Moments after a state hospital employee knocked on the door and told him to put on a shirt, the 61-year-old stared wide-eyed at a small smartphone screen transmitting his image into courtroom 7D of Honolulu’s First District Court.
The homeless man with salt and pepper hair watched attentively as a judge explained that he had been found mentally unfit and couldn’t be prosecuted for the trespassing charge he had been arrested for in August.
“You’ll be released today,” the judge said on Sept. 3. “I hope that you will take advantage of the services that you’re being directed to, so that hopefully we don’t see you back under these circumstances.”
The man nodded, but even a cursory glance at his record shows how thin that hope was.
Five years ago, Hawaii enacted a law meant to keep people with mental illness who commit nonviolent petty misdemeanors out of jail and get them help faster. Too often, officials noted at the time, jails were serving as de facto mental health treatment facilities — a costly, ineffective and unfair system.
