process of engagement for corrections.

This is the first time I want to recognize our collaboration with the Oversight Commission, Kristin, the Governor's Office, Michael Champion and his team, the Correctional Reform Working Group, the Prison Reform Hui, the Community alliance on Prisons, Makana Okeakua, Keolamamo, Habilitat Tri Think Loko Ia Paiau, and the many, many people who generously committed their time and attention to this work.

Our full and final report will be released this week and, and we hope you'll consider all that it embodies. Thank you.

First of all, thank you for this tremendous work. And Members, I do want to acknowledge that we are the first ones to kind of get this kind of level of presentation. So I really want to thank both Dr. Schar and Director Johnson for making this happen.

And just. Kathy. I like the promotion, but can I ask.

So again, this was the, uh, Design Center. These are graduate students meeting this effort, this project.

There are actually 33 faculty Members. We have a team of full time staff. So many of them are alumni of the University of Hawaii. And we do have. We have graduate students and undergraduate students spread across those different departments that I mentioned.

And they were all engaged in helping.

Move this community and they were supporting the work in a paid capacity.

I have a question to the degree, as I'm looking through all of this, and I'm glad to hear that you were engaged with Michael Champion's office. To what degree? And I'm looking at the engagement overview.

To what degree were you also specifically talking to Department of Health and Department of Human Services and engaging those folks to better inform the writers of this, to understand what is the involvement of those agencies in the reentry rehabilitation process?

I guess with it, I can only really talk about their engagement with us specifically. So they were. We had talk stories with them, one hour talk stories with most of these agencies included in those 120 talk stories that started this whole process. So we spoke to them. Many of them were actually part of our speaker events.

They were speakers, they were participants, they were attendees at some of the community of practice meetings. So we didn't have any sort of formal working group, but they were a part of these discussions along the way, Definitely.

Okay. And were there opportunities for your faculty Members, researchers, to kind of dig into that, understanding what that spectrum is of services and maybe where the silos are? Because I, again, I think the problem with the rehabilitation and reentry is not just a problem of Dcr.

It's actually a problem of gaps between agencies and the inability of individuals to flow seamlessly because they. At different times, they're treated differently. Did you folks have be able to. And did you make any recommendations in your report about that aspect of the challenges of rehabilitation and reentry?

You know, I don't think we have. We go into that level of detail in the report, and I think a lot of that deals with especially that new the first circuit diversion system.

I think that's where they're really starting to identify the kind of nuts and bolts of how things have to come together to support successful diversion at a scale that would be impactful. I don't feel fully informed to make a comment on that here and now, but we did have some of those conversations.

And you also did engage city and county folks. I guess the reason why I asked this is because I think again, to really understand and support and build out the community continuum of care, it's not again, just about what's the focus of any facility.

It's actually focusing on the relationships that are being built in the community with government. And while we. I'm a great believer we can do three things all at once. We can chew gum, talk, and walk at the same time. And we need to do all of these things. We need to make sure our facilities are safe.

We need to build up new facilities. We need to have the negotiations to make sure that we can have something eight years down the road. And we need to keep building up the rehabilitation and reentry services to create that continuum of care. We have to do all these things at once.

And understanding what those gaps are is super important. So when I look at the fuller report, I think I'd like to see more about what is the work done in that space. And that is actually probably. I know Mr. Wood will say that facilities is challenging.

I actually think the relationships and the policies actually may be more challenging because we can have facilities that may not be 100% in alignment, but if there's flexibility and the programs are in place and the community is ready, then the issue of the facility is less important as we have to keep our eye on the ball on developing the relationships and the policies.

So you can comment. I'm sorry.

Yeah. And this would just be a light comment, which is, you know, I think that's where. Why the kind of first key concept is to start with this sort of statewide strategic diversion and reentry plan to align all of the.

Both the agencies and the organizations and the providers strategically given limited resources that are available every year we do point out a few interesting precedents where in Los Angeles they actually have under the Office of Health Services a Department of Diversion and Reentry to help be that kind of coordinating body because as we talk to people it's not anyone's Kuleana right everybody is only responsible for their one part of it and they also across the nation have examples of larger coalitions that have self organized some of these diversion or reentry providers to provide kind of grassroots coordination and I know that's going on on Hawaii island with.

Going home Hawaii Members questions for.

Sorry I'm kind of in the weeds sometimes but as far as what you've done University of Hawaii which is seems pretty amazing is that scope over and above what DAGS would normally do as far as analyzing a project and integrating the physical construction with the holistic you know A to Z considerations.

I'll just speak up right than but I understand your question DAGS does engage in similar sorts of activities.

As both Director Johnson and Nishar have said, DCR directly contracted with UHCMC for this, for this particular project, but they do an extraordinary job of community engagement and so forth. But DAGS does our own community engagement activities as well to try to draw cinders waiting for.

Okay, so what, uh has done.

Go ahead, keep asking your question.

Is, is there a integration or is there an acceptance of some of their information? I. I guess I'm trying to make sure that all of this is not wasted. In.

In a sense, throughout UHCDC's engagement on this process, we've been aware of what they were doing. There has been, frankly, not much in the way of interaction between the DAGS effort and their effort.

We've been awaiting the release of their final report, which I understand is coming out this week, so that we can have a good look at that and see what points of interest we might be able to incorporate.

So at this point there hasn't been much communication between the two parties and you're waiting for the report to possibly have that conversation?

I think I can answer that question. We're working with uhcdc. When we get the final report, we've got a drafted report. It will be us, the Dcr, who will bring that information to DAGS as part of the planning and design process and tell them exactly what we want them to do in the planning and design.

A lot of the recommendations made by the UACDC are really good, and we plan to include them in the final plan and design. And when this is turned over to a project, to a developer, we plan to bring them on board and show them everything that was done.

When we hired uacdc, we did not provide them any guardrails whatsoever. We wanted them to get the most outreach possible they could.

We didn't put any restrictions on them at all because we wanted them to engage all of the stakeholders out there and come back with a collective set of recommendations and input from the community, which is what they did.

And now it's up to us, the Dcr, to work with DAGS and the developer to make sure that we incorporate that into the build, the design and the build of the facility.

All right, thank you. That was great, great thought to incorporate them. I mean, to task them with that. Kudos to you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Representative Souza, any questions? Any questions for Bradley? I have a question.

So I've been able to look at bits of the report and I understand that you folks looked at different jurisdictions and that I guess what I would like to know about that, is that again, is it just about facilities when you looked at those different jurisdictions, or is it about the arrangement of relationships between agencies and the collaboration between agencies that make those facilities work?

And I think you might have been at Pima County in California.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And similar to our time that we spent discussing any of this with our local stakeholders when we spoke to people on the mainland. So we spoke to people from Miami Dade, Pima County, Orange County, North Carolina, and Los Angeles.

We always asked both about their system reform efforts and some of their facility design sort of manifestations of that reform. And for the most part, when we talked to those jurisdictions, a lot of it was systems focused.

So like, in Miami Dade, their Miami Diversion program was really at the sort of core of that conversation because that was critical to them, you know, reducing their jail population. And, you know, I think that's something that came up in our Breaking Cycle symposium and.

And again, in each of those places, it was involvement. I mean, I feel like I'm familiar with some of the Miami Dade efforts, but the involvement of the judges in particular is critical because in some ways, they're the spigot for a lot of.

The population, the judges, the prosecutors, and the personnel that support those programs.

Okay, Members, any other questions? I will let you folks then. zero, I have one more question. Okay. Ms.

Shar, what was kind of curious to me, what you said when you said that the outreach you did do is not grounded in the technical and financial considerations, and there's a potential for a car wreck to happen where people are talking past each other, because not everyone in the community process that you folks engaged in has all the knowledge that's on this other side of the table about financial constrictions.

Timing, procurement is very difficult. The negotiations, like, is there a way? Because your report is not 100% prescriptive either. Right. It's not like you have to do X, Y and Z, otherwise stop the project altogether. That is not the way your report is structured. Is that correct? Correct.

Can you kind of speak to a little bit of that? And then how do we integrate and move? Because as Gordon takes in the community considerations, he actually has to deal with the real reality. Right. Can you comment on that? And then maybe I'll give Gordon an opportunity to comment on that as well.

Yeah. So I'll just start and then I'll hand off. You know, I think what we tried to do the entire time was to describe to people our role and scope relative to their role and try to clarify that in our last community practice meeting.

We also actually invited Dag, so Chris Kinimaka gave a presentation to try to explain how the efforts merge and to try to, I mean, just define the process ahead. These are complex terms that, that the community is having to engage for the first time, DB fom, et cetera. So we tried to do that.

And I think within the report, what we're recommending because of, you know, it came from the community is just continued transparency and communication as the project moves forward.

Let's turn it over to Mr. Wood. And then what I'm going to do is if there's no other questions, that microphone is moving over. I'll let folks end with some last takeaways. You can wrap your last takeaways in your response. Then we'll go to Ms. Shar, we'll go to Ms. Johnson, and then we'll let Director end.

Okay, go ahead.

Mr.

Yeah, unless you have more.

Thank you.

Okay, we are coming up on the 11 o'clock hour, so let, we'll have Mr. Wood respond and then if you can kind of like ask questions in rapid fire session, then we'll, we'll go, we'll keep going. Go ahead.

Okay. First, and I should have said this before, but DAG staff and also several of our consultants and so forth have, have engaged in some of the events that that UHCDC conducted and they were very good. And you are correct. It is up to us to take these great proposals and somehow turn them into concrete realizations.

But we are excited about the innovative thinking that has come up. Something else that I should have said before when I was talking about P3s is one of the values of P3s is bringing in the developers innovative thinking as well.

So throughout this whole process we're looking for new ideas and so forth, not just replicating what has been done in the past.

Great. Before you guys have more time to think about your last takeaway statements because Representative Shimizu has some comments. I do want to maybe let's say we had until 11, but I really want to try to get folks out by 11:10. So questions go ahead. Representative Shimizu.

Okay. For University of Hawaii, I represent District 32, which is where the new OCCC is going to be located. I was just wondering quickly your take on public sentiment in the Aiea Halawa area. Because what I hear is people are concerned that, you know, jail population is going to be in their backyard.

And I just thought maybe since you've had extensive discussions and research, if you could briefly comment on that.

Yeah.

If you Have.

I mean, I do want to say that the AHL team has invested more time, I think, in. In communicating with the Aiea Halawa community, specifically because they've been going to those meetings for whatever it is, six to eight years. So I can only comment on our conversations with them.

I think there is concern about safety and well being for their neighborhood and their community. But they're also well educated at this point and they understand what the facility is and what it's trying to be and what it's trying to do. And we'll leave it at that. Maybe, Gordon, you can comment on.

Nine years.

And they've also had some good input on what needs to happen at this site, what needs to happen for this new facility. And it's been really valuable input.

Next question. Representative.

Okay, thank you. I just want to know how to respond to my community because obviously they're going to come to me. Are the programs. Director Johnson, the rehab programs, are they all voluntary? Because I know, I read you folks assess the incoming and you try to develop a personalized plan for them.

Are these programs voluntary for the inmate to participate in?

Yes, all the programs are voluntary. We can't make them participate. We can complete the assessment with their assistance and let them know what the assessment has determined, and then try to encourage them through counseling and redirection to participate in the programs that will help them be successful, successfully reintegrate back into the community.

Okay, I want to just give you a shout out because when you gave your presentation, I mean, it was kind of mind blowing, what you're responsible and tasked to do, the breadth of it. And obviously one of the main points was you had like 30% vacancy rate.

So I was wondering, with all of your goals, your missions, what you're trying to accomplish, what are the biggest obstacles right now that is preventing you from going forward?

It's actually three. One is lack of sustained funding for the maintenance and repair of the facilities. We operate 247365 days a year without. We can't have interruptions. And so I think it's incumbent upon the policymakers to know that there's a lot of wear and tear on the infrastructure when you operate that way.

It's not a school, it's not an office building. It's open 12 or 16 hours a day. It's 247. That's the first thing. So deferred maintenance is another way to say, I'm broke, I don't have the money right now.

And when you do deferred maintenance, the problem is you need to play whack a mole because then an emergency comes up, you got to take the deferred maintenance you plan for and fix the chiller, replace the chiller. 500,000. Now you got to find 500,000 for this other plan deferred maintenance project.

The second thing is it is the community and to some degree some of the staff's attitude toward corrections. I want to stress that the court punishes. Our job is to rehabilitate, it's not to punish them too.

Our job is to figure out through validated evidence based assessment instruments what can we do to help this person successfully reintegrate into community and change the trajectory of their lives. And then the last thing is we simply need to change the culture in corrections. And that's going to be the harder part, to be perfectly Frank.

And that's going to take years to let this, to make the staff realize that they're part of the solution and shouldn't be part of the problem. That we're here to treat people with courtesy and respect as we move them through the system. Everyone makes mistakes. Nobody is perfect.

And I think that's the attitudes we have to try to change that we're here to help people change, rejecting their lives and their families lives. And I'll give you an example. I started out as a youth corrections officer at Hokupa cottage in March 1997. At that time, some of the juveniles had adult relatives in the system.

Now when I walk through the facilities, I see some of those same juveniles. They are adults now in the system and they have children. We have to break the cycle of incarceration and we can't do it just at dcr. It is a system approach.

It takes the courts, it takes the prosecutors, it takes the judges to sit down and come up with valid diversion deflection programs and diversion programs that work.

Thank you. Are you able to like incorporate the faith based community as volunteers to help with this cultural and I would say spiritual transformation?

Yes, and we do engage through our services, the religious community, but we can do more and we should and we will.

Thank you. Thank you. Chair.

I want to reassure Committee Members we're going to have more opportunities to dive into each of these separate areas. I think I've heard a lot of things that I want to follow up on simply on facilities.

You know, I think there's going to be interest, Director, in Members of this Committee visiting the facilities and understanding both the issues and the opportunities. Also, you know, following up on the specific programs that are being worked on with the judiciary Prosecutors understanding what are the other community based services out there.

We're going to be diving into all of these things as a Committee over the next two years. I think at this point. You know, Mr. Wood, Ms. Schar, do you want to make any comments? Otherwise, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Johnson and Mr. Johnson as final takeaways.

I just want to respond to you that I think the report also still reflects the sentiments of the specific IAEA Hole community. So I wasn't sure if you were asking was there something in addition to that that we were missing.

So it's not that there's a gap between what the neighborhood is looking for and what is represented in the report. I believe it's inclusive of all of those voices.

And when you say report, you're talking about the report that is forthcoming.

A report. Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

I feel like the AEA and Halawa communities, what they communicated to us is also in that report. And I guess my last sentiment would be to kind of build on. What Tommy was really saying was what this report is advocating for is the kind of leadership and alignment to address these systemic issues.

And with that there has to be resources. Right. All of everything that was visualized and everything that was included requires resources and investment. Thank you.

And then before Ms. Johnson speaks up, I do know that we are also awaiting a report from you folks on reentry and your assessment of the reentry services as well. And so that's going to be another area Members that we will dive into as well. Go ahead, Ms. Johnson, for your closing comments.

Yes, thank you. Yeah, that report will be coming out by the end of this month, so we're very excited about that. But the last point I just want to end on is that the Oversight Commission also cares deeply about the new facility, the new jail. It's a very large topic within our space as well.

And the Oversight Commission wholeheartedly supports UHCDC's report that's about to come out because it really prioritizes looking at the jail instead of just a building. It's looking at the people and it's looking at the issues that are impacting the people, people in custody and staff. And so I just wanted to reiterate that point. Yeah.

And I'll pass it to the Director. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson.

Director Johnson, just real quick, a couple of things with respect to the system as a whole, it does need to change, as I mentioned earlier, and I'm willing to sit down with those other stakeholders to try to make the system better, even if those areas are not directly under my authority or jurisdiction.

Because if we don't correct the system, we're going to get what we've always got, which is high recidivism rates and communities plagued by property crimes and other type things. Second is that the longer we wait to build O triple C or any new facility for that matter, the more it costs.

Had we built a facility when originally planned, it would have been 535 million. Now with the delay, it's estimated to be $937 million, almost $1.0 billion now, depending on the type of construction method we use, we approve and the size of the facility that will affect the cost for sure.

So I can assure this Committee and the public that from my standpoint, we will pick the most efficient construction method possible, but one that's going to last the state a long time because it has to, and build a facility with the spaces interchangeable as the population changes, whether it goes up or down.

The other thing I want to stress is that with the LAMACA work furlough program, it's not our intent to move that. It's our intent to add to the bed space as the oversight Commission recommended. So Lamacca will stay where it is and we will open up this new facility will have additional work furlough bed space.

And the last thing I'd like to stress is this has been a long time in coming with respect to the facility start and stop, start and stop. But the state needs to do this.

We can do the system change and at the same time build those ongoing changes and the recommendations into the new facility and build a facility that's scalable, meaning we build O triple C for X amount of beds. We why can't we use that same design to build a smaller facility? We just scale everything down as needed.

As you know, we're trying to build a new jail in Kona. We have to move the Kauai Community Correctional center so those same ideas can be put into new facilities.

And every new facility we put up, we'll have a courthouse inside so that we can take and cut down on the transportation of the inmates and also provide meaningful access to the courts. With that said, that's all I have. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I am very excited about for me, this new assignment. I am feeling like we can really do a lot of work in systems reform as well as invest in much needed facilities.

Members, we're going to close this now, but know that this is just the beginning and that we're going to have lots more conversations about all of these important matters, as well as hold some facility site visits and, you know, engage.

Actually, what I really would like to do is engage other Members of the governor's team so that we know and we are reassured publicly that all of the governor's team is moving in these efforts. And I know they are because I came from that area from Department of Health.

But we really need to have them also at the table presenting before the Public Safety Committee. Thank you all. We are adjourned.

Thank.