Hawaii Judge Steve Alm created Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement, the HOPE Program. It’s an award-winning program that employs a tough love approach to felony offenders. Alm, 63, is leaving the bench to move to a Washington, D.C., suburb, where he will work as a legal consultant to states, the Department of Justice and Congress. He might set up a nonprofit HOPE institute if funding can be secured, reports the Honolulu Civil Beat
Under the program, if probationers cut their drug use, keep appointments with probation officers and work to finish drug treatment programs, judges will not be forced to send them back behind bars. HOPE has been a runaway success and a model being adopted across the nation. Research compared HOPE probationers to a control group without the program’s options. Those in the program were 72 percent less likely to test positive for drugs and 61 percent less likely to miss probation officer appointments. Alm is excited because criminal justice reform is being embraced nationally and at the federal level. “Both Democrats and Republicans can agree on this,” he said. “The Republicans tend to like the accountability part and saving money, while Democrats like doing better with probation and not sending people to prison.”
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HOPE probation is a self promoted program relying on illegalities from one judge in Hawaii bullying the legal system with the blessing of criminal attorneys and the help of the State Attorney General office. The statistics from these biased data were exploited by one(!) academic group which is not even composed of criminologists but faculties from a very mediocre school of Public Policy. “Judge”
Alm is asking probationers to take responsability for their acts while he told a criminal lawyer “it is illegal but if you do not complain about it, I will do it.”
Issues and crimes about HOPE probation have been reported on the Fabebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/HOPE-Probation-the-lies-irregularities-illegalities-in-Hawaii/1402816493347357