Hawaiçi court officials, including judges who oversee “treatment courts” that boast high success rates in turning around the lives of criminal offenders, appeared before legislators Tuesday to argue that further budget cuts will cost the state much more money than they save.

Circuit Judge Steven Alm, founder and chief advocate of the HOPE probation program, told lawmakers that it costs $1.82 a day to supervise a HOPE probationer but $139 a day to incarcerate the same offender.
The program, which has shown steep drops in criminal recidivism, has gained national attention and is now being emulated in several Mainland jurisdictions.
Drug treatment for HOPE probationers costs $775,000 per year and is “a critical part” of the program, Alm told members of the state House Judiciary Committee.
If that funding is cut, those probationers will have to be jailed or “let out on their own” while they wait to be accepted to a treatment program, Alm said.
According to figures provided the committee by Tom Mick of the Judiciary’s Policy and Planning Department, the annual cost of incarcerating the 1,483 probationers now in HOPE would be $75.2 million.
The committee also heard from judges who oversee Drug Court, Mental Health Court, Girls Court, and the Family and Juvenile Drug Court programs.
All told the committee their programs have been very successful in diverting offenders from continued criminal conduct, saving society millions of dollars that would have been spent on police, prosecution and imprisonment expenses.