Prison Crowding in Hawaii
Price of Paradise · Hawaii Public Radio · aired 1995-12-10
Guests: Martha Torney (official, Department of Public Safety); Tom Farrell (former Deputy Attorney General)
Duration: 1:08:20

[0:00:00] Randall Roth: E Roth, host of Pop Radio. We're broadcast live each Sunday morning at 8:00 on KHPR 88.1 FM and KKUA 90.7 FM and then rebroadcast Sunday evenings at 8:00 on KIFO 1380 AM. Our sponsor is the Hawaii Community Foundation, a grassroots an organization that supports grassroots efforts to improve our community and also that manages charitable funds with efficiency and compassion. Uh, Jeff, our technical director, if you can hear me, we can't hear through the headphones in here. Are we on the air? Okay. Our topic this morning is prison overcrowding. Our guests in the studio are Tom Farrell and Martha Torney.
[0:00:47] Randall Roth: Tom is an attorney who recently joined the law offices of Bradley Coats, specializing in divorce and family law. Before going into private practice, Tom was a deputy state attorney general assigned to represent the state's prison system. Tom was the lead attorney on the ACLU consent decree case and has handled a number of other high profile cases involving the prisons. Martha has a masters in criminology from the University of Hawaii and has worked in corrections for 26 years, holding various positions from line staff at a juvenile training school in New York, to corrections program specialist for various corrections directors in Hawaii.
[0:01:27] Randall Roth: She teaches regularly in the justice administration program at Hawaii Pacific University and occasionally in the program at the University of Hawaii. Well, Tom and Martha, good morning.
[0:01:39] Tom Farrell: Good morning.
[0:01:39] Martha Torney: Good morning, Randy.
[0:01:40] Randall Roth: Um, Tom, you wrote a piece last week for the advertiser uh, suggesting that all of the recent publicity about the activity of the guards, uh drug dealing, mistreatment of inmates, um, that sort of thing, abuse of overtime is is all symptomatic of just one thing that there is one core problem right now and it's overcrowding. Could you tell us a little bit more about uh, your thoughts on that?
[0:02:09] Tom Farrell: Well, the number of people incarcerated in this state is just spiraling out of control. Um, just to give you a few examples, we opened the Halawa correctional facility in 1987. It was designed to house 500 inmates. Today it houses over a thousand. Um, over in the Big Island in, uh, Puna, which is part of Hawaii community correctional center, we've got 88 inmates uh stuffed into a facility that's designed for 22.
[0:02:39] Tom Farrell: Um, you know, we have basically uh about twice as many people statewide in the facilities uh in facilities than they were designed to hold, and what you see is you see it measurable in any number of things, in assaults and self-inflicted injuries and psychiatric problems and uh constant struggle for control of the facilities between the inmates and the staff. Um, and and that's the the price of overcrowding and that's just part of the price of overcrowding, it can get worse from there.
[0:03:10] Randall Roth: You're describing a a powder keg of sorts.
[0:03:14] Tom Farrell: Uh, I'm I wouldn't quite call it a powder keg, but at some point you risk the loss of control of your facilities. You either lose control to the inmates because you have a riot, uh or you lose control in a subtle manner. Uh in other words you get to the point where through corruption of the guards and and corruption of the system, the inmates are running the place instead of the staff.
[0:03:37] Tom Farrell: Or there's a third way you can lose control and that's through litigation. You wind up in another big lawsuit like such as we have uh covering O triple C and the women's facility and next thing you know, you've got the federal court running your prison system.
[0:03:50] Randall Roth: And and I guess in a way, they are running two of our facilities here in Hawaii.
[0:03:55] Tom Farrell: Well, to be honest, the federal court has has entered a or has approved a consent decree. Uh we haven't had uh as a state had to go back to court on the consent decree on an enforcement issue, but it's really because we're trying very hard to comply with the requirements of the decree, uh and we're monitored by a court appointed monitor. So those facilities are being run differently than the other facilities because of the uh consent decree.
[0:04:22] Tom Farrell: Well, exactly. They have population caps that they have to uh meet and the other facilities, uh basically we're stuffing as many people as we possibly can in there because uh we can't put them in the two that are capped.
[0:04:34] Randall Roth: Okay. Well, our other guest, Martha Torney is an official with the Department of Public Safety. And I guess all of this is pretty much dumped in the lap of of the department. Uh what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts?
[0:04:48] Martha Torney: Uh, I just want to respond to one thing that Tom said to start off with, and Tom, we may go back into court very shortly over the capacity of the women's facility because we have been over that capacity since September 9th.
[0:04:58] Randall Roth: So even the ones that are under consent decree where adjustments have been made, there are problems.
[0:05:04] Martha Torney: There are problems, yes.
[0:05:05] Randall Roth: And because of or at least in part because of efforts to comply with those consent decrees, the other facilities have much, much bigger problems now than do the two that are under consent decree.
[0:05:16] Martha Torney: Yes.
[0:05:17] Randall Roth: So we've got a big, big problem that's not going to go away.
[0:05:20] Martha Torney: We have a big problem that's not going to go away and it's affecting the whole criminal justice system, the way that Tom Farrell uh Tom Farrell's article indicates. And it has eroded trust in the system for corrections. The police and prosecutors and law enforcement officers do not believe that we are doing everything we can to expand our system, to uh ensure that dangerous people are kept inside and it's very frustrating for them. And our argument back to them is that we're the ones that stand in front of the federal judge so, when the uh cases go to court on overcrowding.
[0:05:55] Randall Roth: So when I read uh something in the newspaper about somebody who's been arrested and released, arrested and and released. Sometimes you'll read that somebody was arrested arrested 40 times, 50 times before ending up in in prison. And the police are very frustrated about that. You're saying, we don't have any place to put them. You've been stacking them thus far, but it's just a matter of time before the federal courts prevent you from doing it.
[0:06:21] Martha Torney: Right. The chances of the federal courts uh looking at our other facilities because of another ACLU suit is very, very big.
[0:06:28] Randall Roth: And ACLU, that's the American Civil Liberties Union.
[0:06:31] Martha Torney: Yes.
[0:06:32] Randall Roth: And Tom, now you were the attorney on the state side when the ACLU sued, tell us real briefly what that lawsuit's all about.
[0:06:40] Tom Farrell: Actually, that lawsuit goes back 10 years, it was filed, I think, before I even uh uh started in prisons, but I was um recently handling it. Basically, it had to do with overcrowding at the old Oahu prison in Kalihi, uh building, which is now been torn down and the old women's facility. It's the same old story 10 years ago as it is today. At that time, we had um uh about 1,900 inmates stuffed into facilities uh designed for about 900.
[0:07:10] Randall Roth: And and one of your points is that that we don't feel sorry for the prisoners so much, in other words, this conversation isn't because primarily because they are suffering inconveniences. You're saying that that there's a lot more than that.
[0:07:26] Tom Farrell: Well, this isn't just about the the health, safety and comfort of prison inmates. You don't have a choice. You must run a facility that comports with the 8th amendment to the constitution.
[0:07:37] Randall Roth: And that's what the lawsuit is all about.
[0:07:38] Tom Farrell: And that's what it's all about and if you don't, the courts will make you and they'll make you do it in either one of two ways. They'll either spend a lot of the state's money, which they have the authority to do, or they'll start ordering releases. And if you think uh things are a little out of kilter now with people going out on the work furlough and other programs, just wait until a federal judge issues a release order. Or issues a contempt order, finding the state um $100,000 a day for every uh day that uh that it's over a certain capacity.
[0:08:07] Randall Roth: So if we think we're saving money by not doing something, not expanding prison space or whatever, that maybe we're kidding ourselves.
[0:08:16] Tom Farrell: Absolutely. It's just like trying to live on your credit card. Sooner or later, the bill comes due and when it does, uh if if it's just going to be a whopper.
[0:08:24] Randall Roth: Martha, I I think I'm hearing Tom say that there are people who are being let out of prison sooner than what they normally would be, perhaps sooner than they should be, and we mentioned a few minutes ago that there are some people who perhaps ought to be going in, but there isn't room for them right now. Is is that your perception that we've got a bunch of people that should be in that aren't because there isn't room, or people coming out sooner than they should, again, because there isn't room?
[0:08:51] Martha Torney: Uh that's my perception also that we have people coming, not coming in that should be coming in and that's what really frustrates the police and the prosecutors and that we are releasing people before their time. I know the judges are very frustrated with the situation because they'll work very hard with the defense attorney and the prosecutor in coming up with a plea agreement and the plea agreement will include that the offender will spend one year in jail as a condition of his sentence and he's let out after one month. And so therefore this agreement has really no power behind it because we're not even able to carry out the terms of it.
[0:09:26] Randall Roth: Okay. And and then getting back to these these uh stories that have been running lately that have focused on uh the treatment of the inmates. I know one, for example, quoted uh a medical director at one of the facilities as saying that that you basically have have torture out there that um uh I've got a a quote it's a a monster he was talking I think about Halawa.
[0:09:48] Martha Torney: Yes.
[0:09:48] Randall Roth: That you have a monster facility where men are dehumanized in systematic fashion, would you say, well, that's just because of the overcrowding, or is there more?
[0:09:57] Martha Torney: I think there's more than just overcrowding. I can't say that I agree with everything that Dr. Allen has said, but he has extremely high standards about how inmates should be treated, and I agree with those standards. Those are my values also. Uh, we do have some staff that mistreat inmates, there's no question about that. Will we ever be free of that? I don't know whether the nature of the beast is that we will always have some staff that take uh that abuse the power that is given to them. I certainly agree with Tom though that overcrowding creates opportunities for this to happen, where staff that perhaps would not be involved with abuse, now get involved.
[0:10:35] Randall Roth: Okay. Well, we have on the line, uh, Alika Kaulai who is a a corrections officer, a sergeant uh out at Halawa and uh Alika, I think you've been listening to all of this?
[0:10:47] Caller: Yes, I have.
[0:10:48] Randall Roth: Uh, what are your thoughts as somebody who's um uh there in the prison, a corrections officer?
[0:10:56] Caller: Well, I agree a lot with uh, Martha and Tom. We have uh a lot of problems over here at Halawa. And uh we also have a lot of good ACOs, who's trying to do their job over here.
[0:11:12] Randall Roth: An ACOs, those are the uh the prison guards?
[0:11:15] Caller: Right, they are adult correctional officers.
[0:11:18] Randall Roth: Well, from your standpoint, is overcrowding is is it that simple that if it weren't for overcrowding, then you guys could do your job okay or is there more to it?
[0:11:30] Caller: Like Martha said, there's more to it. Um overcrowding is part of the problem. The other things would be like vision of what the the prison system can be. And how we can go for it and meeting that vision, we have to focus.
[0:11:48] Randall Roth: Well, you you say there's more to it than overcrowding, can you give me an example or two of of other factors that are creating problems?
[0:11:57] Caller: Well, because of overcrowding, we have uh the manpower over here, we have lack uh a lot of lack of communication between our uh supervisors and the line personnel. And that overcrowding creates a lot of a lot of uh opportunities for uh miscommunication of some orders being given past down to our supervisors to the line.
[0:12:35] Randall Roth: Okay. Uh Martha, do you have anything you want to ask uh Alika or comments about what you're hearing Alika say?
[0:12:42] Martha Torney: I think that Alika is right on in saying that the there's lack of communication. We will develop new policies such on uh use of force and the way that the policy is developed is in accordance with all laws and requirements of the state and of the federal government. When that policy is passed on to the facility, it gets watered down in the translation. It's like playing telephone. And so what originally was stated there, not everybody really hears the same thing and sees the same thing. And so many of the ACOs who may be crossing over the line, actually believe that they are working within the perimeters of what they're allowed to do in their job.
[0:13:21] Randall Roth: Mhm. Tom, any thoughts on that?
[0:13:23] Tom Farrell: Yeah, I wanted to ask uh Sergeant Kaulai a couple of questions. Um uh Alika, I I wondered, for example, how is the disciplinary system working up there? When you write an inmate up for a rules infraction and he um goes to a disciplinary committee and is found guilty by the committee, does he serve his time in disciplinary segregation right away or is that backing up?
[0:13:45] Caller: Uh it's been backing up. We've been trying very hard to uh catch up on the backlog.
[0:13:52] Randall Roth: So doesn't doesn't that work out really that uh uh Sergeant Colulli that um inmates in fact kind of have a green light to go ahead and violate the rules inside the prison?
[0:14:02] Caller: Uh, definitely.
[0:14:03] Randall Roth: How does that affect the staff and their morale and and trying to deal with the inmates in a professional fashion?
[0:14:09] Caller: Well, that's part of the the problem that we have. It brings down the morale. And uh good ACOs will cross over the line and they won't write them up and and uh we have problems that way.
[0:14:23] Randall Roth: Maybe take justice into their own hands if they think there's a quicker surer way of uh letting the inmate know that they're out of line?
[0:14:30] Caller: Yes, uh, that's quite possible too.
[0:14:33] Randall Roth: Okay. Well Alika, I appreciate your sharing your thoughts. If you'd like to stay on the line for a bit, uh we can come back to you later on, I know uh I know you've got a lot of other things to do as well. Thank you very much.
[0:14:43] Caller: Sure, thank you.
[0:14:44] Randall Roth: Martha, before we started this morning, you said something to me about uh inmates gaining the upper hand in some ways so far as your efforts to to um reform them are concerned. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
[0:14:59] Martha Torney: Well, inmates are uh reluctant clients. They are not there by choice. They're not happy campers. No, they're not happy campers, and they have requirements that they must complete to be eligible for parole. When we were not overcrowded, we were able to enforce these requirements. There is a law that if education is available and they do not have a high school diploma, they must get a high school diploma, the GED. Uh, sex offenders must go through treatment. We have drug uh treatment. We do not have a lot enough slots for all these inmates now though.
[0:15:33] Martha Torney: And the inmates know the overcrowding is really uh driving our release decisions now, not whether they finished programs. So they can just as out-and-out refuse to participate.
[0:15:43] Randall Roth: And it used to be you could say, well then you're going to stay here longer and that would motivate them.
[0:15:46] Martha Torney: Right, that would motivate them and get them to the program.
[0:15:48] Randall Roth: But now they maybe tell you where to where to go and and just uh wait until they're let out and it's not that long down the road.
[0:15:54] Martha Torney: Yeah, we don't have a hammer anymore over them.
[0:15:57] Randall Roth: Okay. Well, I want to remind listeners that this is Pop Radio. We're talking about prison overcrowding. My name is Randy Roth and my guests in the studio are Martha Torney, an official with the Department of Public Safety. She has a masters in criminology and she teaches in the justice administration programs at HPU and UH. Also, Tom Farrell, an attorney in private practice, formerly deputy State attorney general assigned to represent the state's prison system. He was the lead attorney on the ACLU consent decree case. If you'd like to ask them a question or make a brief comment, just call us at 955-8821. Our neighbor Islanders are always invited to call collect. The number again is 955-8821.
[0:16:42] Randall Roth: We have Cheryl Turbiville from KHON Channel 2 News here with us in the studio this morning as well, and Buddy the cameraman. And so uh Channel 2 News perhaps will be the the thing to be watching at 6:00 and maybe at 10:00. Uh we hope that we'll see a report on this morning show on Channel 2 News.
[0:17:00] Randall Roth: Well, again, we're talking about prison overcrowding and uh we've been talking about a number of things related to Tom's article in last week's advertiser, and Tom, something else that really caught my eye. Uh, you you gave uh uh a scenario, you said, suppose for example, that you are the warden of a neighbor Island facility and you have a mentally ill male inmate. He is awaiting trial on minor charges and has a history of being victimized by other inmates in the general population. You have three isolation cells where you can place him, but one is occupied by females, one is occupied by someone who previously abused him and one is occupied by a violent felon.
[0:17:43] Randall Roth: And guess where he went. Uh so this is a real life sort of uh situation. That's a real case uh And what happened? He went into the cell with a violent felon. You couldn't put him in the cell with the guy who had abused him before, you couldn't put him in with women, you couldn't put him in the general population because he had been victimized and abused there and you couldn't turn him loose. Um, unfortunately, that last choice wasn't a good one either, he was killed by a cellmate.
[0:18:08] Randall Roth: You know, I I called one of the prison wardens and and he declined to be on our show, but I asked him, I said, is is this the sort of tough call that you've got to make from time to time? He said, every day. Every day. Martha, any thoughts on this?
[0:18:25] Martha Torney: Well, I agree that they are every day decisions that have to be made. I want to make a comment though about abuse uh of inmates and working with inmates. The overcrowding in our system, as Tom said 10 years ago, in September of 1990 84, we were sued by the ACLU for overcrowding. And at that time the problem was at the old Hawaii State prison, which became Oahu Community Correctional Center. Between 1981 and 1989 at Oahu Community Correctional Center, we had no murders, no suicides, and no riots, and I attribute and we went up to 1,500 people on a site that was built for about 700.
[0:19:04] Martha Torney: And I attribute that to the fact that the staff and the inmates worked together saying, we're in this together, and we're going to get through it. And I don't think we have that same attitude at Halawa and that may perpetuate some of the problems that we're having up there. The ACO see themselves as being very separate from the inmates and not realizing they have to work with the inmates. Inmates have control.
[0:19:27] Randall Roth: Why would that difference exist from facility to facility?
[0:19:30] Martha Torney: I think it's culture of the facilities, I really do.
[0:19:33] Randall Roth: Culture of the facility. Explain.
[0:19:37] Martha Torney: Halawa began in the state system and had been a jail prior to run by the city and county prior to the mid 1970s. When it came over to the state administration, it became our high security facility. It had 90 inmates. That is what it was designed, and that's how the people were trained to treat to deal with the most dangerous inmates in our system. When the Halawa medium security was put under the same administration, now they're getting all the inmates that used to be at Hawaii state prison and they're trying to treat them the same way as they did the 90 inmates who were the most severe.
[0:20:12] Martha Torney: And that has caused many problems in the inappropriate approach to medium security inmates.
[0:20:18] Randall Roth: Okay. Tom Farol.
[0:20:19] Tom Farrell: Course. Course, you have to remember that Halawa is a prison that is very different from most of the rest of the facilities in in the state of Hawaii. Halawa is where we send our sentenced felons, and most of the other facilities are for people who are waiting trial on charges or or who are sentenced misdemeanants. That is they've been sentenced on uh to serve a year or less. Halawa is where your heavy hitters are.
[0:20:44] Randall Roth: The heavy hitters. Okay. Well, we've got uh all of our lines are full, and we're going to try to move through our callers uh fairly quickly. And so if all of you who are waiting, if you could be uh thinking about what your question is or your brief comment, why we'd appreciate it a lot. Let's go first to Bobby in Honolulu. Good morning, Bobby.
[0:21:02] Caller: Good morning. One statement and then one question. The inmates are all there by their choice. The other is, how about uh redoing some chain gangs with our younger ones, put them out in the community and put them in chains and shame them?
[0:21:19] Randall Roth: Okay. Um, you know what Bobby is raising, I think a lot of people feel this way. I think they feel that that the the big problem with prison overcrowding is that it's not as comfortable for the the inmates and they're saying it shouldn't be comfortable. And in fact, instead of sitting around and and just lifting weights and and watching television, they ought to be out on on the road in a a chain gang or some sort of boot camp type atmosphere or whatever. Um, I don't think Bobby's alone in in the thoughts that she's sharing, Tom Farrell.
[0:21:53] Tom Farrell: Well, I would I would definitely disagree with Bobby that uh these folks are in prison because they choose to be there, they want to be there. I think if they had any choice in the matter, they'd be out the door, and in fact, we see them exercising that choice from time to time to the department's great embarrassment.
[0:22:09] Randall Roth: Well, but they they did, they in theory were in control of the behavior that got them there.
[0:22:14] Tom Farrell: Well, that's true. That's absolutely true. I don't think uh I don't think frankly that most uh prison inmates really give a lot of thought to the consequences when they um uh when they engage in the criminal behavior that eventually lands them there. But I will tell you this, I think putting them out in in work gangs in in public is a great idea. I think the department already has some public uh work gangs. Um but it's certainly uh it's something to do with these folks uh to keep them busy during the daytime.
[0:22:45] Tom Farrell: It's not ultimately going to solve your overcrowding problem, nor do I think it's going to make prison so unpleasant that people who otherwise would be engaging in crimes are going to think twice and not do it.
[0:22:57] Randall Roth: Well, let let me ask our our uh public safety official, uh why don't we do more things like the chain gangs and and the boot camp uh where where it's it's real rigorous for those inmates?
[0:23:11] Martha Torney: Well, I think living in prison right now is real rigorous anyway. Uh I would not support chain gangs only because I believe that is very draconian. Community service work lines though, often we have between 3 and 500 inmates a day working out in the community in all our islands and they do many many different things. They do park cleanups, they wash police cars, they build walls at Alan Moana park, they do wonderful things. I wish we could put more out, again, because we don't have enough staff, we can't always do that. For the inmates who are incarcerated, I would like to see them doing a lot more work for the state that could save money.
[0:23:47] Martha Torney: Inmates in Hawaii used to make most of the the bookshelves for the libraries in our state school systems. What has changed that is, and I'm going back to the early part of the century. First, the depression came along and many jobs that inmates had been doing for the community, public service jobs, went to the federal programs for the free world that were unemployed. At the end of the depression, the unions had made it very difficult for inmates to go back in and do that work. This is still something we face today. I believe inmates could drastically reduce the cost of their incarceration by performing state services that they're precluded from from performing.
[0:24:26] Randall Roth: Okay. Bobby, does that respond to your comment and your question?
[0:24:30] Caller: Yes, it does. Uh, and I thank you very much.
[0:24:33] Randall Roth: Okay, thank you. We go to Lloyd in Waiki. Good morning, Lloyd.
[0:24:37] Caller: Uh, yes. I'm wondering what in the world happened with the federal government uh refusing uh the facilities over at Barber's point, some of those barracks as what ever they were. Uh I can't I could never figure out what their reasoning was and why they couldn't reuse those facilities over there.
[0:24:54] Randall Roth: Okay. Martha Torny.
[0:24:56] Martha Torney: Uh first of all, the decision has not been made yet of how Barber's point is going to be used and it's a a state decision, it's not a federal government decision. And so therefore, it's really with the administration. There are many competing interests though of people who want to do things with that uh property. Uh Keith Conashiro, the prosecutor in Honolulu, very much wants to have us be given, my department be given an already standing building for a drug treatment program. We would love to get it.
[0:25:23] Martha Torney: We believe that the reality is that another program is going to get the existing buildings and that if we get anything, it will be empty land which we will have to invest millions of dollars into building a facility.
[0:25:34] Randall Roth: Okay. All right. Lloyd, thank you for your call.
[0:25:36] Caller: Thank you.
[0:25:37] Randall Roth: We have Erica in Kailua. Good morning, Erica.
[0:25:39] Caller: Hi, good morning to you. I uh have uh one, well, I'll just be quick. The state has no money as everybody knows or very limited funds. Uh there's been discussion of transferring hundreds of inmates, I believe from OCCC to Texas. Um, is this the highest and best use of that money for the prison, or do you have other low cost ideas for solving the overcrowding that seems to be, at least one of the cores of the problem?
[0:26:09] Randall Roth: Well, and and I'm told that it uh in it's expensive whether you keep them here or send them to Texas, but I'm told it I'm told it'd be cheaper to send them to Harvard uh than send them to Texas to go in in jail. Um, what do you think, Martha?
[0:26:24] Martha Torney: Well, it's not setting them to Texas is only a stopgap measure. Tom mentions in his article. This is not going to resolve any problems for us. It's just going to give us a little bit of breathing room and hopefully the state can assist us in coming up with the money to develop more prison beds.
[0:26:40] Randall Roth: Is that realistic, though? I remembered during last year's campaign that when people would ask uh then candidate Cayetano, where he was going to get money to do various things he wanted to do with education and in other areas. The one thing I remember is that he was saying, well, I don't think we need new prisons as if that was a source of of funds for other things. So if you've got somebody, whose governor, who is saying, I don't want to spend it on prisons and that was when he thought he had money to spend.
[0:27:10] Randall Roth: And now as Erica indicates, and and this is uh, you know, quick summary, but we're broke, you know, there isn't much money out there. How realistic is it to think we're going to get new prisons?
[0:27:22] Martha Torney: I don't believe we're going to get new prisons that are very secure in the next five years. We can get some additional beds by building uh low medium and minimum security facilities. Those would be ideal for some of the drug treatment programs, a lot of our inmates could go into that. It will not resolve though our higher security needs in the state, and that just won't be resolved.
[0:27:45] Randall Roth: Okay. Erica, thank you for your call.
[0:27:47] Caller: Thank you very much.
[0:27:48] Randall Roth: Uh from the big island, we have Gary. Good morning, Gary.
[0:27:51] Caller: About 5 years ago, I was on a jury that heard the case of a young man who provided a gram of cocaine to a beautiful woman undercover agent. This occurred three years before it went to court. The man had since married, had a child, but was convicted for life. The judge had no leeway in the sentencing. My question, is it still mandatory life without parole imprisonment for drug dealing?
[0:28:16] Randall Roth: Gary, can I ask you a question? This is Tom Farrell. Were you on a federal jury or a state jury?
[0:28:21] Caller: Um good question. I I think it was state.
[0:28:25] Randall Roth: Okay. Well, you know the state of Hawaii has a paroling system. And basically in Hawaii, if you're sentenced say to 20 years in prison, you don't really do 20 years in prison. That's just an upper limit on what you you could conceivably do and in most cases, you're going to be paroled a lot sooner. Now, the federal government has abolished parole. So in the federal system, if you get 20 years, you do 20 years. Uh the federal government has also come up with some very draconian uh drug penalties. And that's why I wondered if maybe you had served on a on a federal jury.
[0:28:57] Caller: Well, but remember this was 5 years ago, at least and uh uh the judge told us that he had no leeway after after the fact. Of course, we didn't know it as a jury. Right. And so we would not have convicted. I'm sure we would not have convicted this young man to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, is what the judge told us.
[0:29:18] Randall Roth: Yeah, I'm I'm fairly certain that's a a federal sentence and that's uh becoming increasingly common in the federal criminal system. That you have defendants that are convicted of drug crimes that serve these incredible sentences. And it's true, the the sentencing judges have almost no discretion. And Tom, in in your article last week, if if I recall correctly, you were saying that a lot of people have the impression that our prisons here in Hawaii are filled with drug offenders. And I think the point you were making is that that's a misconception that almost all of the people in prison in Hawaii right now have committed other serious crimes.
[0:29:56] Randall Roth: They may have been using drugs but they committed serious crimes.
[0:30:01] Tom Farrell: That's right. Uh I I was curious because I wondered for example if we just simply legalized drugs and never put anybody in prison for drugs again in the state uh would that solve our overcrowding problem? Well, obviously it would help a little, but it really wouldn't do all that much. On any given day you have about 6,000 or so sentences being served and of those about 5,000 of them are for serious, non drug crimes. Usually, you'll find that prison inmates have substance abuse problems or and may be serving time for drug offenses but they're also when they're serving time for other offenses as well.
[0:30:41] Randall Roth: Okay. Martha?
[0:34:19] Martha Torney: Of course we do, on the danger to the public. In the long run though, I want to see Crystal Mett gone.
[0:34:24] Randall Roth: Okay. Gary, thank you for your call.
[0:34:27] Caller: Thank you.
[0:34:28] Randall Roth: Uh we go to George in Kamuela. Good morning, George. George, are you there? Well, I think we George, are you there? Yes, hello. Okay. Good morning. Hi. Um I'd like to introduce another issue that hasn't been well discussed, and that is privatization of prisons. A dozen years ago, there were no privatized prisons in the United States, today they exceed 100. And it's uh it's been very very successful where it's been done. Either uh private company can own and operate a prison, just operate the prison, or just provide even the medical facilities for a prison. Very, very successful. There have been no failures to my knowledge.
[0:35:11] Randall Roth: About two or three years ago, uh some committee in the legislature brought the outstanding authority on prison privatization uh here from Florida. I think he was an attorney and uh he testified, answered all the questions and then I asked him, well what have you concluded? And his conclusion was that the government employee unions are so powerful in Hawaii that you probably wouldn't be able to privatize the prisons or solve your prison problem. I'd like the uh participants reaction to that. Okay. Um what do you think? Martha Torny from the Department of Public Safety?
[0:35:50] Martha Torney: Well first of all, as you may be aware, the feds are planning on building a detention center here, and this if they do build one which I believe is going to happen, they plan on privatizing it. They are considering have a private sector actually build the prison and run it. If they can't find anybody bid willing to build it, the feds will build it and then ask private sector run it. At the state level, no private company will build unless they're guaranteed that the state will fill the beds, which I think is a good business decision not to make.
[0:36:20] Martha Torney: Private businesses uh or privately run facilities reduce the cost of incarceration for the state about 10%, 10 to 15% is what it's been been running and there have been no major problems. I believe the caller's remark though about the public unions making it very difficult to staff out this private prison is a real one.
[0:36:39] Randall Roth: Well, I know when there were a lot of problems with the the guards, especially the the abuse of the overtime system, where a lot of the guards were calling in sick and so at that time at least they would be replaced by somebody who was paid overtime. I've read in the newspaper where it created additional cost of $8 million or something like that and a lot of people felt that uh that the union was somehow involved in in this situation. And then Governor Cayetano mentioned the word privatization and again, some people have the impression that that got the union a little bit more receptive to trying to get these problems worked out.
[0:37:15] Randall Roth: Am I reading too much into the new stories, Martha?
[0:37:19] Martha Torney: No, I think that your interpretation is fairly accurate. I do not believe that the union is causing the overtime, or they're advising people how you can do a scam with overtime. At the same time, uh they are required to defend their constituents when they are charged with um misuse of of overtime. And from that vantage point, they have to do it. We as a administration though are not real good on tracking many of the problems that the uh guards have caused with overtime, and therefore our cases are often very weak, and the union wins because we do not have a real, real good case.
[0:37:57] Randall Roth: Tom is is that why the union wins, or George is suggesting that unions are terribly powerful and that that's having an impact on the situation that we have in Hawaii today. What do you think?
[0:38:08] Tom Farrell: Well, I tell you, a couple of years ago, I went up to Halawa when there were allegations of inmate mistreatment up there and I talked to a room full of guards, I think there were about 100, 150 ACOs in there. And one of the things I mentioned was that there had been some statements to the effect that guards were getting away with various things because their union was so powerful and was protecting them. When I said this, the whole room just burst into laughter. They, the, the ACOs thought it was absolutely ludicrous that anyone would think that their union was that powerful.
[0:38:41] Randall Roth: These are the prison guards.
[0:38:42] Tom Farrell: The prison guards thought it was ludicrous that anyone would think that their union was that powerful. They don't feel like they don't feel like their union is powerful?
[0:38:48] Randall Roth: or persuasive?
[0:38:51] Tom Farrell: Well, they sure don't see it in their paychecks. Um, but um the overtime problem at Halawa was really caused by two factors. One is that you did have about a dozen officers who were really abusing sick leave and forcing the department to call in other officers on overtime to cover them. But the other major factor and it's one that I think has been tremendously underreported is the fact that the state never allowed a sufficient what's called shift differential up there at at Halawa.
[0:39:21] Tom Farrell: In other words, if you run a big facility where you need 24-hour staffing, you have to assume that you're always going to have a certain number of people who are going to be sick or who are going to be on authorized vacations or who are going to be uh on industrial leave or on jury duty or you know a million other reasons that that employees in any occupation don't show up for work.
[0:39:46] Randall Roth: Are are you going to tell me that they didn't take that into account?
[0:39:49] Tom Farrell: Not well, they did but not in sufficient numbers. Uh they calculated the shift differential at about half of what they really needed. So they were assigning people to posts knowing that they weren't going to be at work, knowing that they were going to be on for example uh National Guard training or on on authorized vacations or on various other authorized leaves of absence uh and then calling people in on overtime to fill it. Now, is it cheaper to do that or to hire more employees? Well, of course, you know uh the government is being criticized for having too many state employees, so adding uh adding more employees is a dirty word.
[0:40:29] Randall Roth: Okay. Well, I'm going to get Martha's thoughts and George, we haven't forgotten you. I'm going to get Martha's thoughts and then go back to George, and then take another call.
[0:40:35] Martha Torney: I've been rethinking this a little bit, and uh as we try and improve our approach in controlling overcrowding, I know that we've had substantial problems with the unions in how we can track. I mean, I was not an overcrowding in uh abuse of overtime is the unions have made it very difficult for us to track patterns of abuse because we can't keep certain records. And where we're having the most difficult time is how we develop our cases. We know our cases have been weak, so now we want to come up with mechanisms to develop them. And the unions have been uh successful in spotting us and developing those methods.
[0:41:13] Tom Farrell: Mhm. Yeah, I guess you haven't been able to do drug testing of of guards and all sorts of things like that again, because of the the union's position. And the and the union is just really doing their members a tremendous disservice by opposing drug testing. I have talked to any number of rank and file officers and I'm sure Sergeant Kali uh uh will confirm this that most ACOs want drug testing. Uh they want a clean facility and and they don't uh want uh in their ranks, uh the type of officer who's who's likely to basically stab his fellow officers in the back by doing drugs or dealing drugs with the inmates.
[0:41:53] Randall Roth: Okay. George, are you still there?
[0:41:55] Caller: Yes. You brought up uh privatization and that got us into the powerful unions and we had a a big discussion. Uh any thoughts from you and then we need to move on.
[0:42:03] Tom Farrell: Yeah, I'm I'm pleased your participants uh agreed with what I said. They agreed with what the problem is. Now, what I'd like to know is, what's the solution? How do we get rid of the uh of this monstrous power that the unions have?
[0:42:20] Randall Roth: Well, I don't think uh Well, maybe maybe Martha has the answer. Here we go. Well, I don't have the answer, but I know that many states have been uh grappling with this same thing and unions have been losing some of their power because of financial situations in states.
[0:42:35] Martha Torney: New York State had to lay off 15% of its workforce about eight years ago and uh the unions just realize they can't stop these things from happening because of the economics. And so the states have been a little bit wiser when they start dealing with the union saying, "Hey, we do have power in this relationship also." Everything hits Hawaii a little late.
[0:42:55] Randall Roth: Okay. George, thank you for your call. Uh Ed Cole on Kauai. Good morning, Ed.
[0:43:01] Caller: Good morning. Yeah, I'm I'm just appalled at this this uh privatization of prisons. I mean, basically, what you're talking about is prisons for profit. And if you put a profit motive behind putting people in jail, as you know, corporations always look at the bottom line. If by some miracle the prison population started going down, they would lobby for new laws to keep their profits up. And also, they're using these people for slave labor. They're building they're manufacturing blue jeans, they're repairing circuit boards to send to Asian countries. Texas has a program, they're building a new prison every week for the next 18 months, and these are profits, these are prisons for profit.
[0:43:45] Randall Roth: Okay. Ed, let me let me get uh uh Martha's reaction. This is Martha Torney who's an official with the Department of Public Safety.
[0:43:52] Martha Torney: Well, I want to stress that there is not slave labor going on in these uh ventures such as making the blue jeans and doing the computer boards. In fact, these are wonderful relationships between the private sector and the public government where the inmates are able to to earn at least minimum wage.
[0:44:09] Tom Farrell: which they pay, which they pay to the prisons for their bed and boarding.
[0:44:14] Martha Torney: Sometimes they pay a percent to it but that not the majority of it.
[0:44:17] Tom Farrell: As a taxpayer, I'd like them to pay it all but I I guess that would take away their incentive.
[0:44:21] Caller: Well that's the moral. What are we going to do, execute prisoners and harvest their organs like the Chinese do? Maybe that would make us a little bit of money too.
[0:44:28] Martha Torney: No, I don't think so.
[0:44:30] Randall Roth: Well, let's get into that point. What we're doing. Ed Ed hang on, let me get Tom's reaction to your comments thus far.
[0:44:36] Tom Farrell: Well, actually, I think the prison industries program is a great idea. Uh you can call it slave labor if you want, but the fact of the matter is the dumb inmate is being forced to work and most of them uh there are long waiting lists to get into these programs. Um and frankly, I would rather see a guy released from prison having had some experience at computer repair, which we run as a program up at Halawa or uh uh mechanical drafting or various other things that we're we're having folks do in the prison than uh be released having had virtually no work experience or uh the only experience has been on a chain gang clearing brush.
[0:45:14] Caller: Well, you people are not learning from history because they they had the uh piston coal mine strike and they used prisoners to go into those mines and the piston coal miners that were on strike broke into the prison and freed all those people. And what's happening, what you really have to address is, why do we have more people in prison than any country in the world or something basically wrong with a society that is generating these kind of people.
[0:45:37] Randall Roth: Okay, let's hear from Martha Torney.
[0:45:39] Martha Torney: I would say philosophically, I agree with your caller, because I I believe the United States does uh rely on criminal justice to resolve social problems, that we are a society that perpetuates violence. You just look at our movies and our television shows and things like that and we're a very vengeful society. People want to throw these uh inmates away, lock them up, let them have I mean they talk about they don't want them to have color television. One of the things that I explain to my classes when I teach is that we probably use more preparation H than any hospital does because you don't even get to take a dump in private.
[0:46:14] Martha Torney: You have no privacy at all in a prison system. It is not a luxury to be in prison even though you have a roof over your head and you have three meals a day. I do not, as a worker in the field though, I cannot change the values of the United States. But I believe that one of my very important roles is to ensure that we continue to run humane prisons, that they abide by what we would like to have other countries look as being uh standards.
[0:46:44] Caller: Okay, Ed, it's got to be a quick one. Okay, very quick. Uh my final comment is that corporate crime cost this country 10 times more than violent crimes, and these people are working for the corporations that are now investing in prisons for profit. And something should be done about putting these people in jail.
[0:47:01] Randall Roth: Okay, Ed, thank you for your call. We appreciate it. You're listening to Pop Radio. My name is Randy Roth and with me in the studio is Martha Torney, who's an official with the Department of Public Safety and Tom Farrell, an attorney in private practice who just recently was the Deputy State Attorney General assigned to represent the states' prison system.
[0:47:20] Randall Roth: If you'd like to ask a question or make a brief comment, all you have to do is call us at 955-8821. If you caught the show a little bit late, you'd like to hear what you missed, tonight at 8 o'clock on KIFO, that's 1380 am, you can hear the show in its entirety. Again, that's KIFO 1380 am. Well, let's see. We've got Alika. Our prison guards still on the line. Alika, are you there?
[0:47:48] Caller: Yes, I am.
[0:47:49] Randall Roth: Uh you've heard a lot more about a number of topics having to do with prison overcrowding. Was there anything in particular that you'd like to comment on?
[0:47:58] Caller: About the overcrowding?
[0:48:00] Randall Roth: Any anything you've been hearing?
[0:48:03] Caller: Yeah, about the overtime. Um that's true. We have a lot of uh what Martha and um Tom and we were speaking about the overtime. You know, the proper procedures and documentation is is really hard because of the union. And that those who do work the overtime, it's not by choice. Like I said, we have a lot of good ACOs, uh adult correctional officers over here. And we stay back to make sure that our other fellow officers is not going to be stressed out like the rest of them.
[0:48:41] Randall Roth: Mhm. What what about the comment that was made earlier that it's hard to get inmates to do what you want them to do if you can't hold over their heads the threat that they'll stay in in prison longer if they don't cooperate.
[0:48:57] Caller: Well, getting into the inmate population, it it boils down to uh responsibilities, you know, compared to the staff member. Um if you I believe firmly, if you firm but fair, you gain the respect from the inmate. And we have no problem, the inmates are are not the problem over here. We have uh if you firm but fair, it makes your job a lot easier.
[0:49:30] Randall Roth: Now now you say the inmates aren't the problem. What's the problem?
[0:49:34] Caller: Well, like like I say, um the the overall the communication between our supervisors and the line personnel, that's created a lot of uh morale problems over here. Okay. That's what we have to fix because I'd like to see programs be put on again so that these inmates can have a smooth transition back into the real world.
[0:50:00] Randall Roth: Okay. Well, let's hear from Martha Torney on that.
[0:50:03] Martha Torney: Uh our deputy director Eric Pedarosa is now out at Halawa running the facility, and I think that was a wonderful choice. He is a very uh a man of very high morals and a great communicator, and he is spending a lot of time with staff. I was commenting to Tom earlier this morning that when I go out there, staff, I hear the the ACOs uh talking. Well, I talk to Eric and explain this and Eric came and spent time with me. It's like they're trying to outdo each other on how much time he's spending there.
[0:50:31] Martha Torney: To have real change happen so there is not any abuses happening in our system, it has to be the ACOs themselves that want the change. I agree with Alika that the great majority of our ACOs are dedicated public servants. They want to do a good job, they want to do a safe job, they want to be proud, they are proud of what they do. And with leadership such as Eric, I believe can provide, he will allow that feeling to become the prevailing one, rather than a small group of bullies forcing uh this negative attention on them.
[0:51:05] Randall Roth: Okay. Alika, thank you for uh for joining us in this conversation.
[0:51:10] Caller: Thank you very much.
[0:51:11] Randall Roth: Um Tom Farrell, you know if if prison overcrowding is at at the core of all of this and and it's become more clear, I think, in this conversation. There are a number of things that are going on, but if prison overcrowding is is at the core and if that has something to do with with the money that's been appropriated, allocated, spent in terms of of prison space. Um why is that? Why wouldn't the legislature, for example, have seen the sorts of problems that uh that we've been talking about and come up with money in the past to um to have more space.
[0:51:46] Tom Farrell: It's very unpopular to appropriate money for prisons. How do you justify spending millions of dollars on the state prison system uh when there are unmet needs in the public schools, in uh our mental health programs, uh in our uh programs to try and get working uh our our poverty-stricken mothers, single mothers off welfare and into work. Um all of these are things that people logically uh think should be priorities over uh a bunch of criminals.
[0:52:17] Tom Farrell: Uh the problem however is that because of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, we can't get away with ignoring this program uh this problem, I should say. And so what we need to do is we need to develop a community consensus as to how we are going to deal with the problem and then go ahead and do it. And basically, it boils down to um a couple of things. And first of all, you can try to build your way out of this. Um we need it easily a 1,000 bed prison new standing facility in this state to begin to accommodate some of the overflow, but the cost is absolutely horrendous.
[0:52:55] Tom Farrell: It would probably cost about $150 million to build that facility and about 25 million a year to operate it. We can't afford that.
[0:53:05] Randall Roth: Okay. So that's an option that we can't afford. What are our other options?
[0:53:08] Tom Farrell: Well, our other options basically are to try and come up with some creative alternatives to incarceration. Uh we had a population management commission that spent about a year studying this. We had some very bright people uh on this commission and they came up with a whole host of alternative programs uh such as uh supervised work center, the drug court, which did pass, about the only thing that got through the last session. Um intensive supervision of probationers, uh electronic monitoring, boot camp, uh
[0:53:36] Randall Roth: Why haven't those things been done?
[0:53:38] Tom Farrell: Well, because because the legislature didn't want to spend money on that either. In fact, the Population Management Commission came up with a a program that uh would have cost about 10.2 million um over the biennium and probably would have diverted about 1100 offenders uh and the legislature wouldn't appropriate the funds for it. Interestingly, in the last session they passed legislation that authorized the programs, but they zeroed out all the appropriations. So the the the Department of Public Safety or other agencies are authorized to run these programs but given no money to do them.
[0:54:15] Randall Roth: Martha, you're an official with the Department of Public State Safety, a state agency. Um as I'm sitting here listening to this, it it doesn't make a lot of sense because whether you're spending cash to put people in Texas jails or you're submitting uh your citizens to more crime because you don't have places to put criminals, um or the federal courts are going to force you to do some things that my guess will be more expensive, you know, less attractive to us than what we might have uh decided to do ourselves. It just doesn't make sense to me. Does it make sense to you?
[0:54:48] Martha Torney: Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense to me either. Uh in 1984 when the consent decree was filed, or 1985 when it was filed, 1.5% of the Hawaii state budget was going towards corrections. Our legislature was very responsive in the next eight years and we went up to 3.5% of the the budget. We're in a budget crunch at this time. But as we got a bigger piece of the pie, where is that money coming from? It's coming from other agencies. It's coming from the social service agencies that are your prime line of prevention of crime in the first place.
[0:55:19] Martha Torney: And I believe that's the only way we're going to control prison overcrowding. It's uh a lifelong objective because you have to change the way people are living their lives. You have to change the opportunities. You have to change the resources, and make sure the schools are well funded, make sure there are jobs available for these people.
[0:55:36] Randall Roth: But if you don't have money to do all of that, I mean, it sounds to me like we we don't have enough money in any event to do what we want to do with education and in other, you know, areas of of social concerns, social services. Um where is the money going to come from on the prison side and if there isn't money, what's the answer? Because it sounds to me like what we have today simply, number one, it can't last. But number two, it's just not acceptable.
[0:56:05] Martha Torney: What is the answer? If I had the answer, I'd be director of the department.
[0:56:08] Randall Roth: Well, Tom, I you were saying that the whatever the answer is coming out of the legislature or the governor's office is going to start with some sort of community consensus?
[0:56:17] Tom Farrell: I I think so and the the the what is what is probably the most important thing is that the community needs to come to a consensus that we have to come to a solution and we can't continue to ignore this problem. Um you know, after the last session of the legislature, when we went in there and we said, "Well, uh we can incarcerate these folks at $76 a day, or we can take a bunch of them and and put them into various alternative programs, the average cost of which is about $12 a day." Now you would have thought that that your average politician would be able to figure out what's the smart choice.
[0:56:50] Tom Farrell: Well, the the choice that the legislature selected was, we're not going to do either of those things. We're not going to do anything. And and uh Frankly, I sort of had this feeling after the session like I wanted to go around and grab each of them by the shoulders and shake them and say, don't you understand there's a serious problem. You've got to do something. And either we're going to build more prisons, we're going to come up with some alternative programs, or quite frankly, we're going to be forced to start letting people out on a wholesale basis, and you're not going to like that.
[0:57:23] Randall Roth: I think we've been doing it, or at least that's the impression I have, Martha.
[0:57:28] Martha Torney: Uh many states are trying to build a way out of it, and one of your callers mentioned Texas, which in fact, uh is doing that. In California, 17% of their state budget is dedicated now to corrections and expected to be 20% by uh the turn of the century. The amount of money that we're putting into this, we're putting money into it anyway, and I believe that money could be better spent on other programs. I do not want to see corrections continuing to grow at a rate that it is taking up, taking parts of money away from the schools that are already underfunded.
[0:58:03] Martha Torney: California is a good example of how the impact of prison construction have affected their budget. What was hit first? The university system in California. The thing that gave poor people an opportunity to get a higher education and earn more money.
[0:58:17] Tom Farrell: Well, what does the department think about uh our caller George earlier was saying, privatization. You achieve some efficiencies which lets you do more with less. What's the department's position on that?
[0:58:27] Martha Torney: We have no problem at all with considering privatization. The state would have to make a commitment though to a private company that they would, in fact, uh fill it up with with inmates. The overall savings, though, would run about 10%. So, it's not you're still going to be spending a lot of money.
[0:58:42] Tom Farrell: Okay. Well, we're down to the last few minutes, and I'm sure there are some important topics having to do with prison overcrowding that we just haven't gotten to. Uh I'd like to ask each of you to to just throw out one or two additional issues that the community ought to know about, ought to be thinking about, and then we'll we'll give each of you a few seconds to kind of uh make some closing comments. Tom, additional issues?
[0:59:04] Tom Farrell: Well, I I think uh Martha touched on the drug problem earlier, particularly crystal meth in this town, uh it's contributing tremendously to the crime problem, as is the general trend of the population to be younger. I mean, crime is basically a violent crime is basically a young man's game. Uh crime will continue to increase. Property crime is on the increase in Hawaii. Um and uh our uh need for prison bed space and for other programs to deal with this is going to continue to increase um uh every year.
[0:59:39] Tom Farrell: Uh it's not going to be cheap, uh but we're going to have to do something in this state uh about our prison overcrowding problem. Uh if we're honest with ourselves about it, we can come up with some creative solutions uh that will cost less than simply sticking our heads in the sand. Okay. And and in terms of creative solutions, you would look to the recommendations from this uh population management commission. You bet. Uh expanding electronic monitoring, boot camps, diversionary programs, drug treatment, no one thing is a magic bullet, but all of those things in combination and building more prison space will work. All all of which cost money.
[1:00:21] Tom Farrell: All of which cost money, but um, you know, I tell you if if uh somebody's in your house at night with a gun uh stuck under your nose, you'll be uh wishing that uh that uh you would uh had a legislator who was willing to spend that money uh for your safety.
[1:00:37] Tom Farrell: You know you know Martha, we have so much domestic violence here in in Hawaii and I assume everywhere, but you're certainly aware of it here in Hawaii. And I'm told that that it's not unusual that these uh orders that, you know, an abuser is ordered to stay away from uh from a person, that that abuser knows. They're not going to send him to jail if he goes and harasses his former wife or girlfriend or whatever. They don't have room for him. They don't have a place to put him. And survey shows that a lot of people in our community are are concerned about crime.
[1:01:12] Tom Farrell: Um Department of Public Safety, we want to feel safe. What's uh what's your you're thinking on all this?
[1:01:18] Martha Torney: Well, the spouse abuser will come to our door on a Friday afternoon to serve a weekend or serve 48 hours or so, and along with him is a sentenced felon uh sex offender. And we only can admit one, and we have to make these horrible choices all the time.
[1:01:32] Tom Farrell: And folks like that are catching on.
[1:01:34] Martha Torney: Yes, they are.
[1:01:35] Tom Farrell: Okay. Well, we're down to the last minute or so. Parting thoughts, Martha.
[1:01:40] Martha Torney: Uh first of all, I think I work for a very proud profession, and we have some wonderful employees in our system, and I want the community to realize that crime is everyone's problem, not just the criminal justice systems, and not just corrections. That that uh the community must be involved in prevention of crime, and they must be involved with people who are coming out of prison that are returning to their community to help make that transition a safe one.
[1:02:02] Tom Farrell: Okay. Tom Farrell, just a couple seconds. I think everybody from George on to Martha down to Sergeant you're doing a terrific job and uh they all deserve our thanks. Okay. Well, this is Randy Roth. You've been listening to Pop Radio. If you'd like to catch the entire broadcast tonight at 8:00 on KIFO 1380 AM, you can hear it all. Also watch Channel 2 News tonight at 6:00 and 10:00, maybe they'll have a report on this morning's show. Next week, we're going to be talking about the physician's role in death and dying. You've been listening to Pop Radio. I'm Randy Roth. Aloha.

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