Tommy Johnson’s recent Community Voice piece leaves much to be desired (“A New Jail Is Critical For Hawaiʻi’s Correctional System”). Light on data-supported facts and dense with rhetoric, the Hawaiʻi Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation director hopes no one will notice.
The director’s conclusion about the percentage of homeless prisoners in Oahu Correctional Community Center seems odd. He states that “roughly 7% of OCCC” prisoners are homeless or have no permanent address.
A 2017 report from the Hawaiʻi Department of Human Services puts the percentage of homeless incarcerated at OCCC at 30%. So, it is confounding that the 64% who “had no address” for reasons unexplained in his opinion piece are somehow not homeless.
Inexplicable…