STAND. COM. REP. NO. 415

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 1190

       S.D. 1

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Eighth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2015

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Health, to which was referred S.B. No. 1190 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES,"

beg leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to:

     (1)  Require the Director of Public Safety to contract for the planning and preliminary design for a secure correctional facility designed to provide intensive rehabilitation programs for mental health and chemical dependency treatment;

     (2)  Require the Director of Public Safety to submit a progress report to the Legislature by February 1, 2016; and

     (3)  Appropriate funds to the Department of Public Safety for the contract for the planning and preliminary design for the correctional facility.

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Public Safety; United Public Workers AFSCME, Local 646, AFL-CIO; and two individuals.  Your Committees received testimony in opposition to this measure from one individual.  Your Committees received comments on this measure from the State Procurement Office and Community Alliance on Prisons.

     Your Committees find that the State has been exporting inmates to privately operated prisons on the mainland since 1995 instead of building a new prison in Hawaii.  Fifty-four percent of Hawaii's prisoners are incarcerated in private prisons on the mainland, the highest percentage among all other states.  State officials have continued to pursue various plans for adding prison space in Hawaii; however, the State has not built a new prison in nearly three decades.  Implementation of this measure lowers costs, reduces recidivism, and provides a solution to overcrowding in the State's correctional facilities.

     Your Committees have amended this measure by:

     (1)  Inserting language to specify that the new correctional facility is to be a priority correctional facility, which may include a reentry facility, jail, or prison; and

     (2)  Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Health that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1190, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1190, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Health,

____________________________ JOSH GREEN, Chair

____________________________ WILL ESPERO, Chair