Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 7, 1 July 2009 — Bring Hawaiʻi paʻahao home [ARTICLE]

Bring Hawaiʻi paʻahao home

It is with humble heart I thank the Republican senator from Kailua for valuing Hawaiian imnates more than the State of Hawai'i Department of Public Safety does. In his April 5 commentary to the Honoluhi Advertiser, "Systemic changes will spark economy," Sen. Fred Hemmings quantified the worth of Hawaiian inmate families at $62.48 per body. Please tell me that Hawaiian families have more value than that. The Department of Public Safety, or DPS, claims that housing imnates by chattel contract in facilities on the U.S. continent portends a savings to the state; however, according to language in 2009 legislative session bills submitted to the Public Safety and Military Affairs Committee, for every consumer dollar spent on housing inmates in out-of-state prisons, it is THREE DOLLARS we could use to stimulate the economy in Hawai'i. Therefore, according to the Legislature's own equation, DPS's $50 million dollars per annum for housing inmates is actually a $150 million dollar loss to the state economy. So it follows that as hygiene, snack food, warm clothing, shoes and phone time are among the basic needs of an imnate, his family must be able to afford these items by depositing funds to a trust account via Western Union at a minimum fee of $5.95 per $100 deposited. The deposit eap per month is $500. At an average of 2,000 imnates at $500 dollars per body, Hawai'i taxpayers stimulate the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) to the tune of $1 million dollars per month. Using the Legislature's own equation, $3 milhon Hawai'i consumer dollars are spent monthly on the U.S. continent. This is a total of a minimum of $36 million dollars per annum.

This $186 million loss to the state's economy per annum hardly sounds like huge savings to the taxpayer. Senator Heimnings definitely got it right when he said to bring the prisoners home from Arizona. C. Kamealoha Stagner Kāne'ohe, O'ahu

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