Two men charged in recent murder cases at the time of the killings were wanted on arrest warrants issued under a highly-praised state court program called Project HOPE.

HOPE — Hawai'i's Opportunity for Probation with Enforcement — is a pilot project begun in 2004 by Circuit Judge Steven Alm.

It is designed to reduce recidivism among probationers through close supervision and frequent drug testing by probation officers along with immediate, usually brief, returns to jail for violators.

Professor Mark Kleiman of UCLA, who is concluding a detailed analysis of HOPE, said in a telephone interview last week, "Clearly, it's important to get the (HOPE) warrants issued and served. Partly, it's a question of convincing the police to make these warrants a priority."

Honolulu Police Chief Boisse Correa said the department tries to give HOPE warrants priority attention, but Alm noted that the department has not received additional funding for the extra workload.

Kleiman said, "If I was running HOPE, I would certainly be asking the Legislature for more money to pay for more services from the police."

Alm stressed that neither of the probationers now accused of murder, Kelii Acasia and RJ Ham, attended their Project HOPE warning hearing so that the consequences of rules violations were not made explicitly clear to them.

But Alm acknowledged that the Acasia and Ham HOPE arrest warrants were supposed to receive priority by law enforcement agencies because of the emphasis the court places on immediate consequences for violations of program rules.

"I think these two examples (Acasia and Ham) should not eliminate the program, but certainly raise concerns that HOPE may be used as a means to keep people out of jail who should be in jail," said City Prosecuting Attorney Peter Carlisle.

In response, Alm said, "I can't speak for other judges, but when I'm making the decision at sentencing about whether to send a defendant to prison, I carefully look at the presentence report, the arguments from the attorneys and any other relevant evidence."

"If I decide to place a defendant on probation, only then will I decide whether HOPE probation is appropriate for the individual," Alm said.

Overall, the program has shown excellent results since it began with a caseload of just 70 defendants in 2004 and has now grown to include more than 1,200 probationers, according to Kleiman and Prof. Angela Hawken of Pepperdine University, who have studied HOPE in detail.

They said in a 2007 magazine article that HOPE cut the rate of missed and positive drug tests by more than 80 percent among a group of probationers with a history of methamphetamine use. That contrasts with the 50 percent to 75 percent of probationers who "never start treatment or quit before finishing it" in California, which was used as a comparison population by the professors.

Hawai'i Public Defender Jack Tonaki pointed out that HOPE was created to impose closer supervision of high-risk probationers who pose a greater risk of recidivism, including drug abusers and sex offenders.

"I know that we have seen many cases where our clients who may have been heading for prison have been turned around and in a sense saved by this program," he said.

But Tonaki said HOPE is "very dependent on immediate arrests" of probationers who violate the rules.

"These are high-risk offenders and they're supposed to be picked up immediately and brought to court," he said.

Serving warrants is a difficult job, even without a huge backlog of warrants already in the hands of police and sheriffs, he said.

"It's not easy to track these guys down," said Tonaki.

And even if Acasia and Ham had been picked up immediately on the HOPE warrants, there's no guarantee that they wouldn't have committed subsequent crimes, he said.

"I'd like to say that had both of these individuals gotten the benefit of HOPE, these other types of subsequent incidents would not have occurred," said Tonaki. "But there's no assurance of that."

Carlisle said he supports HOPE, but has reservations about it.

"If used correctly it can be very effective," he said. "But you have to be careful about who you put in HOPE and how many times you allow them to be put on probation, probation, probation over and over again."