HONOLULU'S city prosecutor, Peter Carlisle, has multiple keys to his success. He's quick, bright and tough. He's also, as shown by a 1995 encounter with a drug-crazed thug, personally courageous. Observations by the
city prosecutorBut one of his greatest strengths is his ability to boil concepts down to their essence and express them clearly.
Here are some Carlisle-isms:
On Himself -- "I am both a lawyer and a politician so in the natural scheme of the universe that puts me two full steps beneath road-kill."
On the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility -- "HYCF was constructed at a cost of $12 million. There are 30 beds at HYCF. This is a per bed construction cost of $400,000. If any of you out there live in a home where the per bed construction cost was $400,000, would you mind inviting me and my wife over for the weekend?
"It costs $70,000 a year to confine one juvenile in HYCF. If we decided not to spend so much money on the juvenile criminal we could send a half dozen non-criminally inclined students to Iolani, Kamehameha, Punahou, St. Louis, or any of Hawaii's other top schools for a year. I don't have a hard time figuring out which would be a better investment in Hawaii's future."
On Prison Construction -- "To understand why the last time we built a prison in Hawaii cost over $100,000 per bed you need only to look at the thickness of the concrete walls at the Halawa facility. There is enough concrete out there to build a new great pyramid in Egypt. Because we all live so close to Pearl Harbor we occupy ground zero in the event of a nuclear attack. However, we can all take some comfort in the fact that should the bomb be dropped on Oahu, although you and I will be evaporated, our criminals stand an excellent chance of surviving."
On Government -- "When I returned to government from the private sector I had to be taught about 'free' money. Free money comes from some source other than the source of your main budget. For example, since my office is a city and county office, most of my money comes from the city and county. Money that comes from the federal government or some other funding source is 'free.' Silly me. I thought all money came out of somebody's pocket.
"In the private sector, if you have an employee who is not carrying his fair share of the work or is detrimental to office morale, you take appropriate action. In government one must always remember that it is far easier to kill a vampire at midnight than it is to discipline a lazy civil servant."
On Rehabilitation -- "Everybody wishes there was a pill called rehabilitation that you could give to criminals that would stop them from committing further criminal acts. We haven't been able to find such a cure for the common criminal any more than we have been able to find a cure for the common cold.
"The greatest cure for the common criminal is age. It goes something like this. Were any of you 18 years old at some point in your life? Are any of you now over the age of 35? Have you noticed a difference?"
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.