News That Matters Support us. One day back in , DeMont Conner sat in a room at the Kulani Correctional Facility, listening to a recording of a frantic call.
A woman was on the line, clearly in distress: Her house was being broken into. Terrified, she was hiding in a closet and begging for help β but to no avail. A man soon broke in, raped the woman and killed her. It broke me down. That, right there, was an eye opener. A conscious, deliberate choice. And it resulted in a criminal act.
Kat Brady hails the program for giving people a second chance, a concept she calls quintessentially Hawaiian. Coyne says the program is open to almost all sex offenders who are near the end of their sentences; only those who still maintain their innocence, or are appealing their conviction, are ineligible. The goal, after all, is to make the participants accountable for their past behaviors, he says.
About 80 sex offenders are now enrolled in the core courses, and an additional 23 are participating in after-care. Sessions are held two to three times a week for the core courses and once a week for after-care, but the duration of the program can vary widely β it could be as short as 10 months or as long as four years, depending on the progress of each participant.
So this system gives all the leverage that the department needs to ensure that each graduate of the program is ready for re-entry. To do that, they first have to acknowledge their past behaviors, learn to empathize with their victims, and recognize the series of bad decisions that led them to commit their crime and figure out how to avoid β or deal with β high-risk situations.
