House Standing Committee on Judiciary & Hawaiian Affairs

Welcome, everyone. It's the new year, 2026 legislative session has begun. My name is David Tarnas. I chair the Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee in the House, and I am grateful to have my Vice Chair Poepoe here and our Members Cochran and Sayama. Others on the committee are watching from their office, and we're going to be recording this so that, if they're not able to watch it live, they'll be able to watch it as a recording.

And today's information briefing will be a great resource, and I appreciate everyone being here to participate. Welcome, Representative Garcia. We have... Today is Thursday, January 29, 2026. It's 2pm, and here we are in Conference Room 325. And we have a new system for microphone. And you don't, rather than being on the table, they're actually in the ceiling.

You just need to speak clearly and the microphones will pick up your voice and will amplify it in the room and it will be picked up for our livestream. It's very sensitive, these microphones, and so I would urge you not to have side conversations because the microphones will pick up what you say. We're being very transparent here, so I would just urge you to make sure you are aware of that through today's information briefing.

We'll be starting our regular hearings next week, but this week we wanted to start by doing some education of Members and of the public and of our sister agencies in the executive branch and judicial branch so that we all begin to understand more about how Hawaii's current pre-trial systems work.

Who is involved in the decision making, what are the various possibilities for those individuals who have been arrested. In this briefing we'll address not only what we do here in Hawaii and how it works. We've got the experts here. Thank you.

And we'll also be able to hear about the national landscape and how other states and jurisdictions are reforming and improving their pre-trial systems because we can always learn from best practices in other places. So we have some great people here who will help us with that.

I'll describe who is here, and then we'll start with our presentations. And what we'll do is we'll hear the presentations first and then we'll have opportunity for questions afterward from the Members of the Committee. And the members of the public are here watching and other agencies as well, and that's wonderful. But we're not accepting testimony today.

It'll be questions from us. So first up we have our group, our esteemed group from the Intake Services Center, which is part of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. And I'll... When we get started, I'll give Director Tommy Johnson the opportunity to introduce everybody here.

After the Intake Service Center's Team presentations, which will be very informative about how we do our operation here in the state with our pre-trial system, we'll be hearing from the Executive Officer of the Kentucky Pretrial Services in the Kentucky Court of Justice, Angela Darcy. We'll look forward to hearing from her after.

After Ms. Darcy, we'll be hearing from Lisel Petis, who is the Policy Director from the Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties Program at the R Street Institute, a nonpartisan policy resource for folks like us. I actually met Lisel at the National Conference of State Legislatures, and she's been a great resource for me and other states.

So we'll hear from Lisel about sort of the national landscape. And then we get to hear from our top performer, Judge Ronald Johnson. He's... We were very fortunate to actually join him in his courtroom this morning so we could see him in action.

I really appreciate you taking time away from your busy docket to join us, Judge Johnson. He's the Deputy Chief and Criminal Justice Administrative Judge in the First Circuit Court of Honolulu. And finally, we have Lynn Costales, the Executive Director from the Sex Abuse Treatment Center at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children.

Lynn has a great background as an attorney, as a prosecutor, and she's now the Executive Director of the Sex Abuse Treatment Center. So she can help us understand from the victim's perspective how the victims are informed and involved and need to be included in our decision making when it comes to pretrial detention and how we handle our pre-trial system. So with that, I'd like to... Unless there's anything more I need to do in preparatory remarks. Okay.

And I want to acknowledge that we have Representative Garcia. Thanks for joining us. Other Members will join us presently, I expect. So first up, we have the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Intake Services Center. And may I ask you, Director Tommy Johnson, to introduce your team?

Sure. First, I wanted to thank the Legislature for scheduling this informational briefing. We always embrace the opportunity to provide information regarding our systems and what we do and how we do it. With that said, I'll turn it over to the team leader, Deputy Director Sanna Muñoz, who is our Deputy Director for Rehabilitation Programs and Services, and then she can introduce the team that she's brought here after she says her remarks.

Thank you, Director Johnson.

Aloha and good afternoon, Chair Tarnas, Vice Chair Poepoe, Members of the Committee. As Director said, I'm Sanna Muñoz. I'm the Deputy Director for Rehabilitation Services and Programs with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Moving forward, we're going to refer to our department by the acronym DCR. So I'm going to...

That's okay. You told us what it is. You got permission to use an acronym. I usually don't like using acronyms, but for this purpose, go for it.

Thank you. And I'm going to do just a very brief overview of DCR. But before I do that, I'd like to first introduce our team who will be presenting today. So to my right is Tani Dydasco. She heads the Victim Notification Services Office.

And she's going to provide you with a short overview of victim notification process through the Statewide Automated Victim Information Notification System. That's the system they refer to as SAVIN. That's the system that she and her unit manages. To her right is Kelcie Maka’ike. And Kelcie is the Acting Administrator for the Statewide Intake Services Centers. Intake Service Centers.

And she'll be providing the larger part of DCR's presentation specific to DCR's pre-trial services in the state of Hawaii. And to her right is Terrance Cheung. And Terrance is our Operations Manager for the Mental Health and Justice Systems Project.

And he's going to be discussing with you the sequential intercept model, otherwise referred to by the acronym SIM, more specifically Intercept 2, where pre-trial services are concentrated. Due to the... You've already said you'll ask us questions after. We're hoping that you would do that because time constraints and also because we're a little nervous.

So as some of you are already aware, Hawaii DCR is just one of six unified correctional jurisdictions in our country. In a unified correctional jurisdiction like Hawaii, the state owns and operates both the jails and the prisons. In most of the other jurisdictions, the counties own and operate the jails and then the state owns and operates the prisons. The other five unified jurisdictions are Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

In our unified jurisdiction, our jails are referred to as Community Correctional Centers or Triple Cs, and they house pretrial defendants, sentence offenders with an incarceration term of one year or less, as well as sentenced felons in the work furlough program while preparing to exit our custody. Our prisons are referred to as correctional facilities, and they house our sentenced felons. Uniquely in our state, we have one Triple C that is a hybrid jail prison facility, and that's our Women's Community Correctional Center.

So Hawaii's DCR organizational structure consists of the Office of the Director under the leadership of Director Tommy Johnson, along with three divisions, the Administration Division under Deputy Director Melanie Martin, the Correctional Institutions Division with a vacant Deputy Director position, and my division, the Rehabilitation Services and Programs Division.

Which includes the Intake Service Centers, Healthcare Corrections Program Services, Correctional Industries, the Reentry Coordination Office, the Victim Notification Service Office, and the Mental Health and Justice Systems Project. As requested by this committee, our presentation today will focus on DCR's pre-trial services. I'm going to hand you over to Tani.

Good afternoon. Tani Dydasco with Victim Notification Services. One of the primary functions of our office is to provide notification to victims. DCR is mandated to establish and operate an Automated Notification System, or SAVIN, currently run by VINE, which stands for Victim Information and Notification Everyday.

This system provides victims, concerned citizens, and other victim service agencies free, anonymous, and confidential access to timely information and notification on the custody and parole status of defendants under the jurisdiction of DCR. Notifications are sent via telephone, text message, email, or mobile application, including 24/7 access to information via a public website.

It is important to note that the information provided by the system is for DCR custody only and parolees and parolees only. Does not provide information while a defendant is in police or port cell block or while out unsupervised release or probation.

During the pre-trial phase, the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney works directly with victims providing notification and follow up services. Anyone wanting free anonymous notifications can go to VINElink.com or give us a call. Information is provided on the slide. Thank you.

I'm Kelcie Maka’ike with the Intake Service Center. The Hawaii Revised Statute Section 353.10 establishes the Intake Service Centers and describes the functions of our division. We have three primary functions. The first is pre-trial assessment and reports. Secondly, we provide pre-trial supervision in the community, and we also conduct facility intakes at our Triple Cs.

ISC has integrated evidence based practices of the field into our operations. With reference to pre-trial assessments and reports, statute requires us to conduct a risk assessment on pre-trial inmates within three days of their admission into a Triple C. We utilize the ORAS Pretrial Assessment Tool, or the ORAS PAT, a validated pretrial risk tool to guide our release recommendations.

We also provide a written report to the court to help inform the court's decision regarding bail or pretrial release. Pre-trial supervision, we provide community supervision of persons ordered to be placed under pre-trial supervision by the court.

We utilize the ORAS Community Supervision Tool, or the CST, to identify risk and needs and for targeted case planning and supervision. With respect to facility intakes, we're mandated to screen, evaluate, and classify the admissions of persons to the Triple C's.

We utilize various screening tools to assist the facility's medical unit and security staff with proper housing and management of inmates. ISC follows both state statute and national standards, which base pretrial recommendations on the least restrictive non-financial conditions necessary to reasonably ensure court appearance and public safety.

This slide includes a list of release recommendations used by ISC from least restrictive to more restrictive. The the release recommendations are based on identified risk and range from ROR, which is or a simple release on a promise to appear, to SR with ISC supervision, and may even include the supervision of ISC plus a sponsor or program depending on the individual's assessment results.

Statute dictates that everyone has a right to bail and to be held without bail is the limited exception under specific criteria set forth in Section 804-3. It's important to note that ISC provides assessment information and release recommendations to the court with authority to impose bail, to set the amount of bail, or to grant or deny pre-trial release rests with the court.

If I could just interrupt for a moment, I'm understanding that it's hard for you to hear. Is that true? Okay, we're still working out this new system. Could I ask you to use your outside voice? Okay. That would be great. We all have that outside voice I know, so please use it.

Okay. I'll briefly describe the pre-trial process from arrest to detention with ISC interactions required by statute noted in the blue boxes on this slide. So bail is set either by the police or the court.

If an individual is unable to post financial bail upon arrest, he or she is detained at the county police department cell block until the first appearance, usually on the next working day. Although not statutorily required, on Oahu, Hawaii Island, and most recently on Kauai, ISC staff report to the police cell block to conduct pretrial interviews and investigations as a best practice.

This is represented here in that blue gray-ish box. On Oahu, ISC is interacting with defendants appearing in district court on misdemeanor charges. On Kauai, we're interacting with misdemeanors and felons in district and family courts. And on Hawaii Island we interact with all defendants held with bail and eligible for a pretrial assessment, to include felons and misdemeanors in family, circuit, and district courts.

We conduct a pretrial investigation and assessment and prepare that report, the pre-trial bail report, to the court in time for the first court hearing. It's usually a pretty short turnaround. The court can order the defendant to be released under own recognizance, or ROR, supervised release, or SR, or held with or without bail.

If the defendant is denied pretrial release and is unable to post financial bail, he or she is transported to the respective Triple C. There are times at the police cell block when detainees either refuse or participate, or refuse to participate or are unable to participate in the ISC interview, excuse me, due to medical or mental health challenges or behavioral issues.

Pre-trial admissions who qualify for a bail assessment by statute and were not previously provided one at the police cell block will be assessed at intake at the Triple C. On to admissions to the Triple C's regardless of custody status will be interviewed and screened by ISC at intake.

We employ a number of screening tools as part of the overall intake process. At any time during the pretrial period, the court can order updated bail reports to be conducted by ISC. A defendant could have numerous bail reports completed and heard by the court during that pretrial period.

We also conduct sequential bail reviews on pretrial detainees every 90 days pursuant to HRS section 353-6.2. If the review yields results that favor pretrial release, we will submit a pretrial bail report to the defense attorney for filing of a motion with the court.

Here's some data. This graph represents all admissions, not just pre-trial admissions, into the respective Triple Cs in fiscal year 2025. It's important to note that an individual can have more than one admission in a given year, so the data illustrated here represents number of admissions and not individuals.

The next slide illustrates data pertaining to pretrial bail reports submitted and the releases granted granted by the court by island in fiscal year 25. Oahu is represented in pink, Hawaii in orange, Maui in green, and Kauai in blue. Categories from left to right are the total bail reports completed by ISC, number of individuals ordered to supervise release under ISC supervision, individuals granted ROR by the court, and then the number of individuals granted SR and ROR combined.

The illustration on the far right represents the number of individuals court ordered to electronic monitoring as a condition of pretrial release. Although ISC branches on all islands have the capacity to provide electronic monitoring, this option is utilized by the courts on Oahu and Hawaii Island currently.

The Jail Diversion Program, or JDP, is a Judiciary led collaboration between Intake Service Center, Department of Health, Adult Mental Health Division, prosecution, defense, and the court to identify and divert individuals with serious mental illness and a qualifying criminal charge from jail into treatment with the opportunity for dismissal of the charge after a period of compliance.

The JDP program is currently available on Oahu, Hawaii Island, and Kauai. Although acceptance is minimal on these slides, these numbers are based on the data that ISC tracks only. So JDP referrals can come from other sources outside of ISC, and potential participants are vetted by a number of different partner agencies before admission is ordered by the court. So we'll have to defer to the decision makers on the actual program acceptance numbers.

SUDA-Fast stands for Substance Abuse Disorder Assessment Fast, which is a program led by the Honolulu Prosecutor's Office established through a partnership between the First Circuit Court on Oahu, the Honolulu Prosecutor's Office, Public Defenders, and ISC to rapidly identify and divert individuals with substance use disorder and a qualifying charge from jail into substance abuse treatment.

The Fast in the title refers to an expedited process for notification to and release order from the court through coordinated partnerships. SUDA-Fast is currently available on Oahu only. Some examples of Intake Service Center initiatives that strengthen DCR efforts are highlighted here on this slide.

ISC is collaborating with the Criminal Justice Research Institute, CJRI, on automating data entry for the ORAS Community Supervision Tool for operational efficiency and data analysis. We're also working with the CJRI team on a validation study of the ORAS PAT, as this is the fifth year of out of a five year cycle for validation requirements.

We participate in monthly meetings with the Judiciary and stakeholders to strengthen partnerships impacting JDP and the SUDA-Fast program and are collaborating with partners on establishing a programmatic data tracking system.

In terms of increasing utilization of community resources, we are collaborating internally with DCR's re-entry office to contract for clean and sober housing and peer navigators, and we also continue to contract for community based substance abuse treatment, residential through outpatient, available at for ISC supervised defendants on all islands.

Good afternoon. My name is Terrance Cheung and I'm the Operations Manager at DCR's Mental Health and Justice System Project. I'm also a SAMHSA GAINS certified SIM Facilitator, and I'll be talking about how the department is utilizing SIM planning and our diversion strategies, especially around Intercept 2. Developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Gather, Assess, Integrate, Network, and Stimulate Center, otherwise known as SAMHSA GAINS.

The Sequential Intercept Model gives communities a framework to identify diversion opportunities at critical decision points throughout the criminal legal system. The SIM planning framework gives us an opportunity, an organized way to look at how to redirect people with mental health and substance use needs away from the criminal legal system and into community based treatment and services.

When we engage with stakeholders in the SIM process, we identify not only services people need, but also the resources and commitments from public private partnerships required to make meaningful change. The model, as you can see, has six intercepts ranging from zero to five, each one representing a critical decision point along the criminal justice pathway.

We're talking about everything from community based services and resources to law enforcement contact, detention, court proceedings, incarceration, reentry and community supervision. At each intercept there are opportunities to redirect people towards community based treatment. But first, please allow me to talk a little bit about the first two SIMs. Intercept 0 focuses on community services.

This is pre-crisis support, so connecting people to services without any police involvement or any involvement with the criminal legal system altogether. Intercept 1 involves law enforcement led deflection. This is where alternatives to arrest or alternatives to incarceration strategies are developed.

Both intercepts provide early intervention opportunities before anyone ever reaches our detention facilities, before anyone ever reaches our Triple Cs. What this means is that Intercept 0 and 1 fall outside DCR's or organizational purview. We don't directly control these functions, but we work with these partners on a continuous basis.

As a state agency responsible for the custody, care, and rehabilitation of individuals committed to our facilities and programs, DCR accepts everyone who's court ordered into our facility. Everyone. So this is where we focus on Intercepts 2, 3, and 4 because these represent the points where the department has direct operational impact.

Within these Intercepts, from jail intake at our Triple C's through care within our facilities, partnerships with community stakeholders to divert people to programs and treatment, and all the way to reentry, these are areas where we have direct influence and the greatest opportunities to collaborate. So now let's talk about Intercept 2, our focus for today.

This is where intake, screening, and pretrial decisions are made. This is also where our collaboration with the courts, prosecutors, public defenders, and the Department of Health on diversion decisions can make a real difference in the lives of individuals in our custody.

As you've just heard, as an agency, we screen individuals for behavioral health and polysubstance use disorders using validated nationally recognized tools and provide the results to justice system decision makers who determine whether to connect individuals to community based treatment rather than holding them in pretrial detention.

When we do this together, we can reduce jail populations while improving public safety outcomes. A core discipline of SIM planning is being data informed. We need to understand our local data and apply evidence based practices when we collectively assess which interventions will work here in our state. So let me show you a couple of slides.

Let's look at bail amounts keeping people in pretrial detention. For today's presentation we wanted to tease out what may be considered lower bail amounts that may be of interest. This is for fiscal year 2025. We had 393 people held on bail between $1 and $99 and another 670 people held on bail between $100 and $499.

That's 1,063 people, more than a quarter of our total detained pretrial population, detained on bail for amounts under $500. I should note that the 75% grouped into the $500 or more category includes amounts from $500 to over a million dollars. Now let's look at who's held on pretrial in our facilities.

In fiscal year 25 there were 2,082 people on felony charges and 1,793 people held on misdemeanor charges. A total of 3,875 people on pretrial detention, all held on bail. Looking at our statistics, Hawaii's pretrial population splits almost evenly, 54% felony, 46% misdemeanor. Nationally, about 70% of all jail population are pretrial detainees.

Understanding these data points drives our strategies. So let me briefly outline our department's role in Intercepts 2, 3, and 4 and what we're doing to identify strategies and partnerships. We're actively engaged in SIM planning across the state, bringing together stakeholders from multiple agencies to map our current system and identify gaps.

This past August on Hawaii Island, the department convened partners from law enforcement, the courts, behavioral health providers, community organizations to examine how people move through Intercepts 2 to 4 and where we can create better opportunities for diversion, treatment, and programs.

This collaborative process will help us understand what resources already exist and where we need to build capacity. In November, we participated in Maui's SIM stakeholder meeting led by the County Prosecutor's Office. This multi agency collaboration helps to understand Maui's unique justice system landscape, its provider network, community resources, and specific opportunities.

We participated so we can contribute to collaborative interventions that work for the community. Beyond SIM planning, we're pursuing several complementary efforts that strengthen our ability to divert people to treatment. We're establishing data sharing agreements with courts, healthcare providers, community partners to enable better decisions about who's in our care.

We're working to expand jail diversion programs' capacity and developing stronger partnerships with the courts and treatment providers to create clear pathways from detention to community based resources. And lastly, this is a significant opportunity. While the Department of Human Services is a lead agency, we're partnering with Med-QUEST to implement the 1115 reentry demonstration waiver.

This federal waiver allows us to provide Medicaid covered behavioral health and substance use treatment services before people leave our facilities. Services that traditionally weren't available for Medicaid reimbursement until after release. So by maintaining high quality care inside and ensuring seamless transition to community care outside, we increase the likelihood of successful re-entry and reduce recidivism. Thank you.

Thank you. Back to you to wrap up.

Thank you, Chair. Sorry. This concludes all presentations. So mahalo nui loa for the opportunity and allowing DCR to present on our pretrial services, and we will remain here for questions.

Thank you very much. I certainly appreciate it. Thanks, Director, for being here, and thank you to your whole team here for providing us this input. We're going to now move on to the next presentation and look forward to questions afterward. Thank you. Take up just a moment here while we switch gears.

Next up will be Angela Darcy, Executive Officer with the Kentucky Pretrial Services Program at the Kentucky Court of Justice. Come on up. And I have to tell you, you know the Kentucky Pretrial Services, many in the country see it as really the gold standard. They are incorporating best practices.

They you know, pretrial specialists are mandated by the Supreme Court rule to conduct an interview and assessment within 24 hours of arrest on individuals arrested on bailable offenses. And if an individual does not qualify for prearrangement release, pretrial specialists then present the findings to a judge who makes the decision about pretrial release.

The program has earned a national reputation for innovation in the field of pretrial release, and it operates in all 120 Kentucky counties and provides services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Can you imagine? We have four counties and we're having a hard time keeping up.

But we do have the ocean in between each county so that adds to our challenges. But 120 counties and they provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So I've been stalling to see.

I feel like that's such a high standard there, and I appreciate being here, Representative Tarnas. Aloha. I've really gotten to explore your beautiful state over the past couple days, and we averted Kentucky weather so I'm really glad of that.

It's a little warmer than back home.

A little bit. Just a little bit. I'm going to... First of all, I have to turn my volume. Should I click out of the rest of all? Got 55 slides up. All right, so now I do... This shares right there.

Yeah.

And for everyone in the room, we have posted someone could turn off their speaker out in the audience. Thanks. We have posted all of these presentations on the Committee website so you can look at them and be able to review them in detail future and study them and then get back to the individuals with further questions.

So Back to you, Ms. Darcy.

So I am Angie Darcy and I am the Executive officer of Kentucky Pre Trial Services. We are a little bit different in Kentucky because we are housed in the judiciary. So we are under the arm of the Administrative Office of Court, which is the operating branch for the Kentucky Courts of Justice.

We are have been doing this for a long time. So I will say that Kentucky has been doing this since 1976. So a very long time to get a program running. We basically started off with a desk and a phone and a few offices. That's how we got our start.

And we were, we began when commercial bail bonds ended. So in 1976 legislators decided to eradicate commercial bail bondsmen and they established Kentucky pretrial systems. That's also the time though as well, is when they started the unified court system system as well. So we, we got our start all together.

Our mission statement is, so since we are housed in the judiciary, we operate a little bit differently and we are very defendant oriented and also informing judges of defendants and the risk levels. So we have one of the few states with a pretrial service system.

I don't like to say that we are a national model because I always think that we can do better and I think that there's a lot of room for improvement. And you know, the minute that you start saying that somebody gets better than you.

And so we are trying daily to improve and really improve the lives of our clients. And also I would like to say then I'm also very staff focused as well. Make sure our staff is happy.

And because they don't make much money, so we try to do everything that we can to make sure our staff is happy as well. Because happy staff makes a better experience for the defender. Right. And I call them our clients. So this is our two main statutes surrounding pretrial release. We have 431, 066.

That was the very first statute that came out. And then we also have 431, 525. Now we have had some legislative changes since 1976, but these are our two main statutes. And basically what happens is we do a risk assessment on every single defendant that comes in and the courts have to consider the risk assessment.

And then they also have to consider the other factors in 431525. So the risk assessment compared to. And also take. And make sure that the bond isn't oppressive, that it's sufficient to make sure the defendant comes back to jail or come back to court, not comes back to jail.

We don't want to see him back to jail. Commensurate with the nature of the offense charge, considerate of the past criminal acts of the defendant and considerate of the financial ability. So much like Hawaii, we have a lot of indigent defendants In Kentucky, we have very rural areas. So the court has to consider that as well.

One of the things that I do want to talk about is also which makes Kentucky really unique is our RCRs, which is our criminal rule. And our main rule is RCR 4.08. I don't have it up here. I'll be happy to send it to you. But 4.08 makes everything that we do confidential.

So we cannot divulge our information to law enforcement. We cannot. Unless they fail to appear, we cannot divulge our information to probation and parole until their final sentence. And then we can share a report. But by that time it's kind of moved for probation and parole. We can't share it with prosecutors.

We can only share the risk score if the prosecutor has been certified electronically and done a training so they know how to interpret the risk score. So everything that we do is completely confidential. We do share some of our data with researchers, but that's only if the Supreme Court allows us to share it.

So when a defendant comes in and says, I murdered that guy, we can't tell anybody that the defendant made that admission to us. So that is completely confidential. So everything the defendant tells us, we're not going to go back and tell anybody. So I think that gives us a really unique position with the defendant.

It gives us a place of trust. And so we do something called a needs assessment. When we first intake them, and the needs assessment asks them, do they have housing? And if they have housing, what kind of housing? Are they surfing couches? Do they have a home? Do they live with their brother or sister?

Do they own property? And mental health. We ask them mental health questions like, have you ever had treatment for mental health issues? And they can tell us all that. And we don't even report that back to the court.

We use that as a tool to try and get them services that they might need or make a referral out for them. But everything they tell us is completely. We're never going to we're not going to tell anybody else. And it's very hard to get that information.

We've, we've had search warrants for, for information before and we've refused to, to share that. So we, we are very protective of our clients. So this is how we started out. We did in person interviews inside the local jails. We didn't have offices to begin with. We had the application of a point scale to inform release decisions.

Much different point scale than what we have today. And then we had a 12 hour rule where we had to interview defendants every 12 hours. So anybody that comes into the jails in any county, we have to interview them. We interview every single defendant that comes into the system.

So they're going to touch Kentucky pretrial at some point. It might be a phone interview in some of our more remote areas because we have workers that are in second and third shift and they, we have 26 to 28 people on second and third shift and they may cover five or six counties.

So they may cover two or three jails at a time. So we do jail or we do phone interviews. And then our Louisville, our Fat and our Kenton and Campbell regions actually go into the jails and do our interviews in the jails in person 24/7.

So and then we have direct, we had direct communications with judges by phone. We still do that. So this is, was our beginning structure. 56 judicial circuits were supported. We had 108 employees. We used a uniform schedule of bill. We actually still have that uniform schedule of bill to this bay.

And then our large urban programs, predominantly the rural jurisdictions, were staffed by a single officer. Still have that covering multiple jurisdictions. So this is our evolution of our pre trial structure. We in 2016 we kind of did a big revamp and we tried to do more of a.

So it used to be, for example, we would have somebody in pike county and on second and third shift and they would only cover Pike County. And then we found that we needed more people on our day shift. So what we kind of did was branch out and have.

It was a better use of resources to have one person covering multiple jails. And it was a better use of their time and a better use of our, you know, our funding. So we also created two separate divisions.

And I think that's what makes Kentucky really unique is that we have our pre trial service specialists, which you would call your pre trial officers, but we also have risk assessment specialists. Now all those risk assessment specialists do, they're very specialized and all they do is the risk assessment exactly as it sounds.

Sometimes they do some of our quality assurance pieces like our data when they get slow, but all they do is grade risk assessment. So we do that to ensure accuracy. And we have, we like to try and get 100% accuracy but we have about 98% accuracy on our risk assessment assessment right now.

So we know that our risk assessment is when we give it to a judge that it's going to be accurate and that risk score is going to be right. This is kind of our current structure. So we have me and then we have my two managers, Melaina and Jason and then we have the operations supervisors.

Jason handles the basically all the staffing and he deals with the PSS and the pre trial service specialists and just the operations of the. And then Melena is, deals with the risk assessment specialist. There's fewer of those and also the program side. So we try to constantly revamp our programs.

So we have a whole division that just focuses on how we can do better for our clients, what we can improve. We seek out grants when we can get grants and we're always looking at like can we reduce failure to appears? Can we get people back and forth and reduce criminal activity?

So that side really focuses on that. We have a lit now we have slightly over 275 employees but that's because of our SenateBuild90 program. And I'll talk about that in a little bit. We have 14 regions so we do have 120 counties and we cover 70 jails.

We have 16 regional supervisors that oversee our pre trial service specialists and four risk assessment coordinators and they just supervise our risk assessment specialists. The coordinators do a lot of grading and a lot of like Excel spreadsheets to make sure that our accuracy is correct. So our risk assessment coordinators kind of oversee that.

They're very technology savvy, which I am not. So these are our pre trial rules and just basically everything I said the pre trial service specialist is the one that interacts with the judges, the ones that do the presentations. And then the risk assessment specialists are the ones that do the risk assessment.

Now there was a problem there for a while and I think that we've remedied it because the pre trial service specialists are supposed to present the risk assessment to the judge. However they're not grading it.

So there became a period of time there where when we had Covid, we had a bunch of new pretrial service specialists come in that they didn't know how to read the risk assessment. So we did a bunch of training.

We now require our pre trial service specialists to do so many a month so they can educate the judges and also educate the public on what that risk assessment is. So this is how pretrial process works in Kentucky. So within 24 hours of booking we will do an interview, we will enter a citation.

So usually we're faxed or sometimes if we're in the jail, we get it directly, but we'll get a citation. We scan. They scan it in, they send it to us and we enter it into our system which is called prem. It's sent to the queue then for the risk assessment to be graded.

And then once that's done, we determine if there's something called PAR eligible. And PAR is our pre arraignment protocol. Now the pre arrangement protocol is something that was. It's like the uniform schedule of bail except we call it the non financial uniform schedule of bail. And that was designed by the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court that's to get low level offenders out of jail quickly. So the PAR allows pretrial to automatically release anybody that was charged with a non violent, non sexual misdemeanor or a non violent, non sexual, non drug, class D felony.

So pretrial specialists, if they see that somebody is eligible for par, then they can immediately release that defendant, call the jail and immediately release that defendant through par. If they're not eligible, then we go and we do the judge presentation.

So we have a script and a pretrial history report and we go down over that with the judge. We tell them if they're on probation, probably similar, we tell them if they're employed where they live. And the judge has three options.

Where they're released, they're released to MCR or they're unable to post because they have a financial bond. This is our citation and our CourtNet history. That just kind of gives you an overview of what that looks like. We use the public safety assessment designed by the Arnold foundation and we've been using that.

We were one of the first to test it and we've been using that I believe since 2013. It's an evidence based tool, but it just bases it on off of the criminal history. So it doesn't base it off of employment or whether they're unhoused. Those are the other factors that the judge looked at at.

So it's used as a tool to assist judges. However, it's not the only determining factor. They also have to consider the factors in 431.525 and then these are just some of the tools that we use. And this is a little bit about our pre arrangement release protocol which I just kind of went over for you.

But I'm going to skip to the good stuff because the good stuff is, and that is actually. So when we do a release, this is what we send to the jail and to the clerk's office. That's our bond form and our conditions of judicial release. And then this is sometimes our judges will take a report over email.

So sometimes they don't want us to call them. And so this is something that we, at the bottom there, that's something that we will send to them to kind of present what that person.

So you'll see fta, nca, what their bond is currently, where their holding county is, what booking date and then if they have any extra holds.

So we also, we can call the judge or we can also send them a report where we'll fax them the citations and then give them a spreadsheet so when they get to arraignment they can kind of see what that person looks like. Like and sometimes we do both. We have some pre trial supervision programs.

We have the monitor condition release which is our supervised release. And then we also have diversion, a pretrial diversion program. And then we have deferred prosecution as well. And deferred prosecution is for the class D felony drug offenses.

And then we also are piloting right now a swift certain fair supervised model which is a lot like hope probation without the hope probation.

So we're trying to see if we can get higher supervision levels or higher risk levels out of jail with our swift certain fare which gives them more hands on like electronic monitoring and also maybe increased drug testing if they test positive, maybe. So we do a kind of a graduated sanction model.

And, and then we also do a reward based model too. For example and with MCR typically the defendant will be drug testing throughout his whole pre trial time. With Swiss Certain Fair, if somebody is doing really well, then we will take them off of drug testing.

If they're doing poorly, then we might base, then we might step up the drug testing or we might recommend treatment. So it's kind of, we work very closely. We're in two pilot counties right now. Fayette 33 Boyle and Mercer is one jurisdiction. And it's, we're very judge focused with that.

So the judges really kind of control that and we report to the judges, the judges tell us what we can supervise and what, what they really want to pay attention to. So that is in the second year now of the Pilot. Now it's the first year we're in the full first year.

We started in October, actually supervising and it is going really well. The judges really like it and it is getting some of our higher risk offenders out. And then we have Senate Bill 90 and Senate Bill 90 has been. It was enacted in 2022 as a pilot program.

And what that does is give low level offenders who are low for failure to appear or low for new criminal activity the ability to divert from the court system entirely and get substance use disorder treatment or mental health treatment.

Not only does it do that, but it offers a wide array of services and it is an amazing program. It offers a wide array of services such as a barrier relief Fund. So let's say somebody comes in and they broken a tooth. Well, we're going to buy, we're going to get them a new tooth.

Let's say their tire got blown out and they can't make it to court. We're going to get them a new tire. And then it also offers them career services as well. And the career services also has a barrier relief fund as well.

So if they want to go and do welding class, then we will send them the welding school and then that barrier relief will actually buy them their equipment. And that was a pilot program that was established in 2022 by Senator Westerfield, Senator Storm and Senator Stivers. And this year it has just passed. It's a four year pilot.

And we were originally given $42 million, $10.5 million a year. We've only spent 2.5 million of that because Medicaid, so many people are indigent and eligible for Medicaid. So most of the money has been spent on these creatures called case navigators that help navigate the defendant through the system with Senate Bill 90 and then also in services.

So it has been a really an incredible program that is life changing. We have an annual report that we are currently in the middle of finishing. It has to be finished by tomorrow. So we are currently in the middle of finishing that.

And I'll be happy to forward that on to you because it really does show our recidivism rate on that so far is about just 7% recidivism rate. So it's showing that early entry into people's lives when they just hit the justice system is really making a difference.

So this is kind of what Kentucky is known for, so I'll get to it. So this is our data and this is something called our data dashboard. So we just developed this. This is relatively New. I think this came out in 22 or 2023.

I had this developed, had them develop this for me because I am new to Kentucky pretrial. I was a previous attorney and so I really wanted something where I could keep my finger on the pulse. So this is what you will see is our success rate is 70.2%.

So anybody that comes into the criminal justice system that is released, we have a 70.2% that they are going to come back to court or not commit any new criminal activity. Our appearance rate is actually 78.2%.

So everybody that is released from any type, even financial release, we have a 78.2% success rate with that and then an 86.1% success rate for. And then the success rate total is those two combined. So.

And then one of the things that we do keep our finger on is the violent arrest because a lot of times, you know, the public will say well violent crimes are going up and we can show them that. No, actually it's, it's stable, it's at 95% violent arrest free rate.

And if you look at that chart, it will tell you the appearance rate for every type of release that we have.

So the administrative release, our financial release because we still do have cash bail even though we don't have bail bondsman and then our non financial release which is surety bonds or personal recognizance bonds or the non secure bonds. So somebody can, the judge can set a non secure bond of $200.

The defendant says I'll pay it if I don't come to court. And so that's a non secure bond. And then the 60 day rule is just our indictment. They have 60 days to be released from indictment conditions. So that's our 60 day rule. And then our interviews and persons booked into custody.

If you look and see we had about 100, We had about 156,000 in 2019. I went back, I skipped so and I don't know how to go back because I'm not very technologically savvy. So this is our release rates for pre trial interviews that are booked and we have an in custody and a release.

So our release rate is this will show you everybody that was released by year. And if you look at 2020, we release a lot more people in 2020.

The SU court opened up our pre arrangement release protocol to a ton of people including class C felonies and class D felonies because the risk of Covid was so high in the jail that they wanted to protect the jails and get people out.

So we released a ton of people in 2020 and so this is how many people are released and then how many people actually stay in custody.

So as you can kind of see, we're climbing back up a little bit higher as we create more stat more laws and we are, we are getting a little bit higher on that climb with in custody. This is the release rates for pretrial interviews which have reached final disposition.

So this will tell you that we have about the one year and 2020. You can see that it went way down and a bunch of people were released on non financial release. That was our prearrangement release protocol as well. And then here is another look at it.

This will show you our high failure to appear, our high necriminal activity, any moderate and our low low. So obviously our low low is pretty good with the numbers of coming back to jail. But it also shows you that we still have some that are detained for disposition. Usually those are higher risk felonies though.

And like our assault seconds or our rape charges or our murder charges, those will typically be detained. You can still be a low risk on the PSA with a murder charge if you've never had a criminal history. So that kind of explains that.

Then this will show our total interviews and same day custody status by year of booking. And it basically shows how many people we have in custody and we track that on a daily basis.

So every day I get two emails, I get the success rate email and then I get in custody who bonded out, how many people bonded out and how many didn't. And I kind of look at that every day. And so I can kind of see the trend of where we are.

And if I need to have conversations, you know, with some of our staff or maybe a conversation with a judge, we see levels going up. It might just be a conversation with our judges.

We also send the judges the release rates and the failure to appear rates and the new criminal activity rates so they can kind of see what's going on in their community as well. We send that to a quarterly. This is the chart I get every single day. And it'll just show you how many people got out.

The in custody holds are usually our probation holds or our parole holds and they might have a hold for non payment of fines. Release not offered is when they have maybe a contempt charge. Financial custody, same day release, administrative release, which would be the same day release, non financial release and disposed same day.

So every day I can look at this and I can say, wow, that light green has really dropped or it's gone up. So you can trend it over time. And I have a much larger chart that I can access, but it's nice to see that just to make sure like that number is pretty consistent over time. So.

And then this shows us how many people are compliant with our monitor condition release. And we have an active appearance rate with 97.4%, which is good. We have an active arrest free rate of 93.7%, which is good. It doesn't mean that they're always compliant. Right. So what you will see there is that they're not necessarily compliant.

But if you look at the yellow, that's where we can correct it. So that's where we in pre trial will have a conversation with them and say, look, you haven't been calling in, you haven't been checking in.

We're going to give you an opportunity to get better or else we're going to report it to the judge and violate you. But it will show that it's working, whatever we're doing because most people are coming back to court or a little bit less on the arrest free rate, but still good. And that's it.

Thank you.

Well, thank you very much for the presentation. That's a lot of material. I'm sure we'll have some questions, but we'll go on to the next presentation. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much, miss Darcy. Next we'll be hearing from Liesel Pettis with the R Street Institute.

As I mentioned, I met Liesel at the National Conference of State Legislatures and that is a nonpartisan national organization of legislators. And we learn what are best practices around the country. And so while you get yourself set up, I can mention to everyone that the R Street Institute is a non profit, nonpartisan public policy research organization.

They've got a lot of really interesting research and advice on things because their mission is to engage in policy, research and outreach to promote free markets and limited effective government. So we're always trying to figure out how to become more efficient and provide services that are needed in the state.

And so I've always found it to be very helpful to take a look at what our Street Institute recommends. And so Lisa will be able to fill us in an overview of the pre trial laws, you know, across the country and maybe give us some ideas, some trends and things.

So shall I turn it over to you at this point, Liesel?

Yes, I am almost there. You've done a great job killing some time.

And I should mention while you finish up, you know, the whole reason why we've been able to assemble these great folks here is because Sean Aronson, who is our staff attorney, participated in the Pre Trials Fellows Program of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

And it's a great program that has allowed Sean to learn more about other locations and their best practices. And there's other folks around the state that have participated as well. But thanks to Sean for helping assemble this great team. And I'll turn it over to you now, Ms. Pettis.

Well, thank you, Chair Tarnas and other Members of the Committee. Very honored to be here today. You gave a great explanation of our street, so I won't say that again, but I did want to give just a little bit more context about my background and the perspective I bring. So I am a former prosecutor.

After going into prosecution, I went on to run a nonprofit agency for victims of domestic and sexual violence. I also did five years on City Council. So I kind of bring those different perspectives into our research.

When we look at best practices in the pretrial space today, I want to really provide a kind of actually like scale back and do a overview of what really is pretrial and bail and why does it matter? What are we supposed to be considering when we talk about policy?

How does Hawaii kind of line up against the other states of what they're doing now, what trends we're seeing, and then really what the best practices are that you might be able to implement.

So the pre trial system really is a balance of both risk, where you're looking at public safety and whether or not somebody's going to show up to court. And on the other side, really looking at the constitutional rights of somebody. So presumption of innocence, looking at the prohibition against excessive bail and due process rights.

This is exactly what a judge is supposed to be weighing every time they do a bail decision. So again, both the risk as well as the civil liberties concerns. The core components of pretrial policy are many, but I wanted to kind of give you an idea of where they generally lie.

So pretrial laws is the framework for how a case, including the rights and interests of the defendant and victim, proceed through the justice system before it's resolved by plea, dismissal or trial.

But at the center of that is generally bail, which is what most people discuss, and that governs whether or not a person is released from custody or remains in during the time before then.

So the key components include everything from how quickly bail is decided to what is considered when setting bail, and then the options available for release and any limits the law places on that release or detention decision.

Again to help just frame it. And I know that one of the earlier panelists kind of went over the different types of release, but I wanted to kind of expand that a little bit to what other states look at as well. So first there is citation or summons, which I know that Angela talked about.

So this is even before somebody's arrested, somebody can be summonsed into court in many places. Once you're arrested, you could then also be released in citation. Other than that, there is the release on personal recognizance, meaning that you're just going to promise to show up for court.

There's an unsecured bond, meaning that technically there's a monetary amount attached to your release, but you're not actually paying a dollar of it unless you don't show up. There's non monetary conditions, so you're released. It could be under supervision. It doesn't have to be under supervision. It could be electronic monitoring, drug testing, many options there.

Then there's the cash bail released with monetary conditions that people are very familiar with. And then, of course preventative detention, meaning there is no option to be released at all, no matter how much money you pay or how much you want to pay.

So looking at how Hawaii really kind of lines up with some of the other states, I did put out a bail policy paper. I believe it was a year or two ago now.

But it really kind of looks at some of those core components of every single state, which you're happy to look at to kind of look how Hawaii directly lines up with other states. But I wanted to kind of summarize some key parts of those laws and how Hawaii lines up.

So I'm looking first at just providing a specific time limit and what that means is how quickly a bail decision has to be made according to statute. So there's 26 states, about half the states say that generally has to be done between 24 to 72 hours.

Hawaii, from what I've experienced, which was great today, it is likely happening fairly quickly. But there is not a law in the book saying it's required to happen in the, in that 24 to 48 hour range. The use of pretrial risk assessment. Again, about half the states do require a pretrial risk assessment.

Hawaii is one that uses the risk assessment elimination of the use of cash bail. I was very careful in crafting that. There's only one state, Illinois, that actually has abolished cash bail. But two other states, New Jersey and New Mexico, essentially have eliminated its use, even though it's still on the books.

And can be used and is used at times. The prohibition of commercial bail, Kentucky being one of them. There's only five states that have actually prohibited the use of commercial bail. There's I believe, two others that really have eliminated its use, although it is still available statewide pretrial services that only 10 states actually provide statewide pretrial services.

So it's kind of lucky that Hawaii does have such access, although it is used in a lot of different metro areas at the local level. They must consider ability to pay. So pretty much every state at least has to consider financial resources, but that does not necessarily mean the ability to pay.

Those are two kind of different terminations. So only about half the states actually consider availability to pay and then expanded preventive detention. About a third of the states only allow preventive detention for capital offenses. Generally, that's murder in the first degree, sometimes treason. It can be some for a couple other high level crimes.

Some states, because they've actually outlawed the death penalty, they don't have any ability for preventive detention. But 2/3 of the state have expanded preventative detention to include other offenses. Places like New Jersey allow almost any crime to be considered for preventive detention. And we'll talk about some of the caveats that go with that.

But many are going to limit them to either repeat offenders or violent offenses. So some of the national trends over the past several years, there's been significant activity in the pre trial and bail space. Much of these efforts have focused kind of on three core areas.

Strengthening public safety, improving court appearance rates and ensuring the system operates more fairly and effective and equitably so. Looking at public risk and kind of why this has become a trend, public safety remains a central concern for lawmakers, and understandably so in many jurisdictions.

A small number of high profile incidents involving individuals released pretrial have generated significant public attention in the media. Even when overall crime rates are stable or declining, which they are generally being seen across the nation right now.

These cases are statistically rare, but have an outsized impact on public perception and have contributed to legislative and interest in limiting eligibility for release. Public perception of public safety is also often shaped just by visible signs of public disorder, such as homelessness or open drug use, rather than violent crime itself.

While these issues raise legitimate concerns for communities or businesses, it is important to distinguish them from actual threats to safety. Homelessness and substance use are complex public health and housing challenges, and treating them as proxies for dangerousness can lead to misguided pretrial policies.

In addition, there's been quite a bit of federal political pressure recently to increasingly shape state policies around bail. Discussions at the national level often reduce public safety to a narrow focus on cash bail, when that's really overlooking all the other components that play in between courts, law enforcement and community based supports.

This framing has influenced several proposals from Congress to influence state policies that I think is important to be aware of, but they are very focused on and prioritizing cash bail and they have not moved past the house at this point in time for failure to appear the trends that we're seeing or what's kind of behind them is really well, failures to appear are often viewed as willful attempts to evade the system.

Research in recent years has highlighted that most missed court dates are not acts of avoidance or flight really. They often reflect the challenges of daily life. So forgetfulness, lack of transportation, inflexible work schedules, childcare responsibilities, or even just personal crisis.

So regardless, these failures do appear to place additional strain on already overburdened systems and agencies, contributing to growing backlogs and stretching limited resources even further. So even though the research is showing why this is happening, it is still causing lots of impacts on the system and that's why it's become a focal point for solutions.

At the same time, advancements in technology such as text based reminders and virtual reporting tools have made it more feasible for jurisdictions to support court parents in low cost and scalable ways such as so these developments have encouraged policymakers to take a closer look at the underlying causes of non appearance, but then to consider alternatives to promote compliance.

The last one is protecting individual rights and making a fair system. So another significant continuing focus is the protection of individual rights. A growing body of research shows that most individuals released pretrial do return to court and they do remain arrest free.

Research also demonstrates that when low level individuals are detained unnecessarily, it actually increases the risk of the re-offense rates. These findings have led major dictions to take a closer look at how and for whom pretrial detention is used and the long-term consequences of when it's over. Applied litigation has also played a role.

Court challenges in several states in the use of excessive bail, the failure to assess ability to pay, and the lack of basic due process protections have forced some of these jurisdictions to make changes and then have encouraged other states or other jurisdictions to proactively make changes.

At the same time, budgetary constraints have pushed states and localities to re-examine how public safety dollars are being used. One consistent focus has been ensuring that scarce jail and court resources are not unnecessarily used to detain individuals who pose minimal risk and instead prioritize for those that need it.

These efforts have also been informed by growing awareness of racial and economic disparities and pretrial outcomes. Studies consistently show that individuals from historically marginalized communities are more likely to face financial barriers to release and are disproportionately affected by pretrial detention.

Addressing these disparities has become an important part of the broader conversation around fairness, efficiency, and accountability in the pretrial process. Taken together, these trends reflect a growing recognition that the status quo does carry real costs, both human and fiscal. Unnecessary detention imposes significant burdens on individuals, families, and the system.

At the same time, legitimate concerns remain about how to respond when individuals pose a serious risk to safety or are unlikely to return to court. So in response, a number of jurisdictions are moving towards evidence-based practices that aim to manage risk more effectively while minimizing unnecessary harm and expense.

So moving into our best practices, and I am going quick, I know we have limited time today, but I will be available for questions. So on the ground, what we're saying is again kind of looking back to ensuring public safety. One widely adopted tool has been risk assessments, which Hawaii does use.

That's a great foundation, but that being said, it is worth evaluating whether the tool currently in use is the most accurate or appropriate for Hawaii's population.

This includes considering whether any specialized assessments, such as domestic violence assessments, are needed for particular subpopulations, and whether the tool is being used in the most effective way and implemented to inform rather than drive detention decisions. Regular validation and training is also incredibly important to again make sure that you're having the correct outcomes with those tools.

Another important practice is how the system responds when individuals violate conditions of release. Individuals should have a meaningful opportunity to prove that they can succeed on release, unless there's a clear and articulable risk to public safety or flight. Once someone is released, how the system responds to violation really matters.

I'm going to kind of peruse over this because Angela did talk about graduated sanctions and having swift and certain kind of responses rather than just revoking a pretrial release.

And then last, this is an important part that I don't think is actually discussed quite enough, which is the option for pre trial detention which can be appropriate at a time to address risk.

The goal of pretrial system is not to release everyone, but to use the least restrictive means consistent with community safety and to protect the presumption of innocence at the same time, in those cases where an individualized assessment shows that no combination of conditions can mitigate the risk person poses, detention does become a reasonable option.

Even when courts set high bail amounts based on perceived risk, individuals with sufficient financial resources can still get out of jail. This creates a disconnect between the intent to mitigate safety concerns and the outcome which allows high risk individuals to be released simply because they can pay.

At the same time, lower risk individuals may remain detained solely due to the inability to afford bail, which we kind of saw those numbers earlier today. Additionally, research shows that the deterrent effect of financial conditions is limited.

This is further compounded by the fact that in many cases, defendants pay a non-refundable fee to commercial sureties and are not responsible for the full bail amount even if they fail to appear. This reduces any meaningful financial incentive to return to court.

I am happy to answer questions later about how New Jersey and Illinois do a risk-based system, but I am going to kind of move on from now, but wanted to flag that in case it's useful for failures to appear to improve court appearances, jurisdictions are implementing evidence-based practices.

One of the main ones that is backed by a pretty heavy body of evidence at this point is automated court reminders. So traditionally, court reminders are an opt-in system, meaning somebody actually has to be proactive in signing up for them.

What they find is that in a lot of states that less than 5% of defendants actually sign up, mostly because it's hard to do and there's barriers to do it. Once you do an automated court system, oftentimes you see 70 to 90% people enrolled and that has resulted in 20 to 40% reduction in failures to appear.

Generally this is a saver of taxpayer money on the system because you're not tracking down people for their failures to appear, which like I said, are often due more to forgetfulness rather than actually trying to flee accountability. And they are easy to implement once you kind of put them into the system.

The next which again I will go over this briefly because I know Angela kind of hit on it and it sounds like there is at least some extent to which these are being used in Hawaii. But needs assessments and pretrial support.

A needs assessment is very different than a risk assessment in that it is really trying to figure out why somebody may not be able to comply or be able to return to court and it's helping voluntarily address people's needs. That pretrial support again is not pre trial supervision.

It is getting somebody access to the resources and letting them use them. One thing I did want to lift up is that there are programs out there that use things like a mental health court, which oftentimes is thought of as a kind of post-conviction tool or a diversionary tool.

They actually use it as a pre trial tool, so engages people with certain issues, mental health or drugs, and it really engages them from the start within that program, which could be an interesting thing to explore. A third area is flexible and expedient court engagements. So again, this could look like remote check ins.

It could be video appearances. It also could be something more formal like a homelessness court, which I know that is used kind of at an ad hoc basis within Hawaii, but.

But it can also be more permanent in which a court, again like the mental health court, a homelessness court, can provide those wraparound services by engaging people in the pretrial process, not just as a post-conviction tool. The last is the protection of liberties or essentially creating a fairer system.

Within this, we have several tools as well that we see as best practices. The first is making sure to expedite the release of somebody if they are found to be a low risk, low risk defendant. The research is pretty strong that even one night in jail can actually increase the likelihood of reoffending for an individual.

And so it is very important to make sure that if somebody is low risk that they are immediately released versus taking time to get there. This kind of goes in with the idea of a presumption of release, because there is a presumption of innocence.

It would make sense that there is a presumption of release, but generally these are with some caveats. Again, you need to be balancing the risks along with those presumptions.

And for that reason, a lot of these will say there is a presumption release unless there's an articulable reason to believe that somebody is a public safety risk, a flight risk. It could also have to do with previous or pending cases where you're currently under supervision access to counsel.

I was actually very impressed with Hawaii's access to counsel. And so I did want to kind of highlight some other pieces around due process, which includes the availability of having a comprehensive hearing when it comes to denial of bail. That would include actually having the ability to put on evidence when that bail is being denied outright.

It also includes having certain protections such as a proof evident and presumption grant hearing.

That is essentially to say that the evidence is strong enough to support not just probable cause, but a higher threshold of this person did this crime, as well as a clear and Convincing standard generally to say that this is needed to reasonably ensure that somebody is not going to be a flight or safety risk.

And then the last is an ability to pay determination. In many jurisdictions, courts set bail without first determining whether the person can realistically afford it. So it's kind of just a number thrown out there based upon the charges and the history.

When this happens, it often functions as a detention order, but without the legal safeguards that normally apply, it can really create kind of a gambling scenario where individuals who pose a clear risk may still be released simply because they can pay, even though you don't believe that they could when they were before you.

At the same time, people who are never intended to be held, those given even the lowest amounts of bail, may not be able to afford to get out, even though that wasn't the intended outcome.

Some states have adopted formal ability to pay procedures to avoid this, such as the ability to pay, finding a fact during the bail hearings, or automatic bail reviews. And so some states say if you're still in within 48 hours, that you'll automatically have another bail hearing to determine if you should still be there.

Taking these together, these practices produce systems that respect individual rights while promoting public safety and efficient use of resources, so meeting those kind of balancing pieces of what bail requires. So I want to just reiterate that every single jurisdiction and state is different. Everything does have to be modified for the different locations.

And I'm here and available for questions on any of those practices.

Thank you very much, Ms. Pettis. I really appreciate it. I know this is like drinking from a fire hose for everybody, but we're really trying to pack as much in here as we can. So let's move on to our local experience here from another perspective. We have Judge Ronald Johnson. Huh? Zero.

So we'll have Lynn Costales present next, and then we'll have judge join us for questions. Sorry about that, Judge. I gave you. Thank you. Okay, Lynn Costales, Executive Director of the Sex Abuse Treatment center at Kapulani Medical center for Women and Children.

One second to log on here. Yes, sorry.

So one of the reasons why we wanted to have Ms. Costales speak to us is that I've become aware that as you make decisions about pre trial, what to do with the individual, you really have to be careful about if it's a crime that has victims. And so having the victim representation is really essential.

It's great to hear from Tani about the Victim Notification Services Office, which is really an important factor in having a fair and a fair justice system, because we want to be fair to the, to the victims, make sure that they're not put at risk. So that's really important.

So with that, I will turn it over to Ms. Costales to talk to us about her experience through her career. So over to you.

Thank you so much for having me. I really, I cannot begin to tell you how appreciative I am to be here. As we're listening to the conversation and the things that are being said today, it is very important to not forget the other side of this discussion, which is victim engagement.

And so I know that the focus right now is on the defendant and pretrial detention. But there is a side to all of this that is very important to all of us, which is how we engage a victim in the process. So I'm going to kind of just start off from the beginning of one.

A victim actually encounters or engages in the criminal justice system from a police reporting perspective, because that is the first initial contact that a victim will have in this space.

So obviously they're primarily in contact with law enforcement in certain situations, primarily domestic violence while they're on the scene and they roll up on a scene of domestic violence, there can, there should be a lethal assessment going on by the police at that point. Oftentimes there is engagement by way of trying to connect them with services.

So there are some counties in Hawaii that allow this kind of safe, on-scene. They connect the victim with, with service providers to do that kind of connection of services. But it doesn't happen all the time. Doesn't happen consistently here on Oahu, doesn't happen on the neighbor islands with the exception of Kauai.

I think they're having a great success on that front. But let's say at this point. So sex assault survivors don't get any type of engagement at that front end. Usually comes a little bit later when the detectives are getting involved with the case.

So when we move from this area of on scene engagement and the offender, the suspect is apprehended. So now the suspect is headed off to the Police Department for further processing. The Victim is left there and there is very little engagement with the survivor at that point.

So once the suspect is at the Police Department cell block, right. They're held there, they're charged, whether it's on a felony or a misdemeanor. Bail is typically set at that, that point at cell block. And if an offender suspect post bail, they will get out. There is no victim engagement at that point.

So at cell block, no victim advocacy, no victim engagement, definitely no input regarding bail. No issue of dangerousness, as I understand it, is being assessed at that point. And so now we're moving into the court system, and we're moving into this initial appearance that typically happens at district court. And then cases are moving from there.

Felonies are moving through the circuit court system. There could be a probable cause hearing for certain felonies. Typically domestic violence on the felony level and sex assault on a felony level will engage through a probable cause hearing, whether that's preliminary hearing or grand jury.

There is typically at that point a victim witness advocate that is assigned to that case through the prosecutor's office. And so there is victim engagement at that point. So that preliminary or probable cause hearing happens.

Judge Johnson is probably going to talk a little bit about that because once we get through that point, it's really on the district court level that. May. Or may not have victim engagement. It depends on what the case is. So that's what's happening on the district court level.

And then it moves to circuit court on those higher level felonies. And that is Judge Johnson and his staff that take care of it. Bill can be confirmed or not confirmed. There can be no contact orders that are placed in place. If someone does bail out from that point, it's typically tied to bail, that no contact order.

So again, pre-trial and trial on felony cases, there's victim witness advocates assigned misdemeanor and petty misdemeanors only on certain offenses. I think there is a victim-witness advocate that's assigned on that level. So again, little bit different, not always consistent by way of victim engagement.

At this point, we talked a little bit about Savin and Mr. Johnson and his team talked about that. Again, it's the automated notification. But this kicks in when that suspect, that offender enters into the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The important thing that I want to note about Savin or the state automated system is that a victim has to register in order to partake in that program. So the question really becomes who is engaging that victim to register them, to notify them that there is this service that they can sign up for.

On the felony level, it's typically that victim witness advocate in the prosecutor's office that will do that, but it requires them to register in order to take part in the service. Orders of protection, we kind of know about that. There are temporary restraining orders, injunctions, taking it a little bit longer.

Family court engages on those intimate partner or those family. Family kind of abuse cases. District court handles a lot of the TROs involving victims and the offender in a non-family situation. Of course, on the felony level, in addition to a lot of this are the no-contact orders that are associated with bail.

So there are things that are available to victims on this, but again, these are civil orders on the TROs and the injunctions. There is no victim, although victim witness could think it becomes a little bit difficult for them because their focus is on the criminal justice system.

There is no counterpart to that to help victims through the civil process. Although DVAC domestic violence action center does have a program that's associated with family court, and they can help with some of those civil TROs in the family court setting, but not necessarily in the district court setting.

So victim engagement, what is a primary concern for a lot of victims? It really comes down to safety, right? Safety for themselves, safety for their families. It is although we talk about public safety, oftentimes talking about community safety is important to remember that victims are part of our community.

And although they might not, the larger community may not be necessarily at risk in certain offenses. They certainly are at risk to that particular victim. So that issue of safety becomes very important to that survivor because they might be at risk versus their neighbor versus someone else. So we want them to be engaged.

We want to make sure that they are part of this assessment. Just real quick on this, I just wanted to put this out. This is a very specific to sex assault. All right, so in fiscal year 23 and 24, we did SATC sex abuse treatment center.

We did a survey on what are the barriers to victims engaging in reporting their sex assault to law enforcement and that we had 332 surveys. They're all anonymous. But the important thing is that when we look at what the survey revealed, the primary thing that victims are reporting as their barrier is they don't want.

To go to court. And so we don't know exactly. I could tell you just based on the surveys and reading them, there are a lot of different reasons for that. It could. It's length of delay in the court system. It takes too long. I'm trying to recover. But I keep getting pulled back in this.

I don't want to see the offender because I got to go and testify in front of them. But it was interesting, at least to myself, that that was a primary reason. The other things that are very high on the list, as you can see, are I know who my offender is, and I fear retaliation.

So those are the reasons why victims, at least in sex assault, have some barriers in reporting. I will tell you that by way of sex assault kids, 24% of sex assault kids are unreported to law enforcement. So there's quite a few of them that never get that far.

So finally, safety being the most important thing for a lot of survivors. So time, right, they need time to safety plan. When people are getting released from any kind of facility, whether it's HPD cell block or any kind of facility, victims need time so that they can safety plan. And that comes with notification.

Once notification happens, they need the time to get things together because oftentimes the offender is going to go back to the place they were before they got out. They should have a say on input on dangerousness. And it requires consistency.

Whether it's notification, information on bills, support and advocacy, all of those things become very important to a survivor because they need consistency as they're flowing through the criminal justice system and it's not the most consistent for them currently; they don't have a lot of information.

And when they get information, it can be spotty, obviously, protective orders and no contact orders. What do they want? They want safety. They want accountability. They want to be seen and heard by the criminal justice system. They feel like they're doing everything that we ask. You want me to report? I am calling and I am reporting.

But once they do that, there is a complete fall off for many of them. Now what. Where am I? What's happening? Who are these people that I'm engaged with? I don't necessarily understand the roles of the individuals that I'm engaged with.

And so it requires some consistency and information for them so that they remain engaged the criminal justice system, I'm sorry to say, I'm a former prosecutor, but it moves at a snail's pace for many of us.

So for them to have that sustaining power and energy to last through the beginning of calling 911 to when the case gets resolved, it requires stamina on their part, but it requires engagement in a meaningful way. So the last slide that I have is like the elephant in the room, I think, for all of us.

From Mr. Johnson at DCR to Judiciary and Judge Johnson, it's resources. Everybody needs resources. And it's incredible for Kentucky, and it's a fabulous program, but it's all about resource. From courts to prosecutors to victim witness to the police.

The police actually have a few victim advocates embedded in the Department, but again, they are not consistently used at different stages. Right. But there's only one person, two people, I think it is so all of us. It's a resource issue. So, that being said, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

And I'm here if you have questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And last, let's have Judge Johnson join us at the table, if you would. And so let's just have Judge Johnson come up first. And I want to just ask if you would just talk about, from your perspective. You know, you're up there on the bench.

What kind of criteria do you look for when evaluating whether bail should be applied? How do you decide between release on your own recognizance, supervised release? Just could you give us a little insight into what you go through every day that you're there in your courtroom?

I'd like to say good afternoon, Chair Tarnas, and to the Members of the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity on behalf of the Chief Justice, Acting Chief Justice Sabrina McKenna, to appear and provide information to you. So I appreciate this opportunity. Thank you.

As DCR has lined out and as our statutes require, the court has to consider with respect to the issue of bail and the setting of an amount, the court has to consider the pecuniary means of the defendant and his circumstances, the maximum potential penalty for the offenses and the circumstances that surround those things.

And it's not the family or friend's ability to pay, it's that individual's ability to pay. So it is focused on that particular defendant and their means.

What happens with respect to cases that come through the court is we rely on our partners, DCR, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and their Intake Service center, and they will provide us with pretrial bail reports for those individuals who cooperate with the pretrial bail process.

So if they decline, we have little to no information about any form of stable residence, employment, source of income, and those types of things which we need to take into consideration because we are weighing and setting the bail we're weighing, will the person return to court and what type of risk factors do they pose?

So it's safety to any other person in the community, and will they appear for their court hearings? That's the primary purpose of bail and the primary purpose of setting terms and conditions. And when the person does return to court, as Ms. Costales was stating, the system runs more smoothly.

And there aren't gaps where we're looking for people who are looking, have absconded, or who have decided not to appear, which then delays the process for the complainants and the victims of the crimes.

So it's a balancing between the individual rights of the defendants and the risk factors and the judiciary moving their cases forward in the most efficient way possible and then trying to take these factors and look at how to equitably impose them in each individual case. No two cases are the same. People have different criminal histories.

People have different statuses based upon their criminal histories. What I mean by that is someone can be on supervised release for a case re offender. We look at that person differently than we look at someone who's new to the system. With a first criminal offense, someone can have prior convictions for property offenses.

We'll look at that person differently than we would someone who has no priors, but not the same way as we look at someone who has a history of violent crime. And it's balancing these risks, as was stated by some of our victims.

And looking at the terms and conditions that can be imposed, one of those being cash bail or a bond, we do find that a lot of people in court will go to a bond company and will post a bond.

And I would comment on one of the slides that was shown earlier that the lower level bails, if there is a cash bail required, you usually can't get a bond for a $500 bail, then that becomes a cash bail, and the person will have a harder time coming up, perhaps with that than they would getting a bond at 10%.

So if a bond is sought by someone and the bond is for $10000,10% usually has to be put up. And I'm ballparking, but 10% usually has to be put up, which would be $1,000 to post a $10,000 bond.

So people do post bonds regularly in our system, which also kind of creates a different view on their ability to pay and what maximum amount of bail should be set, because you can, once you across that threshold, usually of $1,000, look at receiving bail through a bond company. So we currently have that system.

I know the presenter from Kentucky indicated that they don't work with bonds anymore. And that's a difference that we have. We also work with our partners, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Department of Health, and we are working very closely with them on Jail diversion Program. I'm the sitting judge for the circuit court Jail Diversion Program.

We currently have about 31 people in the Jail Diversion Program. The admissions into the jail Diversion Program requirements a charge of promoting a detrimental drug or dangerous drug, excuse me, three, which is a class C felony and a serious mental illness.

So in combination, and we are using Department of Health specialists from the adult Mental health division to supervise them. Their specifically Jail diversion Program. Individuals who are assigned to work out treatment plans and as part of the program they have to agree to participate. So it's voluntary.

So sometimes when you look at the numbers for district court, if someone's looking at a misdemeanor or petty misdemeanor, they might choose not to participate in the program because if they were to plead guilty on their first day in court, they might get probation, they might get a couple days in jail, whereas the program would run on for a period of months.

And the circuit court program is designed to look at about a two year time frame where they will be supervised, placed, have wraparound services and be receiving mental health and drug treatment. So I would say that we are addressing at an early point sort of a deflection and an exit for those people who fit into those categories.

And we would like to expand that program. Right now the agreement only covers the drug offenses. So I think that other nonviolent offenses would be appropriate at the felony level.

Thank you very much for that, those extemporaneous remarks. I appreciate that.

I didn't know I was supposed to bring a PowerPoint.

You did not need to bring a PowerPoint. We've had enough PowerPoints today and they are available on our website for you to look at afterward. And thank you, Judge. You don't need to stay right there. What I'd like to do is offer to our Members and I think Chair Belatti would have a question.

But please ask questions of the other presenters. We don't need to put the judge on a hotspot. Folks can all come up and join me.

Yeah, there's plenty of open chairs.

Can I have the ISC person, Mr. Chung. And then the Kentucky expert.

We'll start with that. Come on up. Liesel, you can come up too. Lynn, why don't you come on up?

This is such an important hearing. This is such an important.

So go ahead with your question.

First question.

And explain also if you would chair that you chair an important Committee that overlaps with this. Yes.

So I'm chair of the Public Safety Committee and I'm very interested in the pre trial diversion Programs, as well as the mental health treatment inside of the prisons and then re entry. So all of this is so important to the Committee and to the prisons and the jails. I have a couple of questions.

I'll start with Senate Bill 90 from Kentucky, the pilot program of low level offenders. It sounds very much like our Act 26. And you said that that's part of the program is connecting defendants to services, career services, housing, case management, et cetera. Who is managing those substance abuse disorder treatment programs, mental health programs in your system?

Because I'm assuming it's not you. Is it another Department and who manages the contracts?

So, yes, so the case navigator sees them through the system, but they're actually diverted out of the criminal justice system entirely and the providers are overseeing their treatment.

Who oversees the providers because.

Department of Behavioral Health.

How much collaboration do you have with the Department of Behavioral Health?

A lot. So once that Bill was established, initially we had zero interactions with the Department of Behavioral Health. But once that Bill was established, we had a.

Now we have a very tight partnership and we actually have like a call every two weeks where we talk about the program and how it's working and how it's not working and what steps we need to take.

Just one quick follow up because I think this is really important.

Please.

In our jurisdiction we have this kind of split oversight, so programs. DCR manages those who are convicted in the criminal defense system, but once they get out into kind of the behavioral health system, then we have our Department of Health.

Is that system similar in Kentucky where corrections has oversight of those who are within the criminal justice system? And how do you bridge that if it's a similar situation? Because we have huge problems between what's happening with our Department of Health systems and what's happening with our DCR systems and what's happening, what's happening with the judiciary.

So I would say this. What we have learned is now that we have that partnership, it's really about communication. Right. And getting all the team players into the room and having conversations. So what I would encourage you to do is bring everybody into a room, have a conversation and start planning that.

Now, I know that's difficult and it was difficult for us too. Right. But it is something that can be done. We had zero interaction with the Department of Behavioral Health before Senate Bill 90. And now we have such a close partnership with them that I can probably call them.

If I wanted to start up another program and involve them in it, then I could get some willingness.

I have more Questions, but I'll defer Chair.

Let's go to another Member, Representative Cochran.

Yeah. And thank you all for sharing your expertise, expertise and knowledge in this arena. And so Rep. Belatti brought up some good points, but yeah, I'm really interested in, you know, the recidivism, well, lack of, let's curb that, curtail that barrier relief.

And I think for Ms. Darcy, who like, what's the prerequisite to like work in your Department or your division? Like, are you all attorneys, are you all counselors? So I was just curious.

No. So to be a pretrial service specialist, you have to either have a four year degree or have four years of experience in the criminal justice system. And then our starting salary is about $37,000 a year. So it's not a lot of money, but surprisingly we're well staffed.

What about someone who been there, done that, been through the system? You know, just street knowledge, life experiences can really relate and associate with people who are going through the system.

So yes and no. We would probably put them into a case navigator role or maybe an administrative role. But with their pre trial service specialists, they have to have the ability to access NCIC and they can't have it. They can't have a felony background.

So if it's misdemeanors and been there, done that, it's something that we might consider. But we can't consider it with our drug court can consider people that have any kind of record. I'm assuming that's what you mean when you say that.

And I'm actually speaking on behalf of my own personal experience. And so I recall for me it was, I went through the process where I knew my family could afford to bail me out. They purposely kept me in to teach me basically a lesson to learn that this is not where I want to be.

I didn't realize that. But the longer I was there, the more I realized like I never want to be here again. And that's over 30 years ago and have not repeat, you know, so learn from my mistakes and moved on and look where I'm sitting today. And I think.

So, so yeah, and so that's why I just wanted to know who would, what the prerequisite would be?

I think that it's somebody that we would consider notwithstanding if they had a conviction of a felony. And we were kind of expanding as we go along because now our pool is getting a little smaller. So as we go along there's other positions that we can put them in.

Like that would be a perfect, perfect position for a case navigator because been there, done that. Right.

And my other I and I think it's for everyone. So in pre-trial, I always thought, you know, you're pretty much innocent until proven guilty, basically. So in Maui, we. I'm from Maui Island M, Triple C. And I always thought they should, we. Should be allowed to vote.

I mean, you, you, if you're incarcerated, I mean, if you're convicted, what's the question? Then it's are, do you. Does your state or anywhere here in our nation allow pretrial people to vote before being convicted of a felony?

Kentucky does.

Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Great. Because I always thought of having.

Lisel so do you have any information on that?

Oh, okay. Several states do. I think the bigger problem is generally if somebody's incarcerated, how you get. You can allow them to vote because they are incarcerated at the time. If they are out on release, many states allow them to vote. Even several states allow convicted felons to vote. So it just really depends state to state.

Judge Johnson

In response to your question, while the individuals who are at, say DCR and doing the pretrial bail reports might not be able to be persons who have prior contact with the criminal justice system, the people who are working with us in the jail diversion program, there are peer specialists who have remarkable personal experiences through contact with the criminal justice system and otherwise, who are working with our defendants as part of the Department of Health team.

I think that's important.

Thank you.

It can help be helpful.

Thanks for that question. Very, very good. Back to Chair Belatti.

Thank you. This is for you, Mr. Cheung. Thank you so much for telling us how DCR is actively engaging in all these efforts for SIM planning. I was really interested in hearing you comment on the Med Quest and DHS launch of the 1115 reentry program. What are the obstacles now?

Because my understanding is the 1115 program was approved last year and we should be seeing the results already. And for the Members here, the 1115 waiver is essentially the process of allowing and making sure there's a warm handoff between people who are exiting prison and may qualify for Medicaid services, including the new wraparound housing support services. Potentially.

What's the obstacle in it being running?

Right. So I wouldn't say they're challenges. These are requirements that are necessary by the Federal Government for us to be able to draw down on the material Medicaid funding dollars. Some of those requirements include a data sharing platform, so between correctional facilities and Medicaid.

So data sharing in terms of when somebody comes in, when somebody leaves our facility, where they're going to and other things. We are trying to set that up right now.

And those things take a lot of time and minutiae because those are a lot of data points and share sharing platforms and things that we haven't done in the past. So that takes time. The other is that each facility has to be certified to be able to draw down on those, on those dollars.

And there are three main requirements. The first is that there has to be mat services that are provided to individuals at the facilities. The other is a third and we have those. The other is a 30 day medication that we provide to inmates upon release.

And then the third is that there has to be a recognized or stated release date at least 90 days before release. So we have the first two. The third one is the tough one because that's information that we have to be able to share with NetQuest on a daily basis. Right.

And so we're working on that right now, working on MoU's, we're working with ETS around what that might mean around data sharing and that takes time. What we're looking to do is, if all goes well is that I will be able to implement this hopefully by. The end of the year.

There are some states that have received it that have actually backed out of that waiver because those jurisdictions have found it really difficult. We're in the conversations monthly weekly. Thank you. Thank you.

We only have a few minutes left but I do want to ask Intake Service center, if you, Deputy Director, tell us so what, what's working well and what are things that could be improved and do you have any things that you want to make sure you tell the legislators?

Well, I think currently our partnerships with Judiciary, the Department of Health, although it might not appear that way because of the minimal amounts of acceptances with our gel diversion. We have strong working relationships with them and it's just our team is relatively new and so it's just kind of strengthening those collaborations which we are.

So currently what we found was to increase an intake service center's role, we found that we can utilize some of our contracts to help maybe move some of these initiatives forward. For instance with the SUDAFAST program, because we don't need to look at the mental health component. This is just related to the substance abuse.

We can now use our substance abuse contracts for residential up to outpatient treatment programs and we can use that to ex. To hopefully increase the amount of individuals that are exiting our facility into those programs. And we also are sharing contracts with our reentry coordination office to implement peer navigators.

So we already have that with our female population for all of the other islands. We're working on the male population peer mentorship program. And we're also working with our reentry office for utilizing our clean and sober bed spaces to try to increase exits from our facility into those community bed spaces.

With the obvious agreement of the courts, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, and those areas.

And Mr. Cheung, who was recently added to our team, is looking at, and this was where Judge Johnson also commented, is looking at those charges and, you know, having the discussion as we collect data to determine what other charges would be appropriate for diversion efforts.

Thank you. Ms. Makai, do you want to add anything more to that from your experience? You know, you're responsible statewide for these different intake service centers from neighbor islands, you know, Maui, Molokai, Hawaii island, and of course, Oahu here. So talk to us about it. Are there gaps that need to be filled?

Are there things that we can do to strengthen your operation?

I think in terms of opportunities, I'll say that probably our biggest strength is our partnerships. Like Deputy Director Munoz mentioned, we have a long history with a strong relationship with the county police, with the court. So I think that helps us to better coordinate, identify where our gaps are and to build partnerships to improve.

One of the biggest challenges is the inconsistency in practices amongst the different circuits. We're working really hard to try to close those gaps where we can. But, you know, that's a kind of complex issue with a lot of moving parts, but we're working on that.

I think what is working for us is our adaptation to evidence based practices. It's taking a while for the staff and, you know, to kind of build that and to adapt to that thinking. We, the opportunities are now with the strengthening of our partnerships.

Hopefully we, we can be in closer alignment with the courts so that, you know, we're giving Judge Johnson a product in our bail study that is meaningful for him. He did mention today, obviously, you know, there are some challenges that we have and so we're trying to kind of overcome those things.

So it's a bloated question, Representative Tarnas, but I just say I'd like to focus on the opportunities. And I think the biggest thing is, is our partnerships and that will really help us to move forward.

Did you want to add anything to that, Judge Johnson?

I did. Thank you. One of the things that we find as a challenge in the jail diversion program is actually finding the placements we are competing with everyone else for bed space, for case management, for treatment.

And it is difficult sometimes to convince someone who says, yes, I want to participate. Sounds like a great program. If we could have a, you know, if we can get access to bed space quickly, we can place them, get them the treatment and the services they need and plug them in and they won't have to be in custody. Right.

But if there's no bed spaces and there's mental illness that's untreated and there's substance abuse, where the person has a very strong drive to seek out the drug, again, you're going to get different outcomes.

And so really making those resources available in whatever way we can, accessing those resources is the key because, you know, we are working with Dcr, we're assessing people or working with Department of Health. And really it is the placement and the treatment that needs to be expanded.

Thank you. I appreciate that comment. We do need to wrap up. I do want to give vice chair an opportunity to ask her questions that she hasn't asked anything just yet.

For the Kentucky program. Two quick questions. $42 million is a really significant investment, an incredible investment by your state. I'm curious if that came out of the state or if there was a special mechanism of funding.

It came out of the Opioid Abatement Trust Fund. The money was directly diverted to Senate Bill 90 for that.

Thank you. And then the second question is transitioning away from the bail industry. Was there any analysis on the impacts economically, whether positive or negative? And also if I guess that's the question.

I think there are several studies that were done originally on whether it was effective. I think it's tough, right. Whenever you're starting something and trying to get away from a system like Bill Bondsman, for example, and Kentucky is constantly under attack for not having Bill Bondsman.

But it's just something I think a state has to get used to. And then there's no right way or wrong way to do it. It's just, are you doing the best thing for your community? And I think it's really about the intent. Right.

Of everybody that's involved and whether or not you're doing the best thing for your community. So, like, Hawaii may not ever be able to get rid of Bill Bondsman. And that may be okay for Hawaii. Right. Because. Because you may have the, like the judge said, you may have somebody that needs to post 10%.

What I will say is that Kentucky still sets high bonds. We still have, like Judge set a $750,000 bond today. And that in Kentucky would have probably been a $200,000 bond. Right. That they would have to post full cash on. So. We'Re. It'S not much different. If. You still have financial bail.

You're always going to have that system, whether or not it's bail bond spin or a really high cash bail.

Thank you.

So I know that many of us still have other questions I think we'll take an opportunity to ask afterward. But I would like to, since we have sort of the national view. And I'd like to leave a question with Ms. Petis just as you know what, what are your thoughts?

Easily low hanging fruit for Hawaii that we might be able to implement to help reduce our pre trial jail population responsibly.

So I mean there's so many different ways you can go and that's why I wanted to give a broad overview because it really is when you talk about pretrial policy, it's a huge buck and every little piece matters.

I was fortunate enough to sit in on both the district court and circuit court this week, which was great to see everything in practice. And honestly, Hawaii is doing some things really, really well. So you guys should at least be grateful for some of the things that are going very well.

Things that we've discussed that I think really should be at least considered or thought through is how to make sure that the determination of whether somebody's released or detained is really focusing on those risk factors and not the concern of risk factors.

So having these articulable recorded thoughts of why somebody may offend again or is a risk to the community or may not show up versus just the crime itself or their residential status as a reason of why that may be true. And for that reason it can help divert some people. And I don't mean divert as in diversion.

I mean divert as in not having pre trial detention to be released quicker and then having those that really need those extra supports like treatment, which I think came up a lot and I understand why that can actually be used for those that need it most other things that can really help in that is making sure that you have more availability of alternate conditions.

Electronic monitoring I think is a glaring one that is used by a lot of states to make sure that there is at least some sort of safety mechanism for somebody that probably doesn't need to be detained and can be released is a big one.

And then the more meaningful ones, but a lot bigger lift are things like a mental health court where you're actually immediately pulling people into a court that can give full wraparound services and support. Again, fair lift, but can be really impactful.

Smaller things I would say if you can get the low hanging fruit of people into court immediately that are not evading law through automated court reminders. Such an easy thing that most states are looking at right now kind of universally because it is so impactful and and one of the easier lifts I could go on forever. So I will stop with this.

That's great. I really appreciate it. I what we all have more questions and I and I know that and I would just encourage Members to follow up with our panelists and their teams to ask those questions because this is not an easy answer. There is no easy answer to this. We have to figure out it together.

I would like to thank the whole Intake Service Center's team from Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Thanks to your whole team for coming. Thank you to Angie Darcy from Kentucky for joining us. Thank you for to Lisel Petis for joining us from our street.

Thank you Judge Johnson for fitting us in your busy schedule and being here and giving us your insights from your real life experience. And thank you very much to Lynn Costales with the Sex Abuse Treatment Center at Kapulani for joining us to give that perspective. All of this was very informative.

It will take a while for me to really understand everything and let it soak in. Our Committee is committed to making this a better place and a fair justice system and you've helped us. So thank you very much for participating. And with that we are adjourned.