Project HOPE

This morning's Advertiser reports on Hawaii's Project HOPE (Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement), or HOPE Probation, administered by the Judiciary. The Advertiser's story, "HOPE gets nation's attention," refers to an article carried yesterday by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and a presentation by HOPE's founder Judge Steven Alm, and Prof. Angela Hawken, at a conference held in Washington, D.C., also yesterday, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The WSJ article, "Scared Straight...by Probation," states in part:

The key: "flash incarceration" that sends offenders to jail for short but immediate sentences for violating virtually any probation condition. Those who follow the rules are rewarded with looser supervision.
. . . . .
Flash incarceration has been used around the U.S. by specialized courts established to adjudicate drug cases, with demonstrated success. But the Hawaii program is one of the first to test the approach among a broader group of probationers. In a randomized, controlled trial of more than 500 probationers, researchers from Pepperdine University and the University of California at Los Angeles found HOPE probationers were less than half as likely as controls to miss probation-officer appointments or test dirty for drugs, even though the controls knew in advance when they would be tested and HOPE participants didn't.