OCCC crowding
at ‘crisis’ level

The ACLU says it will go to
the feds over a system that is
'breaking down'

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Charging that the overcrowding at Oahu Community Correctional Center has reached crisis proportion, the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to ask the federal court to renew its supervision of the state prison.

As of last week, Dan Foley, ACLU attorney, said the Kalihi prison was over its capacity of nearly 900 inmates by almost 300 prisoners.

"The systems are essentially breaking down at OCCC," Foley said, "medical, food service, safety, security, environment. There are inmates sleeping on the floor. You have three to a cell -- triple celling."

In one OCCC annex, the state is housing 200 inmates, exceeding its capacity of 114 prisoners, he said.

"The conditions are the worst they have been since the consent decree was entered into, and what is alarming is that it's continuing to move backward rather than forward."

The ACLU plans to notify state Attorney General Margery Bronster that unless this overcrowding is addressed and remedied by January, "we have no recourse but to seek court intervention."

Prison spokesman Ted Sakai said "the state is just as concerned about the overcrowding as the ACLU (is)."

Sakai said the state Department of Public Safety is working with a $500,000 legislative appropriation to pick a new prison site and begin the design phase. State Public Safety Director Keith Kaneshiro has been pushing for two new prisons -- a 1,500-bed facility for men and a 500-bed one for women. Gov. Ben Cayetano has indicated the Big Island could be a site.

Foley said the burden lies with state lawmakers and not with the Department of Public Safety which has "an outstanding warden who is just overwhelmed."

"The buck stops with the Legislature because the Legislature enacts laws that ultimately results with so many people in the prison system and doesn't allocate the resources to manage them."

Foley said the state can't keep sending inmates to Texas prisons, which now house 600 from Hawaii, but which may not be available in the future because Texas will need those beds.

"It's a real crisis situation as far as bed space and I don't think Public Safety has the answers other than using Texas to absorb the overflow."